What makes an artist?

This post began as a Facebook status. It sparked some interesting conversations and I wanted to elaborate further.

It started with this image:

(sorry, I do not know the original artist; I found it floating on FB.
If you know the photographer or captioner, please let me know)

You know the old cliche about artists as free souls, beating to their own drums, etc, etc, etc. Of course the artist is the one that doesn't conform to the rules while the others are just boring, conventional people who will have boring conventional lives.

No. If you ask me which one of those little girls will be the dancer, I would answer the one that is concentrating, paying attention to the teacher and practicing her little heart out to attain perfection. The one who loves dancing so much she is willing to give up almost anything to dance, who will train every day until her feet bleed.

This is what a dancer's feet look like. This isn't someone who is just goofing off, this is someone who is willing to hurt a lot for her art.

Who will be an author? The one who not only observes people and lives, who has great creative ideas for a story and has something to say about both, but, mainly, the one who sits down and writes. Their first story will be terrible, their second story will be terrible and so on. But if she practices her craft, if she is willing to read over her work (painful as it may be) and evaluate it objectively, if she is open to advice and weighs that advice, she will improve.

Which one will be a painter? The one who works all day at a job to pay her bills but gets home and sits down in front of the easel for a solid 4 or 5 hours of work, dreaming of the day she can support herself with her art. The one who can hear 50 "nos" but take it as a learning experience, to improve her form of expression.

It isn't enough to "have something to say" in order to be artist. It is also necessary to be able to say it. That requires practice and hard work to develop your skills. Goofing off doesn't make an artist, it gets you kicked out of a serious class.

Pure technique also doesn't make an artist, it makes a craftsman. Artistry is combining what your soul wants to share with the skills to make it come true.

Artists may be introverts or extroverts, the class clown or the bookworm. The class clown may become a lawyer, a doctor or an artist. In the end, it is about having something to communicating and working hard to express it, understanding a chosen medium so it can share the message, knowing the rules well enough to break them for a cause and observing the world to extract that one new thing, large or small, that no one had noticed before.

A Little Art from Unexpected Places

We often see a great divide between scientists and artists - one is cold and distant, the other passionate. They see the world in different, irreconcilable ways.

At this point someone will mention how Einstein played the violin. He did - quite badly according to some (others thought he was a good player, so I will leave it to the gentle readers to come to their own conclusions). I want to share a different scientist who was also an artist.

Richard Feynman - physicist, Nobel prize winner, elected one of the top 10 scientists of all time, lifelong curious guy - was also a bongo player (pretty well known fact) and a semi amateur visual artist. His views on beauty and art was simple:

I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe…

I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.

You decide if he was any good.

Rufus
http://www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/feynmanart15.jpg

http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=11498

One minute line drawing
http://www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/feynmanart12.jpg

And some more here: http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/01/17/richard-feynman-ofey-sketches-drawings/

Book Review - Provence, 1970

This is a review for Blogging For Books.

Provence, 1970 is about a group of influential American cooks and food critics (Julia Child, Richard Olney, James Beard, Judith Jones and M.F.K. Fisher) travelling to Provence in 1970 and how this ended up changing food culture in the USA. The author is MFK Fisher's great nephew and uses her diary as a basis for the book.

I wanted to like this book. I wanted to like it a lot. I wanted it to show me how cooking changed in the early 70s and how this group of people did it. I wanted to see cooking through their eyes and experience

I did not like it, though. The book assumes the reader knows who all these people are. Forgive my lack of food history, but I only knew Julia Child and only because of the movie Julie and Julia. So the whole narrative is structured around people I didn't know and mentioning all their important, influential works I had never heard of. 

From the blurb in the back, I knew something huge was supposed to be happening but I had no idea what. I felt I was reading about several people I did not know, without much character detail, talking and complaining.

Not only that, but I also have to ding some points for the writing itself. I am not particular about writing. I appreciate a well crafted sentence but I won't notice awkward ones until they get very awkward. For example, a paragraph tells us about roasting chicken and serving it. Midway through, "it" starts to refer to the pasta the chicken will be served with. Colour me confused when the author mentions boiling "it"!

If the reader is already well acquainted with these people, I am sure they will think this a fascinating behind the scenes look. For me, it just dragged. On the bright side, several of the cook books mentioned are now in my to-read list!

Another book review and random musings

This book was provided by Blogging for Books. A good side effect of Blogging for Books is that I am finally blogging semi regularly. The downside is that I may need to rename my blog, since it is being overrun by book reviews. 

