vertical topography

Up until about a month ago, my forays into "art" included a portfolio of craft projects created during my childhood and a few token paintings I completed during my "Watercolors for Beginners" class during the second-to-last-semester of college. Needless to say, upon realizing my experience with "art" one might say that I was extremely disqualfied to produce it.

But produce it I did. Working with three co-workers, I helped brainstorm, finalize, install, and yes critique, a real, honest to goodness, work of art. I'm patting myself on the back as I type.

The piece is sort of hard for me (personally) to describe. In vague terms, it is comprised of lengths of silver wire, placed vertically against a white wall. Each piece of wire is anchored at the end by a small pin, and the wire is sufficiently long enough so that we were able to manipulate it into wavy lines that billow outward from the wall. There are maybe...oh, 100 or so of these pieces, lined up next to each other. The effect up close is (as many people have agreed) very elegant and stunning.

It does have its short-comings of course (not particularly visible from a distance) but otherwise it accomplishes what it set out to do: express topography in a vertical manner.

I think for me the process of creating the piece was more important than seeing the final result. The discussions between the four of us in determining what we actually wanted to do or what materials we actually wanted to use were, upon reflection, more memorable and exciting than the installation. Now, don't get me wrong...installing it was fun, and I was quite happy at seeing the piece finally in existence. But in the end I enjoyed the collabortive process and arguing my points more than getting it up on the wall.

I'm not sure just yet what that means to me; that I enjoyed the process more than the resulting creation. I want to say that for me, "art" IS process, and the resulting piece is merely a random output. I can't tell you how many times our idea changed, or was adjusted...how each concpet morphed into another one and then another and another. I feel that instead of only creating one (tangible) piece we instead created, say, twenty pieces...I mean, who cares that they don't really exist?

I really enjoyed and will always remember the creation of this piece, and am proud that it was done for an actual organization and not something that only I got to enjoy. I guess for now, my art will be "process". I have to say though, that I am looking forward to expanding my personal definition in the years to come.