Waking this morning returned me to painful consiousness. The psychological displacement of moving is disconcerting. Waking in a strange unexpected place. A feeling of depression descended until Dook lept on to the bed and reminded me of my responsibilities. Chemical support may get the job done but leaves a depletion of serotonin and dopamine. My recent studies into ethylphenidate nearly killed me and brought online critisism from other, meeker researchers. But I am Skree and I have set standards the common man can not meet, I struggle to match them myself.
If you choose to have a sled dog you have to get up, however rough you feel and walk ten miles every morning. So we set out. The first real frost. Once out of town and in the field the sun paints the sky in oranges and colours that have no name. Across the valleys the fields are white with frost. I'm not well but I can't let physical discomfort over rule this beauty. A trace of AL-LAD afterglow from Saturday's trip is battling the eth come down.
We walk through woods as I contemplate how damaged I am. What to do for the best. Should I work or have my exertions hit their limits. I need rest. I really need a day of rest. There is only so much I can take. I've had little sleep and no proper food for days. I feel guilty neglecting my work but I'll break if I do much more. Forgive me this day. So very tired.
Monday 24 November 2014
Friday 21 November 2014
Return to Furniture with some reservations
I lie exhausted amongst the bags and boxes containing my posessions. I have successfully moved. Emptying the cottage revealed a filthy backdrop and two days cleaning could not entirely wipe it clean. Rugs hid forgotten beer spillages, the dust and grime of a years open fires, invisible when furnished, emerged with each load of the van. In hope of a humble deposit, and self respect I suppose because I would have earned more than I would have lost if I had left the place a tip. . We should move each other rather than ourselves and dump rubbish. The superstitious delusion of essences, the objects that map ones identity, the props that support our sense of self we drag from home to home. This is all invisible to another's eye, separated from emotional tags one can see the crap for what it is.
Three flights of stairs to this top flat. Mag helped me get the fridge freezer and washing machine up here but otherwise I shifted it all myself. Claire helped pack and contributed some cleaning but she had her flight to Scotland booked for the day of the move. Our last night we slept apart on opposite sofas, the bed already gone. Driving her to the airport always fills me with sadness. We talk all the way through Radstock, midaomer norton, chew magna. The drive back is silent and empty. It is when she is gone I love her most. A shameful admission and undoubtedly the reason I have had so many relationships yet not managed a marriage.
The move has forced me to neglect making so a workshop weekend awaits to try pull back some time. The desk I am making, perhaps my most technically challenging piece, undoubtedly my best commission piece is one I am proud of. Elliptical, six cylindrical legs, the wall of the ellipse is laminated to two shapes. The front drawer echoes the back whilst the remaining four sides are all identical but laminated to a different former. Veneered at the same time in a vacuum press. These will have black stringing lines inlaid to echo the details of the maple office where it will sit. If you're kean look through January's postings where some photos of the office show the detail inits laminated glazing bars. The elliptical top has a maple border with carved edge and green leather work surface. Quite a bold piece. I had said it would be my last but the commissions seem endless. The next being a corner bookcase of quite some size to complete a room in a house on Exmoor where I have made all upstairs furniture and may well do downstairs too. That is the third house I have furnished in entirety. The odd additions that the clients spice it up with sometimes blend quite well. I get an enormous sense of well being walking round these houses where each detail, all proportions are the product of my mind. A reflection of myself. The bookcase, however, is to match the background joinery of Malcolm whose aesthetic is quite different from mine. His has a touch of the Tim Stead about it with knots and defects selected and preferred. My feeling is that wood is organic enough already in its grain and disciplining these patterns is where the beauty lies. The use of contrasting timbers takes restraint and care or one can create work that tires the senses. In this room splayed beech fights yew, already too much, further acacia detailing I find unrestful on the eye. Furniture is as much about what you don't do as what you do. I imagine, to his eye my work is overly modest. When I do the bookcases I will endeavour to enhance his wood panelling with a more mature, quieter piece. Students often fall into that trap, of incorporating too many themes in a single piece, the mistake of many a designer maker too. It can be easy to forget that when making a piece ones intimacy is far greater than the viewers. My challenge is to not over make it revealing the rawness of the surrounding work. The detailing of the house is a real missed opportunity and to my eye something of a folly. Given the opportunity I could have created a far more considered interior. My furniture provides islands of sense amongst the malaise of mixed and mismatched timbers. My work for the Chelsea house is far more refined. My work for Exmoor only partially my design. Given sketches I realised and tempered down the ideas. For a time I struggled with working to another's initial conception. It drove me to consider abandoning furniture. The project has taken over five years, my furniture took three which is a long time making work I would never put my name to. Each visitor to the workshop would see what I was making and, to be frank, at times I had to make it clear these weren't my ideas to retain self respect. Once complete I took some sort of pride in it all. I began posting photos of it on this blog, if your kean you can look it out. Slightly embarrassing, I would compensate with a wild drug fuelled private life. Climbing industrial architecture and developing my photography as my primary creative outlet.
