Creative Flow PART 02

Trembling Aspen | Series_02 Hey, Koganecho! | Issue_09

‌‌It’s all there. And when it’s gathered up, when the illusion of separation isn’t a barrier, when temporal distance is compressed in a way my conscious thinking mind can’t plan for, something else is at work and it’s beautiful. I think it’s the most hopeful meaning-making I’ve ever participated in.

That’s how I ended PART 01, with hopeful meaning-making after a period of struggle.

“Welcome to my studio,” is how I’m imagining the start of PART 02. We’re in my studio and I’m telling you about my artistic practice, not as a monologue but as a dialogue, so we can both better understand artistic practice in general, and then apply that better understanding to the specifics of living our respective lives as the respective works of art they are.

The first thing I’d show you is this:

The journey we’ve been on has allowed me to participate in a group exhibition here in Koganecho. That’s my art work featured on the front, which, I’ll admit, felt good. Peer-to-peer validation is an important thing. Then I’d want to tell you about the process, because the kind of art I make, well, the process of making the art is the art. The image, hanging on the wall, is an artifact of the process. Then, in my head, I’d hear my friend Peter say, can you talk about it without talking about the process? And I’d think about it. I’d think about the difference between process and technique, about what I mean by the word process and how what I mean by that word is shaped by the art world. I’d think about what else I might call the process and I’d come up short and decide, I’ll just talk about the process because, for this particular series, I’m not completely clear on where the line between the process and the artifact is.

My impulse here, with you, dear reader, is to talk directly about the process because you were part of creating the conditions that lead to the struggle, that lead to the work, that lead to the show. So I owe you a bit more, methinks. I don’t want to rob you of free and open dialogue with the art work. I don’t want to put thoughts in your head, or narrow the art work's meaning down to what I say it means. Dear lord, this isn’t about what it means. I don’t know what it means and more than I can know what a good question means. A good question, like “What’s on your mind.” has infinite answers which is what makes it a good question. I hope this art work like a good question, has many answers, many meanings for each and every person that encounters it. So, yeah, it’s not about telling you what it means. I’d like to offer you, an invested reader, a bit more insight into the process of crafting this art work in a way that leads to the art work being an even better question. Not necessarily because you plan to be an artist and need to know about artistic practice, but because you’re a human in the process of becoming yourself and I think artistic practice in general, and the process of becoming human are related.

First off, the title. This series is called The 創流 Series. 創流 (Sōryū) is a word my friend Natsuki—a native Japanese speaker and Calligraphy Master—and I made up at a Lunar New Year calligraphy demo she was doing at Prada (a detial I include only because you can't make that shit up). It consists of 創 (sō), which means create, and 流 (ryū) which means flow. We were thinking of the creative flow we hoped to experience in the coming year.

Shall we look at some images from The 創流 Series?

These individual gestures...

...became this final image.

Let me show you a few more...

I want to share every drawing of every piece in this series, but I think that would be overwhelming. My wanting to share all of them doesn’t come from a sense of “Look at how much there is!” and me hoping for a gold star. The impulse to share it all comes from a sense of “Look at what we did together!” With that in mind, I didn't share them all, rather I’ve shared comfortably too many, like Grandma offering you a bit more gravy. Honestly, this series feels like the meat and potatoes of the whole residency—the why that got discovered as a result of doing this whole thing. If there’s anywhere to go a bit overboard with the gravy, this is it.

Gravy

The text I incorporated into the work, as it appeared in the group exhibition:

This work is an exploration of how we reveal ourselves through moments in time, how what we reveal is also a revelation about the world, and what happens when we gather together those moments in time. What do layers of surrender reveal? What Patterns emerge when time is not a barrier?

この作品は、流れる時間の中のある瞬間を通して、私たちがどのように自己を明らかにするか、また、それは世界についての啓示であり、それらの瞬間を集めると何が起きるかを探求するものでもあります。いくつもの層が何を明らかにするのか？時間が障壁とならないとさ、どんなパターンが現れるのか？

‌‌The artist statement as it appeared in the gallery catalogue for the group exhibition:

A Sōryū (創流) painting session involves making a series of 27 single gestures on 27 single pieces of paper. When I make these gestures I attempt to not think or plan, to enter a state of beginner’s mind (初心) so as to “try without trying.” I attempt to simply begin the brush stroke, and then allow my body-mind to respond to the brush stroke as it is being made.

The process breaks down the myth of the individual painter genius that is often associated with abstract expressionism. Instead, it shows that an overall effect―an idea of particular importance to Rosenberg in his writing about Pollack, de Kooning et al―can emerge without any one person being the centre of it all. The layers of marks and gestures create a coherence that exists beyond any individual's conscious efforts.

