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Facing down the fear of failure

by | Mar 25, 2012 | Doilies, Doily, Fabric, Failure, Fiber, Fibre, Installation, Macrame, Process, Sculpture

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Visual artists talk a lot about the importance of happy accidents. That’s when good things come out of experimentation. It’s very tough to accept the less-happy accidents as part of the process, but I find that time heals all ego wounds and I’m willing to re-visit some of those early attempts.  My giant doily falls into the Hideous category.

Looking back at the only trace of this grand experiment, this poor photo-document of the mess before I balled it all up and slam-dunked it into the nearest bin,  I see there is some method in all the madness of crocheting ripped strips of painting canvasses. Some hooey about tying the foundation of high art to ‘low-art’ craft. But the thing doesn’t exist anymore because there was a basic problem: there is no art in the object. And herein lies (lays?) the happy accident: in the making I discovered that having a concept is not enough to carry the work; it must appeal at another, non-cerebral, aesthetic level.  That doesn’t mean it has to be pretty, but it has to be pretty intriguing.

This big ol’ six-foot doily fell flat.

That was so 2010. Today I wouldn’t need to  wrestle with dusty canvas strips and giant crochet hooks to see that the idea was fatally flawed. So some progress has been made.

I also see it between the lines in the CVs of established artists. At first glance the websites are impressive, with online gallery slideshows featuring one ingenius project after another. Now I know better. No one emerges fully formed,  but experiments and ruminates and incubates and makes mistakes and ditches the failed attempts and moves on.

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I was thinking about that kind of backstory while wandering through the lobby of the Ace Hotel — while trying really hard not to also think about the Deuce Hotel in Portlandia (see YouTube clip below) — in Palm Springs last month. The giant macramé installation on the windows dreamed up by costume designer Michael Schmidt is anything but flat or laden with some all-important concept. But it works as a phenomenological sculptural object, turning an otherwise stark and bland piece of architecture into a messy, comfy, quirky space through manipulation of line. And some giant beads.  Part nest, part entrails, a wall of chaos but pristinely white, the thing works for me.

I have to believe the project didn’t  come together all at once and fully realized, but perhaps began early in the artist’s development. Somewhere along the line there has to be the equivalent of a junked giant doily.