#thoughts on art

[ivaspinoza]

the observer effect (notes to myself)

I've been super busy with my job, and I've also been working on a bunch of personal artistic projects at the same time. Of course, I feel productive, but exhausted and kind of rushed, which I don't like. To me, slow living is not a trend, but a need for which concept I'm constantly going back to— because I truly believe the post-modern schedule is one of the biggest issues we have as human beings right now. Everything is too much, too fast, and the current global mental health conditions can confirm.

We need time to process, feel and be sure of stuff. Thinking through life and choices, meanings and feelings takes time.

Today, after printing zines and drawings (testing and experimenting), I was happy, but anxious. Everything is going as I planned, but I have so many other ideas I want to try, ideas that I might prefer, and things I want to refine. It's not only perfectionism: it's respect for my own creative process, a unique, valuable, and authentic process that will determine my quality, how my message is delivered to my audience and the endurance of what I created. I don't want to be trapped by the fast paced culture that doesn't let us develop the bare minimum skill before trying to make money!

I don't remember where I saw this, or who said it, but it was basically an artist saying how much early exposure can kill the development of skill, that artists are actually supposed to have time away from everything and everyone, time to mess it up and experiment, time to have a mentor maybe, but if not, time to be away from observant eyes and be on your own. ''In physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation.'' Anyway...

Of course, there is also a bit of perfectionism (that I believe all artists must learn to master, which I still haven't been able to do): '' Maybe... This looks shit and I'm being an idiot. I can see too many mistakes. I need to work harder. Do I even have the time for this? It's going to take ages until it's good enough. For every test, I'm spending my paper and ink! Well, if I want to make any money so this is worth it, I better hurry up!''

So... Another observer is bad, but as my own observer, I am also not very good. Great.

Do you know who is a good one at this? My husband. He just leaves me alone, because he knows I hate people looking over my shoulder as I create something. He gives me space. He doesn't make a big thing out of it, so I'm not embarrassed or pressured by the ''talented, amazing artist'' mask.

When he got home today, I ran to him, as I usually do, and I shared everything I had done. He was excited and appreciative (he is not the kind of person who will compliment just for the sake of ''making you feel good'', and I adore him for that — because I know he is being honest and that means I can be truly authentic, I can question and challenge myself instead of living for pleasing others, which he never—thankfully— allowed me to do). While he was sharing his perspective and making me feel more confident than ever, he said something like:

''You can keep experimenting for as long as you like! I know you enjoy exploring and refining, so you can just try everything until you feel sure!''

My inner child pouted (and so did I). He smiled.

''Even if I make no money out of it?'' I had to ask.

''Of course. Even if you never, ever make any money. I just want you to be satisfied with what you do. You don't need to rush.''

No, but seriously now: that made me cry. I guess I will be taking my time! He hugged me and I said thank you for holding this space for me and all the things I carry, for helping my creativity to be free, tax-free, and to develop naturally, without the pressure of making a profit, of instantly making it work. I do love taking my time, but I also need to point out that having this man who can smell the raw, secret and invisible conditions of my soul from miles away is literally the best thing ever.

He never allows me to lie to myself and to hide, and believe me... I've tried. Resisting is only worse. At some point, I will have to descend into my most vulnerable room, in the underground of my mind palace, and he will be there, sitting, drinking his tea, calmly waiting for me to arrive so we can clean the messy room together.

With that said, I will just be grateful and go back to my creative space, inside this safe frame his masculinity created for me, which is the definition of provision and protection, and I will keep enjoying my process in my own time. No pressure. No rush. Just delight!

(The right observer will disturb you right).

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[werewolfpdfs]

just been thinking about the hierarchy we place things on honestly. I don’t think it’s inherently better to Create Things than to appreciate what others create. one of you is putting more cool shit into the world and the other is putting more love into it.

[vmures]

Threw together a throwback playlist with a bunch of my favorites from my childhood, teen years, and college years. I got a little add happy so it's like 18 hours of music, but I kept finding deep cuts on albums I loved that seldom get played on any modern streaming or radio (hell, they didn't get played on most radio back in the day either). I gotta say, I'd forgotten how much I loved some of these songs. Art is so amazing to me. You can go for years not thinking about a piece that carved a place in your being in one way or another (song, show, book, visual art), and then when you do see it again it's like meeting an old friend.

