More Critical Questions

Got an e-mail from Jason. A very schizophrenic e-mail, but in his defence, he was just trying to illustrate a very real and possible scenario when my seminar final panel happens in just three weeks. Still, I have this really strange image of one of his photoshoped images in my head as the three people he described taken as if it was an over-the-shoulder shot of my presentation. With me as a guest model. Anyway, here's the scenario he presented.

Pretend there are three of me sitting at a table as your senior
thesis panel. One of me is wearing a suit and tie from Brooks
Brothers, another is wearing a thrift-store sweater vest and yellow
shirt, and the other me is wearing a pink pant-suit from Liz Taylor.

The suit/tie me asks: "Mr. Abarquez, you've recently stated that by
removing craft and presentation from your list of concerns you are
able to focus more on your process, rather than an aesthetic goal.
In what ways might you present this project so that the process
stands foremost to the viewer rather than simply looking through a
collection of drawings?"

The sweater-vest me follows up with this question, "I agree with this
question. Your willingness to share this personal method of escape
is fascinating to me. The drawings are interesting on their own, but
it is the idea of what you are doing as a whole that really intrigues
me. When this piece is displayed in a gallery for your senior show,
will you hang each piece separately in their own tiny little gold
frames? or will you have them all bound into a book like a photo
album so that viewers may flip through at their own pace? or perhaps
scan these drawings in and project them in some sort of slideshow
montage?"

The Pink Suit me interrupts at this point, "A video?"

Sweater Vest, "He's already said that he thinks this would be boring
after 30 seconds."

Pink Suit, "Boring for whom? For him or for me? I could spend hours
watching someone draw, especially if the video is done in an
interesting way."

Sweater Vest, "But his project isn't about a video."

Pink Suit, "It's not about the drawings either. It's about the act
of drawing and how he uses that to escape. So essentially he could
show us a video piece of him drawing and never even reveal what he's
drawn."

Sweater Vest, "Like the cartoon he described?"

Pink Suit, "Exactly like the cartoon."

Brooks Brothers, "And what about originality? If he's already seen
that in a cartoon it's not original."

Pink Suit, "Who cares about originality? It's safe to say that
nearly everyone who comes to see his senior show isn't going to have
seen the Recess Cartoon. And he's not copying anything anyway. He's
demonstrating that the act of drawing is what is important to him.
The finished pieces don't show that because the act is already over
by then."

Sweater Vest, "I like the finished pieces. They are important
because the act is important."

Brooks Brothers, "I agree. He draws so there are drawings. Seems
pretty simple to me."

Pink Suit, "When he addresses the panel it's going to make a
difference whether he's presenting finished drawings or video
documentation of him drawing."

Sweater Vest, "Or both?"

Pink Suit, "Absolutely both."

Brooks Brothers, "And if the video is boring?"

Pink Suit, "Who cares about boring? Have you ever been to an art
gallery? Most art is boring to most people."

Brooks Brothers, "Boring doesn't sound like escape to me."

Pink Suit, "Your tie is boring."

Brooks Brothers, "Shut up."

Pink Suit, "You shut up!"

Sweater Vest, "Both of you shut up. Regardless of what he wants to
do, this one fact is true: he is going to have to consider what sort
of experience he is providing to the viewer."

Pink Suit, "That is not what his art is about."

Sweater Vest, "For the sake of getting through his senior seminar
class and graduating, he is going to have to demonstrate that he is
taking into consideration what sort of experience he is providing for
the viewers."

Brooks Brothers, "So he needs to bullshit something...?"

Sweater Vest, "No. His concept is totally awesome. No need for
bullshit. But the presentation is as much a part of this piece as
the drawings or the act of drawing is. No right or wrong way to do
it, as long as the panel can tell that he's taken it into
consideration."

All three of me nod wisely.

Because this is a very real possible scenario, I'm going to treat it as such and pick up where the panel of Jasons left off.

To address the concern of presentation that has become apparent, my initial intent was to overwhelm my viewer, possibly alluding to the fact that there is a lot of things I want to escape from. The quantity of the drawing will out-weigh the quality and infer a sense of time. After all, it does take time to do these drawings, be it a little scribble on a paper that goes nowhere or a fully rendered character design. To simply display the box and/or a pile of the drawings was never my intent as far as a finished piece goes. The box is just there to help me transport them around and keep the piece together as cheaply as possible. Actually, it kind of refers back to when I was a kid and how I would stuff a drawing as neatly as possible into my binder only to have it ultimately creased by something careless like being pressed up against the side of the bus or something.

