Looking Back to Look Forward
Balancing divergent ways of making art and Alexander Graham Bell and tetrahedral kites.
My connection to art making recently took a more curatorial turn. As I’ve showed in my last post, I was drawn back to work I had made in 2020 and made a small book from that work that I published.
I feel very proud of the book and the revisiting this watercolour work in such a positive way has been helpful to me. My association with past work hasn’t always been a good one. Looking back on things I have made can sometimes be clouded by unwarranted self doubt.
But I saw my own sense of beauty in the small spaces I painted back then and it was heartening to find that they were meaningful to others as well.
The process of making this book was partially like being my own curator but also a new creative design project. I was able to view all of the images from the 2020 series, define a smaller set that I wanted to work with, and think of them in the context of this book — which to enlarge and how to set them as complementary pairs.
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But what I’m thinking about more today is what I was doing before I looked backward and made this book. Im thinking about the artwork I have been making over the last year, an on-going series I have called Openwork.
It’s been almost a full month since I made one of these drawings. The image above is the last one made.
Shifting my energy towards making the Imaginary Landscapes book meant that there wasn’t as much time to devote to new art making but it was also the mental and emotional shift in looking back at a very different kind of work.
This balance between these different modes possibly oddly made me think about Alexander Graham Bell and kites.
I know… the brain does what it does but there is some sense to it.
Graham Bell is of course known for his role in the history of the telephone but like many polymath inventors, he and his collaborators had many other projects and focuses.
Many years ago I encountered a few surprising images of Graham Bell and the complex tetrahedral structures he and his collaborators were testing.
This fascinating story of these early attempts at facilitating manned flight is for someone else to tell in more detail but here’s a link to start that rabbit hole for you: Public Domain Review
What I want to think about is that balance between radically different kinds of work. While Graham Bell’s work was primarily that of mathematics, geometry, engineering, aerodynamics, and more, it is also a demonstration of a mind not satisfied with a single focused path.
To be clear, I’m not making a comparison between myself and Graham Bell. What I’m examining in my work is how I can alternate between interests and forms and what could be perceived as “styles”.
The balance is both natural and also fraught with friction. There is an expectation that artists have consistent style and form that is mostly market driven. But in practice most artists have a broader web of interests and experimentation that they draw from. Even those artists that seem to be consistent visually are likely making discoveries behind the scenes that could radically change what they make at any point.
I have been (am) a designer, photographer, musician, painter, illustrator, etc. All of these labels and timelines are just pathways through a broader map of what I have done and what I might still do.
And I want those pathways to feel like they have easy connection points but honestly they sometimes feel more like dead ends. There are ways between the paths but it requires a kind of aerial view to find them.
The hard thing for me is that, unless I have a work context for it, I’m not great at stepping back and examining. Or maybe I am fine at it but I would rather just be into something and see where it goes.
My guess is that Graham Bell had clearer pathways between his interests and investigations. But that may just be me applying the outsider’s view to the working habits of people that have reached levels of wider public knowledge. We kind of assume that well known people that have had “success” have their shit together and work in organized and purposeful ways.
But in many cases that’s likely wrong. Maybe Graham Bell was mired by being interested in too many things and maybe his methods were sloppy and disjointed. I can’t say.
It may just be a projection on my part, but there does seem to be a playfulness in Graham Bell’s work. Like that of a historically later but practically connected inventor, Buckminster Fuller, there is the sense that invention comes from play and improvisation as much as it relies on rigour and structure.
As I now mean to turn my head, heart, and hands back to my Openwork drawing project I want to approach it with both playfulness and intention. I want to recognize the many ways in which this art making differs from the Imaginary Landscapes paintings while also feeling that both came from me and that is all the connection they need.
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I want to say thanks to the folks that have purchased Imaginary Landscapes. Most of the orders are on their way and I am excited to think about those images in new hands again.
Another great one! No one ever said you needed to do one thing!
It’s an interesting challenge being into multiple creative disciplines. In my case it’s coding, photography and music. I’ve long been interested in all of them, relentlessly learning, honing my disparate crafts.