[erika-xero]

When I was younger (in my early twenties) the art community in my country was WILD. The toxicity, the unrealistic standards, the very existence of public pages dedicated purely to bullying ACTUAL CHILDREN for not being GOOD ENOUGH IN ART. Being proud of your skills was considered somewhat shameful: if you ever expressed any love towards your own drawings you most likely got bullied and hated by the majority of the community.

I spent years and years hating myself, being ashamed of my skills and feeling guilty for not being as good as the professionals working in the industry for decades. I spent nights crying because of the unrealistic expectations of others - and my own unrealistic expectations.

Now when I think about it... this is so f-cked up.

There is literally no way for a young girl who wasn’t even an art student (I graduated as an interior designer, which doesn’t have much in common with painting or drawing) to compete with older professionals, who started their carreer before she was even born. This is just f-cking impossible.

[ritterum]

Of Doors

(Hour of Glass)

One day, King Edhra called his griot to his side, and said: “Tell me about doors, and about the men who make them.”

The griot thought long and hard and was still; the sun rose and had fallen by the time he moved again. This is what the griot said:

O King, you ask about doors when what you really want is what’s through them. What ruler has not become covetous of some good for the mere reason that it lies inside a locked room? Nay, I will not speak of these doors; too much has been said about them already, and your mind swirls with empty promises. What men do not tell you but women and children know is that a door brings only change. For the child: the door brings chores, and the strap. For the daughter: betrothal to an unwanted man. For the newly-wed: the birthing-chamber, or a man who has come to claim his birth-right.

I shall tell you now of a city without doors, which lies in the western desert far, far from any oasis. None who enter the city leave; such is its beauty (so they say - I have only seen its glint from afar, in the light of the setting summer sun). It’s said that a young hermit, grown lonely and irksome in solitude, wished to make for himself a place to remind him of home; and so in a year he made himself a city out of the desert sand, not quite a copy of his hometown but grander, and detailed down to the last mosaic of the last parapet. There were sand-people in the city but no doors, for sand is hard-pressed to make itself into a door, and foils every attempt. The young hermit was filled with pride at his accomplishment, and prayed that the winds would blow it to where his kin could so. But the winds were fickle and unjust, and blew every which way, so that the great city of sand fell to the ground.

Distraught, the hermit rebuilt the city as best he could, but quickly and more sloppily, for its form was fading from his mind even as he worked. In a year, he had made himself another city, and praised himself over its appearance (although one need not look too closely at the faces of the sand-workers or at the shields of the sand-sentinels). But even before he could lift his arms and beseech the winds, the city collapsed in upon itself, for the sand had not been packed and steadied, and could not support its own weight.

“Woe,” cried the hermit to himself, “am I so wretched that nothing I make shall stay standing?” (Not so, O King, a man who makes houses of sand is not wretched, yet is doomed all the same.) So he sat and meditated for many years in misery and frustration, until the loneliness began to pick at him again, and he resolved to build himself a sand-house again. “Only one this time,” he said, “and not so big.” Well, he finished that house and found himself determined to build another; and when he was done with that one, he built another still; and on and on he went until a year had gone by, and he found that he’d made another city, but even larger and more intricate than the first! And as he looked over his creation in shock and amazement, lo, the winds arrived, fickle and unjust - but they too were awed by the beauty of this monument. So before the hermit’s eyes, they struck it with lightning and turned the whole thing into glass - every minaret, every cottage, every last sand-child and sand-squire. And for good measure, they struck the hermit, too; but alas, he did not turn into glass, which was an oversight on their part.

If you really want a story about a door, O King, I will tell you one and no more, for it’s the only one that matters. Before the beginning of time, Adam, the father of humankind, wished to find a way to make his decisions impermanent, so he constructed a doorframe between Past and Future, and erected a door inside it. Satisfied, he crossed through the threshold, but the winds, fickle and unjust, blew against him and knocked his head against the door, so that he fell to the ground, unconscious. Adam lies there still, and without anyone to close the door, the winds continue to flow through the threshold, blowing What Will Be into What Was. Now we don’t just choke in the dunes of history, we grow old, we shit out children, and we die. Who’s to say it was all worth it?

