monoprint

Artistic Failure and the Dangers of Branding

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
Ikebana, Suzanne Edminster, gold metal leaf and acrylic on canvas, 15″ x 30″. This painting was part of a failed attempt to get into a local gallery.

I was going to write a completely different blog today.  But so many of my friends in the artistic community failed to get juried into our 2018 juried open studio tour, Sonoma County Art Trails,  that I wanted to bring up the topic of failure and the dangers of branding.

All four that I know are fine artists, with established reputations, patrons, and studios.  Also, coincidentally,  all are abstract artists or work outside traditional genre lines, and all are women.

In America, we have a fetish for success.  Our success-lust — there should be a word in German for this and there is, “Erfolgswunsch,”– leads us down many dark and sterile ways.  Our movies worship the thought that if one works hard enough, makes enough sacrifices, you too can SUCCEED!   There are genres of treacly, inspirational songs devoted to this notion.  We Americans are suckers for this one.  It has invaded our churches as prosperity theology, the notion that even God wants us to succeed at everything. God wants us to market ourselves.

In this spin,  the accusation is that if you have failed, you have simply not tried enough.  You need to try again. And again.  Apply to Art Trails again.  Get in those ten thousand hours, loser.  (Though those four women painters I mentioned already have put in their time to their art.)  We need to re-examine our blind adherence to the try, try again philosophy.  Tenacity is good. But what does it serve?

The American dream of success promotes guilt, and it promotes throwing a lot of time and money out to enter the palace of fame and fortune.   It promotes buying advice and spending more money to find out how you can get into the Academy, the gallery, the open studios tour– spend year after year applying and paying the fees to apply.  Take marketing classes. Give money to get online courses and gurus. Brand yourself, baby.

Goose game, Akua soy ink on paper, a failed monoprint.

Part of the current propaganda of Succeeding  is “branding.”  My own connotations with the world are of pain, burning, slavery,  hot iron and screaming calves, and ownership of cattle and humans.  Branding involves creating a consistent image and not deviating from it.  This means failure to conform to your own brand— say, an abstract painter deviates and paints vineyard landscapes– means that you have failed your brand.  It is a failure within a failure, a double failure, failure squared.  Loser!

The problem is that in avoiding losing, in identifying with our own brand, we lose the chance for personal growth.  Milton Glaser, in the video below, voices what artists have always known.  It is a seven-minute video and worth your time.   It’s also worthwhile using the link to his website, above, and taking a look at the series of his own quotes in the header.  It’s no coincidence that in discussing failure, he brings up branding as an issue.

Success, or personal growth?  Milton Glaser managed both, an enviable trick.  But difficult.   I think everyone really needs to discover their own way through, and that takes reflection,  and failure, not wholesale adoption of the images of celebrity and success our society promotes.   The internet provides ways of crafting an individualized success that did not exist when I was a kid back in the the 1960’s.   We only had print materials and TV.

I had a childhood memory of the show Branded,  the 1965-66 show starring Chuck Connors.  The theme song seems, well, branded into my brain.  It is a very scary theme song and image, showing a man stripped of all his honors, his good name, his sword,  and his regimental family, cast out due to apparent desertion of his comrades.  In fact, he is literally “drummed out” of the Cavalry, to the sound of military drums in the background.

The very last line of the song in the video below expresses my feelings about branding.  Remember listening to those TV theme songs and trying to understand every word?  In the last seconds of the final credits of Branded, we hear:

Branded! That’s not a way to die… what do you do when you’re branded, when you live with a lie?

Enjoy the video below.  I chose a black and white version,  the way I originally saw it.   Suzanne

Thanks to Austin Kleon for his incisive thoughts and for providing the Milton Glaser video.