The pieces for Chelsea are closer to my taste but still I am essentially creating what I imagine my client wants. This drift from my own artistic or creative mission has been driven by necessity. It has become a means to an end. A way to make money. I created a reasoning to excuse my making work I don't like. That I am fulfilling others dreams.
I so dearly want to return to my initial reason for making. To create an art of myself to leave for the world. During my days of exhibiting my own speculative work I would sell roughly half, all the best ones. This left more and more of my work to try store. You can only exhibit a piece to the same audience once and if it doesn't sell you are stuck with it. Never able to use it for scratches and the marks of use render it no longer fresh. It also presents an image of artistic stasis if you exhibit old work. I take some consolation in knowing few are truly able to get by solely through exhibiting speculative work. Most are either born rich, marry money or teach to supplement their income. I used to. But if you are only in the workshop two or three days a week you won't produce much of worth. Or it will be slow.
So still I wrestle with whether to continue the commissioned work of which I am fortunate to have an apparently limitless flow. Or return to my art. I have no savings to support me while I amass a body of work. I am working class, hand to mouth, my labour all I have to sell. I could work on commissions in the day and my stuff at night but these are ones tired hours. I prefer to practice something else, like writing of an evening.
Three flights of stairs to this top flat. Mag helped me get the fridge freezer and washing machine up here but otherwise I shifted it all myself. Claire helped pack and contributed some cleaning but she had her flight to Scotland booked for the day of the move. Our last night we slept apart on opposite sofas, the bed already gone. Driving her to the airport always fills me with sadness. We talk all the way through Radstock, midaomer norton, chew magna. The drive back is silent and empty. It is when she is gone I love her most. A shameful admission and undoubtedly the reason I have had so many relationships yet not managed a marriage.
The move has forced me to neglect making so a workshop weekend awaits to try pull back some time. The desk I am making, perhaps my most technically challenging piece, undoubtedly my best commission piece is one I am proud of. Elliptical, six cylindrical legs, the wall of the ellipse is laminated to two shapes. The front drawer echoes the back whilst the remaining four sides are all identical but laminated to a different former. Veneered at the same time in a vacuum press. These will have black stringing lines inlaid to echo the details of the maple office where it will sit. If you're kean look through January's postings where some photos of the office show the detail inits laminated glazing bars. The elliptical top has a maple border with carved edge and green leather work surface. Quite a bold piece. I had said it would be my last but the commissions seem endless. The next being a corner bookcase of quite some size to complete a room in a house on Exmoor where I have made all upstairs furniture and may well do downstairs too. That is the third house I have furnished in entirety. The odd additions that the clients spice it up with sometimes blend quite well. I get an enormous sense of well being walking round these houses where each detail, all proportions are the product of my mind. A reflection of myself. The bookcase, however, is to match the background joinery of Malcolm whose aesthetic is quite different from mine. His has a touch of the Tim Stead about it with knots and defects selected and preferred. My feeling is that wood is organic enough already in its grain and disciplining these patterns is where the beauty lies. The use of contrasting timbers takes restraint and care or one can create work that tires the senses. In this room splayed beech fights yew, already too much, further acacia detailing I find unrestful on the eye. Furniture is as much about what you don't do as what you do. I imagine, to his eye my work is overly modest. When I do the bookcases I will endeavour to enhance his wood panelling with a more mature, quieter piece. Students often fall into that trap, of incorporating too many themes in a single piece, the mistake of many a designer maker too. It can be easy to forget that when making a piece ones intimacy is far greater than the viewers. My challenge is to not over make it revealing the rawness of the surrounding work. The detailing of the house is a real missed opportunity and to my eye something of a folly. Given the opportunity I could have created a far more considered interior. My furniture provides islands of sense amongst the malaise of mixed and mismatched timbers. My work for the Chelsea house is far more refined. My work for Exmoor only partially my design. Given sketches I realised and tempered down the ideas. For a time I struggled with working to another's initial conception. It drove me to consider abandoning furniture. The project has taken over five years, my furniture took three which is a long time making work I would never put my name to. Each visitor to the workshop would see what I was making and, to be frank, at times I had to make it clear these weren't my ideas to retain self respect. Once complete I took some sort of pride in it all. I began posting photos of it on this blog, if your kean you can look it out. Slightly embarrassing, I would compensate with a wild drug fuelled private life. Climbing industrial architecture and developing my photography as my primary creative outlet.
