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Over the course of the term, as I’ve been writing and animating, I’ve devoted a good amount of time thinking about the creative process – habits and strategies for establishing a good artistic workflow. As the end of the term and imminent deadlines draw closer, however, a new question springs to mind: how do I know when a work of art is complete?

Abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock would famously add new coats of paint to a canvas in progress days after his initial work. Perhaps this was a specific process, or perhaps Pollock simply worked on a painting until he couldn’t stand to anymore.

Growing bored of a piece is the easiest way to know I’m done working on something – but also the least satisfying. As another abstract expressionist, Arshile Gorky, once said, “something that is finished, that means it’s dead, doesn’t it? I never finish a painting – I just stop working on it for a while.”

Perhaps the problem is in the assumption that Art is something to be “worked” on. Work implies a task with a specific, tangible goal and rational justification. Art may have goals attached, but motivations for creating Art are often complicated and mutable.

***as a performative element – I’m going to timestamp updates to this post over the next few weeks to demonstrate how I rarely consider an idea complete due to an external deadline **

There’s always been something quasi-romantic about the runaway narrative. Whether you’re 10 years old and that means you create your own world in your backyard, or whether you’re sixteen and it’s the sixties and you’re trading comfort for freedom. The rebellious side, the one that comes out when you make your parents tell you twice to fold the laundry, fuels that itch for freedom. What would things be like if you could leave this stupid world behind? What would it be like to live your life the way you wanted to, no rules, just freedom?

It’s romantic, especially for those of us who were forced to grow up faster than others. But it isn’t possible. Not really.

To truly runaway, you have to give up bathrooms, clean water, mosquito spray. Maybe if you’re seven you can camp out underneath your trampoline for a night and call it good, but that’s not what real running away is. Really running away is eschewing society, with all of its BS and politics.

That’s not what we want it to be though. We want running away to be like the runaway narrative. We want to travel Into the Woods, take a journey, go to New York City. We want to see it in slow motion, our hair flying erratically behind us as we stand up in the bright red two-door convertible. Who’s driving? Who knows. We want to chase freedom, chase boys, chase fireflies, grinning ear to ear as he leans in closer, closer, closer.

But the runaway narrative that shows up in books and movies isn’t real. Real people don’t run away from their lives. They run away from their jobs, their house, their friends, their problems. They move to a different neighborhood or go to college out of state. They stay silent about what’s happening in their lives so that the smile never slips, because if it slips they know.

There’s something romantic about the runaway narrative in art. There’s nothing romantic about the runaway narrative in real life.

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?

Over Spring Break I went to visit my Grandma in Florida. Below is the first of a three-part piece titled, “The World at a Slow Pace,” about my time in her lovely condo.

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Today my grandma wears dark blue sweatpants and a thin, light blue sweater flipped inside out. Her sweatpants rest slightly above her ankles and I can see that she has decided to wear one sock, on her left foot, and to keep the other bare. Both feet shuffle around the condo in white slippers designed for comfort rather than support.

Earlier today she walked the ten minutes to the beach with me, and I could see her legs from the knees down. Veins run down her shins like rivers on a map, blue and scattered and criss-crossing everywhere. The skin underneath her chin sits like the throat of a turkey, hanging curved and fleshy off her trachea. My grandma is surprisingly agile for her age; as we walk she sometimes notices that her pace is slowing, so she takes a breath and swings her arms and moves with a new determination.

“Nice that the beach is so close.” I say. “Frank’s place is so nice!”

“It’s fine.” She says resigned.

A few years ago, when she spent her winters with her second husband Murray, she lived in a million-dollar apartment in an extravagant high-rise north of Miami. Whitney Houston and Barry Bonds owned places in the same building.

She was married to Murray for eleven years; was married to my grandfather for forty before that. Now she lives with Frank, although they are not married, on the west side of Florida, in a small two-bedroom condo in a development of two-bedroom condos and old people. Frank is a widower and an old friend of the family’s. So when the two found themselves alone, they thought why not be together?

Around every corner of the development I can see tennis courts and shuffleboard games, unused and waiting like park benches in the winter.

I don’t ask my grandma if the pain of burying two husbands is too overwhelming to consider marriage for a third time. I don’t ask if the toll of surviving two separate loves has impacted her physical or emotional health. But I can see it in her actions, small steps she takes to see the middle and end of each day.

