>well yeah that's pretty much it for some people. the reason i make art
>is because i like the way i feel when i'm doing it! when i finish a piece,
>i'm always left feeling a little sad that it's over. maybe one reason i
>enjoy printmaking, because it's a lotta process... although painting is
>more... ummm.... intense (?). it happens faster, aesthetic decisions
>have to be immediate and come one right after the other. it's
>exhausting and exhilarating. don't knock process!
Indeed!
Is this not art? I am just completing my second 4x5 camera (my own designs, built from scratch; folding field cameras). The building of the thing is, at least for me, a work of art. I made the wooden pieces with intarsia inlays. I've used the colors and textures of the various materials "against" each other. And then there's the goal of getting, ahem, "perfectly dimensioned" and finished parts which work "perfectly" with each other as a smoothly coordinated machine.
The process of getting to the excellence of the result for me is (a?) (the?) key part of the process. Comparing with the use of a Lomo or a Diana, I don't think I could find a way to use crappy tools and find nirvana in the "best result I could get using those crappy tools". I spent all too many years doing that, producing objectively poor results, especially in my own eyes - others' eyes don't matter. It's not that I have (or need to have) the "best" tools -- decidedly not! I have built and acquired tools just adequate for me to get to the result I visualize. Today.
The work is very intense, and there are a thousand ways to "blow it" at any moment. That's part of the process.
The building of the tools themselves is, as well, an essential part of the "process", for me. That's one reason I so much love photographing with cameras (and tripods, and darkroom equipment, and ...) I've built myself. For me, building cameras is part of the creative chain to get to the images I want. But I certainly don't know where the chain starts or ends.
Now that I've done a trial assembly of the new camera, and I know that everything "fits", and the result looks better than my mental image / plans, and I know that it will work very well --- well now I'm kind of sad and let down. The process of the visualization and creation had a life in and of itself. Now that it's "just" left to be finishing and polishing, well, well, ...
Don Feinberg
ducque@mindspring.com
Received on Mon Jan 3 22:43:05 2005
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : 02/01/05-09:28:07 AM Z CST