The pieces for Chelsea are closer to my taste but still I am essentially creating what I imagine my client wants. This drift from my own artistic or creative mission has been driven by necessity. It has become a means to an end. A way to make money. I created a reasoning to excuse my making work I don't like. That I am fulfilling others dreams.
I so dearly want to return to my initial reason for making. To create an art of myself to leave for the world. During my days of exhibiting my own speculative work I would sell roughly half, all the best ones. This left more and more of my work to try store. You can only exhibit a piece to the same audience once and if it doesn't sell you are stuck with it. Never able to use it for scratches and the marks of use render it no longer fresh. It also presents an image of artistic stasis if you exhibit old work. I take some consolation in knowing few are truly able to get by solely through exhibiting speculative work. Most are either born rich, marry money or teach to supplement their income. I used to. But if you are only in the workshop two or three days a week you won't produce much of worth. Or it will be slow.
So still I wrestle with whether to continue the commissioned work of which I am fortunate to have an apparently limitless flow. Or return to my art. I have no savings to support me while I amass a body of work. I am working class, hand to mouth, my labour all I have to sell. I could work on commissions in the day and my stuff at night but these are ones tired hours. I prefer to practice something else, like writing of an evening.
Tuesday 18 November 2014
Down, down, deeper and down
Depression nine times out of ten is down to some fundamental aspect of your life that you are in denial about. Of course a few suffer clinical depression with roots in imbalances of certain neurotransmitters but your normal depression, that which blights modern society, the illness responsible for more lost work hours than any other condition is usually a response to living a life you don't want. This maybe a marriage to someone you don't truly love or being in work you are not suited to. But it is the denial of this fundamental duty that is the cause. Drug addiction is a coping strategy many use to endure the life they have found themselves living. It can seem impossible to imagine a career change or spouse dumping so drugs or alcohol enable one to get by.
This year I became repossessed by a crack demon I thought I had long ago excorsized. Six years was the length of my first possession and ridding myself of it and the accompanying diazepam addiction took a good six months of hell where I was unable to work. Once free I hated it. I hated everything to do with it. Then, in January, whilst under immense work pressure from a job I couldn't seem to finish and a debt to my main client a parcel came through the post from an old freind who owed me a little money. It contained two big rocks of crack cocaine and two bags of high quality heroin. Due to my prescription of the partial agonist bupronorphine heroin has no effect on me. This has protected me from relapse in to heroin addiction for over fifteen years. The crack, however, took hold and for two months I was possessed. This accompanying self hatred led to what may have been described by some as a suicide attempt but I think of it more as an excosism or bursting of a psychic boil. So angry with myself I took an overdose of methoxphenidine, a dissociative anaesthetic. Previously I thought I had taken twenty times the average dose but a recalculation this week revealed I had taken 75 times the beginners dose. It didn't kill me but put me on a three week trip or psychosis that I have described in earlier postings.
Recovery from this coincided with retraining dook. Dook was mad when I first got him from Claverton dogs home. His weight was down to 23 kg and he was that paranoid he'd bite anyone who came too close who he didn't trust. At the time, sharing a psychosis we began rising before dawn and walking miles together. I would be rambling on to him about the hallucinations and gradually we both regained sanity. Now he seldom misbehaves. Only if someone that doesn't know him acts like he's a long lost lover or if some idiot approaches him whilst tied up outside a shop. For this they deserve a snap.
I'm packing in making furniture. These last few years have nearly seen me dead more than once through taking drugs to cope with the pointlessness of my work. I am grateful for being able to make a living but all I do is make trinkets for the rich. No one I know can afford my work. I set out to be an artist. To express myself but have ended up trying to draw out what I guess a rich man would find beautiful. I spend hours of my own time on making flawless pieces. I spend much of my own money making sure the details are alright. Because I have been paid I have felt duty bound to work my fingers to the bone. My mental health has deteriorated to the extent where now I must sign off as my appointment with my clinical psychologist begins in ten minutes.
