Many battles have happened over the last few days. Work has been going well and I am now up to 189 houses. The repetitive tasks on my mini house production line has been grueling some days, as sculpting houses, making casts and then casting houses can be quite tedious and not a process that you can rush. Through play and experimentation I have had a breakthrough discovery of how to control the amber tones of the sap – but like all procedures it is long winded.
On a more trivial note an infuriating war has begun between the mosquitoes and me. At the moment they really seem to be winning as I am always holding sticky sap objects at the time that they strike. I won’t state my death count but just say that August seems to be the month for mosquitoes in Toronto.
I have had a few “what am I doing?” days, a phenomenon that seems to plague all creative minds. With hindsight I always find it astounding how I can remember and then forget the importance of being an artist on such a regular bases. It’s so easy to slip into the idea that it is just a hobby or therapy for the individual. But art has the potential to be so much better and bigger than that. Especially with the project I am working on now, I am determined to develop workshops and events to coincide with my work to aid communication. Sometimes I fear that the public’s engagement with visual art is decreasing disproportionately when compared to other creative outputs such as music or writing. Art is a language that is understood by everyone innately. How much an individual engages with their understanding of it is variable, but everyone partakes in the translation of symbols everyday without realizing. I think when you put art within this basic context it can become more accessible. This is not to simplify complex and well-philosophized pieces of art: just to reinforce the idea that there is no absolute way of interpreting art. Everybody’s opinion and feelings count and that is what makes art such an amazing entity.
Last night I was blessed with musical enlightenment. For 5 hours I experienced a wonderful event organized by Matt Cully called the Poor Pilgrim Island Show 3. This free event consisted of several musicians playing around different locations on the Island. Yesterday the weather was crazy; two huge thunderstorms rolled over Toronto and the Island and almost threatened the go-ahead of the event. Yet amazingly the ambience of the mist, lightening, rain and thunder added to each performance – something that could not have been for planned with any choreography. It was truly beautiful and has cleared my head and re-engaged me with what I am doing and why.
