Artist

My daughter is an artist. We’ve known that for a long time, but it was emphasized to me in a new way recently. For those who haven’t read their way through this blog’s archives, we recently moved. My 19 year old daughter was a trooper throughout the process and was a huge help to me. But one afternoon she just stopped. She spent hours sitting among the stacks of cardboard boxes. She just had to create something. Next thing I knew, out of flaps from boxes, some rope left over from a settling-in project, a couple of photos, and markers we had used to label the cartons, she had made something beautiful. Then she hung it up on the living room wall.

A true artist has to create. They will go crazy if they don’t. And they will use whatever is at hand. They don’t wait until they can obtain the ideal elements, though they always strive to get their hands on those. They will take dirt and rocks if they have to and come up with something.

This also got me to thinking about tools. When I first started attempting to make moving picture productions, I was always running up against the limitations of the gear that was available to students. I would think that someday I’d have access to really good, precision gear, and then the process would be much more controllable, precise, and therefore, easier. What I learned over the passing years is that it really doesn’t matter what level of tools you have at your disposal, you will always push them to their limits and a bit beyond. An artist is somewhat like a test pilot in that he or she is usually eager to see where the edges of the envelope are. How far can I take this? Early work often goes to the max and can be way overdone out of this exploration of limits. Later work often is much more about subtlety and tone backed off from the radical. So whatever limits are there usually get bumped up against fairly early on. I guarantee you that every big budget movie ever made, though millions of dollars are being thrown at it and the very best gear that money can buy in use, all kinds of things are held together with tape and drywall screws, cameras are put in places the manufacturer never thought they’d go, and support equipment is pushed to function in ways it really wasn’t meant to. All that precision control, though very helpful, is often pushed to the point where the camera is in some, unlikely, unstable spot, just getting a shot as much by experimentation and luck as by engineering.

An art director on a movie I worked on long ago said something that I thought about this very day when tinkering with a project of my own. He said you have to not be afraid of taking the next step – of doing a bit more with it. The fear is that you will lose something you like if you go too far, but you have to keep going. Making art is precarious. Unless you are making something by formula. But in that case, you aren’t an artist.