And check out my summer painting classes at LocalsCreate, a new art venue in Geyserville.  Metaphoracards is really fun and coming right up on May 29. I need two more people… if you are the first two to  sign up online and email me about it,  I’ll give you a free copy of Salt Licks and Bad Birds, my book. Just remind me about the book as I’m only offering it here in my blog.  I’m teaching a 3 week series  Wednesdays in June and July on abstract painting and a wild little class called Dream Figure Intuitive Painting  on June 16. Email me at saltworkstudio@gmail.com with any questions.

 

Experimental Monotype Step by Step

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio

Monotypes are odd birds, strange fruit.  It’s not a painting, yet not reproducible.  It can’t clone, but emits ghosts, flickering between positive and negative images. Since it’s almost purely process, and resists planned end results,  it’s an artist’s playground.  Here’s my process to make one print, step by step.

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These are Akua intaglio Inks, made with soy oil for easy clean up. My glass worktop is an old shower door recycled by my husband.  The plate you see above is 18″ x 26″,  thin plastic from TAPP.  I’ve inked it up with warm colors and a few dark marks to get me started.  I used an etching press for the prints.DSCN0728

 

Above, the first run from the plate.  Below, another run, with magenta added for depth.

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Now I press on a goose I carved with a Dremel engraver and etching needles on a plastic plate.

DSCN0734On the right you can see “brayer geese” from running the brayer over the plate and transfering it. Ghost geese! Then, the strange point where Chance takes her hand to the process happened.  I wanted to add a dark layer in my next transfer.  I spread random lines of dark ink and picked it up with a large roller. The rounded pattern ended up looking like bird and egg forms!  I had just seen a Motherwell at the DeYoung and was reminded of his use of dark form over light.

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Here you can see the plexiglass plate set over the paper so I could get an idea of what it might look like.  Strange, but I found it compelling, so I rolled it through the press.

Suzanne Edminster, monotype, Goose Game
Suzanne Edminster, monotype, Goose Game

Finished!  At the same time, I had been working on another.  Both of these were done with the same plate.  I just kept wiping the plate and applying more colors in different variations.  Here is the second monotype in the series.

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It’s exhilarating to be aligned for a moment to the unpredictable processes of making.

Screwtape for Artists, Letter 4: Deserving

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
Goose Game, Suzanne Edminster
Goose Game, Suzanne Edminster

For new readers, you can find an introduction to the Screwtape for Artists letters here.

My Dear Wormseed,

Excellent work lately, my friend. The Artist/Subject’s vague sense of victimization– our beloved martyred feeling, so handy for invisible destruction– is well under way. The joyous act of artmaking is actually quite difficult to martyrize, but you are doing a good job here. Humans make art under the most horrendous conditions. Art is a pernicious vermin that invades everywhere and is hard to stamp out.

Here’s a tip: remember that the coffin of the complaining victim is constructed with the nails of DESERVE. Whenever the Artist seems to move forward with energy, pound another DESERVING nail into that brainpan. She DESERVES a break, a cookie, an afternoon off, a cappuccino, to procrastinate just one more day. Here the DESERVE acts as a somehow “earned” reward. The more DESERVING, the less creating.

I am so glad that we have managed to sever the word from it’s original root, which has no “built-in” reward. It simply means to serve completely or fully. The Heroic Artist was very good for our cause in the 20th century: all those tortured men smoking and drinking and screwing themselves to death because they deserved it as artists. In the 21st century the women are taking the helm of the arts, and a new technique for destruction, victimization or the martyr impulse, must be assiduously and viciously cultivated.

In contagion,
Your scabrous Mentor,
Screwtape

Letter 1, Letter 2 and Letter 3.

The Goose Game

Goose Game board 2

The Goose Game is a series of 63 monoprints and monotypes based on my pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago. The Goose Game is also a European child’s board game similar to Chutes and Ladders with 63 squares. It may have been a mnemonic device used by the Templars to give illiterate medieval pilgrims a “map” to guide them. Forms of this labyrinth-style board game may stretch back to ancient Greece, where the legend is that Greek soldiers invented it to while away time on the beach during their ten-year siege on Troy.

