Artist Statement 2.0
Side note: After rereading my previous artist statement I can’t help but laugh at how strange I sound. But at the same time I did feel that way about art at some point… So if you want a good laugh check out my previous one.
Now for my updated Artist statement.
My experiences with art have really shaped my view of the world and how I interact with it. Over the years, I have found that I work best under a set process. This process, my ideal set of steps, really determine if I pass or fail at making art in my eyes. For me process is everything. The end result is not what is important. Through the act of making, I find that I learn more then from making a beautiful portrait or a riveting water color.
It is especially interesting to me when I follow the same process but get drastically different results. For my stamping series, I had the same six steps for every single piece. But each of them are extremely different and I learned new ideas and techniques from all of them. That is the most exciting part; you know what you need to do but the outcome is still unknown. Its not like assembling a chair from IKEA, those instructions will always make a chair and all those kits will make chairs. But for art, all of the kits we have (paper, ink, stamps, paint) are the same and all of the instructions (tape edges, apply base layer, stamp blocks) are too. But the end results are drastically different.
When an outsider views a work, they only see what is portrayed, you may look at my prints and see just rectangles on a page. But when I look at them, I see all the little nuisances and information that I learned from making the work. I, and only I, know the language of my process and my pieces that I can read and look back on. To me, that is what art is all about.
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First Artist Statement
When I make art, I want it to be an experience, and when I see a piece of art that I did I want to remember that experience. To me art (and life) is just one big show and tell. And I want to tell the world. When working on a project, I don’t try to make the most beautiful portrait, or the best abstraction on what an apple looks like. I try to give my art what I am feeling. So if I put feeling into it, I don’t care if people don’t get it. They aren’t supposed to get it. For me, if I look back at art that I did, if I get the feeling that was used to make it, the piece is perfect.
I take that mentality even farther with my sketchbooks. To me, they are almost like my journal. I have a page devoted only to things that I think about when I can’t sleep or about people that are affecting my life in some way. I do many “cliché” things like song lyrics or whatever. But I like it that way. If I have a song stuck in my head I have to tell someone. That someone is often my sketchbook. Also, I love using tape. If their was one media that I use more than anything, its tape. I don’t know what it is; it is just my favorite thing to use. That’s that.
But before I stray into the many uses of tape in a sketchbook, I have to finish my artist statement. I make art because I want to capture a moment in time and keep it forever. I want to hold on the emotions that come with all of the experiences. When I look at a piece of art and don’t get emotion from it, than I might as well be blind.
