Make a mark - iteration as practice
Since the new year, I’ve been getting together virtually with three friends to make art. I love how having a weekly crafty date has helped me make room in my life for analog arting.
I made the above collage in January for a friend who shares my same birthdate.
In 2020, I was delighted to discover Deborah Roberts when I was looking for artwork of and by Black women to share with a friend. Roberts’ collages challenge perceptions of ideal beauty and make room for women of color. Roberts had a solo show in Austin in 2021, and I appreciated this profile of Roberts by Doyin Oyeniyi. I wanted to call out a passage midway through the article about how Roberts began collaging. She was in art school at Syracuse University and tasked herself with an assignment to make twenty works using the same concept. One of her professors challenged the number – “Why not 100? Why not 200?” Roberts went for it and made 225 works (Little Debbie Series). Of this project she says:
“I could look at some of them today and say, ‘Oh, my God. Ew.’ I know they were bad, but it’s just like any type of muscle or exercise. You have to do it multiple times until you start to get that rhythm.”
Practice. A lot. Regularly.
Deborah Roberts - That’s Not Ladylike No. 2
Alma Thomas, The Eclipse, 1970, acrylic on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1978.40.3
While I’m on the subject of Black women artists, I discovered Alma Woodsey Thomas recently.
Thomas earned a Bachelor of Science in Fine Art from Howard University in 1924, becoming the first graduate of the university’s art program and possibly the first American woman to earn a Bachelor’s degree in art. In her late sixties, Thomas became a full-time professional artist, and at the age of 81, she became the first African-American woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Her work is colorful and abstract, capturing the creative spirit, and is described as similar to Byzantine mosaics and pointillism.
I love the joy, color, texture and awe of this painting. I also love that it is an iteration of making a dot.
At the end of November, a long-ago friend and I reconnected. She said to me, “I want to be a creative.” She also said, “I’m not artistic.”
I believe that being a creative is a matter of acknowledging and nourishing your creativity. Everyone has the capacity to be creative. Some people tap into this ability easier than others but that doesn’t make one kind of creativity better than another. Even the ability to be creative about what counts as creativity comes easier to some than to others.
I love this story, The Dot, about tapping into your inner creativity. The art teacher in the story is the kind of art teacher I imagine Alma Thomas being. The main character in the story, Vashti, takes up iteration as a practice as Deborah Roberts did at art school.
Recently, a friend and mentor sent along this inspiration from Austin Kleon: make ugly art. There’s something weirdly liberating about trying to make something ugly. Let’s say it turns out ugly, success! You set out to do what you intended. Let’s say it doesn’t turn out ugly. Is that success or failure? If you need an option or five between success and failure that’s fine.
Me, I’d consider the not ugly or not so ugly or a little ugly something you made a success. Why? Because you made it. The value is in the process to you and how it nourishes YOU. If you made it with other people or in the company of other people, it probably nourished them, too.
Prompt:
Drawing upon Deborah Roberts’ project of 225 works using one concept, make your “ugly” art. Set it aside and make a new ugly art, even if it’s the same thing. And when you finish that one, set it aside and make another. This is called practice, and it’s how all art and creative works get made.
Say it over and over if you need to:
If you get stuck:
Remind yourself it’s ok to make something ugly.
Maybe challenge yourself to see how ugly a thing you can make.
Take a handful of your art supplies, then figure out how to adhere or document that handful.
Call a friend and ask for help or assistance.
Send me an email. Attach a picture of what you’re stuck with.
Make a dot.
Make another dot.
Eventually you might revisit some of those early works, and when/if you do, YOU will be a different person coming to them. What you do with these works will be its own creative process.
Enjoy!
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