I tend to think that making things in batches is more efficient and this has caused me no end of grief. Making something for the first few times in batches is like placing a large bet. Sometimes the stakes are low (you’re playing with your Grandma for skittles) and sometimes the stakes are really high (you’re playing at a casino with borrowed money.) I usually consider the stakes of time and strain on my hands. But I have learned that the mental and emotional energy it takes to bring an idea to life can’t be downplayed. This really hit home for me as I was making the shoes and legs of my Garden Variety Wizards.
Each of those shoes and legs are sculpted and felted by hand. The first time I made them, I assumed the wire I chose to use as an armature would be strong enough to support the wizards in the static standing poses I wanted. They turned out to be unsteady and would’ve required a base of some kind which wasn’t in line with my design goals. I wanted the wizards to be placed in whatever environment the collector had in mind for them and really inhabit the space as though they lived there. Putting the wizards on a base would separate them from their surroundings the same way as putting anything (or anyone) on a pedestal would.
It had been quite some time since I had learned to make something entirely new to me and had forgotten that the first time through takes a lot more energy and time than subsequent attempts. I made all seven pairs one step at a time, meaning that first I sculpted all the shoes, attached wires, baked, painted them, and felted the legs on. I didn’t give myself a chance to learn from each pair. There’s a whole blog post, perhaps a whole book to be written on why an artist might try to behave as though they’re some kind of factory assembly line all by themselves. I’ll leave that to be explored in depth at another time, but today I will just note that it didn’t work out well for me here.
After turning my thoughts to other areas of my practice for a while, I came back to the wizards and decided to try again. I didn’t batch out the entire set this time, but I made all the fancy little shoes with just one wire because I thought what they needed was a wider foot and shorter legs. After attaching just one pair I realized my mistake. The wizards are heavy and their weight distributed in a strange way because the hats pull them backwards. They needed sturdier legs and while felt can be pretty stiff, it was never going to be enough to hold them up with one 20 gauge aluminum wire as the armature.
What I needed was not one wire, but several twisted together to form a strong core of armature to the legs. I made one pair of legs with shoes and tested it the whole way through. I put that wizard down on the desk and it stayed exactly where I put it. I moved it. It stayed again. It was still standing the next morning. I made another, just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. When that worked I made the other five pairs of shoes and legs and attached them. You can see them all standing successfully in my shop.
A person acting as a technician who’s just making objects to sell needs to value the time it takes to make something above many other factors. But an artist needs to preserve precious mental and emotional resilience in order to avoid burnout. Since I started considering artistic experimentation and development from a more holistic perspective that honors my body, mind, and time, I’ve experienced more joy in my studio.
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