Monoprint Making

I’m new to monoprint, but I have noticed that it seems to have a pronounced time element embedded into it. Once it runs through the press once, or twice, it is largely fixed, set, done. You get the feeling that each run of the press is a literal compression and limitation of energy, like the joint in a stalk of bamboo.

The press bed presents a threshold of before (the roller pressure) and after. In a metaphorical way, each print could be seen as a dream from the “bed” of the press, with traces remaining and fading.

We are at a hinge in time right now, the Lunar New Year before the Spring Equinox.  This is my post 100, and I hope for a hundred more. I wish you good dreams in the year to come.

A Wild Goose Chase and Mr. Turner

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio

 

 

Goose Game monoprint, Suzanne Edminster
Goose Game monoprint, Suzanne Edminster

I’ve making experimental monoprints in a series I call the Goose Game. All artists are on a wild goose chase, pursuing an ever-vanishing Muse. There’s no sense to it. Even inventors, or artists of function, have to get lost repeatedly, fumbling in the darkness, before the light goes on. Abstraction, or any creating from nothing, is just plain crazy.

goose game chop I had a chop made in the form of a rubber stamp. The symbols mean goose, board game, luck, art. A Shakespearean origin of the term “wild goose chase” said it was a kind of horse event where the leader swerved crazily around and the rest of the riders had to follow him. We follow our instincts up the mountain and into the muck and over continents, with the wild goose.

I just saw the film Mr. Turner, and I am so glad I did. He was on a wild goose chase of a new vision of land, water and air, though he was often reviled. Some people say “nothing happens” in the film. Nothing happens, except life. He coughs through bitter winters,  scribbling in notebooks, attacking the canvas, day after day until death. We walk with him through vast horizons and empty beaches; never again will we see these views so free of humanity. This film shows the big belly, humble scratching. and wide horizon of Turner’s creation. It’s a treat.  Everything happens.

Screwtape for Artists, Letter 3: On Originality

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
Monotype experiment, Suzanne Edminster
Monotype experiment, Suzanne Edminster

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

C. S. Lewis

Stormy weather outside, for California, that is. There’s a beautiful grey light against the too-early bloom of the magnolia petals outside the classroom door. magnolia

This C.S. Lewis quote really spoke to me, especially as I flounder about in a new media for a while. Reduced to the status of a beginner, questions of originality pale against simple technical ignorance. As I get older, I feel less unique and special, less original, as a person. I share experience with so many, and, as and adult, know it.

Dear Wormseed,

Congratulations on  the recent sale of the Gauguin for 300 million dollars. A flood of artists will feel discouraged in their own art, and the price obscures the painting itself completely, making it nearly impossible to view with fresh eyes.  Corruption rules!

The Subject-Artist recently proposed making a tableau of dream images.  This is very dangerous, as these inner vapors carry far too much information and spirit, and may speak to others as well.  Keep her in the familiar territory of easily understood beauty, like your recent Artist-Subject Thomas Kincaid.  You earned a sizeable bonus on him, did you not?

You are on still on shaky ground with the daily studio visits.  You must redouble your efforts to keep her away, or you will feel the consequences.  Keep your team on the streets with graffiti– it was brilliant to unify the art impulse with vandalism.  Keep it up.

In Venom–

Screwtape

Archived:  Letter 1 and Letter 2

 

Screwtape for Artists, Letter 2: Studio Time

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
Goose Game series monoprint, Suzanne Edminster
Goose Game series monoprint, Suzanne Edminster

I decided to ask my artist friend Karina Nishi Marcus to join me in a studio time game. From January 30 to February 14, we’re going into our studios every day. The only rule is to walk in and touch something. That’s it. We’re curious what effect that it may have on our productivity. We do email check ins to report without judgement how we’re doing. I’ll let you know how it goes. Care to join us?

Here’s the second Screwtape letter for artists. In case you have just joined me, you can read the introduction to the letter series here. It is a letter to the demon Wormseed, who’s trying to capture the Artist’s soul.

