Art Without Compromise*

I'm only about 30 pages in to Wendy Richmond's book Art Without Compromise*, but just as a friend promised, I've found something on every page which I find myself nodding to, wanting to underline, or even tack on my wall. On page three in the chapter "Cultivating Creativity" Richmond writes:

Here's how I define a successful day in the studio. I arrive with some vague concept of what I want to create. I begin to work and find that the materials have a different plan for me, and I take my cues from them. each step evolves from the previous one, and I am surprised as I work. By the time I leave, I have made something very different from what I had expected.

Isn't this art at its best?

Richmond portrays a sensitivity and awareness of her own process, as well as habits she's cultivated that might benefit others. Comprised of short essays, AWC* encourages the reader to rededicate herself to her craft and process, to allow it to present new opportunities and shirk rigidity.

My artist friends will find her suggestion to create a visual reflection notebook very useful. Many of us do some form of this already in our sketchbooks, but what she recommends is taking photocopies of a span of your work (say over years or even decades) and recompiling it in a book without an intentional order, letting new juxtapositions surprise you. She often leaves pages for commenting and allows new connections to form, and recognizes ones there that she might have overlooked. This would be useful for any type of creative process, not just visual. As much as we like to think we change, I think it's also helpful for us to see the ways we don't change so that we can strengthen those tendencies into something more useful and powerful.

Richmond also emphasizes an awareness of one's own time and the need to track our cultural and historical lineage in relation to our own work. This is something I tend to shy away from, but perhaps we can't help respond to what we see and what's going on around us, even if we think we aren't doing so. I'd like to be able to do this more intentionally, though I'm not sure what that might look like.

Reading this book has me itching to get back into the printmaking studio, where my process is much more intuitive and successful. I can take in a few sketches and they will be transformed by the etching of copper or the blocking of a stencil. The printmaking studio moves me beyond my own vision of things into something more. Sometimes it is a big failure, but when it's not, it's that much more rewarding.

In the meantime, I've been thinking about what I can do in my studio (i.e. second bedroom/storage space). It's been difficult for me to think CONCEPT since finishing art school, and the nice thing about collage is that it can offer up meaning to the maker as much as the viewer. Helping my sister a couple weeks ago with an installation, I was able to allow my intuition to guide my hand much more than I do in my own work. I might allow intuition more into my visual work and see where it takes me. (I find I am able to do this more with my writing--perhaps because it is still new to me and I have no choice but to discover as I go.) Sometimes, the things I enjoy most are just vessels for another persons ideas--the journals I am making now for example, which just involve selecting recycled paper and a visually interesting cover. Or, I might hang a series of things on the wall in my studio to stir my own imagination, but the arrangement has an art all its own.