The desk I am making is one of my best pieces and one I am proud to sign off on.
This year I became repossessed by a crack demon I thought I had long ago excorsized. Six years was the length of my first possession and ridding myself of it and the accompanying diazepam addiction took a good six months of hell where I was unable to work. Once free I hated it. I hated everything to do with it. Then, in January, whilst under immense work pressure from a job I couldn't seem to finish and a debt to my main client a parcel came through the post from an old freind who owed me a little money. It contained two big rocks of crack cocaine and two bags of high quality heroin. Due to my prescription of the partial agonist bupronorphine heroin has no effect on me. This has protected me from relapse in to heroin addiction for over fifteen years. The crack, however, took hold and for two months I was possessed. This accompanying self hatred led to what may have been described by some as a suicide attempt but I think of it more as an excosism or bursting of a psychic boil. So angry with myself I took an overdose of methoxphenidine, a dissociative anaesthetic. Previously I thought I had taken twenty times the average dose but a recalculation this week revealed I had taken 75 times the beginners dose. It didn't kill me but put me on a three week trip or psychosis that I have described in earlier postings.
Recovery from this coincided with retraining dook. Dook was mad when I first got him from Claverton dogs home. His weight was down to 23 kg and he was that paranoid he'd bite anyone who came too close who he didn't trust. At the time, sharing a psychosis we began rising before dawn and walking miles together. I would be rambling on to him about the hallucinations and gradually we both regained sanity. Now he seldom misbehaves. Only if someone that doesn't know him acts like he's a long lost lover or if some idiot approaches him whilst tied up outside a shop. For this they deserve a snap.
I'm packing in making furniture. These last few years have nearly seen me dead more than once through taking drugs to cope with the pointlessness of my work. I am grateful for being able to make a living but all I do is make trinkets for the rich. No one I know can afford my work. I set out to be an artist. To express myself but have ended up trying to draw out what I guess a rich man would find beautiful. I spend hours of my own time on making flawless pieces. I spend much of my own money making sure the details are alright. Because I have been paid I have felt duty bound to work my fingers to the bone. My mental health has deteriorated to the extent where now I must sign off as my appointment with my clinical psychologist begins in ten minutes.
The desk I am making is one of my best pieces and one I am proud to sign off on.
Sunday 16 November 2014
Return of the photos
skreeworld for long periods of its history was a visual vehicle photographically chronicling my journey. This year has seen horrors beyond any previous experience. All being well I will be able to post up all the photos that the sale of my computer prevented.
Friday 14 November 2014
Return from my artistic retirement
Much more chipper. MOT wasn't as much as I'd thought and getting some material funds back for the windows. Paulus, my old freind left a message on facebook saying, "make work or die with your trousers down" or words to that effect. I'd hardly slept but got out with dook for 6am 2.5 hour walk where I mulled this over. Perhaps Paul had meant a light gibe but it got me roused. I set out to be an artist and some long twisted route found me designing and making bespoke furniture. Now that's not too bad. Some people have to stack shelves. But I'm not really interested in furniture and never have been. After living as a traveller I realised I would achieve little of consequence if I pursuied such a life. Having left school and home without qualifications due to a broken family my choices were fewer. I couldn't go to art college but with the joinery I had picked up I could get on a furniture design and craft course. This I did. But I made art, not furniture. I excelled gaining a first and two commendations. Some people mistakenly think I mean sculptural furniture, or that I am bragging claiming that the quality of my work elevated it to the realm of art. I don't mean this at all. I made work to be shown alongside other art and to be measured by artistic criteria. Some of it was bad art. Circumstance and need to eat steered me down the furniture route and I accepted this but had to take drugs or drink to compensate . But my half imagined obligations drove me close to death this year and I will die soon if I don't get back to doing what I was born to do. Death has had his hand on my shoulder all year as I took substances to allow me to carry out work I don't love. I'm nearly fifty now and my body can not take the strain. I have given too much of my
If ever away already.
So I have taken a vow. This desk, perhaps my finest piece of bespoke furniture will be my last. I will make other arrangements to settle debts and obligations. Then I return to my natural vocation. The one thing I never question my abilities at. I am a good artist . My time is limited. It is wholly necessary I get the work out. The path I fell down has brought me so close to death I feel ashamed for submitting to imagined obligation. Let them do what they must, for I must do what I must. The future is bright. I am refinding myself and reason for being. Coming out of Retirement as of today.
