Hardship in the face of art

I feel so defeated.

Nothing quite beats a major dissapointment like having to hear that it ain't over yet. I'm doing a project that depends on peoples participation, but for some reason, people don't want to do anything unless they get paid or rewarded in some way. It's how we're wired I guess.

The project is a steel sculpture. The subject is the future. So I figured if I could get a lot of people to contribute to it at bi-annual events, it would never end and thus be a symbol of the future. Much easier said than done, my friends.

I advertised to some extent, set up my 'lil spot (that took me about 2 and a half hours) then this guy came and peered over one of my walls and said that I couldn't weld in there. 2 and a half hours of worrying, panicking  trying to get it done in time...for nothing. As if things couldn't get worse, no one showed up. Some of my friends chose things to be welded to cheer me up, it didn't work. I wanted to kill this thing, it isn't alive and it isn't killable, but I wanted to kill it for making me feel so horrible.

This was on Tuesday, so today I came up with a better idea. To take my idea to the people. I would walk around with some scrap metal in a box and a photo of the sculpture. Then I would ask people to choose a piece and where on the sculpture they would like to place it. My lecturer didn't like that idea. It's not the same as luring people and having them participate because they are interested. So now I have to get people to believe that they want to do something and then get them to actually do it. Does lemonade and cake sound alluring enough?

This project is due for tomorrow 8:30, but there's no way I would have been able to pull that off. My lecturer was nice enough to give me an extra day to sort my stuff out (bless her soul). It's quite ironic though. I was amped to do this when i first came up with the idea and I think that that's the only reason that she let me go through with it. Now I want to dump the whole thing and she has to convince me to continue with it. I really want this to succeed. I think that I need to go out more; my studies are all I have right now, so if something goes wrong with a project I react like it's the end of the world. I act that way, because for me it is. I have nothing else.

This project did make me realize hoe important friends are. I called my best friend (who i haven't seen in a few months), because I really just needed someone to help me with this whole thing. Without a moment's hesitation she volunteered to help make ads and to bake a cake. Almost immediately it felt like I wasn't so alone anymore, that someone cares.

I really need to go visit my parents, I feel emotionally and spiritually drained. Lets hope that tomorrow is a success, I don't want a project to ruin my hibernation weekend. Hibernation that my mind and body really need right now.

Dog

I've always been used to having a zoo while growing up, so moving out was quite surreal. Leaving my hordes of pets (babies, as I like to call them). Naturally I had to get something to smother homesickness tears with. A puppy was the obvious first choice, quite an en devour for someone with no income...

So there he was, tiny and fragile, my baby. I can remember carrying him whenever I got the chance and sneaking him onto my bed with my parrot for a nap. I was in heaven, me and my 2 babies, sleeping.  With the help of my parents and partner in adventure (I hate the word 'boyfriend'), he grew.

He has the strangest mannerisms, he moans a lot, complains a lot and is very mouthy. With very mouthy I mean that he holds my hand when we walk around in the house and always needs something in his mouth. He looks you in the eye when you talk to him, wakes you up by putting his head on the bed and staring at you and he takes sides when my fellow adventurer and I play-fight. He is also particularly fond of slapping people with his paw.

We've started taking him to classes as we noticed that he has a nasty prey drive. The term 'prey' includes children, which is very, very bad. It'll rip me to shreads if he hurts a child. We went to class yesterday and while trying to get him to heel the 'teacher' lady started walking in circles around us. I was staring at her just as much as my dog was, trying to figure out what the heck this was all about. Seems quite obvious, but she was trying to get me to get his attention on me.

I do, and always have loved teaching my animals things. I even taught my goldfish to swim to specific colored hoops to be fed, but I'm intimidated by people when I think that they know more than I know. That's extremely naive, I know, but it's just the way I am. I'm afraid of failure. When I do fail, I don't take it well. Anyway, the next moment the teacher lady starts asking me why I'm so insecure and says that the dog wont look to me for leadership if I don't even believe in myself. That struck a pretty big nerve.

There I was,a 19 year old, crying. I tried to hold it back, but I've always been quite insecure and I hate it. I hate the way that I can't hide it and the way that no matter how hard I try, I don't seem to be able to do anything about it. Mignon (the teacher lady) probably got a fright and threw her arm around me. She told me that it is hard, but it can be done. She meant this in the context of teaching my dog to heel, but I referred it back to the insecurity topic and cried even more.

My adventurer spoke to her and apparently she told him to take me home and pamper me. She felt guilty for making me cry, little does she know that it had nothing to do with the dog or with her.

Maybe these classes will teach me to be secure, be self confident. Maybe my fear of failure will force me to become more self confident for that sake of training my dog to actually listen to me. He'll be better than the other dogs, even the 100% german GSD that we have the class with.

My ticket to a more secure me.

Project Sculpture

We were briefed on our new project this week and, as the title states, we'll be doing sculpture. The project has 2 phases, one dealing with assemblage, the second with scrap metal. No restrictions on size of amount of objects used.

The two have to be binary oppositions. Now there's a strange idea - that there are things that exist that are complete opposites of each other with no grey area. It might not sound so strange at first, but think about this scenario:

A man breaks into a pharmacy to steal medicine for his dying daughter. He could not afford to buy the medicine and, to him, this seemed like the only other option.

Should he go to prison? Ask this question to kindergarten kids and they'll all probably say "yes". This is because as we grow and gain worldly experience we learn that the world isn't only black and white - we develop to understand a 'grey' area. So, to me at least, 'good' and 'evil' cannot be binary oppositions simply because bad people are capable of good and vice versa. I'm actually struggling finding a 'true' binary opposition simply because everything seems to have an in-between; Night and Day, that makes dusk and dawn impossible. Nature and technology perhaps? That seems to have been a theme for all my art this past year, might be a good idea to continue that trend...

Still feel a bit baffled by it all though.
N.

An Explanation

When most people think of art they think of beautiful things. Not all art is beautiful according to everyone, but then again, nothing is or ever will be. Throughout time the direction of art as been steered by the taste of the majority of the population. Artists need to make a living and have always (like any business person) done anything to keep the customer happy.

I'm sick of this. For me, art is about developing a skill, but it seems like art in recent years dismiss ability and praise anything new. We live in a world flooded by information - so many things have been done that is seems as though there is so little left to discover. That is actually a silly thing to say as, logically, the more things exist, the more combinations of objects are possible and thus there will always be something new to invent or discover.

Getting back to the point - this blog is for my development as an artist. It will record everything, from my great successes to my darkest failures and everything in between. Hopefully this blog and it's contents will help me look at myself in a new light as I search for a rebirth in art in society as well as in myself.

N.