You can take the girl out of the newsroom, but you can’t take the newsroom out of the girl, it seems. No matter how many days/weeks/months/years I know in advance, I don’t zoom into high gear until it’s down to the wire deadline time.

And so I’ve got four pieces due at the gallery by 11am this morning, and I will just exactly make it…with three.

Quick commercial break: I’ve got three pieces in the Guardino Gallery on Alberta Street, for their Pacific Northwest Sculptors show. Lots of great stuff in it, including far more illustrious artists, so it’s worth a look. Reception tomorrow night. Here’s an invitation–please come and support my morals if you’re in the area and have nothing else to do.

One sad note: The image on the invitation is the fourth sculpture, the one that WON’T be in the show (sigh). She suffered an unfortunate accident–I dropped the drill on her while making a totally unnecessary but typical me-with-too-much-time-on-my-hands adjustment–and is now in no fit state to be seen or sold. Stay tuned to see her arise from the ashes in a rather different style; I’m kinda excited about where I’m going with her but she’ll take awhile. In the meantime, here’s her before picture (she’s about 8 inches deep, maybe 14×16):

vintner3

Hmmmm. I’ve been told by about a bluejillion people that I shouldn’t talk about this stuff in public. I’m either (1) giving away my studio process secrets or (2) showing just a tad too much of my own creative process, including the flubs, which should be kept dark and mysterious.

I pretty much ignore the first. I’m not really inventing anything new (and whenever I think I have it turns out the ancient Mesopotamians or somebody got there first) so I can’t claim this stuff as “my” process anyway. And I’ve noticed a curious phenomenon when people ask how I do this stuff, anyway: When I tell them all the steps, they generally say “you’re crazy,” and walk away shaking their heads.

Maybe they’re secretly plotting to steal my methods…but I doubt it.

The second, now that’s more valid. Like the cat who slides across a polished kitchen floor and crashes into the refrigerator, I should probably get up, brush myself off calmly and say, “I meant to do that.” I should never show the interior bumblings and fumblings I go through to deliver my art, right? I should have awakened in the night with the precise vision shining in my head, made exactly that and smugly tell awe-inspired patrons that my muse spoke.*

Maybe. For me, though, the actual creative process is far more interesting. You bumble into something good, then you figure out how to make it great, and incorporate it into your work. That’s what makes it fun.

How boring to pop little artworks out of your head exactly as planned, one after the other, without giving them (or physics) a say in their own creation! We have assembly lines for that kind of thing.

Making art is very different (for me, at least). And so for the time being, I’ll go on journaling the journey–and the flubs–as well as the end result. If it helps somebody else, great. But mostly, this is for me.

And now I’ve wasted a whole 20 minutes typing this up, the deadline is ever nearer and I haven’t even taken a shower. –sigh–

*and it does happen that way sometimes, except for the part about the awe-inspired patrons