Oh the fur! I am covered with it... the room is covered with it... Do they make room sized lint rollers? No matter, I have ye'ol broom and dust pan.
I'm happy with how they are turning out... each one is new, and I'm learning little things about the materials. Though I find myself, sadly, still trying to shake the world of the 'fine artist' that I was hardly ever really in... I've made only four of these little guys and a conversation with my favorite college teacher keeps tugging at the corners of my mind - he was worried that I would fall into the trap of only creating the flower pictures that I have, probably, only ever made half a dozen of... and at the time of the conversation - had only made two and just for my senior show. A show that, I hoped, would express my confusion about what made the shapes I found so pleasing 'corny' if they had eyes or 'art' if I turned them to the side and covered their faces...
I never have found answers... only the ones I've dug out of the muck of my own mind - And that is... these things are easy to like. Flowers, imps, trees, etc etc... they are easy to understand and to except. And so - they are not fine art.. heck, they are often hardly considered art.
But - and I have come to find this the most reassuring of things- all the artists whose works I've long loved - did not create works that fall into those fields of acceptance. I love Clive Barker's art work with a passion. He is shameless and he is ever ever EVER full of life and imagination and corny though it is - love. Love for creation and expression... and that comes in the form of strange and wonderful things that he -wants- people to want. He isn't holding you at bay with a stick demanding you pay him homage.
Brian Froud creates for a deity.. a force he believes calls to him - I don't have any such supernatural force to blame for my active choice to create things with pointy ears - I really really just like how they look. I do think I can blame him for it though. I blame him for a lot of my innate esthetics. Well.. I blame him and Jim Henson... and don't get me started on Jim Henson... I think his name... his work.. and his life speaks for itself. I was beyond lucky to have had a childhood so surrounded by his creative presence.
I'm proud to not fall into a world of creators that make solely for themselves.... I would be honored to, maybe, be placed in that category where all my heros meander: Imaginative fantasy (to use the Netflix genre name). Even if that means I inevitably find myself working at a bank... I'd rather have walked this path for a little while than to have lived the in the world of gallery shows and pretension. I once said - I'd rather be sweeping floors at The Creature Shop than working anywhere else... I still feel that way - geh.
Back to work! Where is that 'ol broom. ;)
For the first time in well over... you know, I don't want to think how long it has been... I ran around outside with no shoes on my feet. Bliss! I'm sure I'm scaring the ladies who share this building with us... what with my spray painting the lawn three shades of not green... the literal cloud of faux fur that is now scattered across said lawn and now my wandering around outside with no shoes sculpting an imp. At least I'm harmless, right? Just wait until I start decoration the outside of this apartment! -At least I live in Vermont now... a place where no one seems to notice the slightly irregular or the outright odd.
