![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pasithea*sigh* I've been in kind of a strange art funk since I returned from Burning Man. I've been doing quick sketches at lunch but nothing that feels very important or meaningful. It's just lightweight exercise. At home I've mostly been working on finishing up a few odds and ends sewing projects and some of them have been pretty neat but again it's nothing spectacular. There are a couple of problems rolled together here.
The first is my tent. The tent is HUGE. Call it about a month of sewing and two months of painting, it's definitely been a dominating factor in my artistic experience this summer. It's easily the biggest thing I've ever painted. The previous largest thing was 24" x 36" and I don't believe it had as much detail as the tent. I think the space panel of the tent is also one of the best things I've painted. Every time I look at it I'm just kind of agape going, "Wow.. There's no way I made that!" ... When I was working on the tent, each panel was an opportunity to one-up myself on the next panel, but that highlights another problem.
It's not only the largest project I've done, save for projects at work and Free As A Bird it's the most coherent project I've worked on. It takes a lot more effort for me to work on something that requires the discipline to stay interested in it for months. It's a great deal harder than a project I can knock out in a few hours or at most a day or two, and I probably wouldn't have been able to complete the tent had it not had a lot of 'cheats'. Like... I _could_ have stopped at a tie-dyed tent and it would have been barely more work than sewing. I did actually take it to Belden as tie-dye only and then I used my narcissistic behavior against myself. I told lots of people what it would be so I felt compelled to do it. Even then, each panel was a piece to itself and wasn't bound by style considerations of the others. They were loosely tied together with a theme.
Sewing and house-hunting are also issues. I have been feeling like some amount of my artistic focus should be on making extra money and sewing is probably the best way I can do this. I'm fast at it and I can make some pretty interesting-looking stuff out of odds and ends. It's also probably the fastest way to build my name. The internet is such a large venue and printers are so good that 2d art is of limited value whereas clothing is both artistic expression and self-expression of the wearer. Raves and festivals are also a much smaller forum, making it easier to attract a following. But, on the whole, I enjoy sewing for myself a lot more than sewing for other people. I always want to keep my best and most inspired things for myself because part of me longs to be the beautiful and unique snowflake. Sewing is also half art, half engineering. It's not as 'relaxing' as purely just drawing or futzing around with paint and other materials. There are new things for me to learn in sewing but it is somewhat more restrictive than painting. Particularly in terms of the cost of the materials.
Last is this weird notion that I need to be branding myself. Like I should close up shop for a few weeks, design a business card, coherent livejournal icons, give my website a makeover, set up presence on several social networks, give myself a coherent name-presence, and create a 'style' that is me then come back as a radiant super-star. I admit that it's a nutty idea but sometimes I feel so scattered and so incoherent that while I feel like I routinely make pretty good stuff, it's so all-over-the-map that it's hard for people outside my head to relate to. Either 90% of it isn't to their tastes or (so several people have told me) they are overwhelmed or intimidated by me.
I guess I understand the last bit. I often feel inferior to 'normal' people and it can make me somewhat boorish and boastful because I want to impress people with what I've done because I feel that 'me' (my physical self and my thoughts) aren't really interesting enough to hold their attention for any length of time. I'll squarely blame my family for that. I was NEVER 'good enough'.
On the other hand, I'm often at first hesitant to tell people anything about myself because there's no single thing in my life which clearly defines me. I'm the total of all of it, but if I tell someone all of it first off, they'd be bored to tears because it would take a very long time. Second, I'd feel awkward because talking about me makes me feel boastful and prideful and I don't like people who are like that and third, it makes me expect that they will just think I'm a compulsive liar because.... If _I_ met me, _I_ would be VERY skeptical of my claims. I seem a bit too akin to Baron Von Munchausen.
Perhaps this is the root problem. There's so much 'me' that I don't know who I am. I don't have a clear definition of self and that makes it difficult to really focus and be one thing. Set time to infinite in the equation of my life and I become everything because that's what I truly desire. I want to learn and experience and do pretty-much everything. It's very difficult to draw a coherent artistic expression from that kind of drive and yet I recognize patterns well enough to know that if I want to have art be an additional means of supporting myself, I must do just that.
I'd like my personal expression to have a wider appeal than just me. I enjoyed this weekend in large part because my tent was interacting for me. I didn't have to try so hard to impress people and didn't feel as much need to talk about myself. I need more of that. I need an identity that people can relate to, or at least an artistic theme that presents a limited concept of self that people can relate to but trying to find such a streamlined mask is very daunting to me.
The concise summary of my problems is this:
Seems like this would be easier.
