Value and quality
This week’s question comes from Douglas Dollars:
What is the role (and value) of “quality” when often simply having something in the first place is so much of the battle?
Decades ago I asked an art teacher a very similar question and his answer has stuck with me to this day: Just make the fucking thing and let history decide if it was worth a damn.
Now, I have no doubt that he was trying to dismiss me because the question touched a nerve that he, like everyone else, struggles with. Also, I was a very irritating art student. (He was also happy enough to decide whether it was “worth a damn” at the end of the quarter.) Nonetheless, it stuck with me.
In 2021 I got an art studio. I hadn’t had an art studio in decades, but, like so many of us, my family and I had been living and working in a small apartment since March of 2020 and we were all about to explode. I was so excited to just have an art studio again that when the studio manager asked me “What are you going to make in here?” I drew a blank.
I had no idea what I was going to make in there.
I sat in that studio for a week unpacking boxes of art supplies and memories that I hadn’t looked at in decades. One of the boxes was full of slides of old work, and while going through that old work (which sucked, history had decided) I found the germ of an idea. I ordered a bunch of supplies. The supplies came.
I still couldn’t make anything.
Then I remembered that teacher’s words: just make the fucking thing. I decided I needed a very stupid goal. So I gave myself until the end of the year to make 100 paintings. This was in September.
Making 100 paintings in four months is a lot of work. And it doesn’t really give you time to worry about shit like “quality” because worrying about shit like quality takes time and energy, and I had 100 paintings to make. For four months I went to my studio not thinking about whether I was doing anything good, but instead thinking that I had to make two, three, or even four things today to keep pace.
This leads us to your parenthetical. Because while the quality of those 100 paintings may be questionable (history will decide) the value of doing that was not. The value was that it got me out of my head, got me making stuff, and while I was making stuff, things clicked and led to other things. Gears started spinning. Every moment of that exercise needed me to be present in that moment, kept me grounded, kept my anxiety at bay, and let to some amazing moments which I would’ve never experience otherwise.
You fight the battle in your head by getting outside your head. And it’s done with the smallest of steps. Every word you put to paper has value. Every time you nail two pieces of wood together there is value. Every lump of clay you knead in your hands has value. The value is in the kneading, the nailing, and the typing.
Does it have quality? I’m fine with history deciding. Just make the fucking thing.
Hey look, I answered a question! And it was fun. For the record, this is the same exercise as making 100 paintings in 4 months. I need to write again, and your questions gives me the reason to do it. So if you have a question, just reply to this newsletter with it. I can’t promise I’ll answer it, but I might.
Also, answering questions doesn’t pay rent. So, if you haven’t, buy a zine.
All is love. Be kind to one another.