{"id":1825,"date":"2012-06-07T22:22:41","date_gmt":"2012-06-08T05:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/?p=1825"},"modified":"2012-06-07T22:22:41","modified_gmt":"2012-06-08T05:22:41","slug":"neil-gaiman-make-good-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/?p=1825","title":{"rendered":"Neil Gaiman\u2013Make Good Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I received an email with a link to Zen Pencils<\/a>. There are some illustrations based on comments made by Neil Gaiman<\/a> in a commencement address given to the University of the Arts. Thank you Neil for reminding me to not forget \u201cthe journey to my destination.\u201d Sometimes I allow life stuff to consume my studio time.<\/p>\n

Neil stated that he learned to write by writing. That brought to mind Art & Fear<\/i><\/a>, a book that I read during my first year of college teaching. There is a story about a ceramics class and their project for the term. The class was divided into two groups\u2013the \u201cquantity\u201d group and the \u201cperfection\u201d group. The quantity group would be evaluated on the weight of their work at the end of the term and the perfection group would be evaluated on their one perfect pot.<\/p>\n

Most folks know that the more work you make, the better work you make. Mistakes and pieces that don\u2019t quite work can offer loads of important information, perhaps even new techniques added to your bag of tricks. I feel that making lots of work allows me to be more creative and not too fussy with a single piece. <\/p>\n

If a piece doesn\u2019t quite work, why? Perhaps something does\u2013the combination of materials, a technique that I might want to develop, or maybe the work is so ugly a hammer is in order.<\/p>\n

In undergrad there was the Ugly Wall and in grad school Bisque Ware Bowling.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cthe journey to my destination\u201d<\/p>\n

I had the pleasure of taking a film class when I was an undergrad. Much has stuck with me. We viewed Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut\u2019s film, Day for Night<\/i><\/a>, a film within a film. Truffaut is the director of the film and plays Ferrand, the director in the film. There is a quote about process that often comes to mind when I am working on a piece and something isn\u2019t going quite right. <\/p>\n

\u201cShooting a movie is like a stagecoach trip. At first you hope for a nice ride. Then you just hope to reach your destination.\u201d<\/p>\n

The titles of my Avian Headboxes<\/i><\/a> are the result of my love of literature and film. <\/p>\n

A few of the titles are Ferrand<\/i>  from Day for Night<\/i><\/a>, Adele<\/i>  from The Story of Adele H.<\/i><\/a>, and Victor<\/i>  from The Wild Child<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Adele\"<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I received an email with a link to Zen Pencils. There are some illustrations based on comments made by Neil Gaiman in a commencement address given to the University of the Arts. Thank you Neil for reminding me to not forget \u201cthe journey to my destination.\u201d Sometimes I allow life stuff to consume my … Continue reading Neil Gaiman\u2013Make Good Art<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,28,7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-artists","category-books","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1825"}],"version-history":[{"count":62,"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1887,"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions\/1887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}