Studio Notes: September 19th, 2021

In this episode, I’m in my home office again, having just returned from the Maker City Summit. I discuss that briefly, and then change course and dive into my idea of a “pretension-free guarantee” in art.

Transcript

[Areas in bold for emphasis.]

I'm Brandon Woods, and this is studio notes for September 19th, 2021.

Today I went to the Maker City Summit, the big all day event of lectures and networking of makers throughout Knoxville and I guess “Knoxville plus” and the professionals who are able to, I guess, kind of help us figure out how to make a living doing what we love. I got to meet some wonderful people and really, really came away with a lot to think about and a lot of things to put into action in my in the professional side of things that that should really help me moving forward.

And I wanted to talk about one thing today. One thing that's come up three times this past week that I've really been mulling over since July. And I first presented it in my big grand tour video walk through of my exhibition “Spatium”—the video that I did with Caitlin—is this idea of a “pretension-free guarantee” in art that. I think that the less pretension that comes through art, the more encouragement that viewers have to embrace their own interpretations and come to the work from where they are, the better.

I think I think that we've. We've all talking about sort of like as artists. Maybe I should say they've the postmodernist have really took art down a path that I. I am rejecting in with my work and just sort of in my practice in general and in the way that I want to talk about my work and all of that, because. It seems like progressively art has become less accessible to people, whenever the best thing that art can do is reflect the best parts of the viewer and the best parts of the artist who made the work. That…well…

I am my best self when and for making my work, because in making my work, one, I'm doing what I love and in doing what I love, I'm able to put that love back out into the world, but more so, I am better able to understand who I am, better able to understand my convictions, my my values, my sense of life as Ayn Rand would put it, and I'm able to better understand the world and the world in context to me as an individual.

And what what does that what does that mean and what is. What is best, what is what is good, what is the Good capital, the capital G, Good? And this is all this is all stuff that I have been formulating for a while and I've really been having trouble putting it putting it fully out there.

My my first two rules are do what you love and make good work. And when the viewer comes to the piece. Whenever it is Good work there. And the viewer connects to that work, to the best part of themselves is responding to it. If the viewer buys that work and they take it to their home or their office. And where they are really living with the work because we spend so much time in our offices. Then what they're seeing in it is going to be those best parts of themselves being reflected back to them. It's going to be the same process that I go through in creating my work. It's going to be the process that they go through with that work in that seeing the best parts of themselves reflected back at them, speaking to them. It's going to strengthen those parts of them. That is to say that living with good work betters the people living with it.

And. This idea that I have like “pretension-free guarantee”, which really just rolls off the tongue. And it's just kind of a fun way to put it is. It also just strikes at that that point that I'm trying to make that. Wherever the viewer is, they can come to the work from that point. And what's really exciting, too, is that if I'm, you know, have. Having, like, designed my own calculator to construct these dimensional panels and the paint that I apply on them changes colors such that they are able to see a new color, red-green. All of that. I mean, the viewer doesn't have to take any of that with them. Doesn't have to get that out of the work necessarily if they're getting the best part of themselves out of it. All of that. What I'm putting into it, what I love about my work, that's mine. And they are they're free to make the work their own as well.

And later on, they are they become more interested in what aspects of the work that I put in to it that I that I was really excited about. And that's just more for them to explore and and experience later. There's there's always going to be more of the story of that work left to be told. And that's a that's that's really borrowing pretty directly from the kind of the final speaker today, Kiran Singh Sirah, who he's with the International Storytelling Center.

And he he he grave…gave a great, great talk about the radical gift of hope and the eye at the very end of today.

And so I'm going to end it there. But until next time, do what you love. Make good work. I'll talk to you, soon.