Dear friends,
Happy you stopped by, this web holds some pictures of things (art!) I have done or participated in meaningfully over the last couple of years. If you’re looking for the Durham sculpture project follow this link and be sure to sign in on the red form!
Process is an integral part of just about everything I do, possibly because I never find the things I think about ahead of execution particularly interesting, and it’s a recurring truth that I find genuine surprise by doing rather than thinking. Thought, for me it seems, is too laden with history to reflect much else.
And so it is, I do and see what happens, this doesn’t mean I don’t look at the outcomes carefully, or am lax about which processes to follow, but I’ve found over and over that removing one’s self from any sense of pre-destination is a powerful tool conducive to discovering unexpected outcomes.
Of course there are some difficulties in fully trusting process, it’s akin to traveling blind, or, more accurately, to traveling with a very shallow field of vision. An imagery that has percolated into existence over time is that of a bird flapping in the air. The bird can only see as far as the horizon, beyond that is the unknown, guessed at best: as long as the bird flaps its wings, the horizon continues to reveal itself. Process is the flapping, the mechanics, the cranking of some machinery, the horizon is what is discovered in increments, layers etc… but only as long as the process is active, stop the machinery, the horizon lays still.
I like this imagery because it tracks quite closely the creative process I follow, the bird might fly over the plains, and as the flapping continues, several possibilities will reveal themselves, a mountain range to the right, a lake to the left, poppy fields ahead, and so on. Note that it’s not that the process removes the necessity for choices to be made along the way, quite the opposite, process reveals choices that can, or not, be acted upon. To me process thus thought of helps remove the unhelpful tugs and blinders of pre-thought, pre-disposition, pre-emption, pre-destination. And so on.
Hope you enjoy looking through this body of work.
cheers!
jw