Artistic values, style, and goals

I’m almost done with the jacket – another week’s work should do it – so I am naturally thinking about what comes next.  Also, I read an excellent blog post by Elizabeth Barton on what a juror looks for, which got me thinking about what I look for in my own work.  So I hastily scribbled down some of my own values and styles, so I could set my goals more clearly.  Here they are:

Values:

• Good workmanship.  The piece should be well-made, the best that I can do, technically speaking.
• Focus on quality, not time. It takes as long as it takes; if it takes 1,000 hours and a year to complete, so be it!
• Strong aesthetic. It should be beautiful.  (Not necessary for art generally, of course, but is one of my own values.)
• Powerful. It should evoke emotion in the viewer; it shouldn’t be “flat”.
• Well-designed. It should embody good design principles.
• Innovative. It should push the edge of the medium, of my understanding of the medium, or both.
• Artistically free. Choice of media, style, etc. shouldn’t be dictated by trepidations on where I’ll actually be able to show my work; if it’s interesting enough, the venue will appear.

• Technique focused. I like playing with new techniques, and will frequently come up with a piece based on a technique I’m exploring.
• Intellectually challenging. If it’s not a challenge, and/or I’m not learning something, I won’t do it.
• Novelty driven. I don’t like stepping in the same river, or the same tradition, twice.
• Complex. This goes along with “intellectually challenging”; I tend to make my work with layers of complexity, often to a fault.
• Goal driven. It is very difficult for me to let go and just “play”; there has to be a goal associated with it.
• Planned. I work best when I have a plan and can work to the plan; spontaneous creation feels sloppy to me.

What is interesting to me about this is that nowhere in all this list is the $64,000 question of art vs. craft: Does it need to have a meaning??

I thought about this for awhile and decided that the answer is “mu” (Zen for “Unask the question” – roughly translated, the question is constructed improperly, which makes a correct answer impossible.)  I have no idea what constitutes “having meaning”.  I am not a particularly subtle person – if it isn’t explicitly stated, I tend to miss it.  So I am not at all sure why a scarf, for example, is considered not to have meaning, but an abstract painting of a circle and a square would be considered to have “meaning”.  If the question is, “Does it have to have an explicit narrative?” the answer is no.  But I am not sure what is considered “meaningful” in reference to art.  (I’d love your thoughts! so please leave a comment on this post if you think you understand what it means.)

Then I sat down and brainstormed a bunch of things I want to study in 2011:

• Pattern drafting
• Garment construction
• Fabric manipulation
• Surface design techniques
• Differential dyeing (warp cellulose, weft protein)
• Art and art history – to get an idea of what other people are doing and what has been done before

Obviously that is a very long and ambitious list, and I won’t get to do any of them in-depth in just nine months!  But I thought about it some more and realized that I don’t do well at studying things in the abstract anyway – instead, the best way for me to study things is to pick projects that require them, and learn as I go.

So here, keeping in mind my values and working style,  is my goal for 2011:

• Conceive and sketch out a garment that uses handwoven fabric plus surface design and/or fabric manipulation techniques.
• Draft the pattern for the garment from scratch, work with Sharon on fitting the garment, and construct it using couture methods.
• Garment should be completed in 2011 or early 2012 (preferably, but not necessarily, in time for the Convergence and CNCH Fashion Show).

Is that ambitious?  Yes!!  But I think it is a good goal, one that will stretch me a lot, creatively speaking.  And I’m fairly confident that, with Sharon’s help, I can make it happen.

First step is figuring out what I want to make – so I have ordered a couple of books on couture and art-to-wear, and will spend some time poring over them, for inspiration.