practical tools

I don’t have an art room. I just have an interface. It’s electronic, mostly, when it’s not paper. This one is a cool gray, blue gray, with a gradient of royal blue at the top like a narrow band of water. It’s very wintry. I feel comfortable with it. It’s not textured at all, not messy, no fingerprints, nothing to spill or sprawl.

I can still identify with Audrey Flack or Louise Nevelson. Those women that create gigantic huge room-sized sculpture. I imagine myself on a ladder, surveying the work. That’s a happy, engaged place to be, isn’t it. Involved. In the room.

There’s nothing to wish for, nothing to yearn for. Everything is right here, in the room. I enter the room, or I don’t enter the room. It’s that simple.

The product matters. All the cultural artifacts hanging around the product don’t matter.

And – it’s a collective enterprise. It may not seem so, but at the heart, it is. I know it is. And here I am, I feel connected, I am swimming in the large room, and using the practical tools, and it’s a joy.

Creativity can feel lonely, out there in the farthest orbit, but it only takes the slightest effort to smile at her, ask her a few questions, and lead her in.