Week 1

With the first week officially over it seems fitting to reflect on the progress so far, and to be honest so far things have been going well. My main task was to do at least one drawing each day and I've been managing that with relative ease thus far, although at times the time-scale I have to complete the drawings can be fairly tight. The Blog also seems to be working as a solution as to the issues of how to be able to hold myself to account, maintain that element of pressure that I need to remain driven whilst also providing an immediate outlet for the drawings as the idea works towards its resolution. Furthermore the Blog also works well as a way to record and document the evolution of the idea, this was something that was usually lacking in my older work. As rather than compile the ideas, notes and works into a tangible format most of it was lost due to my inability to document the work. Instead things existed as fleeting moments, failed and discarded experiments or verbal creative outburst before swiftly vanishing into the ether. To refer to an earlier post the most important part of the work is often how it moves from conception to realisation, something which I became particularly invested in after reading Sol Le Witts' 'Paragraphs on Conceptual art' as part of a dissertation I had been working on. In particular the following excerpt peaked my interest,

"If the artist carries through his idea and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance. The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product. All intervening steps –scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations– are of interest. Those that show the thought process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final product." 


As Sol Le Witt alludes to the process is sometimes more interesting then the actual outcome, as it's the part of the process that we are most creatively invested... afterwards the work acts as a reminder of what has come before it, all the energy and inertia that carried the idea to fruition now exists only in the history of that object. It is then only by sharing the history of the completed idea that the viewer can become more invested themselves. I see the Blog then as my way to bridge the gap from conception to realisation and provides the medium by which to share this most effectively.

This week has also been about learning what issues are likely to inhibit my progress and how I can prepare myself to overcome those issues. At this moment the issues all seem to revolve around time, or the lack therof, working shifts that start late in the day and end late in the evening leaves me with around a two hour window (morning or night) to complete the work. It has also meant that although the drawings are completed it isn't until late that night that they can be posted. However this is definitely an issue which should partially resolve with experience as I adapt and become more efficient over time. A further bonus I've found stems from writing about what I'm doing this enables me to evolve with the idea and provide new thoughts and tangents to follow along the way. Again over time and with more posts the writing should also become more fluid, more natural and hopefully help to provide a good insight for those that are following the idea.

In a sense what I've found this week, as with most seemingly simple ideas and tasks, the premise of the idea in theory is as direct as the motion from A to B. However in practise it is much more complicated as we never consider the vastness of the number of variables and obstacles that we will encounter meaning that the process become much more convoluted than we initially anticipate, so instead we tend to move more from A to Z by passing through B, C, D, etc. The best thing is that hindsight really is a wonderful thing, and with the experience I've gained thus far on my side I can be much better prepared for the week ahead, and as my experience grows exponentially so to does my preparedness for the following week.