I am just taking a quick peek into the forum after being away, spending a grueling month working double shifts on a holiday job schedule. Interesting that this is the first thread I see.
I am an artist & crafter. At times, I sell my work. Lately, because of an illness that causes chronic fatigue, I haven't been able to make things to sell this holiday season. I had to give up renting a separate studio to work in as I was just too exhausted to even get there. However, purely by accident, I ran across an ad for a used, small size kiln, that is absolutely perfect for me to work with at home.
Even though I have had barely enough energy to drag myself into bed this past month, when I found that kiln, it gave me renewed energy. I wake up in the mornings with my head filled with new ideas, eager to try a new concept and direction to move in. The few precious hours I have off, I've been researching new techniques, as I realize having a kiln at home, instead of spending hours monitoring it in a studio, allows me to play in different directions I couldn't before. I see my work expanding in different directions that before. I'm also able to do old pieces that I so love to do, again. This passion is spontaneous. It ultimately will show in the pieces, whatever my current skill level is.
Some of my other art & craft projects that I haven't finished or haven't gotten around to, are being put away, or are suddenly being pushed out of the way, or moved down in priority as I am excited to move in this direction again. I have no guilt about not finishing those projects.
_I_ decide what I want to work on. It's not like I have accepted commissioned projects and am reneging on agreements with someone else. The only deals I made was with myself, and I am free to break them at any time over any single project or
type of craft I no longer find rewarding or have my heart into them.
To me, that is the way making art
should feel like. Something I didn't hear when you talked about your quilting.
I remember reading a couple things a while back, that were pretty enlightening to me and changed my concept about MAKING art. It piggybacks on what Maggie said. I've written it here before.
Making art is PROCESS oriented. It's ultimately about the journey of the process, as it takes up 90% of the time. If one sells their completed works, that may take up another 10% of time. It is NOT about the end result. Art & crafts are more a
doing for the maker. It's the actual journey of making that is the most satisfying. That's why when one piece is finished, we start the process
again. The finished item is just a happy (or frustrating) by-product of the process. If it's only about the end result, the finished product, and you really don't enjoy the MAKING of the item, then you'd be better off BUYING an item that is equivalent to the finished item you want to make. It's simpler, takes far less time, stress & frustration. And as you, yourself have realized, rushing through to finish a piece, taking shortcuts that don't feel really natural to your way of working, show up in the end results of the finished product.
My suggestion to you is to sit down and define what success & especially, what is a
failure to you. It is different to different people. Are only finished projects considered successes? Then people like Leonardo Da Vinci, who was known to have hundreds of unfinished sketches, paintings, projects and ideas, is to be considered a horrific failure of an artist. So many of our greatest creative Masters left "unfinished" works. If selling one's work makes one a success, then Van Gogh, who never sold a painting in his lifetime, was a failure, too.
Must all your pieces be absolutely lovely and that you end up loving them all? Well, them, I'm not sure what to call you, as in the definition of artist, frustration & dis-satisfaction are part of the territory. Or as modern dancer and revolutionary choreographer, Martha Graham said,
"You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. . . No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."I read somewhere else, that for people who don't finish projects, it may
not be a sign of failure. Just that we have a different reason for doing things. I like to start different types of craft projects. I'm always intrigued by
how to do things. Again, the
process. Once I get far enough along to figure out the process, and can see where it's going, how it will be finished, I may not need to keep going to the end. Having an actual finished project may not be as important to me as understanding the process.
Other times, I may realize early on that the project is not going to turn out as I had hoped or expected. It has nothing to do with practicing more, or acquiring more skill first.
That particular project, the way I envisioned it, isn't going to work out.
Also, how will I know if I even
like doing that particular craft if I never tried doing it? I need to do the process long enough to realize, "This isn't the craft for me. It's pleasant, but ultimately, it doesn't grab my heart the way I thought it would. I like looking at, touching, holding, feeling, having a
finished item of this process more than I like the process of
making them.
For example, I absolutely LOVE
gorgeous, soft, fluffy yarn, hand-knitted, intricately patterned sweaters. I just love wrapping myself in them.
But, I realized, I am just not the sort to sit down & knit one for myself. It took several balls of yarn and quite a few attempts to figure that out. There was no way to have known that until I tried the process a few times. Now, I just
buy them instead and marvel at someone else's handiwork.
At one time, quilting may have been a spontaneous passion for you. It may have been there at the initial onset, but petered out. You are allowed to grow, to change, to lose interest as other things in life take over. These processes and realizations aren't intellectual things one can figure out in advance.
For the audience/observer, it is a linear, intellectual process, starting at point A, working through B, finishing at point C. Or it is about acquiring things. (For hoarders, too.) That finished work is the only tangible thing they can understand, as they don't understand about the process, so they focus on the finished result. And because of that, they throw
off the focus, from what it should be about for the
artist. That ultimately, for the maker - it's a doing.
I hope to make many pots in my life with whatever energy I have in me. I know that I have
already broken down & thrown away more ugly pieces than I will ever keep or sell. I don't consider any of that time wasted. To me, it's all part of the process - and part of the joy.