by John Lacey on March 4, 2010
I wrote about finding your power when no one cares. And that’s great, it is. But then there’s also the feeling that accompanies the realisation that – yes, really – NO ONE CARES. It is not much fun. Especially when you feel like you’re really doing great interesting stuff, really cultivating a talent, really developing a voice. At times you have to wonder if it is worth having a voice that nobody is prepared to listen to.
What if there was a territory that represented this struggle? Well, Ford Fiesta Movement team members Sam Proof and Jen Friel think there is. It’s the internet… or, erm, Los Angeles. Either way:
Go Big or GTFO, This … is the internet. LA is a city like no other, and a city that itself is most like the internet. It’s full to the brim with creative people wanting for a modicum of recognition. Opportunity is a bullet train speeding by at a thousand miles an hour. You can sit there and watch the blur, or you can take a leap, stick out a hand and grab on for the ride. – We’re going to give the LA community, (creative & viewer) the ride of it’s life.
I should probably tell you that I’ve known Sam Proof for several years now. We met in a Stickam chat room, he was a friend-of-a-friend… and at the time I remember him creating funny videos – often as Zeus or Jesus (it’s amazing what you can do with a beard and a toga). I’ve interviewed him on my podcast about online video creators (twice). I love catching his weekly web show Failpire whenever I can. And, yes, I even contribute periodically to another of his ventures – Podpocalypse.
What might be less apparent, even to those who know both of us, are the early morning (for him; late night with the time difference for me) peptalks and commiseration sessions.
At the beginning of the year an important part of my YouTube channel branding was drawn into question. The powers that be weren’t convinced that I had the right to use something in my videos that had been created specifically for use in those videos. It was annoying, but I wasn’t just annoyed – I was furious. It was the final straw in a growing sense of dissatisfaction about creating content online. My subscribers – my theoretical audience – was growing and yet the number of views a given video would receive was actually going down. Talk about diminishing returns…
As it happens, there’s a “90-9-1″ Rule For Participation Inequality online but even knowing this was cold comfort.
So when I recorded the first JOJCAST for the year, it was a miserable resentful lament. I told the world I was going to continue but on my own terms. Out of the ashes came some sorely needed encouragement:
I think we all struggle with this, and for those of us that are not in the 100,000 club I think we struggle with it nearly daily.
[...]
Good luck john, I’ll always be around to cheer you on
Stay Strong
-SamProof
And in that moment I think I finally understood the message of his catchcry ‘Stay Strong.’ To me that means keep going. It’s okay – indeed normal – to have doubts, to experience frustrations, but don’t give up! We all get by with a little help from our friends…
If you’re in that ‘other Internet’ Los Angeles, you can join Sam and Jen for the draw-a-thon on Thursday 4th March. And if you’re not, you can still follow their progress online.
by John Lacey on February 25, 2010
In Memory Tree, a documentary about the life and art of Australian artist David Boyd, there is a great exchange between Boyd and fellow artist John Coburn.
John Coburn: What is art? What is it all about? That thing that’s in you and it’s got to come out.
David Boyd: If it doesn’t come out it will blow you up… [Both laugh]
John Coburn: Yeah.
Rod Pattenden, Chairman of The Blake Society, talked to David Rutledge on Encounter about The Blake Prize (Australia’s largest religious art prize):
The Blake Prize represents a territory; it’s a place, or an opportunity, where religion and art come together. So anyone who starts to criticise the Blake in that it’s this, or that, really has to come up against the question: what is religion, after all? And what is art, after all? They’re both speculative areas of cultural life, they’re both going to push the boundaries, by their very nature they’re going to annoy people.
