I’m starting a little Friday View chat thread to follow up on ideas from my weekly posts and offer a place to have community conversations around topics over the weekend. It might not be every week, let’s see how we go.
After ruminating on this week’s writing and your beautiful comments, I’m realizing how “templated” (not sure that should be used as a verb but I’m doing it!) our lives are becoming, and how much I want to resist those templates that are being offered to me. The template is just another version of the box. I want to create my own template that’s me-shaped.
As artists, our whole practice is about our unique vision of the world
✯ How do you find yourself again when you stray too far from your own vision/template?
✯ How do you resist the pressures to align your template with current trends?
✯ Is there room for compromise or is this one of the “non-negotiables” in our relationship with our art practice?
Feel free to sound off in the comments and share any resources that help you stay true to your own template.
I have to go cold-turkey on the world sometimes in order to find myself again: take a breath and retreat for a while. I'm thinking of taking 3 months off social media over the summer to get back in touch with my true creative soul.
I find journaling helps. I'm forever drawing little diagrams like mind maps of how I want my art practice to be structured.
Mentoring is essential for me. I have a couple of great mentors that I reach out to when I'm getting confused. One is great at the money side of business, the other supports me in giving me the confidence to carve my own path.
Reading inspirational books. These don't have to be about art, in fact often the books that help me shift my mindset are not directly about art practice. I have a crush on adrienne maree brown and adore everything she writes. Currently I'm reading Pleasure Activism which is making me think about how I can center pleasure in my artmaking and community activism.
yay for discussion groups! i'm here for it. thanks for opening this up. I am craving more art talk (which covers a lot of life). i crave blocks of time away but i don't often jump off the train! my main way to pace myself is to take trips to the country where we have a beautiful canvas tent without wifi or any amenities. it's glorious and will be an artist retreat one day when my kids are older. but even this summer, i plan to go for several personal retreats (yes living in brutal winter has a few perks).
Resisting the pressures to align - hmmmm good question. I get very frustrated with the literal size of the square, the engagement potential and the limited time of the viewer. I am attempting to move viewers away from the platform to other avenues and I think there is potential there but it takes a lot of effort.
I'm starting to feel drawn more and more to real-time, face-to-face art experiences. For example: hanging work in public, creating small, intimate exhibitions in my home and giving people a chance to meet me and my art in person. Taking baby steps towards local presence. But one has to be comfortable with small talk? Or maybe not.
I have a friend who is showing a collection this spring and she has zero presence online. Her only method of communication is via email. She has promised us - who live faraway - to create a virtual showing. Her pieces are not for sale because they are a story of her relationship with her grandma that needs to get out into the world. I feel work like this, that is either conceptual or story based really resonates.
This moves me to the question, "Who do I identify with as an artist?"
For years, I've felt lost. I would pull a thread to see where it went. I would hope that after time, some cohesion would manifest. But I'm realizing now that I need to commit to my work in more intentional ways. To choose one thing and go deep with it. Jacqueline, you pushed me towards that earlier in the year and I'm still chewing on this.
Insta wants me to be present and online all the time. It wants me to respond to comments and other dm's. It wants me to check on other artist and share their work. Of course I want to do all that labour. But…to not forget it is labour and that it has the tendency to dilute my focus a lot. I think that's what you are referring to Jac. Do we have an opt out button?
You mention AMB. She's amazing. I love her book Pleasure Activism. She took a sabbatical for several months. I am also pursuing this as it pertains to my community activism. I think there is room for this in our online presence as well. We can choose what engagement levels we have! We must reclaim our autonomy! I think.
Thanks for your thoughts Maria, they resonate deeply with me.
I get comfort, pleasure, and confidence from knowing that I'm not the only one who is exploring these issues through art - we all need to stick together!
I'm trying to see social media less as a constant in my practice, more as a tool I can pick up and put down when I want. I actually think the tension that creates - the when and if I use that tool - could create something interesting.
Intention is a great word. Yes to that and all the ways we can manifest intention through our practice. Learning we can't do everything in a world that tells us we can is really hard. An old mentor told me to go "narrow and deep" - I've always loved that.
