Rules For Making Art
- You can quit. If you want to quit, if you explicitly want to quit, you can. You must never forget that. It is not a negative, it is not a penalty, it is not a failure. Your life is yours to live. The amount of time spending art is yours to choose.
- If you do not explicitly want to quit, you cannot. You can rest. You can rest as long as you like.
- But unless you say, to your self, in a quiet moment, "I do not want to do this" then you keep going.
- You can rest as long as you want.
- Months. Years. Decades.
- It doesn't matter. The art is there when you get back. It doesn't expire.
- You're alive? It's still in you.
- Skills can be relearned. All of them. New skills can be added.
- You should rest.
- It isn't a need, it is a demand. It is maintenance, it is itself part of the art because it is part of being alive and being alive is part of the art.
- There is no penalty for slowness.
- The benefits of speed are vastly outweighed by the hidden costs: wear and tear on machinery, your body, your mind. You think these are gossamar costs because they are out of sight, out of mind.
- Until they are not.
There is no penalty for slowness, the benefits to speed are ephemeral and difficult to calculate, resting is not a need it is a requirement.
- Your art is yours. Your life is yours. It can be big, it can be small, it can be both. It can be cheap, it can be expensive, it can range between the two.
- The audience brings to the table their wants, their needs, their curiosity.
- The audience does not dictate the art.
- You do not dictate the audience.
This is a collaboration. Both sides are equal, artist and audience. This keeps your feet on the ground and your head in the clouds.
- With fire, I recommend making art that you think should exist, but doesn't yet. That's the stuff, that's the best stuff.
- Weigh the costs. Financial, social, physical, mental, spiritual, temporal. Constantly. Is this what you want? Are you following your heart? This is not a loaded question. It is spoken softly. I speak this to you as softly as I would a lover who has fallen asleep in an uncomfortable position.
- If you can't make what you want, where can you reduce scope? Where can you increase time? Can you make it smaller, can you make it less elaborate? Take longer time to do it?
- Can you make something else entirely?
- Can you keep this idea in idea form while you work on something else?
Weigh the costs. An unrealized dream left to dust because it was too hard, too expensive, preventing you from making a realized dream, is worthless.
- Make it small.
- Make it simple.
- Review the scope. You want to make a widget. I ask you softly, do you want to make this widget? Not something else?
- Make it smaller than that.
- Make it simpler than that.
- Review the scope. You want to make a fidget. I ask you gently, if you pursue this path it will cost you much, would you be as satisfied if you made smaller things in greater quantity?
When you feel like quitting, ask yourself with the clarity of cold water on a hot day. Hot water on a cold day. Do you actually want to quit or do you need to rest? Are you not resting because the cost of resting feels like giving up?
- There is no giving up.
- Failure doesn't exist.
- You either want to do this, and do.
- You either want to do this, and do it simpler, smaller.
- You either want to do this, and rest for awhile, so you can gather resources to do it later. Mental, physical, financial, social, spiritual.
- You either want to do this, and plan alternatives, break it apart and do other things first, work up to the grand vision, rescope the grand vision, remix it, shift it around.
- Or you don't.
- And if you don't? If you truly don't? Then don't force it.
- Live your life doing literally anything else. That's great too. Equally. The entire point of being alive is to fill up the well of your soul. There are infinite paths.
If you want to make the thing? Make the thing. Maybe it's great. Maybe it is objectively terrible. Most likely it is somewhere on that spectrum.
- Did you enjoy it?
- Then it was worth it.
- That's literally all that matters.
- Everything else is secondary.
- Quality is secondary.
If you make things publicly? Quality is quaternary. Here is the order of priority. I'll spell it out. I believe this with my entire soul.
- Your enjoyment
- The enjoyment of your friends
- The enjoyment of people who don't know who see it
- The quality of the piece itself
Maybe it wins awards. Maybe it's in publications, maybe museums. I've had work win awards, be published in books, shown in museums. I have stuff you've seen if you've shopped in the grocery store in the United States sometime in the last 25 years or so. And far broader places.
That's great. Resources to keep going.
If you do, too, I hope you make art. If not, that you're resting. And if doing neither, I hope you rest until you it's art time again.