Runao’s Commentary:

Ample sacrifices to the gods of wind make even the most foolhardy ventures worthwhile. Do not forget your offerings to the ‘little deities’, nor should you forget the small people as you rule over them.

[mizusjawline]

I think art is such a beautiful thing. Art is so old and so inherent to being human. Around the same time as we started making tools, we started making art.

I think it's beautiful that our ancestors wanted to express the world around them by drawing it on cave walls. Why? What motivated them to do that? Was it an attempt to make sense of the world around them? Was it boredom? Or did they, even then, have a sense of beauty and a drive to decorate the space around them?

And yet, here we are, so many years later still trying to express and make sense of the world around us through art. Even now we decorate the walls around us with posters, pictures, paintings, graffiti........

Art is so primal. Creative drive is so primal. And I think that's beautiful.

[an-unlikely-poet]

Poetry is language in verse

Photography is opportunity

Music is labor

[chaosnoirjpg]

Healing Imposter Syndrome

The current sciences (psychology) says there is no way of curing or healing or treating imposter syndrome. (They have failed the people they claim to serve and help.)

The rebellious optimist in me says otherwise. There is a practice, not a cure, treatment or healing-way, a practice. I use the word practice because it is flexible, open for growth, a learning curve, forgiving, and non-committal.

---a dialogue---

interviewer: what are your thoughts on the popularity you've gained so quickly for your one song? do you feel imposter syndrome?

artist: I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to be known for my art. There are so many artists that do great work and don't get recognized in their lifetime if ever. My biggest struggle isn't imposter syndrome but rather trying to return to the [head] space where I was able to create art like this.

interviewer: what lead you to create the hit song?

artist: I had no expectations [of the song being a hit]. I was singing to no one. It was just me, my camera and a song I wanted to sing. I only intended to get it out [of me] and I did. I was successful in that.

--end dialogue--

The practice to alleviate imposter syndrome is:

Maintain an attituded of gratitude - be grateful that you are where you are at in the here and now. ask yourself: what are you taking for granted? then move into the spirit of gratitude

Simple Intention - you set out to art, period. you didn't intend to make good/great art

[breasailbookworm]

" The guide fossil, or the dance of the buried periods of time-

-

'The being which has a form dominates the millennia. Every form conserves a life. The fossil is no longer simply a being which has lived; it is a being which is still living, asleep in its form.'

It is easy to understand that the notion of the fossil could run through all of Warburg's thought.

It is a paradigm, unobtrusive but insistent, of the Nachleben—one of its major leitmotifs. Its paradox—its ambition—derives from the fact that while such a paradigm moves, transversally, and is almost musical, it is never established at any given point, refuses to 'harden' and never completely crystallizes.

One could say that even in dealing with the notion of the fossil, Warburg tried to do what he tried to do everywhere else, namely, not to petrify anything, but rather to conceive everything from the perspective of its movement.

But how can one conceive of a fossil as being set in motion?"

-

Georges Didi-Huberman. . In: The Surviving Image: Phantoms of Time and Time of Phantoms-Aby Warburg’s History of Art. Translation: 2017.

(left detail of "Primavera" by Botticelli; right, "Black beauty", one of the most complete T. Rex ever found-Royal Tyrrell Museum, Alberta, CA.)

[tangismyname]

The frustration of feeling very positive about the art you are working on for the day, but you happen to be doing it while at your day job.

Like it generally turns out better because I only draw for like 30 seconds to 2 minutes at a time before I refresh to process more orders at the computer. Approaching the art so slowly with lots of time to process, think, and rest my hands in between lines has outcomes I am more proud of, but this workflow is hard to replicate. I would need so many planned interruptions, that would require me to pull away from a drawing (impossible task at home during hyperfocus art time)

It reminds me of being able to create masterpieces on binder paper while waiting for everyone else to finish their tests or ignoring teachers in high school classes.

[alleesaur]

doodling a bunny vs doodling a hare

[yeepof]

I understand that tall men are our POV characters, but surely being like a foot taller than everyone around them would have some occasional consequences

[hansoeii]

the honda odyssey, huh?

[razzafrazzle]

Just Checking In! (aka Something About Red Triangles)

[sunsbleeding]

[arielries]

Do you ever wish you could take the steam with you?