Definitions...

My practice is now a deconstructive and reconstructive affair.  Experimentally I want to discard with the method of what I have been doing.  It is strange that as an “artist” artist we are so often trained to make work like we have been making.  This effort makes sense in the context of an artworld that requires products, pieces of material goods that can be shifted and traded.  It makes very little sense if we are striving to develop new perspectives or discover personal interests outside of the comfort of control.  Looking is extremely important to my work, so perhaps I should destroy it.  I often come across this predilection to antithesis in my thinking.  Creating the opposite to illuminate the differences.  Assuming the negative to solve the proof.

            For professional practice I imagine a schedule.  A repeatable set of parameters that occur each week.  This of course sounds like a job. Because I believe that art is a job.  I also believe that teaching art must be a part of my practice.  This is because teaching a thing makes you better and more informed on that thing. Writing for me is becoming increasingly important, so perhaps books, and articles enter into the equation of a practice.  The objects themselves (books) have a strange magnetism that transcends most peoples experience.  People love books. 

            Musicians practice, they set aside time every day to stretch and expand, go over material, doing it multiple times, pushing the artworks farther forward.  Art making is like practicing Mozart without a score.  Or rather, hoping that you are practicing Mozart but can’t quite tell until you hear the recording if it is Mozart or not.  A physicist said something recently that stuck in my brain: “ The secret of success is moving from one failure to the next without diminished enthusiasm.”  I respect this concept immensely, and it comes as a comfort. 

Practice

noun

  1. habitual or customary performance; operation:

            office practice.

  1. habit; custom:

             It is not the practice here for men to wear long hair.

  1. repeated performance or systematic exercise for the purpose of acquiring skill or proficiency:

            Practice makes perfect.

  1. condition arrived at by experience or exercise:

            She refused to play the piano, because she was out of practice.

  1. the action or process of performing or doing something:

            to put a scheme into practice; the shameful practices of a blackmailer.

  1. the exercise or pursuit of a profession or occupation, especially law or medicine:

             She plans to set up practice in her hometown.

  1. the business of a professional person:

            The doctor wanted his daughter to take over his practice when he retired.

  1. Law. the established method of conducting legal proceedings.

  2. Archaic. plotting; intrigue; trickery.

  3. Usually practices. Archaic. intrigues; plots.

 

            I think I love definitions because they are finite.  Like math or sports they provide a concrete answer, or result that is clear, and is something to rely on.  Art of course is challenging because of its openness.  Its indefinability.  Even if the work does not sell, an artist may have achieved the highest pinnacle of success.  The game is defined by rules that are as fluid as the art itself.  I think this might be why more people do not become artists.  It’s just too much uncertainty.

            I want to take my practice out of the ordinary.  I have held myself for years to strict regimens of content and process.  But that might have squandered opportunities for important work that has been left in the margins.  That work is going to have its day.