Sorting your insides
My forest is a processor
This past week or so I’ve been thinking about the components that make up my art practice. Not the various media I work in, or materials I use, but rather the things I think about and pay attention to when I’m not making art, but end up informing my work. I’ve even gone so far as to break it all down in a mindmap to help “see the forest” as it were.
I needed to remind myself of what the core of my practice is. Work and family life have been more busy and distracting as of late. I’ve still been drawing pretty steadily, but in the last month felt myself “detaching” from my work. I’ve been feeling constrained by my studio space in a way I find irritating at the moment. Some of that has to do with some day job upheaval, and sharing studio space with my jobby-job workspace. Some of that, I think, is just reaching the end of the runway and not feeling the plane lift off the ground in a way I feel good about.
Anyway, in my last post I closed it out saying “if you want to know about me, just look at my art” or something like that. While this is essentially true, it does not accurately describe the part of the artist’s practice that is the most intellectually and emotionally taxing - the reprocessing of the world around you and providing space for it connect to the parts of your brain that require saying something about it.
This might be a blip. I had some really strong feelings about my practice about 4 days ago, which have subsided after spending time mapping out my thoughts (see above). It was enough, however, to push me to look back and some unfinished projects that keep me up at night, puzzling on possible IRL manifestations. I also feel myself needing to refine some areas of my practice that I don’t think are working very well.
Everyone has a “world processor” inside them. Not everyone engages with it to their fullest capacity. Artists have a particular version of this that requires the body’s participation in making the absurd and ineffable appear in physical form. If you are a creative person and you have not done some version of mapping out those pieces of yourself that drive you to make work, I highly recommend it.
The key is to put it away while you are making, because it is not the work itself. Your work needs to operate apart from language and conscious thought. It is just a helpful exercise in locating the center of your practice.
Bonus round - Official Destroy Monthly Art Subscription
I’m starting up a monthly subscription program as an experiment in art and commerce. Every month, and for a limited number of subscribers, I’ll send you an original work on paper made with my own two hands. “What good can become of this?” you might ask yourself. Grab a subscription and you can:
Start your own art collection1
Become an D-list art mogul 2
Launder your money in non-fungible assets and then sell them at a Sotheby’s auction for an undisclosed sum in a few years3
Live the life you want, surrounded by champagne, models, and mounds of Bolivian marching powder4
I realize the cost of this might feel prohibitive to some, but I’ve tried to offer something that is meaningful for you in both cost and what you get, and also doable for me to accomplish. The second tier is more of a way to show support for my writing outside of this platform (which I may move away from in the near future). Substack takes a cut and I want to keep it free anyway.
Hit the button below to learn all the dirty details.
Guaranteed.
I provide the artwork. Your mogulishness is all on you.
In no way shape or form a guarantee on your future wealth.
Also not a guarantee, but please shoot me your address if this starts happening to you.