If ever away already.
So I have taken a vow. This desk, perhaps my finest piece of bespoke furniture will be my last. I will make other arrangements to settle debts and obligations. Then I return to my natural vocation. The one thing I never question my abilities at. I am a good artist . My time is limited. It is wholly necessary I get the work out. The path I fell down has brought me so close to death I feel ashamed for submitting to imagined obligation. Let them do what they must, for I must do what I must. The future is bright. I am refinding myself and reason for being. Coming out of Retirement as of today.
Thursday 13 November 2014
Now
Certainly been a trying time of late. The landlord made an agreement with me that if I made new windows to replace the old ones at the front of the cottage he would pay by me not paying rent for a month. This meant he got the work done for roughly a third of the going rate. Believing I would be here for some time I carried out the work spending approximately a months rent on materials alone. In addition to this I restored and painted the front door as it was neither secure nor weather proof. I also redecorated the entire ground floor. He reneged on our deal and as there is no written agreement he has asked for that months rent threatening me with CCJ and stealing the deposit. Angered by his deceit i handed in my notice. Now I must decide whether to forfeit his threats or pay the rent. The labour and material costs I have incurred is in the region of £1600. He has made no offer to even cover material costs.
My van went for its MOT and I was quoted £195 for the work required to get through this. I put funds aside to this figure. Yesterday the garage rang telling me they misquoted and now I must pay around £300. I need the van to move so shall have to pay this today. I am due a final payment on a desk I am making next Tuesday so all should be well in the end but till then I can not pay the rent even if I wished to.
These figures may seem small and under normal circumstances I would be able to cover it all but due to time lost at work earlier in the year through mental health problems I am at zero funds. Certainly trying times. If the garage sticks to its re quote I can just afford to pay but any additions or if the quote does not include the VAT I will have to ask that they wait a few days for payment. In recent years I had been fairly flush with a decentish pool in the bank to fall back on but this last year has been such a nightmare of mental problems I have found myself in this position.
On the positive sued the desk is going to look fantastic. Material costs have run way over expectation but the design is a strong one.
I am considering this as being my final piece as it would be a magnificent one to sign off on. Much of the final payment will be going on leather for the top and carving round the edge.
From here I aim to begin work on my PhD. I believe I have something important to say on the subject of touch that has not been written about before and would like to get this done before I die.
I spoke about this with my clinical psychologist yesterday. My aim first is to resolve any remaining drug problems over the next couple of years as I am still dependent on bupronorphine and etizolam. Coming off these drugs and destabilising is not something I am looking forward to. Finding time to endure the withdrawals will be awkward as there is no way it can be done whilst working. Tapering off is a recipe for relapse and I would far rather find somewhere to do my rattle over a short six months then a further eighteen months should allow my neurochemistry to restabalise.
Prescription drugs have bandaged me together for years, patching me up so I could carry on working. Like a car with botched repairs I raced on heald together with tape and whatever was to hand. This cannot continue indefinitely though and I can see no other way than to stop and undergo a proper refurbishment. Whether this will be possible remains tobe seen. I am also tied in to a two year work project the details of which have not yet been defined. I am obliged to complete this work as the client has been something of a patron throughout the last fifteen years without whose work I would have no doubt had to remain a university lecturer, a position I never enjoyed. If this is the case then the refurbishment will have to wait as my duty to others overrides my personal needs. At present this attitude is not working. I find myself deeper and deeper in to a situation I feel unable to resolve.
Perhaps that is life. Obligations, debts, work then death.
My van went for its MOT and I was quoted £195 for the work required to get through this. I put funds aside to this figure. Yesterday the garage rang telling me they misquoted and now I must pay around £300. I need the van to move so shall have to pay this today. I am due a final payment on a desk I am making next Tuesday so all should be well in the end but till then I can not pay the rent even if I wished to.
These figures may seem small and under normal circumstances I would be able to cover it all but due to time lost at work earlier in the year through mental health problems I am at zero funds. Certainly trying times. If the garage sticks to its re quote I can just afford to pay but any additions or if the quote does not include the VAT I will have to ask that they wait a few days for payment. In recent years I had been fairly flush with a decentish pool in the bank to fall back on but this last year has been such a nightmare of mental problems I have found myself in this position.
On the positive sued the desk is going to look fantastic. Material costs have run way over expectation but the design is a strong one.
