I have a confession to make…

I have an art materials obsession. By art materials I mean anything and everything I think will help me physically manifest my ideas. The temptation to seek out new materials and tools pops up throughout the year but is particularly acute in the fall when the allure of new materials becomes a clarion call. For me September still marks the “new year,” perhaps from the years of association first with my and then my children’s academic calendar. Fall also happens to be my favorite season. I revel in the sharp air, the achingly blue skies, the crackle and crunch of dried pods and leaves beneath my feet. There is nothing like being beneath a swirl of bright yellow maple or birch leaves as they swirl and dance around me.

A new tool

I will see a fellow artist working with a (new-to-me) tool or I might spot a tool or material that excites me. I start to believe that if I had that tool, or that material, it would solve certain technical problems and do some of the work for me. Inherent in the purchase is the belief that these things will lead to discoveries and successes in the studio. I imagine all sorts of things this tool or material will do. It will free me to create! It will solve the problem! It will make the creative process easier, the art itself better! Next thing I know I am down a rabbit hole seeking these materials: 1950s kitchen tools to use with wax, the perfect tea cup (ahem…to smash), the right thorns, burning tools, or dyes. There are times when the search is necessary (and oh the exhilaration of finding a reliable source for thorns)…but more often then not it becomes a means of procrastination. A mistaken belief that the tool, material, ink or dye color will solve whatever I am struggling to address in the studio as I try to create the work I imagine in my mind. I vest these things with a power well above their “thingness.”

Listening to my voice

Sometimes I get a tool or material and it addresses the issue at hand. More often than not I relearn that the most important thing in creating unique work is to listen to my own voice, follow the threads of ideas, and engage the materials on hand in a way in which to express the greater idea and concept. Often the solutions end up coming from places I never expected. Or in the working through, putting needle and thread to paper, torch to wood, tool to paper that answers reveal themselves. New challenges present themselves and the work starts to dictate what it needs, as well as what is unnecessary, distracting or extraneous. Ultimately some of the pieces I most respect, am most satisfied with, are the result of multiple pivots, dead ends, and failures, before that magical, mystical, intangible moment when the sensed and experienced, the cohering of idea and thought, matures and materializes into a physical object before me. The thing I create is never as profound or beautiful or perfect or close to my original idea, but that is what fuels later work. What is it I wonder that makes the idea of a shortcut so alluring?

Trusting the process

I know this. I relearn it constantly. Yet I can still find it hard to resist the siren call of materials and tools. I have devised some questions to ask myself when I feel that inner restlessness, the urge to find solutions outside my studio and myself: What materials do my fingers itch to work with? What do I think this tool/material will add to my process? What do I have at my disposal that does similar things? How does it solve a specific problem? Is it actually a good fit for my process, concept and intention?

It doesn’t mean I stop getting new things. I still cannot resist hake brushes, found lacy rusted pieces, and any and all kinds of hand made and Asian papers. However, curbing my art supply lust can lead to digging more deeply and unexpected discoveries. I need to trust the process.

And the process takes time.

The right tools are the ones in front of me. My repeated challenge is to recognize that.

And an added note to self: No shopping on eBay and etsy after midnight…ever!

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