An Eye For Every Work

You have the freedom to make any work you feel driven to produce, my friends. I say, get Ye into the studio and and make some stuff. Trust the process and know that there is an eye for every work. Making images for 'likes' or to please others just leads to average work. Social algorithms are designed to converge, baby, and that ain't what you're looking for. Instability and divergence, may prove more interesting in the long run. 

Anyway, that's just me preachin' on this fine Thursday morning. 

The weasel

I have a couple of ideas about how I can move forward with this image. But, even if none of them pan out, this photograph is a nice record of a majestic tree. Another kind of imprint for me, trees. And, after the disturbing piece of short fiction I read last night before bed, I really needed to spend time with a stolid photograph like this to begin my day on the right path. It was a short story by Wallace Stegner, the one in which a boy traps a live gopher and feeds it to a weasel. The weasel's name was Lucifer. I don't particularly want to begin a day of making art with the image of Lucifer eating a live gopher in my head. A daily practice of reflection can be an effective way to banish the demons and get to work.  

Chopin and photography

A couple of days ago, I stumbled upon an interview during which the classical pianist Emmanuel Axe discussed the pieces he worked on during the COVID lockdown. He wanted to spend the time diving into compositions he had neglected during his career, and it turns out that he has not performed very much Chopin. So, he spent much of 2020 leaning into Chopin. He discussed his process of practice or rehearsal, and mentioned that the German word for rehearsal is 'probe'. 'Probe' also means to test, explore, investigate, check out, that sort of thing. A good example would be figuring out how to balance the left and right had parts in Chopin. You have to sit down at the piano and do some experiments -- explore some of the possibilities available to you. The same approach applies to a good studio practice in the visual arts, I would say. 

So, what's on the rehearsal schedule this week?