Truly - Why Am I Making This? Issue #23
Hello my dear hearts,
It’s almost the second anniversary of this newsletter! The general topic of “why am I making this [pottery, painting, photography etc]” has been on my mind a lot lately, so I thought it would be a good time to reflect.
I mentioned last month that I would soon be selling some pottery in a shop. I also planned to - but didn’t - sell some of my “seconds” (ie. pieces that are experimental or have been unloved in previous sales) at a casual sale through the pottery studio I work at. I was very enthusiastic to be selling some things - the boxes of pottery around my apartment had really been piling up. But I found it to be such a pain to do the minor tasks involved in selling things. Taking inventory, pricing, packing things up to deliver. I didn’t even have to worry about interacting with people, setting up my wares, processing payments, etc!
The pain of inventory management and my despair at the general entrepreneurial tasks of “being an artist” caused me to spiral into one of my usual crises of faith, where I questioned whether it was really worth making all this stuff and what I ultimately want to “be”, as an artist (professional, hobbyist, something else??)
Dedicated newsletter readers know that I seem to have this crisis literally every month. In September last year, the subject line of this newsletter was “Is Art Becoming Like A Job?” - and the answer was yes, it was, because I wanted it to be, except that actually, maybe I didn’t, but if I didn’t, what did I actually want???
2021 felt like the true beginning of my transformation into a professional artist, a transformation that I had wanted to take place ever since I graduated from university in 2015 with a physics degree and realized I had no clue how I planned to exist in our capitalist society. And in 2021 I sold paintings. I made a staggering amount of pottery and sold quite a lot of it, in a store for the first time. I did commercial photoshoots. A few times, I was a wedding photographer. I had a table at an artist’s market where I sold even more pottery.
In the years before this, I was preparing for these moments, even when I didn’t realize it. When I spent a month learning how to paint portraits for no real reason. When I sat outside and sketched possible designs to paint on pottery, having not actually made any pottery yet. When I asked a friend if she wanted to try doing a photoshoot together, even though I had no idea what I was doing. I stumbled into opportunities in 2021 because I was ready, because I had been making art for so long - not because I was executing a plan.
But by the end of last year, through the beginning of this year, I’ve been lost again. I've had ups and downs, well-documented in the archives of this newsletter, but starting in August or September of last year, I've been, on average, mostly tired and confused. I haven't been sure what kinds of art are “worthwhile” for what I want to do next - mostly because I’m not really sure what I want to do next. But I think it’s sinking in more and more that for now (and maybe for always) I can and should just make whatever I’m drawn to at the time.
Random things in life drive me to make art. A lot of times, it’s nothing grand or important. I see some paintings I like on Twitter and I decide to spend a few weeks seeing if I can learn to paint like that. I’m going to be meeting an author I admire, so I embroider a character from her book to give to her as a gift and try to charm her into being my friend. Someone buys a small bowl I made with tigers on it for a surprisingly high price, so I paint more pottery with tigers. A new friend is excited for me to take photos of her months in the future, so I'm inspired to pick up my camera again. I’m driven by whims and the happenstance approval of random individuals. But still, I arrive somewhere.
So, on the title of this newsletter - “why am I making this?” - I think for now (and maybe for always) there’s no big answer. The reasons change week to week, month to month, year to year. And that’s fine. I often find myself fixating on what I “need” to do next, but right now, I’m trying to just let go. Even if I don’t try at all, I’m inevitably going to keep doing random things by default. I just have to keep letting it happen.
In the spirit of not fixating on goals and outcomes: I meant to have a bunch of miscellaneous photos to share with you in this newsletter, but I do not. I sent out my film from late April and early May to the lab too late to make it into the newsletter, so you’ll be getting those photos next month. A lot of them will be of pottery, unless I messed up the film! In the meantime, I did take a handful of digital photos in May, so you can have two of my favorites. Ruby at the beach and Eva on the accordion. (I finally bought an off-camera flash this month.)
Until next time,
Julien