Forty years and counting

       People often ask the artist, when seeing a painting, “How long did that take?” The simple honest answer is something like two hours and forty some years. Two hours of painting, and forty some years of work, design, research, trial and error, determination, struggle, blood sweat and tears. 

       Looking back at 40 years or so of making art, and what I have learned: 

         When I was in Design 2 in the Art program of my University, our professor gave us an assignment. It was called “I Am-This Is.” The idea was to describe who we are and then give a visual representation of it. Since I had recently gotten involved with a Christian ministry and was learning how to live according to God’s Word, I wanted my story to reflect the Word in my life. My idea was to build a house- like a doll house, where each room displayed an aspect of my life, and then somehow have one room that was full of light.

In the Art Building we had access to the shop, which was a spacious room with tools of all kinds and two old guys that knew how to make stuff. This process of building was new to me and I needed lots of help from them. As I got into building the house I cut several arched doorways in the walls that would separate the rooms. Because of the design of the rooms and the way I was cutting away windows and doors, the discarded pieces of wood resembled birds in flight. 

As I was toiling away in the shop, one of the grad students came over to see what I was doing. He took an interest and started asking me questions. 

“So what is the theme? “ he asked.

“It’s called I am-This is. I want to show my life as rooms in a house, and how the room got filled with light when I learned God’s Word.”

“Hmmmm…who is your professor?”

“Professor Gee”.

“Can I give you a suggestion?”

“Okay” (I was really struggling with this wooden house idea and open to ideas).

“I know Professor Gee, and he is really into conceptual stuff. Here’s my idea. Scrap the house. But save these pieces that look like birds. Put them in a paper bag. When its your turn to present, take the paper bag and as you tell your story, reach in and throw the birds around the room. Believe me, he’ll love it!”

So that’s what I did.

On the day of presentations, I walked into class with my bag full of birds. Everybody else had their versions of overworked hand built projects something like what I started with. As I listened to the other students present, I was excited and peaceful. Then it was my turn. I went to the front of the class with my bag. Professor Gee was leaning on a table in the back of the room, looking bored. I started telling my story and throwing the birds around the room. Halfway through I noticed Gee’s mouth hanging open, and he was unblinkingly attentive to what I was presenting. My final statement was “God’s Word has set me free.” With that I reached in and threw the last bird out the open window. 

I got an A on the project! 

And I learned that good design has a lot to do with simplicity.