Fun Friday Resources

Let’s talk about artists’ processes.

The inestimable Austin Kleon has been very open about his struggles to stay creative during the pandemic, and you would think by now I would jump with both feet into whatever strategies he has shared about overcoming that. This blog post is one of the best: It uses RITUAL to DRAW THE CIRCLE — almost literally —and to name those issues (and by opposing, end them? A consummation devoutly to be wished).

Wayne Thiebaud, Pies, Pies, Pies (1961), via the Crocker Art Museum

When I was working on the Cello Sonata, I found myself holding back on the second theme of the first movement. The first theme was über-dramatic, but then this second theme was… too pretty? I found myself fearing the judgment of a sophisticated audience (I was writing it for a friend’s recital in the D.C. area) — and how dumb is that?

That’s why this article on Wayne Thiebaud’s fantastic and fascinating style resonated with me. As he says:

I ended up with this row of pie paintings and stupefied myself. I mean, I virtually said to myself, “That would be the end of a serious painter.”

It’s worth noting, too, that Thiebaud was still working as he turned 100.

This article over at Open Culture on Jane Austen’s editing strategy is great: She used pins to mark places in her handwritten manuscripts that she wanted to replace or delete. If you’re in the middle of a manuscript, how do you give yourself permission to ABANDON part of your writing and then return to it for SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION?

(I tend to use XXX as a marker in my word processing documents for text I don’t have words for yet, and I have been known to change the text color of passages that I want to remember to come back to. If I’ve printed it out, then I use highlighters or ::gasp: a red pencil to mark them. Sticky notes/tabs are also useful, like Miss Austen’s pins.)

And finally, we always say that MOMA is not your AUDIENCE, but perhaps MOBA is…