Emergency Artist

There must be more than one quote about this -- and I can never remember my sources -- but I'm thinking of the one that goes like this, 'The best artists always question themselves; the more self-assured the artist, worse the work is likely to be.'  Or something like that.  (Which reminds me, a propos of nothing in particular: my favorite fortune cookie fortune goes like this. 'From time to time, you can't help thinking of someone.'  And do you know, it's true?!)

This is on my mind partly because of my adventure in creativity and/or frustration this afternoon.  I had one free-standing support to finish, for the third piece to be shown in John's program this Sunday, at Christ Church.  'Sacred Music, Sacred Art', he's calling it.  There will be four 'tableaux' in the concert: a large-scale painting by a young Rutgers BFA graduate; three of my suspended figure-ish things; an original icon, in the classic Byzantine style, depicting the African saint, St. Monica; and finally, a 17th-century Portuguese crucifix, made of olive wood, with silver mounts and what I suspect is a more recently-applied corpus.  All works will be viewed with live choral music.  My current problems arose because my work needs to hang rather freely.  And because I wouldn't be permitted to drill holes in the 90-ft. church ceiling (even if I could), I had to come up with a reasonably quick and inexpensive alternative.  I usually choose copper pipe, as sturdy, lightweight, and easy to use.  But now it's murderously expensive.  As I chose industrial black iron gas pipe for the exhibition fittings for these pieces, I decided to use the same materials for the three gallows, if you will.  It seemed like such a good idea.

However.  In spite of the fact that I actually bought a small pipe wrench (the proper tool?  No!), so I could adequately tighten the joints in the pipe, no matter how much force I managed to exert, the joined parts resolutely refuse to stay where they belong.  How aggravating.  (Though I think I have a typically makeshift solution in mind)

The adventure part arose because, on the most complex of the three units, I decided to install a backing of hardware cloth (or what folks out in the Midwest call 'rat wire'), which has exactly the soulless quality I want, but which is also a terrible pain in the ass to work with.  Nasty, nasty stuff.  Bleeding will happen.  It will snap and bend and refuse to move when I want it to.  All I had to do was install two dozen small machine bolts, at regular intervals, up each side of the piece of screening.  It took me more than an hour to install the first six.  During which time I took the Lord's name in vain about a million times.  As well as using the standard old English fricative expletive.  About a million times.  Sometimes in combination, as a matter of fact. 

Plainly, I was frustrated.  My hands were shaking, big time.  I couldn't remember being so flusterdd about trying to put something together.  (Which points to the brevity of my memory, I suspect) I finally hit on a solution to address the inflexibility problem, and the last part of the project went along with relative smoothness.  Aside from the occasional slash from the metal.  And the persistent skewing of the wheeled supports.  Which I'll fix tomorrow, or know the reason why.  Whatever that means.

All of this work, by the way, for a program in which my portion will last, at most, about fifteen minutes.

That's really not the point though.  I'm actually excited by this opportunity.  I've never shown my work in a church before, and I've often fantasized about making a big blown-glass crucifix -- all red and black blistered glass, the way I like it.  The title of the central piece in my grouping is 'The Unrepentant Thief'.  I'm always interested, it seems, in the ones who've made the bad choices.  I've even written something like a poem, as part of the meditation.  Which I believe I will get to read.  I can barely stand it, I'm so excited.

So where does the idea of emergency come in, then?  Well, I was down in the incredibly cluttered basement earlier today, looking for my screw driver, and a box of machine bolts, when it occurred to me (do you have things occur to you all the time?  I don't know whether to be grateful, or annoyed) that, instead of only making artwork for a specific, and usually imminent, occasion, I could actually set up a (gasp) routine, and just kind of fiddle around with things, while I wait for the next obligation to arise.  What would that be like?

I mean, part of the wafer-thin rationale -- such as it is -- behind my near-ceaseless gathering of little tidbits of today's collapsing environment, has been the notion that these things will be incorporated into pieces of work.  I've never formed a concrete notion of how that incorporation might occur -- the possibilities are well-nigh endless, I guess.  Hot glue, for starters? -- but the big hole in this rationale is my steadfast inability/reluctance simply to set to work.

Now, I know we all have our own ways of getting from where we are to where we need to be.  I've been aware that one way I motivate myself, is to find something to which I can commit myself, and then usually wait until the last minute to begin working.  The resulting tension, I've thought, gives my work a raw tautness that doesn't arise out of the leisure of dawdling and pondering -- a 3/4 inch bolt here?  Or a full 1 inch?  Another day goes by, another flaccid contraption lies on the bench.

But, for good or ill, I'm in a distinctly different place in my life now, and have no outside commitments to keep me from turning, full face, to confront these oddments I've gathered, and letting myself begin to use them, without so much preconception. 

Which leads me back, again. to the opening thought -- that of doubt, and the 'realness' of my art.  Maybe one reason I keep that particular badly-mauled axiom in mind is because I'm perpetually and resolutely doubtful.  And according to the handy doubt-to-worth ratio, this must make me one of the foremost artists of the 20th century.  (I did have an actor acquaintance, years ago, who seemed to epitomize this aphorism -- he was smoothly confident, shamelessly self-promoting, and an awful, two-dimensional presence onstage) 

In my life now, though, the doubt goes deeper than questions of mere cultural value or relevance.  While I was struggling with the rat wire this afternoon, lacing the air with fricatives and the Lord's name, I was wondering -- why on earth am I doing this?  What on earth is this for -- beyond Sunday's program, that is.  What happens to all the failed sculptors, and their all work?  We never hear about them, do we?  Along with my current bout of Death Flu, and its capacity for flattening all hope, I'm faced with a literally stomach-turning dilemma.  I've always known that being able to make some kind of art was saving my life -- whether I was devoutly crayoning pictures of Jesus in some church-sanctioned coloring book in the orphanage, or channeling my shame and self-loathing onto sheets of blank paper, as I sat guard over my brothers, who were all chained to the rafters in our unfinished suburban basement.  Even as recently as a few months ago, I could get lost in the making of little wall units that captured, when they worked, the stresses and convolutions of the larger handing work I've been making.

But now, the getting lost doesn't make any sense, as there's nowhere to go, and nowhere to come back to.  Nowhere for the work to go.  And I seem submerged in a generally pervasive bath of hopelessness about what has always been the spinal column of my own identity.  For now, the 'why' has been erased.  And I don't feel, just for today, that I will ever be clever enough -- or devious enough -- to construct a convincing reason to resume what I see now as an ultimately useless investment of time, space, energy and someone else's money.  For most of my life, failure hasn't been an option, no matter how sick or broke or displaced I've been.  The work had to be done.  Now, failure seems to be the only, the inevitable outcome, no matter what I do or how I do it.

And, in the event of another emergency...?

©   2012         Walter Zimmerman