On being an artist -- content/intent

What does content or intent mean, and do we have to have it before we start a piece?

Uh, no.

I think it's perfectly valid to work in the dark, just laying things down and attributing a meaning to it later on. I often work from my unconscious mind. Like a dream, the finished piece reveals itself to me, reveals me to myself.

It took me a while to figure out that Beneath the Blanket Fort was about safety and security, that it was about trying to find a small safe space in my universe over which I could have complete control. Its genesis was simple. One evening I decided I wanted to let go and try something new, something that did not use human figures in the imagery and was limited in palette. For a long time I had wanted to compose a piece using the whites of my glass palette. So I set up the dimensions of the piece on my kiln shelf and began composing. I was still finding my way through grief at the time and my need for a quiet place made itself known during the composition. Before calling it Beneath the Blanket Fort, the piece went through quite a few names, mainly based on what others told me it spoke to them. When I finally recognized that my abstracted works were not about actual places, but rather about how those places made me feel, things fell into place and I saw what this piece was about.

At other times it is very clear to me what experiences and feelings are driving the work I am doing. The work is more conscious and planned out. Numerous sketches precede the composition of the piece. The three series I am working on right now, about prayer, sadness and heartbreak are planned. I have something I want to say about those feelings and experiences. I am careful and deliberate in the composition of these works.

I started this thread because a friend posted on her blog a journal entry from a year, responding to a thread on the Warmglass site :

I read it and realized that I don’t have a spiritual history or a motivation for my work. It is beautiful, therefore it is. Does that mean it is not Art because there is no meaning behind it? Should I start trying to make art based on things I feel and care about? If so, I will become an environmental artist, and most of that work I find schlock. It also doesn’t lend itself to what I like to do. Many of the artists on the list don’t like production work—they just want to do inspired art pieces. I like production. Does that mean I’m not an artist?

I don't really think that it's production versus one offs that determines whether someone is or is not an artist. In fact I think there are people who call themselves artists, do one-offs only and proudly refuse to do production work -- probably because they are incapable of repeating themselves again and again because their technical skills are not sufficiently good for repeating a design. There, I said it. Duck and Run for cover, the mudslingfest is on my heels.

On the other hand there are people working in production who are artists. Just because you made that plate before, does not mean that it has no content or meaning. And often we make things with content without recognizing or without naming the content in the work. My first teacher in clay, Estefania Moraos, is credited by the foremost clay artists in Venezuela for having been their teacher. Fanny runs a small production studio surrounded by banana trees, coffee bushes and Mango trees. Her ceramics are what enables her to survive economically. Her work is sublime, I am proud to own some of her pieces. I would never say that she is not an artist because she runs a production studio.

Ultimately, what's art is what the user, the viewer, the buyer thinks is art. They may have been told it's art by a gallery, a museum or their heart. And if you think of yourself as an artist, then you are, at the very least in your heart. I guess I would just be happy to sell my work.