I have to hold onto my glass of water here, or else she will clear it away to the sink within five minutes. She is constantly cleaning, even though the apartment is as spotless as can be: white walls, white window curtains, white tile floors, and not a speck of dirt to be seen. There are potted plants and flowers around the condo, several in the living room and more out on the front patio. She waters them twice a day. Talks on the phone to friends or family at least six or seven times a day. She walks to and on and from the beach, each time remembering the route she takes to the sand path out loud.

I notice she takes long in the bathroom. Perhaps a sign of getting older.

After dessert, before sleep, she asks, “Frank, do you want to use the bathroom first or should I?”

Their days are a constant organizing of small matters: runs to the grocery store, deciding dinner menus and afternoon naps. She’s invited friends over for dinner tomorrow night, made plans to see a movie on Tuesday. The sun begins in the backyard, bright and eager over the shared, heated swimming pool, and ends in the front, sliding past the still palm trees and the slow-moving golf carts.

I have done nothing today and still feel tired. I sit with Frank on the white couches, under white lighting, as he finishes every word of the New York Times. I am absorbed in my book and we both sit in the quiet as my grandma finishes cleaning, and then joins us with her own book. Eventually, we decide it is time for sleep, and I wander to the twin bed in the guestroom, wondering how I could possibly feel exhausted from a day of eating and sitting, but fall quickly asleep to a soft breeze through the open doors.

I have come to realize now, how there is only a month left in this semester, and how after that, there will only be two years left of college left for me. I am halfway through college already? What the hell man. Unless some divine intervention occurs in the next two years I don’t think I will be at all ready for life outside of academia. I am not ready to be exposed to the unsheltered Americana that awaits me as soon as I get a piece of paper that certifies that my parents paid for my college experience. Even recently, I had to fill out tax forms, out of sheer formality, because I made the little income I did make this year. So much for putting off any semblance of adult hood, the fact that I was filling it out, no matter how trivial, or how little content those forms had, I still felt the nagging sensation at the back of my head, telling me that I am a fucking child still, and probably will be for the better part of my near future. I heard once that the word sophomore originated from the Greek words Sophos, meaning wise, and moros, meaning foolish. Yes, there are moments when I feel I am that fool who thinks he is wise. Sometimes I do attempt to give myself a little credit for something that would be universally acclaimed by the adult world as not that special at all. But I need to convince myself now and then that I am succeeding in certain avenues of my life. I need to stay sane don’t I? But even this trivial experience with taxes, and the epiphany that I am halfway through college already (epiphany might be an exaggeration for most people, but my sense of time is horrendous), is this maybe not a moment of moros? Who am I to think that that is proof of me nearing adulthood? Fucking bullshit I say. I crack myself up, far too often.

Perhaps what is important is that you recognize the importance of remaining the fool, because if you are a fool for long enough, you eventually become wise – at least to a certain degree, for you may be no Da Vinci, but at least you aren’t mentally drooling over everything that isn’t immediately stimulating. Pretending to be wise is in and of itself a foolish act. So instead, I am going to spend the rest of my semester barely getting work done and acting like some blind probe in space, just try to find little tidbits of stimulation anywhere I can find it, then realizing it is already 1:00 in the morning, make the decision that I should go to sleep, but then be unable to go to sleep because I did nothing that day, then guilt trip myself for a bit, then wonder about the trivial things I talked about in this blog post already, then think about how I do like two of my classes this semester, realize a wonderful idea for a short story, I won’t write it down of course because I am already in bed, so I repeat it to myself over and over again and hope that I will remember it when I wake up from about 5 hours of sleep cause I spent all this time thinking in bed after getting in late in the first place, this rush of ideas will continue, ideas for various essays that I need to work on perhaps, and after all is thought of and not completed, I will tell myself, “fuck it, you are an idiot,” and then fall asleep.

Or I do something I have always done as a child: try to stay awake so that I can be consciously aware of the very moment I fall asleep at, so that I can specifically experience that elusive switch between awake and asleep. When that happens, I stay awake till I see the rising sun. Another day of foolishness, with a heavy sprinkle of sleepiness. A combination that everyone loves on a Monday.