Sunday, January 30, 2005

Rub, rub. Pat, pat.

I worked in the studio on the early stages of a new piece. I'm putting in the background, which means putting about a thousand little jigsaw pieces on a board I spent about a week warping.
I'm looking at my hands. At every large exhibit, at least one person comes up to me and says something to the effect of, "Oh, if I only had your hands." (Second only to my favorite, which is "Wow---it would take me ten years to do that!")
First of all, you wouldn't want my hands. They are scarred and scratched and wide as a farmer's. After a dozen years of sculpting nearly every day, they are strong hands. People bring pickle jars to me----from across town.

Secondly. Do you really think that artists make art with their hands?
Don't you think that if I lost the use of my hands I'd make art with my feet? Or mouth? Or with whatever technology was available?
Are you aware that there are artists out there who create art without their hands?
It's in my head. It's in their heads. Whatever you do is in your head.
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But. I do think this:
In order for a person to do the art I do (including the piece I'm working on right now), that person would have to have my brain.
My brain is where the vision is. Where their (artists) visions are. Where your vision is.


It also occurs to me, just now, that a person performing the task I'm performing right now,( which is selecting and gluing puzzle pieces on with both hands) would have to have the following criteria:

Such individual must be capable of rubbing the stomach and patting the head, simultaneously, and switching to patting the stomach and rubbing the head---without amorphous rub-pats or pat-rubs.

NOW I'm using both hands here, right? But the ability to do this, is in my brain.*

This could actually be a lemma. Yes? We could think about it some more, and agree that it is a theorem. I wonder. Is this a right-brain or left-brain function? Hmmm.

*Note to Dr. Abba: I had coffee earlier, and a good dose of tired. Other brain variables will be mentioned should they apply.

A quick word about the SlaughterHouse page on the site. It will be up and running very soon. For now, I'm going to stash all the technical, nuts-and-bolts stuff in there. I don't have any interest in doing a tutorial on mold making or paper mache or what-not. But I'll put the weird stuff in here like accidental discoveries, unorthodox uses for tools and materials, and some of the spectacular screw-ups that gave us our SlaughterHouse motto:

"Nothin' can go wrong now!"

So, if you have technical questions please ask and I'll try to answer them here, so as not to bore the pants off everyone else.

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