I've blogged before, and even gotten a small audience going before switching to a different format and completely disappearing into obscurity. I'm glad that technology has advanced to the point that blogging is now free and the editors are intuitive. As a creator myself, I'm always looking for tools which are transparent in the hand. If I'm struggling to make the tool work, it's detracting from the work at hand.
About myself
My name is Adam. I'm 35 years old, and I make things. I'm a Renaissance Man in a Specialist World. I write fiction, prose, poetry, do ceramics, sculpt, draw, do graphic designs, play with Photoshop and Illustrator, and as of this past weekend, I do oil painting and watercolors as well. I don't take my label from any one medium, and I don't know that you could sum me up as anything other than an 'artist' in the broadest sense of the word. I am a visionary, a rebel, a study in paradox. Professional by day, Bohemian by night, as my friend Tish puts it.
I am, in short, a maker. I make things, and I make things happen. I've lived the cuckoo's life. Adopted at birth into an Italian family, I've never quite fit in (although they've accepted me just fine and I have a loving, supportive relationship with all of my immediate family members). I'm too weird for the normal folks, and too normal for the weird folks. It's not intentional - I was scorned by the punk kids in high school (this was the 80's and punk rockers were actually seen as being intimidating back then... now I see them on the old films and laugh), and shunned by the normal folks. I played clarinet and was a geek and a nerd and a band fag, but even in the band I was respected for my musical talents but avoided because I just wasn't ever a part of the crowd despite every single effort ever made.
I mention this only because after 35 years of it all, I'm ready to tell the world to fuck off and start living my life without guilt or shame. I'm weird and I'm fine with that. It's not from trying, it's just the factory default setting for my life.
Why Blog Now?
I start this whole blog because this past weekend I've begun a formal apprenticeship with the pluralist artist David Gulotta. He's teaching me painting (oils, watercolors, and pastels among other fine arts) in the old fashioned style of Master and Apprentice. I'm learning everything from the ground up: how to grind pigments, make paint, make brushes, stretch canvas, etc. It's something of a reaction to the VAST amount of know-how which has been sacrificed over the years since the "Art School" appeared on the scene. In one weekend I've already learned more about painting and sketching than I did in my art classes in college.
I've been affectionately been given the Apprentice Title of "Roundeye #7". It's a nod to when Dave himself was apprenticing in a Chinese Restaurant kitchen under a master chef. His name was Roundeye, so all of his apprentices get called that affectionately. As the 7th apprentice (a most auspicious number!) I'm Roundeye #7.
Creation Required
The name of this blog is Creation Required. It's a statement of fact for any artist. It's not that I have a choice about it, I simply cannot be emotionally content unless I create something, or put in work on a creation. I need to do it every day the same way that 18 year old guys need to ... well, you get the picture.
The urge to create is primal and pervasive. It is subtle when it manifests, typically appearing as the feeling that there's something I should be doing right now which is not happening. I find myself wandering from room to room in my apartment and driving my husband Storm nuts. I feel distracted, unsettled, unable to concentrate on television or computer games (with exception of Civilization and SimCity, that is... those games count as "creating" for my psyche). Sometimes I'll eat before realizing that the hunger I feel is emotional and tied with the need to express, to advance some project or work, or to just make something.
It happens more or less every day. When I indulge the creative need, I get to a point where there' a sort of inner quiet and afterglow like sex. Contentment, satisfaction, and peace. The creation has advanced, something has been brought forth from the inner spaces, and now, for a time, I may relax.
And so I call this exactly what it is. CREATION REQUIRED. Not optional. For me to be truly happy, I would need to be somewhat independently wealthy. Not for all of the toys and extra stuff I could buy, but just so that I could enter a studio and work on whatever happened to need creating that day. I can make schedules and tie myself to projects so that I can produce on demand, but I'm much happier when I can go where the spirit takes me. Maybe today it's drumming on my djembe, or dancing to music, or listening to a broadway show and making blocking charts and director's plans in my head for lighting and scenery and costumes. Or maybe it's sketching, or painting, or digital photography, or writing the next chapter in a book.
That's ideal. It also doesn't happen for me yet, but it's a dream of mine to get to that point where I can just be an artist and make stuff, and then hand the finished pieces over to someone else to worry about sales or turning them into profits. I'm a dreamer though, so I'm holding that eventuality in my mind firmly. I will dream large, and dare to dream about being the perfect vessel for a new way of seeing and thinking which gains sufficient recognition to free me from worrying about "working" for someone else ever again. As goals go, that's a great one. To be fiscally independent simply because the 9-5 grind interferes with the artist's life. To have property where no one may trespass without invitation, where the atmosphere of safety which all artists need can come about. That's my dream.
But since I'm still tied to the 9-5, working a career as a staffing agent for the Creative industry in Southern Connecticut, I'm forced to wrestle with the truth. That might be the dream, but this is the reality. It's totally a do-able dream, but like everything in my life -- Creation Required.
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