I am considering this as being my final piece as it would be a magnificent one to sign off on. Much of the final payment will be going on leather for the top and carving round the edge.
From here I aim to begin work on my PhD. I believe I have something important to say on the subject of touch that has not been written about before and would like to get this done before I die.
I spoke about this with my clinical psychologist yesterday. My aim first is to resolve any remaining drug problems over the next couple of years as I am still dependent on bupronorphine and etizolam. Coming off these drugs and destabilising is not something I am looking forward to. Finding time to endure the withdrawals will be awkward as there is no way it can be done whilst working. Tapering off is a recipe for relapse and I would far rather find somewhere to do my rattle over a short six months then a further eighteen months should allow my neurochemistry to restabalise.
Prescription drugs have bandaged me together for years, patching me up so I could carry on working. Like a car with botched repairs I raced on heald together with tape and whatever was to hand. This cannot continue indefinitely though and I can see no other way than to stop and undergo a proper refurbishment. Whether this will be possible remains tobe seen. I am also tied in to a two year work project the details of which have not yet been defined. I am obliged to complete this work as the client has been something of a patron throughout the last fifteen years without whose work I would have no doubt had to remain a university lecturer, a position I never enjoyed. If this is the case then the refurbishment will have to wait as my duty to others overrides my personal needs. At present this attitude is not working. I find myself deeper and deeper in to a situation I feel unable to resolve.
Perhaps that is life. Obligations, debts, work then death.
Saturday 1 November 2014
Jane Cleals post to the FDMA forum
today I read a posting on the FDMA forum regarding the effect CNC technology will have on craft furniture. 'I have always thought that furniture must be hand crafted by the maker himself to be of any value' was her opening gambit. My immediate thought was she must believe all commercial industrially made production furniture is of no value. This is clearly untrue as most 20th century classic furniture was in some way an illustration of the technology used in its production. I am no expert but some of that early modernist furniture fetches high prices. Here my thinking took two routes. She was referring to the small branch of the tree of furniture we could refer to as 'craft' furniture. Or that she personally saw no value in furniture that wasn't produced by a wood craftsman. Clearly the digital revolution has been a great liberator for the unskilled and untalented. Now anyone can approximate a competent drawing. Anyone can produce a decent photograph.
When we encounter an object made by man does how it came about affect its value? Is the touch ova specific individual something that changes any of its qualities? Does this not imply a belief in the supernatural ? A belief in essences. Invisible traces of the past touch of an individual we believe to have some kind of magic. There is a famous thought experiment where we imagine a three d printer capable of producing an exact copy with identical atoms. If we use this imaginary device to reproduce da vincis Mona Lisa. Would the copy hold equal value to the original? What if through human error we muddled the two up in transit. There would be no way to measure the essence because essences are a supernatural concept. Bruce Hood writes about essences. In his lectures he has been known to produce a cardigan for the audience to pass round assuring them it has been dry cleaned. He then informs the audience that the cardigan was once owned and worn by Fred west. This is untrue but people recoil I disgust. Some need to go wash their hands. We may consider ourselves none believers in the supernatural yet we all have irrational habits, lucky socks, treasuring a pebble given by a lover, collecting celebrity memorabilia.
When I was a student I recall disappointment and shock when some students in my year learned that our country's most well,now designer maker no longer made his work but instead employed a skilled team he supervised. Damien Hirst, Jeff koons and many other well known artists operate in a similar way. The photorealistic npaintings of butterflies are produced by skilled technicians. His butterfly mandalas are laboriously constructed by his art factory. In truth art has always been this way. Not every artist but many old masters employed teams to realise their ideas. A certificate of provenance usually accompanies work from these major artists studios.
What interests me is not the deception those naive students felt but our belief in the supernatural. Even Richard Dawkins collects pens and other items once owned by Charlea Darwin.
As makers we have a perfect vision in our minds and CNC technology is a helpful tool in achieving this. What more can hand tool creation offer other than error and fault. This may have a meaning in its reminder of our flawed and imperfect nature. The designer maker scene and outlook seeks a perfection. Their exhibitions are seldom about the clients but are more about peacock displays of skill that inevitably goes above the head of any non practitioner. The General public, even expert collectors who don't make cannot have the eye. It takes fourty hour weeks, usually longer, of close scrutiny. Our sense of touch is tuned to a level impossible to achieve without years of perfecting. I don't fully understand art but I know only the elite makers can discern the truly great pieces of furniture.
