synchronicity

A RANT
This is another topic that comes up periodically - mostly under the topic heading "derivative."  Then there are the words stealing, appropriating, copying, and -- gasp -- counterfeit, that crop up in some of these on-line conversations about art quilts.

Sigh...blah blah blah blah- it just goes on and on: people accusing other people of copying someone else's style or worrying that they will be accused of same, just because they once took a class with someone and are using that person's method of construction or techinque of cutting.  It makes me tired.  Why are we so hung up on that word "derivative"?? Is this an art quilt obsession?? Is it because we are relatively new to making ART that we drive ourselves nuts about this stuff?.

There have always been artists who painted the same things in the same style at the same time because they were all experimenting with a new way of seeing. You would be hard put to tell the difference between work by X and Y.  And even Z's work got into the act. Nobody cared then and nobody cares now.

Ditto music: Beethoven's 6th has phrases in it that could easily have been written by Mendelssohn. Can you always tell the difference between Mozart and Hayden?  And Leonard Bernstein was clearly influenced by Aaron Copland and Gershwin -- you can HEAR it. So what? It is still Bernstein's music.
There are a million examples of this in every type of art.

I did start out with synchronicity, didn't I?  Yes, it happens - more than we think.  Many of us have experienced making work and then seeing a piece from clear across the planet that is strikingly similar in subject or even style, although neither of you could possibly have seen each other's work because they were being done at the same time and you didn't know each other, to boot.  There are two other artists whose work I relate to - and saw the first time with the shock of recognition because we both use one particular element in our work.  We developed separately, as did our work - and we did not know each other.  Parallel lines of interest and thought.

I like to call it "family resemblance."  Here are two pieces done by two artists who live 3000 miles from one another and who had never met.  This is my piece, X-Post Facto.

It was truly with the shock of recognition that I saw Karen Rips' piece, "Exhale" and somehow knew that we were kindred spirits. 

 

I sent her a picture of my piece and she couldn't get over it, either.  We finally met when I taught in California and it never occurred to either one of us that there had been anything but coincidence.

I had made mine a year or so before she made hers; hers was part of a series but mine was the only one I ever made like that, before or since. Either one of us could have made both pieces. SYCHRONICITY:
it happens.  Embrace it.

A possible idea for an exhibit.  Anybody want to curate a Synchronicity show?

continuing the thread

There have been a couple of  intelligent and stimulating discussions on the SAQA list (still ongoing, I hope) about issues that come up again and again on other lists. But this conversation has a different tenor - and people are really being honest about their own self-doubts when it comes to their work, finding their "voice" and a few other things. It's a universal.

Talking about "voice" comes up time and time and time and time again among artists on several lists I belong to.  Is it redundant? In a way yes, but it is always worth talking about because it seems to be an eternal quandary for artists.  We worry ourselves to death about whether we are authentic, whether we are original, whether we are echoing somebody else's work, whether we are any good at all - and especially whether we are expressing ourselves in a way that is uniquely ours, aka VOICE.

Sigh...voices change as we grow.  When my kids were little and called me at work, all three of them sounded the same, so I said "hi sweetie," till I could figure out from context who it was.  After a few years their voices changed (espcially my son's). My daughters still sound similar but the context remains distinct for each of them: their personalities, what they say, and how they they say it allows me to identify their voices. I believe it is the same thing with our art.  Don't you think so?  At least, I would hope that none of us is making exactly what we made 5-10-15- 20-and more(for some of us) years ago.

Does this sound like my "voice?" Not sure anybody (but one or two people who saw this piece when I first made it) would identify it as mine.

I started this piece almost 15 years ago after I sat in a chamber music concert listening to a piece in a minor key.  Then I wondered how you would express a minor key visually and decided to try. I was not happy with it because it was on a different background (and already quilted, btw) so I put it away till about five years ago, when I took it apart and changed the background fabric.  (This is all irrelevant). Originally called Life in a Minor Key, I changed the title to Blue Note. (also irrelevant).

What is relevant is that as I look at the piece, so different from how I work now - my voice is there.

1) it is layered and I still work in layers, albeit with other processes, and 2) my work is still expressing life in a minor key -- whether it is obvious to the viewer or not.  

I've said this before, I think - but it bears repeating.  I once had to write an artist's statement for a solo exhibit.  When I groaned, the gallery director said "tell me what you do and why you do it."  It forced me to take out all my work, throw it on the floor, and look at it to see what it was about and what the common elements were.  What I do and how I do it may have changed, but what a lot of my work is about has not changed.  Listen to your work over the last 5-10 years and hear what it is saying - and you will know what your "voice" sounds like.

Remember - every voice has a range and sings a lot of different songs - but the underlying timbre is recognizable.  What do you "hear" in your own work?  Comments, please!