I did collaborate on a drawing with a friend of mine, an artist named Young Mi, yesterday at Mosaic. She would very likely squirm at that description – it’s funny how we're so capable of extending such monikers on others and how difficult it is to accept them ourselves. Anyway, I drove up to Oregon along the PCH once, videotaping the view out the window. Something about capturing moments while willingly trapped in a car fascinates me. I never did anything with the footage I took then, but recently I elonaged a 10-minute piece from Big Sur to about an hour. Young Mi and I projected it onto a canvas from behind and then drew on the surface with cray-pas while the video was playing. It definitely had a huge performance element to it, which unnerved us and yet energized us at the same time. We'd tried it once before, but that time the work never took flight from interesting concept to compelling end-product. I think it was due to lack of strategic dialogue about logistics and such. I guess we realized this but still felt ok – because it was so much about performance and real-time, it was good to just "do it" in order to figure things out. At any rate, we talked through things a great deal this time around and I believe the drawing was stronger and more successful because of it. We also felt much more comfortable drawing and working side-by-side this time around since the getting-to-know-you element of the original effort was out of the way (we've collaborated on lots of things but never in a way where the interaction was so immediate and time-sensitive). In fact, I reneged on the original idea of taking turns drawing to allow each other the whole canvas at a given time. I hope Young Mi didn’t mind. I couldn’t help but jump in. Being so invested in the process, it was difficult to sit back as ideas and general enthusiasm got the better of me. We ended up having some technical difficulties but I think the work we produced is very cohesive. It was about loss, love, journey (both physical and symbolic) and alienation filtered through childhood memories.
It felt great to DRAW. And it felt great to produce something that was attractive. It felt great to CREATE, as cheesy as that sounds.
4 comments:
There is definitely something to be said about allowing yourself a space to just create for the enjoyment and love of it. Somewhere along the way everything got so weighty with the need to be important and worthwhile. The two aren't mutually exclusive though, and as a witness to what you and Young Mi created...Bravo ladies!
Hit me up when you are going to LACMA! baby baby.
Oh Helen, if I had a nickel for every beautiful thing you said I'd be a rich man. But I'm rich by the mere fact that we're friends...
i think it's so funny that we both have this animosity toward blogs though we love to write and end up STARTING and COMMENTING on one...i guess it was inevitable.
I'm in total agreement with you about the experience and the two end products. It reminded me how much I LOVE the creative process and yes, revitalizing—and I'm sure it's because the experience of collaborating with you has been so energizing—not b/c i feel like we're on the same page, but b/c eventhough we were on the same page, each of our individuality was expressed and respected and what came out was something i definitely wouldn't have made left to my own devices. you have a whimsical side that is different from mine and it was a nice surprise to see it, making it new. I felt it was a true collaboration in the best possible sense and would really love more opps to do so.
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