In any event, the box isn't going to be part of the presentation. It confines the mass of the drawings into something manageable, both physically and visually. My initial idea is to just wallpaper a gallery wall with them. Ceiling to floor if I can get away with it. Oh, and using just a plan office stapler, too, if not push pins. Again, referring back to how I would use anything I could find that was cheaply and readily available for the purpose I needed at the time when I was a child.

Now I know what you are thinking: Where did all this childhood stuff come from and why is it suddenly important to the piece?

Well, to put it bluntly, I've always wanted to be an artist since I was a child. And as a child growing up with parents in the office place, I had a lot of access to office supplies like ball-point pens and printer paper, which is the material I produced all those drawings with. More often than not, my mother would hand me a pile of paper and a few pens and I would draw while she worked behind the desk. This practice happened less and less as I grew out of having to be watched and started going to school, but I always had access to printer paper and pens. It was just something that was always around when I was a child.

One of the Jasons may ask if I've looked into any psychological papers or readings about escapism and childhood traumas (which I'm sure there are plenty floating around since that whole EverQuest thing). My answer would be a regretful "no." As much as I am aware of the generalizations of such escapism, particularly with video game culture, I have not looked into the studies myself.

And if I was permitted to brag, I would say that my own experience makes any scientific study on the matter irrelevant. After all, who knows better: the scientist doing the study or the kid who became self-aware of the escapism tendency?

A question definitely asked by the Jasons would be why staple or push-pin the drawings from floor to ceiling in an attempt to overwhelm the viewer? Why not produce a series of these sketches on one giant piece of paper, or better yet, the wall itself?

As much as that would push the visual product, it wouldn't push the idea. Furthermore, it feels like one of those suggestions given to me by someone that doesn't get what I'm doing. Someone who wants me to turn left instead of letting me turn right. And if the idea is as great as I hope the Jasons think it is, then the visual product should be able to express that awesomeness. And I don't mean awesome in the 90's way, but awesome in the sense that it gives the viewer a sense of awe. A giant drawing on the wall may have that effect, but I feel that this idea warrents the individual pieces of paper being as big as that single giant sheet if not more so.

Backtracking several minutes ago, one of the Jasons mentioned something about a video where all that is seen is my hand drawing and not the final product. Yes, I feel that having a video of me drawing is a boring piece. We don't live in the art era of Yoko Ono where I can get away with filming such a mundane act and call it art. There needs to be more to it in the video art world as far as the contemporary art scene goes. That something more doesn't have to be anything huge, but it does have to be enough to be interesting. And seeing someone drawing without seeing the final product would aggravate me as a viewer if I were to come across the piece in a gallery of my own accord without knowing what the artist is trying to do.

Meanwhile, while I would be saying this, I'm already formulating an idea of projecting the image of me drawing on the drawings produced while questioning if that image is overkill for the viewer or not. Someone let me turn right, but they suggested I use a hybrid (no pun intended) instead of a SUV to go where I want to go. And as interesting as it may turn out, especially if the viewer's moment caused some of the drawings to lift a bit creating a cast shadow, I think the video would take away from the images themselves. But in the end, what do I really want the viewer to see: the act or the resulting product?

Let's end the scenario there and concentrate on the question I just asked myself, because that's the matter at hand.

Now, I've stated before that the act itself is a private act. It is also an act that I feel is impossible to illustrate properly in any media. But I have to show my viewers something, so the challenge is to show them the impossible. Make something invisible visible.

The video is a great way to make the invisible visible, but the idea of aggravating my viewer with a video of me drawing seems very pretentious and snobbish to me. It's as if the video is saying "I'm so great at drawing that I don't even need to show you what I'm drawing." Definitely not something I want, especially after I just drew a comic slamming pretentious views of art.

So with the video idea something I can revisit if I feel like the idea and final product could benefit from it, I have to ask myself why the drawings themselves? The way I see it, showing them the drawing is similar to someone showing their collection of action figures that date back to several years before they were born only without the nerd factor. There are stores in Japan that have floors of nothing but action figures, some of them not even for sale, and the photographs I've seen of the floor space alone make the collection feel bigger than it really is. That's the effect that quantity has over the viewer. Conversely, it also shows an obsessive nature, which is often associated with escapism. If popular media has given the general public any indication as to what an obsessive mind looks like in the physical form, it is the quantity of things. That's why the psycho killer is more than likely going to have photos of the people they want to kill from every angle possible.

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I've hit the nail on the head after talking in circles. The drawings is the end product of an obsessive reaction towards the negativity of reality resulting in the want to escape to a world based in the cartoon genre that is of my own design. Tipper Gore would have something to say about this, wouldn't she?