This week's book was Inside the Criminal Mind, by Dr Stanten Samenow. Dr Samenow is a psychologist who works with criminals and chronic law breakers. His basic thesis is that criminals act based on choice: they know they are harming others but don't care. The criminal mind is basically self centered, acting for their own benefit regardless of others. In the author's view, this is as true of a petty street thief as of a white collar crook and not everyone with a criminal mind is in the criminal system. This book is a revised edition of the original 1984 text.

The opposite view is the one that criminality is a result of poverty and circumstance. In this case, the way to end criminality is to attack poverty, to educate everyone and guide them to proper jobs.

Personally, I take both views as right and wrong. There are people with criminal minds and there are people who are the result of circumstance. There are people who see stealing from a corporation as a "victimless" crime and, therefore, justifiable. There are those who see some criminal actions as retribution in an unjust system. 

As an insight into a particular type of criminal, the book is fascinating. As a generalization, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Now, to other subjects.

Book Review - Lincoln in the World

Another book review and, this time, I am back in my milieu - non fictional (and non speculative) history. This week, I read Lincoln in the World (once again provided by Blogging For Books).

One thing that always puzzled me was why Britain didn't enter the Civil War, since the South provided most of the raw cotton needed by Britain's huge cotton spinning and weaving industry. On the other hand, Britain was also strongly anti-slavery. Had they entered the war defending the South, there is little doubt that the North would lose. So how was this accomplished?

The book, however, has a wider scope, trying to show how Lincoln's foreign views worked through out his career. It includes the French invasion of Mexico and even adds a (very weak) chapter on Marx. Some are intriguing, others puzzling. The French invasion is more properly tied to Jackson (Lincoln could do little more than send a telegram), the Marx chapter does stretch credulity. 

The best part, however, is the entire cast of characters, from Seward (the Foreign Secretary) to Napolèon III, including an interesting and little explored side to Mary Todd Lincoln.

Veredict: well worth the read

Kicking off 2015

Now that I've wrapped up 2014, let's get 2015 started.

I like to start a new year with an experiment, something I've never done before. This year, I attempted to use a braided shank for a ring. I've been mulling over this idea for a while now and it was time to get it down in metal.

Yeah, I won't call that a success. The ring ended up bulky and awkward. But the idea is out there. A thinner braid would probably be better but I was very happy at how sturdy the shank is after heat treatment. Also, a lesson learned: don't ever quench argentium wire, even if you think it has cooled enough. If just one point is still too warm, it will crack and cracked wire is broken wire. On a ring shank, that isn't a big loss. On a neck piece, that would be 15-20 hours of work ruined. Not good.

My main worry in this project was soldering the braid to the bezel. It still isn't perfect, as you can see, but I got the knack of it. Next one will be perfect.

So, what now? I am wearing this ring for several weeks, so I can be sure the braid is comfortable and that it will withstand abuse. Then I can create a more fluid, delicate piece.

Wrapping up 2014 - part 2

I've shown the last piece of 2014, the pearl necklace. But, of course, that doesn't mean that everything was neatly wrapped up in 2014, leaving 2015 a blank slate. Quite the contrary; there are several (ahem, nice understatement) unfinished projects around to be taken up this year.

Most of the unfinished projects have a clear direction and I just need to sit down and finish them (the nice rubellite cab ring, the large gold rose, the silhouette pendant, etc). This is the big unfinished project, though. It was an answer to Peter's challenge for us to slay our beast and face the design and fabrication issues we most avoid. In my case, it was asymmetry, multi metal and ornamental. A quick look at my work will show that I tend to symmetrical pieces, in a single metal and a somewhat minimalist look.

The first challenge was braiding the neck piece. It is significantly more complex than braiding a bracelet. The wires are much longer (hello, safety glasses!) which make them both harder to control and the ends get quite work hardened by the time they are braided. The shape has to have more curves to sit correctly - they have to curve around the neck as well as over the shoulder and over itself, so they look rounded. The braiding itself is quite time consuming.

The first attempt was an unphotographed failure. I have some pride and I won't share that one with you. I tried to mock it up with copper wire but the wires hardened much too fast for the work. Then, I tried argentium silver, so the entire thing could be heat hardened at the end. Have you any idea how easily argentium wire will crack when annealing? Yup, another attempt bit the dust.

Over and under, over and under, over and under ad nausea

This was my final try. I am not completely happy with it but it is decent and very wearable. The photograph greatly magnifies the unevenness at the back - by the time you consider all the curves plus the distortion caused by the wires, it looks a mess even though it isn't. Really, I promise.

One semi finished neck piece, ready for ornamentation

At this point, all I can say is that it is neither asymmetrical, ornamented or multi metal, which means it is time to get to work to make a profusion of flowers and gemstone settings to adorn this basic shape. And that is work for 2015!