There’s a difference between making art because you’re asked to, and making art because you have to.
As I approach the end of this year, for the duration of which I’ve been given a cubicle in the Art and Design building to call my workspace, this distinction has become increasingly apparent. After developing a habit of spending every night in the studio, regardless of how productive I am in that time, I’m nervous for the day when I no longer have access to a place set aside for creative activities. Whether I spend the night making and writing or talking and drinking with my classmates and closest friends, it feels necessary to separate these aspects of my life, and never feels like a waste of time. What happens when I no longer have a place to go when I feel the need to surround myself with creativity?
In the art school, we make work because it’s been assigned to us – until the senior thesis project, there’s always some kind of prompt or inquiry to get the creative juices flowing. The interesting part of critique is seeing how each artist responds to the challenge in their own distinct way. We have unlimited access to the space, materials, tools and machines, as well as logistical elements like ventilation and waste management we could ever need. Each assignment is necessarily derived from this access, a response not only to the prompt but to the opportunities at our disposal. Once we graduate, however, both of these keystones from which our creative processes have been primarily built upon will be pulled out from right beneath our feet. What happens when the work is no longer a response to assignments and access, but the other way around? When we’ll have to work with what material and space we can squeeze out from the cracks of freetime in the everyday life of a poor art school graduate with an addiction to making?
It seems to me that this is when the real Art happens – when the process of making work is a creative response to the obstacles of self sufficiency in itself. What will I make when I don’t have access to a printing press, drying racks for paintings, ventilation for mixing plaster and pigment, welding equipment, a wood shop, the list goes on. Not to mention the ability to tack on expenses to my parents’ financial account and call it a “course fee”. Creativity is responding to the obstructions you’re given, and there are about to be more of them than I’ve ever known before.
As much anxiety as I’ve developed over the course of this last undergraduate semester, it’s not without a significant dose of excitement to dilute this paralyzing effect on my creative practice. It feels as though I’ve gotten to a point where I no longer need the prompts and inquiries to come up with ideas for a print or painting or sculpture I’d like to make. No longer will I have to work with skeptical professors breathing down my neck, asking “why” for each and every decision. No longer will I have to conform to a class schedule that doesn’t match up with the ebb and flow of my motivation. No longer will I have to make work I don’t care about to please people who are paid to be critical, whether it’s productive or not.
In the end, there will be definite positive and negative changes that I’ll have to deal with – the only alternative is to stop making work, and that’s not an alternative I’m willing to accept. Will somebody just give me a bunch of money and space so I can quit rambling already?
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