Process

Art as a physical process is something that I've made time to start exploring. I say 'physical' because it's painting, and gluing and spraying--it's tactile and hand held. I use the word 'process' because images take shape, are destroyed, recreated or reconceived and are manipulated yet again.

So as you might be able to tell, we found a TV on the street one night, and our friend carried up to the flat on a dare. I just rewatched the shaky video of the 5 floor climb. When we were all almost at the top, I asked him what his motivation was. "Love," he responded. I want to think on that as I explain the rest of this story.

I live in a large apartment with 9 other people. There are seven bedrooms, two couples and three sets of roommates. Some of us work in IT, finance or marketing. A couple  of us are teachers and one or two of us are fully funemployed.  We don't have a social space other than the kitchen, nor do we keep the same schedules. We have pretty unreasonable neighbors who live above said kitchen, and our landlords have been a little less than polite with how interested they are in most of us moving out. This has put a lot of strain on how often we want to congregate or how comfortable we all are with others hosting friends and guests, (which has been kind of a bummer now and then.)
One of my colocators is this American girl who I was really excited to have move in. She likes biking and music and sharing food so there hasn't been any drama.

Neither of us are really artists with a capital A, but, between the supplies we both had, we decided it would be fun to get together and paint on canvases, cut stensils and make collages. And there sat the TV on the piteous little couch someone is usually sleeping on, come the weekend.

We talked a lot about what we should do with it.  Everybody wants a TV fish tank now and then but in the end we decided to turn it into a planter for the english ivy we've got going on the balcony. Maybe I should have waited to write until the plant was ready to move in but this is post is at it's root about process.

Here is the plant hanging out in the hole we cut, before most of the painting happened

And here's where the process gets...involved.
We asked that everyone give something compostable over to the plant in its new home, you see we want to feed the plant with a little bit of everyone. Something given, not taken. Intentional, not happenstance-ical. It almost feels like a spell--like a prayer for our house to flourish and prosper. Plus everyone has been invited to paint something on.  In this way the TV has been a way for us to mend some of our fences, get to know each other better, and most importantly, remember why we like living together and spending time around our house. It's also kind of cool that we could take a device that pretends to be social, but can be just as alienating, and force it fully into the realm of community. Even with it's cord ripped off, this TV will be viewed. Plus it's art and it's functional. So in the end, what's my motivation? LOVE. 
And what an arduous climb that can sometimes be. 

What I'm learning from this project is not to be afraid of errors. If I do something I don't like, instead of giving up and and saying I've ruined it, I try to look at my gaffe as an opportunity to take the lines or colors in another direction. Once you relax and trust this, you realize there are no mistakes in art, but there is space for ingenuity.
At one point when I was feeling quite sure of myself I decided:
Art is destruction
and birth
and destruction

           and the viewer
and birth again

If you can strip away some of the pretention from that stanza, what you're left with is all that I have said above plus what the viewer brings to the piece and what it will mean to them. Art may not be eternal, but that's still not a very good argument against making it. I for one am not dissuaded--lacking in talent though I may be.

Well it's time for me to lay in the park for awhile.
Oh, and if you like the way I laid out the photos, I downloaded this free application. It's the best photo collager I've found. Happy Wednesday, may you make everything of this week that it deserves to be.

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