10 Things YOU Need To Know About How I Make Art
One
You are standing across from a person you have never spoken to before, you’re trying to introduce yourself - actually - well, you have introduced yourself in a saying hi type way but now you’re trying to make an impression. You’re naturally quite shy so you aren’t the best at it, you think it comes across as cute or endearing, you really really hope this is the case.Two
You are in the city you grew up in, you and a group of friends have pooled together some money and someone's coupon to buy a shit tonne of Hungry Jacks and you have carried it over to a local park and are sitting in a circle eating together. You are not the me that I am right now. You don’t know what is to come, but you can gaze up at the sky and describe how it looks. I can’t, which is devastating to me but doesn’t really matter. Do you like me? Do you feel as though I am about to waste your time?Three
You and I are sitting on your bed about to watch a show on your laptop, we are excited but we keep getting ads, just ad after ad all telling us to go somewhere else. As though the show is covered in medical leeches, or that it just buried itself somewhere, hid away. You and I look at each other, we don’t know what to make of it. We shut your laptop and go eat.Four
Back to the person you were trying to explain yourself to. Your words feel desperate, you’re trying to keep it out of your voice but you’re so bad at this. It feels so obvious, how you laugh a little too hard at their jokes, how you dressed to meet them. You hope they will see something in you, something you aren’t trying to tell them. You try to tell them everything you can, try to lead them right to you like they are picking over a crime scene.Five
There are tutorials on how to develop your art style on youtube. They are unnecessary, style is a result of existing as a person in a context. You cannot avoid having one because you are ultimately relaying what you have seen and what has impacted you and what you find easy to or difficult to approach into the things you make. You could not meaningfully copy another piece of art if you tried, you would just tell people some really intimate things about yourself, perfectly illustrating how another work impacted you, how your politics differ from its creator, how you think about art, how desperate you are. Maybe you should try it then.Six
You are in your room lying awake after a nap, some time during it had gone from evening to night and your room is dark - through the parts where your curtain doesn’t quite reach the borders of your window a soft line shines. You can hear cars outside. You can think which is rare because usually you are somewhere else in your head. The sky crosses your mind, you open your curtain and look at the street until you grow worried people might be made nervous by you staring at them. You close the curtains and try to watch that show but you get distracted by another website. Have I wasted your time?Seven
You, for the record, cannot even copy yourself, you can’t approach the same concept the same way twice, because you’ll be a different person by then. So make art about the same things, even in the same way. It does not matter and the you who made the first thing no longer exists if you were planning on asking them for permission, or forgiveness. I’m sorry, I cannot fix this problem you have given me, I can only hold it a little more gently than you did.Eight
I want my voice to be in the things I make more. I want people to hear my accent, I want people to hear how much I struggle articulating things. You are not meant to read what I say with confidence. I am whispering to you. I am mouthing words because my voice didn’t come fast enough to grant me volume.Nine and Ten
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