Richard Gill, music director of the Victorian Opera, speaking on Artworks:
I would define art the same way that the author John Carey defines art. And he defines art by saying, ‘A work of art is anything that its maker believes it to be. So if the maker believes it to be a work of art, it is a work of art.’ And I think that’s a really good definition, because it admits everything. What it doesn’t admit to is quality. But I think starting with the idea of ‘this is a work of art’ is actually very encouraging. And so I take that to mean John Carey’s definition to be, for example let’s go to one of my pet hobby horses, music education, where we make music with children. And if a child comes up and says, ‘I think I’ve made an art work. I’ve composed a piece.’ You can say, ‘Yes, indeed you have. Now let’s listen to this piece and what are the differences between your piece and this piece.’ And it may be Bach or Beethoven or Schoenberg or Schubert or anyone. But then you’ve got to weigh in, to say, ‘Okay, so your work of art is like this; Mozart’s work of art is like this. Where are the differences? What do we do next?’
So rather than saying, ‘No, you haven’t made an art work…’ Then you’re telling the child, one, you can’t define art; or you do define art but you don’t really want to tell the child what it is. Whereas you agree, yes it is, you’ve got a starting point.
So in short art is whatever the artist says it is, if not dealt with it is likely cause considerable harm to the artist and it is, by it’s very nature, annoying. You know this definition really works for me…
by John Lacey on February 17, 2010
This is just a quick note to let you know that Mur Lafferty and I Should Be Writing is going to be tackling The Artist’s Way creativity program as an online community. You can follow the group’s progress at the I Should Be Writing website (or subscribe via iTunes or at YouTube) and by joining the associated Facebook page.
I’ve never done the The Artist’s Way as part of a group before and am quite excited at the prospect.
by John Lacey on February 13, 2010
Kate Bush sings in ‘An Architect’s Dream‘:
Watching the painter painting
And all the time the light is changing
He keeps painting
That bit there
It was an accident
He’s so pleased
It’s the best mistake he could make
Now it’s my favourite piece
It’s just great.
I wrote about getting started. I wanted to write too about knowing when to stop. No, I don’t mean giving up. I mean acknowledging the point at which an individual piece of work (or art) is finished. The truth is you can keep working on something forever, especially if you’re waiting for it to be ‘perfect.’
The Artist’s Way – that book that I am forever referencing on this website – has interesting quotes from interesting people in the columns around the main text of the tome. I particularly like this one from Paul Gardner:
A painting is never finished – it simply stops in interesting places.
I guess the next question is, simply, which interesting place do you stop at?
I wish I had some definitive answer for you. If my couple of months of painting have taught me anything it has been that sometimes I’ll have a profound sense that a canvas is finished. But other times I will have an impulse to experiment, to try something just to see what will happen. And this is great! It is wonderful to take creative risks, to feel like you can do this. But experimenting with a canvas is very different to experimenting with words in a word processor. You can completely alter a paragraph in a manuscript on your computer and if it looks wrong you can change it back. Sometimes you’ll have the luxury of an ‘undo’ feature, other times you’ll just recreate something from memory. It is harder with a canvas. There are very real limits to what you can do to ‘remove’ paint from a canvas.
[And as though to illustrate my point I just wrote a paragraph in this blog and then deleted it to start again. See? It is easier in text.]
So when I’ve painted an eerie graveyard scene and am happy with the canvas I could stop in this interesting place. Only… I can’t seem to do that. No, I’m fascinated by the idea of coloured washes. It doesn’t seem to matter that I’ve never found a personally satisfying application for them in any of the other paintings I’ve done. I’m hung up on them. I think it will give the painting a sense of depth and add to the overall mood. But it doesn’t work out as I imagine. The entire scene is obscured in the process. I have this moment where I think to myself, “You know John, you had a perfectly workable piece of artwork before you did that.”
But I don’t want to beat myself up. Risk is kind of what it’s all about. Creative risk is the reason our parents secretly (sometimes not-so-secretly) wish we’d give up our creative pursuits and work in banks. And I have to realise if I hadn’t been prepared to take some risks I wouldn’t be painting at all. I wouldn’t be writing, I wouldn’t be blogging. I wouldn’t be podcasting. I wouldn’t make videos and put them on the Internet. I wouldn’t be doing any of the things that are important to me if I hadn’t been prepared to experience creative risk.
The other thing worth remembering is that the stretched canvases and canvas boards I use are quite affordable. Infact compared to my university education… you know, I don’t think I’ll finish that thought.
Happy risk taking!