Somehow related to this is my complete inability to come up with a good idea for a costume for Halloween. I'm always wearing 'costumes' how do I make something _feel_ like a costume to me? Challenging problem.
The first is my tent. The tent is HUGE. Call it about a month of sewing and two months of painting, it's definitely been a dominating factor in my artistic experience this summer. It's easily the biggest thing I've ever painted. The previous largest thing was 24" x 36" and I don't believe it had as much detail as the tent. I think the space panel of the tent is also one of the best things I've painted. Every time I look at it I'm just kind of agape going, "Wow.. There's no way I made that!" ... When I was working on the tent, each panel was an opportunity to one-up myself on the next panel, but that highlights another problem.
It's not only the largest project I've done, save for projects at work and Free As A Bird it's the most coherent project I've worked on. It takes a lot more effort for me to work on something that requires the discipline to stay interested in it for months. It's a great deal harder than a project I can knock out in a few hours or at most a day or two, and I probably wouldn't have been able to complete the tent had it not had a lot of 'cheats'. Like... I _could_ have stopped at a tie-dyed tent and it would have been barely more work than sewing. I did actually take it to Belden as tie-dye only and then I used my narcissistic behavior against myself. I told lots of people what it would be so I felt compelled to do it. Even then, each panel was a piece to itself and wasn't bound by style considerations of the others. They were loosely tied together with a theme.
Sewing and house-hunting are also issues. I have been feeling like some amount of my artistic focus should be on making extra money and sewing is probably the best way I can do this. I'm fast at it and I can make some pretty interesting-looking stuff out of odds and ends. It's also probably the fastest way to build my name. The internet is such a large venue and printers are so good that 2d art is of limited value whereas clothing is both artistic expression and self-expression of the wearer. Raves and festivals are also a much smaller forum, making it easier to attract a following. But, on the whole, I enjoy sewing for myself a lot more than sewing for other people. I always want to keep my best and most inspired things for myself because part of me longs to be the beautiful and unique snowflake. Sewing is also half art, half engineering. It's not as 'relaxing' as purely just drawing or futzing around with paint and other materials. There are new things for me to learn in sewing but it is somewhat more restrictive than painting. Particularly in terms of the cost of the materials.
Last is this weird notion that I need to be branding myself. Like I should close up shop for a few weeks, design a business card, coherent livejournal icons, give my website a makeover, set up presence on several social networks, give myself a coherent name-presence, and create a 'style' that is me then come back as a radiant super-star. I admit that it's a nutty idea but sometimes I feel so scattered and so incoherent that while I feel like I routinely make pretty good stuff, it's so all-over-the-map that it's hard for people outside my head to relate to. Either 90% of it isn't to their tastes or (so several people have told me) they are overwhelmed or intimidated by me.
I guess I understand the last bit. I often feel inferior to 'normal' people and it can make me somewhat boorish and boastful because I want to impress people with what I've done because I feel that 'me' (my physical self and my thoughts) aren't really interesting enough to hold their attention for any length of time. I'll squarely blame my family for that. I was NEVER 'good enough'.
On the other hand, I'm often at first hesitant to tell people anything about myself because there's no single thing in my life which clearly defines me. I'm the total of all of it, but if I tell someone all of it first off, they'd be bored to tears because it would take a very long time. Second, I'd feel awkward because talking about me makes me feel boastful and prideful and I don't like people who are like that and third, it makes me expect that they will just think I'm a compulsive liar because.... If _I_ met me, _I_ would be VERY skeptical of my claims. I seem a bit too akin to Baron Von Munchausen.
Perhaps this is the root problem. There's so much 'me' that I don't know who I am. I don't have a clear definition of self and that makes it difficult to really focus and be one thing. Set time to infinite in the equation of my life and I become everything because that's what I truly desire. I want to learn and experience and do pretty-much everything. It's very difficult to draw a coherent artistic expression from that kind of drive and yet I recognize patterns well enough to know that if I want to have art be an additional means of supporting myself, I must do just that.
I'd like my personal expression to have a wider appeal than just me. I enjoyed this weekend in large part because my tent was interacting for me. I didn't have to try so hard to impress people and didn't feel as much need to talk about myself. I need more of that. I need an identity that people can relate to, or at least an artistic theme that presents a limited concept of self that people can relate to but trying to find such a streamlined mask is very daunting to me.
The concise summary of my problems is this:
Who am I and how do I want to express myself?
Seems like this would be easier.
Somehow related to this is my complete inability to come up with a good idea for a costume for Halloween. I'm always wearing 'costumes' how do I make something _feel_ like a costume to me? Challenging problem.
