Fear or “Art is Hard”

Sometimes, I forget that art can be really really hard. Some of you may be thinking “well, no duh” but I mean more than just the technical side. Of course, that part can be quite hard, but it’s the sort of hard I’m good at dealing with. I have good hand eye coordination for the small stuff* and I know how to break skills down when I need to. When I started knitting, I knew I wanted to make a sweater vest with cables, so I started with a cabled scarf, and when I wanted to knit a stranded colorwork blanket, I practiced with a stranded colorwork hat. So on, and so forth. I’m pretty good with color too, since I’ve been practicing it for years now.

No, I mean the other part. The part that makes it my art, my design. Now, I think “art” and “not art” is far too stark a binary. I believe firmly that much of my knitting, spinning, crochet and sewing has art aspects to it, and thus is art. I select colors, shapes, fit of a garment, all because I have an end look and effect in mind. Should it be funny and exciting? Professional and sleek? These decisions are all made to elicit, to one degree or another, feelings and reactions in those around me. “She’s competent”, “they like adventure”, “he enjoys a winter fire with an after dinner drink”. That’s all art.

But it is, for me, different from trying to create an image. The wearer of the garments I create is almost as responsible as I am for the final look. They (or I if it’s for me) has to bring their personality and mood to it too. And frankly, people don’t expect as much, so well… if I fail, nobody notices.

But the things that are clearly 100% art without practice use or purpose… that’s harder for me. The stakes feel higher. A boring scarf with a bunch of mistakes can still be a nice warm scarf. But a boring badly executed painting? I also struggled in art classes in school to figure out how to create art with feelings, and not simply technically skilled. I’m not by nature emotive, though I certainly feel emotions just fine (or all too well sometimes). But getting them from inside to outside? Not as easy. I know for some people art is their means to bridge this distance, but that doesn’t come as easily to me.  And to my natural challenges the fear of being misunderstood, dismissed, or told that I shouldn’t be feeling the feelings I’m expressing… well, it makes doing it hard.

The first couple needle felts I did were just pure fun, and challenge. But now it’s starting to get harder, and I have to push through. Some of its my own high bar. The last one was good… so I can’t do worse on the next. But it also feels more important that they convey something, and hopefully that something is a bit of the original feeling I had when I took the photographs that I’m using. So, this is all to say that this last needle felt? It was hard.

This is where I got to on Friday night, and I thought parts of it looked pretty good. But I wasn’t really happy. The fortress itself just seemed too flat, too cartoonish. Though, after much effort, I had managed to get the round projecting feel of the entry-way tower on the right. The hill also has the fire of the bare winter shrubs. But still, it didn’t feel like what I saw, what I felt, when I took the picture. Here’s a closer look:

This is where I got it to over the weekend. The top edge of the fortress is better. It looks a little more craggy. But now it has too much contrast. So I slept on it again.

This is where I’m stopping. I think it gets the feel of the place – the soft winter light that just glows, the broken edges of the fortress. Enough contrast with the sky, but not too much. I can still pick it apart, find flaws, and see where it could be better. But I’m going to stop here, and move on to the next piece before I get stuck on the imperfections.

A needle felt representation of the medieval fortress Cetatea Neamtului in Romania, late on a winter afternoon, in reds, yellows and oranges.Because I think I sort of got what I was going for with the sense of the past, and what was, with the old fortress on a hill of bare winter vegetation in the pale light of late afternoon as the sun just started to set. All that gone and going, and yet, looking up as something so large rising up above where I stood, glowing in the light, still very much present.

And lastly… here it is with the original photograph:

Community Yarn Fund

I learned today about the Community Yarn Fund which Anne of LittleSkein.com is running. One of the challenges many designers face is how to afford the supplies with which to prototype and refine their designs. Money donated to the fund goes into the funds she uses to provide shop credit to limited or low income makers. Can’t justify further yarn purchases for yourself? Consider helping somebody else.

*don’t ask me to pitch a ball with any accuracy – I’ve never sorted out just which hand I’m worse at throwing with.