I am interested in combining the spontaneity and improvisation associated with action painting, and the expressive potential of individual gestures associated with gestural abstraction. By capturing individual gestures on individual pieces of paper I am enhancing the illusion of a world dominated by subject/object separation. I then unmask this illusion by digitally merging the individual gestures―through an iterative series of "computational processes" which affect a kind of temporal compression―to reveal a coherent visual whole. The beauty of the final digital image is evidence of unity, connection and meaning existing beyond what otherwise appears to be a reality of fragmentation and separation.

A bit more gravy

As this process evolved a few constraints and heuristics emerged.

Constraints:

‌One brush stroke—more correctly one gesture—per piece of paper. One drawing session in one sitting, without interruption. Documentation followed immediately afterward—capturing the same light, time of day as the drawing session.

Heuristics:

‌No pixel left behind
Every page is included, and what ever made it onto the page is included, no editing. Whatever was captured in the documentation process is included, no editing. The “good” and “bad,” as I might conceive of those terms, are all there all together

Relationship rules
The final image, which combines all the layers, is a computational process based on how all the layers, with all the pixels, relate to each other.

Perturbations are good
Anomalies and perturbations create visual interest. I held the camera by hand, and didn’t use a tripod, the crinkles and wrinkles in the paper are part of the final image, the lighting was in situ, as I found it.

‌‌In retrospect, the heuristics are about trusting intuition and serendipity, preserving the truth of a moment as it happened, without judgement or conscious editorial intervention. The heuristics were a process (a system) from which emerged both constraints and affordances. The constraints and affordances emerge from my embodied agency (action-in-context). The context is an assemblage of relationships—rather than a collection of things—between paper, brush, ink, my embodied self, desk, chair, room, etc. I am making this and all of my past artistic practice is part of my making; and at the same time I don’t end at my skin—in the words of Alan Watts, I am something the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing.

Whew. How are you doing? Full? Room for a little dessert after all that gravy? How about one small story about one session in the process. You have room, right?

Dessert from my creative journal

regarding one particular session on April 18

I was being present to the fact that this process is about healing‌‌

It is about allowing my body, through these brush strokes, to speak on its own behalf

It is about allowing what needed to flow, to flow

In contrast to other sessions, in which I am dissatisfied with some or most of the brush strokes, what ended up on the page was mostly brush strokes I love

Mostly beautiful

At about the 7th or 8th drawing I started crying

I don’t know why, it wasn’t linked to any particular memory or event, it just sort of started

I had a sense of there being grief-gratitude that needed to be felt, and it was being felt

I tried to not-try. To remain with the experience, and not think my way out of it, to allow it to happen

I tried to not be embarrassed by the experience, not have expectations of the experience,

To just let it be what it is, in all its unexpectedness.

Tears kept flowing

Then this brush stroke happened

And I really started crying.

Again, I don’t know why it brought tears the way it did. Well, I do know, on some level, in my bones. And I don’t want to name the experience, or label it, or reify it.

This experience is something that happened in the intensely private space of my studio, and in my own internal landscape set within that private space.  So, yeah, pretty private. Just showing you the brushstroke feels wildly vulnerable. Sharing my experience of it being created, uh...even more so. And yet, I feel compelled to share it here. Why? In a word, and my best guess...

Healing.

Mine, yours, everyone's, the planet.

For me, this session and the final image from this session, the individual brush strokes that comprise the final image, and this one brush stroke in particular symbolize the way the residency as a whole has been about healing. My own personal healing, yes. And the way the deep healing of our human and embodied-selves is wrapped up with the healing of the planet. They go together. Energizing, informing, enacting, facilitating, interacting, holding onto and orienting around each other.

I can’t tell you exactly how it’s about healing. As I say, it’s my best guess. To which I’ll add, my friend Akshay recently shared the following. It seems salient.

We do not speak of it in order to describe or define it.

We speak of it in order to evoke the recognition of it.

...Even that is not quite true.

In the end, we speak of it or express it in some way simply because we are compelled to do so, without having to know how or why.

~ Rupert Spira

As we push back our chairs, slightly too full of gravy, the remains of our feast on the table in front of us, I hope you feel full, but not too full. My intent in inviting you into my process, and into my studio, in offering a meal with too much gravy, was to be a good host. I hope you felt welcome.

Until next time.

My participation in the Koganecho Artist in Residence program, the art work, the artwork I am producing here, and this very newsletter were all made possible by members of The Mycelium Council. If you enjoy Trembling Aspen, a topical series of pop-up newsletters from me, Steve Frost, please consider joining.