Art and Fear

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself, nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror that paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Franklin Delano Rosevelt.

That’s the first quotation I ever memorized because I wanted to. Looking back, it would make sense that I’ve turned back to WWII for content and inspiration in my art work because it has been a strong influence and interest of mine since childhood.

What I liked about Art and Fear is that it distinguishes between stopping and quitting and emphasizes the fact that art is all about starting over. I often think that part of the reason I never expected to focus on art was because it was something that I had integrated into my life on the small scale–projects here and there. Creativity was never something that I thought about and art was never a goal in making. It wasn’t until I allowed myself to invest in those small “creative” studies that I began to consider art as more than a daily meditation.
“Making art is dangerous and revealing” (13). The beauty here is that that danger, that a personal investment in a work is a gamble. Making is an action that is preceded by much deliberation, strategizing, analyzing and at times hesitation. The greater the jump, the farther the fall. I approach art the same way I was taught to approach sports, school, relationships and life–Go for the gold. There is no sense in doing something if you’re not really going to do it. Life is 90% mental and 10% physical. Or so my dad always says.
I think what I like about art is not only the combination of physical and mental work but also the fact that the results of a project are both physical and mental. I love the sense of process, progression, possibility that ceramics offers and the many ways it can be used to communicate. Art stands beyond the barriers of language and culture. A piece is the product of multiple series of interactions that is meant to be interacted with. Above all, I agree with Art and Fear’s conjecture that “What’s really needed is nothing more than a board sense of what you are looking for some stragety for how to find it and an overriding willingness to embrace mistakes and surprises along the way. Simply put, making art is chancy–it doesn’t mix well with predictability” (21).