My Stygian colleague Wormseed,

The situation with the Artist grows worse and worse. Each day she enters her studio, your goal fades like the bright colors of the Old Masters or the wild painting on Greek columns. You,  Wormseed, have been assigned to suffer Inquisition Number 25631 to remind you to keep working harder. It won’t end soon enough. If only you could succeed as well as the your brother Ifrit did recently in the book burnings.  Murdering books is the most delicious snack after eating souls.

I’m afraid you may have to concede defeat on keeping her out of the studio, a tactic which worked so well for so long. Now you must concentrate on subtleties. Early exposure of immature work is a sure-fire way to shut off the tap. Refusal to “practice the scales” of repetitive trials is also good. Perfectionism is a superbly subtle dagger… it bleeds out their disgusting passion for making in a very satisfactory manner.

I see you have activated the string of disquieting dreams that used to derail her from her work in the past. Even those seem to be ineffective: she’s broken their code and now know that they mean she is creating something new. However, a good nightmare or emotional crisis can go quite far. Just don’t let her make any art from them, or the jig is up.

I hope for your sake that you make more progress soon. A molecule of your diabolical existence vanishes each time a brush stroke or line is applied to paper, a reversed Dorian Grey. ( You were involved with him as well, though Oscar escaped us at the end, and after such a promising start. ) I have my faceted fly eye upon you. Do not fail again.

Your ball and chain,

Screwtape

P.S. Despite our continual efforts at the destruction of beauty, new painted caves continue to be found, obscured masterpieces restored. To offset this, the internet offers so many new opportunities for degrading artists, especially if they identify with digital “fame.” The hand of the artist is chopped off and dismembered from the Work, carried out to sea in an exquisite virtual tsunami of mediocrity. Divide et impera!  

‘Adorable Laura Hoffman: Wine Emporium, Power Tools, and Thursday Extravaganza Studio Party

| Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio

Laura Hoffman is red wine, resin, power tools, prints and parties.  I have NEVER stopped by her studio without being welcomed and shown fabulous art and a great time.   I’m not sure how we met:   the Barracks and SOFA seem miles apart in more than distance.  How to characterize her distinct style? Monumental, fractured classical ladies in gender-bent attire, with a mythic twist?  The feminine archetype of all ages, tweaked?  Beamish frabjous Alices, like Lewis Carroll on oil paint fumes and Sonoma wine?

The Wine Emporium, source of viticulture  and visual delights, hosts wonderful art exhibitions.  Many thanks to James Haug and his exquiste palate (or is it palette?)  for both wine and art.  Laura’s show can be enjoyed, along with the Wine Emporium’s signature tastings, until early January.  If you haven’t been into the Wine Emporium in Sebastopol, you’ve missed James’ extensive knowledge, a stock of hard-to-find fine wines, and his open hospitality.  My slideshow below show’s Laura’s opening, and the Wine Emporium site hosts an online gallery of Laura’s work.  My show starts Labor Day 2012. Do drop by to taste the wine and see Laura’s ladies.

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As for the power tools, well, you’ll have to ask Laura.  In January I’ll  be playing with her sanders in her studio.  We’ll be trying  interesting new techniques for collaging whole animals and people on to our surfaces!  Just kidding. Well, sort of.

Mythic News: Laura invites so much to play in her paintings.  The collage borders teem with action and embedded symbols. Look at the little stories embedded in the details: a swingset in a watermelon, ships, nuts, shells.  I particularly like her baroque little horizon lines which sprout more heiroglyphic narrative.  Take a look at the wonderful photo in the slideshow of an avalanche ofher collage sources:  they seem like the thoughts the ladies are thinking– coy, oracular, silly, or dreamy.The huge delicacy of the work  is, well, a delicious, huge delicacy.  Sweetmeats for the holiday indeed.  Fruits of flesh, seasoned with a saucy mind.  Pastries for the soul. Lauradorable.