Last year I went to a workshop where an artist described her art as the process not the product (actually those are my own words, but the artist basically said the same thing, which is why it resonated so deeply with me). I’ve often held that unless you can witness the artist making their work: to be privy to the whole process of thinking, experimenting, discarding, keeping…the whole struggle of pain and fear, frustration and joy that is woven into the process of making art, you haven’t really experienced art–you’ve enjoyed the end product.
Today was my first day back in the studio after a very long hiatus, and it was truly a joy. I’d been working on these Turmeric Spice beads for weeks, so it’s nice to finally get back to work. For this project, I decided to be led by the process rather than beginning with an end product in mind. This intuitive way of art making was familiar to me when my work centered around painting and sculpture, and it is bringing me a great deal of joy now.
I experimented with my Turmeric Spice beads a great deal. They started as recycled paper beads then I mixed a few different colors of polymer clay together and added that to the beads then baked it. Now I’m in the process of drilling the beads and figuring out what comes next. I know that I want to make a necklace. I feel called by the metal gold, driftwood, and poppies. The odd thing is right after I thought about poppies, I saw a news special about the fighting in Afghanistan, how the American marines left a poppy field intact. I feel compelled by the whole thing, so now I’m doing some research around the poppy-opium production cycle. It’s interesting. What’s also interesting is that for days I’d been thinking about somehow incorporating the color red into the design of the necklace. Considering that many of the beads look like the head (or hip) of a closed poppy flower, and that red is a common color of the poppy flower, I think I understand why my conscious was called to the color red.
Well, I am surrounded by creative people, interesting people, people I love and who love me back. The support is overwhelming. Today was a very good day, and now it’s time to rest.
