I recently finished another book project, “Fragments Red.” This volume will be the first of a seven-volume project, each pairing photographs with reflections of different sorts. A handful of drafts, each with a number of changes. Then there was the layout and design issues, where to put gatefolds, how to bind them, solving pagination issues. […]
Consistency is important. Consistency not in the sense of making the same thing or even the same type of thing, but in the sense of making something. Doing something with my hands. Anything. Lately, I have occupied my hands and my mind by using books as an inspiration for a type of drawing, something called […]
You need a concrete goal, as well. The longer you keep to these basics, the easier the act of writing will become. Don’t wait for the muse. As I’ve said, he’s a hardheaded guy who’s not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn’t the Ouija board or the spirit-world we’re talking about here, […]
I make things. I often use tools other people have developed, e.g., hammers (some people forge their own hammers, I don’t) and screwdrivers and saws; cameras (some people make their own cameras, I don’t) and printers and developing tanks; ovens and baking pans and measuring cups. But in the end, I use those tools to […]
I find the world unknowable and therefore fascinating, unfamiliar and therefore irresistible. I long for that space where life seems uncertain, where I have to revise or reject the comfortable assumptions and convictions that have structured my life. I used to frequent a local coffee shop where I often saw a particular woman. Whenever she […]
Art is about the maker. Its aim: to be an expression of who we are. This makes competition absurd. R. Rubin, The Creative Act
I do not write for the public. G.M. Hopkins I don’t quite know how Hopkins meant this comment. His poetry suggests, to me, that he meant he didn’t write popular verse. He wrote for an audience of one or maybe for no audience. He wrote what he needed to write and didn’t give any thought […]
Ambition for wealth is the enemy of artistic excellence. Leon Battista Alberti (ca. 1436)
I envy Vivian Maier. Not because I like her work — I have seen too few of her photos to know what I think of them, though I doubt they would appeal much to me. No. I envy Vivian Maier because she seems not to have cared whether or not I liked her work, or had […]
I make things and leave them places (a Little Free Library or a local coffee shop or a local French bakery or stashed amongst the books at a local bookstore) for other people to find. I don’t know what happens after that. It adds a sense of mystery and intrigue. I create things I need […]