Yes, insta demands our unpaid labour more and more! That's a great way of framing it. We are required to do more for fewer gains. That's not sustainable for most of us.
A life’s work, yes! Maybe it’s our most important work. I’m the opposite of you, I’m all intuition and very little logic. Thanks for the book recommendation, i’ll add it to my reading list. I really value you being here in this space with us❤️
Just placing an old post here about being stuck in a box, it might be helpful:
https://open.substack.com/pub/privateview/p/trying-to-escape-the-box-getting?r=4wslf&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I'll go first:
I have to go cold-turkey on the world sometimes in order to find myself again: take a breath and retreat for a while. I'm thinking of taking 3 months off social media over the summer to get back in touch with my true creative soul.
I find journaling helps. I'm forever drawing little diagrams like mind maps of how I want my art practice to be structured.
Mentoring is essential for me. I have a couple of great mentors that I reach out to when I'm getting confused. One is great at the money side of business, the other supports me in giving me the confidence to carve my own path.
Reading inspirational books. These don't have to be about art, in fact often the books that help me shift my mindset are not directly about art practice. I have a crush on adrienne maree brown and adore everything she writes. Currently I'm reading Pleasure Activism which is making me think about how I can center pleasure in my artmaking and community activism.
yay for discussion groups! i'm here for it. thanks for opening this up. I am craving more art talk (which covers a lot of life). i crave blocks of time away but i don't often jump off the train! my main way to pace myself is to take trips to the country where we have a beautiful canvas tent without wifi or any amenities. it's glorious and will be an artist retreat one day when my kids are older. but even this summer, i plan to go for several personal retreats (yes living in brutal winter has a few perks).
Resisting the pressures to align - hmmmm good question. I get very frustrated with the literal size of the square, the engagement potential and the limited time of the viewer. I am attempting to move viewers away from the platform to other avenues and I think there is potential there but it takes a lot of effort.
I'm starting to feel drawn more and more to real-time, face-to-face art experiences. For example: hanging work in public, creating small, intimate exhibitions in my home and giving people a chance to meet me and my art in person. Taking baby steps towards local presence. But one has to be comfortable with small talk? Or maybe not.
I have a friend who is showing a collection this spring and she has zero presence online. Her only method of communication is via email. She has promised us - who live faraway - to create a virtual showing. Her pieces are not for sale because they are a story of her relationship with her grandma that needs to get out into the world. I feel work like this, that is either conceptual or story based really resonates.
This moves me to the question, "Who do I identify with as an artist?"
For years, I've felt lost. I would pull a thread to see where it went. I would hope that after time, some cohesion would manifest. But I'm realizing now that I need to commit to my work in more intentional ways. To choose one thing and go deep with it. Jacqueline, you pushed me towards that earlier in the year and I'm still chewing on this.
Insta wants me to be present and online all the time. It wants me to respond to comments and other dm's. It wants me to check on other artist and share their work. Of course I want to do all that labour. But…to not forget it is labour and that it has the tendency to dilute my focus a lot. I think that's what you are referring to Jac. Do we have an opt out button?
You mention AMB. She's amazing. I love her book Pleasure Activism. She took a sabbatical for several months. I am also pursuing this as it pertains to my community activism. I think there is room for this in our online presence as well. We can choose what engagement levels we have! We must reclaim our autonomy! I think.
Thanks for your thoughts Maria, they resonate deeply with me.
I get comfort, pleasure, and confidence from knowing that I'm not the only one who is exploring these issues through art - we all need to stick together!
I'm trying to see social media less as a constant in my practice, more as a tool I can pick up and put down when I want. I actually think the tension that creates - the when and if I use that tool - could create something interesting.
Intention is a great word. Yes to that and all the ways we can manifest intention through our practice. Learning we can't do everything in a world that tells us we can is really hard. An old mentor told me to go "narrow and deep" - I've always loved that.
Yes, insta demands our unpaid labour more and more! That's a great way of framing it. We are required to do more for fewer gains. That's not sustainable for most of us.
Great comments, thank you so much x
A life’s work, yes! Maybe it’s our most important work. I’m the opposite of you, I’m all intuition and very little logic. Thanks for the book recommendation, i’ll add it to my reading list. I really value you being here in this space with us❤️