My reasons for drawing and later in life making is purely selfish. I find myself in a state described as flow. In the zone. A recognised state of peace where ones self is lost. Time goes by when you are in flow. I can never spell the psychologists name who has written most about it, Mihaly Czikzentmihalyi,t but when I'm in it I have no worries or concerns outside of my work. I imagine it is not dis similar to the loss of self Buddhists and other meditators aim for. It is indulgent in a sense and I have seldom enjoyed the other part, submission of my work for approval though I understand this is the other main artistic motivation. Approval. The pat on the back. Confirmation that what you make meets the mark of ones peers. I believe those makers who drop the making to focus on design and promotion enjoy this aspect more than achieving the state of flow. I wouldn't mind someone else to represent me at London private views.
But I can't expect to be paid solely for turning my back on the world and enjoying my making. The work I produce, I also wonder, we'll have been brutally confronted by the fact, that others in my field make work not so different. If they employ all labour saving devices and produce comparable work with a spindle moulder or a CNC router for half the cost of my indulgence then a client would require immense loyalty to support your spokes have shaping.
When we encounter an object made by man does how it came about affect its value? Is the touch ova specific individual something that changes any of its qualities? Does this not imply a belief in the supernatural ? A belief in essences. Invisible traces of the past touch of an individual we believe to have some kind of magic. There is a famous thought experiment where we imagine a three d printer capable of producing an exact copy with identical atoms. If we use this imaginary device to reproduce da vincis Mona Lisa. Would the copy hold equal value to the original? What if through human error we muddled the two up in transit. There would be no way to measure the essence because essences are a supernatural concept. Bruce Hood writes about essences. In his lectures he has been known to produce a cardigan for the audience to pass round assuring them it has been dry cleaned. He then informs the audience that the cardigan was once owned and worn by Fred west. This is untrue but people recoil I disgust. Some need to go wash their hands. We may consider ourselves none believers in the supernatural yet we all have irrational habits, lucky socks, treasuring a pebble given by a lover, collecting celebrity memorabilia.
When I was a student I recall disappointment and shock when some students in my year learned that our country's most well,now designer maker no longer made his work but instead employed a skilled team he supervised. Damien Hirst, Jeff koons and many other well known artists operate in a similar way. The photorealistic npaintings of butterflies are produced by skilled technicians. His butterfly mandalas are laboriously constructed by his art factory. In truth art has always been this way. Not every artist but many old masters employed teams to realise their ideas. A certificate of provenance usually accompanies work from these major artists studios.
What interests me is not the deception those naive students felt but our belief in the supernatural. Even Richard Dawkins collects pens and other items once owned by Charlea Darwin.
As makers we have a perfect vision in our minds and CNC technology is a helpful tool in achieving this. What more can hand tool creation offer other than error and fault. This may have a meaning in its reminder of our flawed and imperfect nature. The designer maker scene and outlook seeks a perfection. Their exhibitions are seldom about the clients but are more about peacock displays of skill that inevitably goes above the head of any non practitioner. The General public, even expert collectors who don't make cannot have the eye. It takes fourty hour weeks, usually longer, of close scrutiny. Our sense of touch is tuned to a level impossible to achieve without years of perfecting. I don't fully understand art but I know only the elite makers can discern the truly great pieces of furniture.
My reasons for drawing and later in life making is purely selfish. I find myself in a state described as flow. In the zone. A recognised state of peace where ones self is lost. Time goes by when you are in flow. I can never spell the psychologists name who has written most about it, Mihaly Czikzentmihalyi,t but when I'm in it I have no worries or concerns outside of my work. I imagine it is not dis similar to the loss of self Buddhists and other meditators aim for. It is indulgent in a sense and I have seldom enjoyed the other part, submission of my work for approval though I understand this is the other main artistic motivation. Approval. The pat on the back. Confirmation that what you make meets the mark of ones peers. I believe those makers who drop the making to focus on design and promotion enjoy this aspect more than achieving the state of flow. I wouldn't mind someone else to represent me at London private views.
But I can't expect to be paid solely for turning my back on the world and enjoying my making. The work I produce, I also wonder, we'll have been brutally confronted by the fact, that others in my field make work not so different. If they employ all labour saving devices and produce comparable work with a spindle moulder or a CNC router for half the cost of my indulgence then a client would require immense loyalty to support your spokes have shaping.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)