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09/30/2004 Archived Entry: "Thinking, thinking, thinking..."

There's quite a number of things I've been thinking over since yesterday. Mainly on what to do with myself after this job. Yes, I don't plan on staying here another year, but I have to first figure out what I plan to do after I quit and when I should officially throw in the sponge.

I don't think I should quit as of next week, like John suggests, on the basis that John will soon be switching his job to a contract-based one and the transition's going to put us most likely on a financial seesaw. I think personally I should officially say I'm quitting after December, so that there's time for me to readjust, there's a new year for planning things out, and I can go and see my parents in January without fear of missing work at the beginning of 2005.

I know why John says to make plans for me to do it in October. He knows this job is draining my creativity and I've got a large commission that needs to be out before the December holidays. My mother-in-law says the clients who ordered the glass panels want them in before Christmas so that they have something nice to show their guests for their Christmas party. I have no idea what the progress is on the panels has been since like a month or two ago when the drawings were translated onto Glass Eye for the lead lines. I'm thinking of just -giving- the nice people who asked for the images the original inkings hand-colored and framed. I think the originals should go with the panels. He knows I need to expand my artistic capabilities and I agree with him. I don't want to settle for a job punching in numbers at a cubicle all day long.

What I'm hoping will happen is people see my inkwork and the panels side by side and realise that I can do mixed media, that I'm not confined to one style or type, and say "Wow, who did that? I'd like to see more of that!" Because I want a job where I can actually see an end result and where I can use the gifts [ insert prefered diety here ] gave me to the best of my ability. I need to have a little more confidence in my abilities, that I've always known, but it's always easier said than done. This time, I just have to try no matter what.

I think you'd have to -be- an artist to understand why sometimes you'd rather be a starving artist than work at a job where you're just a cog on a company's Big Ben. Being a cog drains you... it drains your will to do anything else, your will to keep trying to learn new things, your WANT to progress. You'd have to -know- what it's like when you're sitting there at your job and inside you're screaming "I HAVE TO MAKE SOMETHING!" Whatever happened to "craftsmanship"? Musicians, sculptors, painters, carpenters.... it's almost as though it's a rare and dying breed to work as part of a trade as opposed to a corporation.

Computers are a blessing and a curse for artists, I learned that when I started learning about glass. Think with me for a moment... When I say stained glass, what do you picture? More than likely you'll picture two things: Tiffany lamps and church windows. One thing Sister Marie (that was the lady I took the two-day course from) said that held true to me, as well, was that stained glass is NOT supposed to look factory created. It's not supposed to be hard, dark lead lines and hard, pristine enamels and paints. It's supposed to look like someone actually painted it, that someone took the time to fuse the pieces, apply the lead by hand, and sign the piece with the date and the company. Sure, you can silkscreen apply paint to glass, but even then you can hand-apply the enamels and paints to it on a second firing. Stained glass is more interpretive than any other media I've seen so far, including cinematography. Stained glass is very much like literature to me.

But getting back to my point, when computers arrived they were designed to make computing faster, more efficient so you'd have time for other things, right? This, in some cases, cheapens an art form. Where you can cookie-cut produce damn near anything now, including musicians!, by just installing a few libraries of pre-chosen information and playing mix and match. True artists know that these programs are there to enhance or improve your existing abilities, not cheapen them. But someone will take a program and say "Okay, make me an artist!" and then sit and stare when nothing happens. You can't manufacture creativity, you can only emulate it but the seams will always show.

To put it more plainly: What would have meant more to you as a child? A teddy bear your mother or a close family member hand-made for you or a teddy bear that was store bought? Granted, trying to hand-create some things in this day would be suicide, sometimes it's those little attention-to-detail things that make something work. People are losing their eye for true detail after being exposed to the artificial for so long. It's like if all your life you've eaten Americanised Chinese food and then go to China and have real Chinese cooking. You'd probably like the Americanised food better, despite the fact that you're actually eating real Chinese cuisine.

There's a lot of words I'd like the throw in the faces of a few people I heard criticism from growing up. When they asked "What would you like to be when you're out of school?" and I'd reply "I want to be an artist and maybe get my degree in Fine Arts." Do you know what the knee-jerk reaction to that reply is? "Oh, well, you can't do anything with that." It's as though that response was programmed into most people's heads - and yet they stand there dressed head to toe in something a designer created and listening to music a musician recorded. For once, I'd like to make something and slap people in the face with it as if to say "Can't do anything with it?? Oh, really!?"

I don't want to end up an old work horse who tells their child "I used to dabble in sketches, but now I don't do that anymore." Since I was very small I knew that's not what I wanted to do.