This post is about experiments go awry. Usually, an artist toils on their own and they only show the product. But I don’t toil on my own, I create frames and invite people to toil with me. The process is as important as what comes out of it, so that means sharing not only what works for a project, but sometimes where my frames miss the mark.
And so I present Exhibit A.
One of the new things I tried in the January Art Lab was inviting people to make drawings and collages of their national parks in addition to making abstract photos. I’ve used both processes before (people drew maps for Play Passages, and made collages for Landing Gear), so I was excited about trying out these techniques to create different representations of the parks. I didn’t narrow down or test the frameworks, though, which I would usually do. I was in a state I sometimes get into where I just want to try it all, and rush ahead. Collaged landscapes are a very broad category, and I threw the idea out there to see what would happen.
I received a few wonderful collages, like these by Aimee Ducharme:
I was so impressed and moved by how she ran with the assignment. She went out and photographed the sunset for six straight evenings on the beach near where she lives in Venice, California. (I must note that she also used a film camera, not digital, which nowadays is a creative risk all by itself—prints are not cheap!) Then she made a series of collages out of the prints, and wrote about visiting the National Park of Awe, a place you can set yourself up for visiting, but you can’t really go looking for exactly. There’s a way in which she wrote about the experience of trying to capture the best, most perfect sunset, that mirrors the creative process I’ve been talking about. She sometimes worried about missing the peak time, about getting the right colors and the ideal shot, about sometimes finding a grey sky, but then having her senses suddenly overtake her with the awe and beauty of the sunset itself, the immensity of this stunning occurrence she gets to witness every day during the pandemic.
She made the collages in response to that feeling, piecing together pieces of each day, stretching herself to make an image of a sunset that’s different than the hundreds of sunset photos we’ve all seen. She accepted the grey days and incorporated that acceptance right into the images. But still, she struggled and doubted. She wrote me that felt unsure about what she was doing, that they weren’t coming out how she wanted or expected. I hadn’t seen them yet, but I encouraged her to keep going, to just enjoy that sense of play, to not judge herself. She and I had a lovely back and forth, and she pushed on, finished the collages, wrote about her experience visiting the National Park of Awe, and sent them to me. I loved them, and I loved what she did. I love how she challenged herself.
But then the deadline passed for the submissions from the second Art Lab. And I could see that the collage experiment worked individually, but it didn’t work collectively. I only received a few, maybe 3 in total, besides Aimee’s, and they didn’t fit together in terms of style. I started to realize that collage and drawing don’t make sense at this stage, and maybe not at all for this project.
And I felt terrible.
I felt trepidatious when I wrote Aimee and explained, but she was wonderful and understanding. So were the others who had tried out the other experiments. She said she got so much out of making the collages, in and of itself.
And that's largely the point. In the Art Lab, we talk about how important it is to give ourselves permission to take creative risks, to try things and then be willing to let go of the outcome when things don’t go the way we expect. Needless to say, this is much easier said than done. It’s scary and vulnerable, but it’s what I’m asking all of you to do when I’m inviting you to make art with me.
There’s a behind-the-curtain aspect of the creative process that I’m engaged in, but as a participatory and community artist, it's important to sometimes pull the curtain back. That can be really hard to do. Playing around with things on my own isn’t always easy, but it’s a lot less vulnerable and scary sometimes than asking people to try ideas out and make things on the behalf of one of my projects.
I realized that if I’m preaching that it’s okay to explore, let go of expectations, and see what happens, this is all a part of it. It’s a part of being a community and participatory artist, of inviting people into my process. It’s just a little more public. It’s amazing to me after doing this kind of work for so many years that I need to be reminded again and again that things won’t always unfold as I expect, and that that’s okay.
I treasure the back and forth conversations with Aimee that we’ve had since she got involved in the National Parks of Emotion. I treasure all of the ones I’m having with so many people for whom this project has really sparked something. It helps remind me that what I do really is as much about the process as the product, and that part of that process is invisible and relational. It’s about the connections I’m forming with everyone who is coming along on this ride with me. It’s about vulnerability and trust. It’s about how much I continue to learn about taking chances when I ask all of you to take chances. I guess it’s about leading, in a way. This isn’t the first time that I’ve had to sheepishly admit to everyone that we need to go a different way, and it won’t be the last. But hopefully I’ll continue to get braver about doing the u-turn.