Personal "I Suck"

With the thesis paper for my class due next week (and feeling the fresh sting of failure knowing that I rushed through a mold-making process instead of taking my time like I should have simply because I had to get it done for the next class), I've been looking for help with what to write about. The thing is, I don't know what to write for the paper let alone how to write it. In fact, I haven't even touched on the idea since I started my big box of drawings.

Since Jason has been helping me out by asking me all these critical questions and then asking to have the answers blogged, I went to him first. Naturally, he asked me to blog a few questions more as the final step of weeding out what I've written thus far. And the questions he asked couldn't be more personal.

The first question is this: What aspects of the project are important to me? Aspects as in "more than one."

I never really thought about what is important to me in any project I do, personally or for a class. The only thing that I considered important during the process is that I enjoy myself. I can't make art or do a process correctly if I feel pressured or I'm not having fun doing it. That's kind of how I messed up the rubber mold I was trying to make last night for Sculpture 2. I can only hope that it is okay for what we are using it for, or else I'll have to pour again.

In any event, that's the only aspect that is important to me: that I have fun doing it. The fun factor ties in with the idea of escapism rather nicely, because of the things we as a culture do for fun. We go to theme parks, watch movies, play games, hang out at bars with beautiful people, play with our pets, give gifts to our kids, etc. And when we do those things, most of the time we only think about the moment and not what happens before or after it. That moment is the feeling of fun and a release from whatever is keeping us tied down to reality. Why do you think when someone proposes, the generic response is that the act is a dream come true? Philosophically speaking, dreams are a subconsious escape, so by saying something made a "dream come true" is implying that the intangible escape has entered reality if only for a brief moment.

The second question is: What parts of this idea is closely connected to you? In other words, what part of you is in your idea concept?

Now, the way I'm reading this question is that it is asking not so much what part of the idea is a part of me so much as what is my personal connection to the piece. How is this piece an extension of myself? Or am I just putting another part of my personality on display similar to my blog?

My knee-jerk reaction is that I'm displaying my obsessive nature with the cartoon world and cartoon genre. Knowing that the piece is about escapism in one sense, one could easily come to the conclusion that the part of me that is in the piece is a very sad or frustrated individual who wants to say things he can't, have things that aren't real, and do things that are impossible as far as he sees it. It's no secret to anyone who's read my blog that I have a self-defeating nature, especially when I over think. The drawings is an attempt to alter reality so that it is more satisfying, thereby escaping it. Now you run into a lot of dangers when you do that, most of which are being so absorbed in the "new" reality that you forget how the one you live in works. The Gamer Widows can testify to that.

But the question I have to ask myself now is that is my obsessiveness with cartoons and the want to have a better reality than the one I have now really the driving force behind this piece or is it still that initial frustration with school, my art, and myself in general like when I started out? Things change, and sometimes they change fast. Both with the support I've gotten from this project online as well as the questions I'm being asked, the entire feel of the project is starting to become blurred. I know what I'm doing; I know why I'm doing it outside of the obvious; I know what I'm continuing to do it even though I had several chances to just stop and let it die. But what is it that I'm doing in the art sense? Communicating an idea of escapism? Displaying another part of my personality in an artistic fashion a la the black canvas of emo art? Or am I just bullshitting myself now into thinking I'm doing art when in reality I'm just filing away sketches to be used later like Dr. Seuss did?

When I sit down and think about this question, I honestly don't know. And if A = B and B = C in a conversation of associated ideas with a logical train of critical thought with little to no tangents in the overall flow of the conversation (God, I've watched too many episodes of Numb3rs to the point where I'm sounding like Charlie now.), then by that logic I cannot answer the second question of what part I'm connected to in the idea of the project. Which begs the question of if I'm connected to the idea at all now.

This is one of those half-truths nobody likes hearing. Or half-lies depending on your outlook on life.

If escapism is the idea of the project, then no, I'm not personally connected to it in the same way Jason is connected to gender roles and a contemporary look on the imagery of the modern male homosexual coming from the background he is. However, that doesn't rule out escapism being a part of why I draw, produce RollerCoaster Tycoon firework shows, play Sam & Max: Freelance Police, browse for porn, or am a member of Gaia Online. Okay, maybe the last one isn't escapism, but it can be, so it makes the list.

The point is that I didn't pick the idea from the start because it was interesting. The idea was already a part of the process and somehow made its way to the forefront. How and why that is the case is beyond me. It was never my intent from the beginning so much as my original intent was to just overwhelm my viewer to the point where quantity would cancel out any questioning of concept if not spark a conversation of a potential concept behind the piece.

Can you make an art work without an artistic concept driving it? Yeah, I think you can. I mean, Jeff Koons made things the way he did because all he wanted to do was make people smile instead of think about why he made a stainless-steel replica of an Easter Bunny balloon you could get at Wal-Mart. It was Greenburg that came along and pretty much made the contemporary argument that Koons was making some kind of commentary of the consumerism culture at the time by pointing out a copyright protected character's shadow was used to make a mirror used to reflect the viewer's image inside a frame shaped like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. And I kind of like that approach if the artist didn't have a deep intent behind it. Have someone else try to explain it, and if it sounds good, don't argue with it. I can't say the same if I started out with the intent of escapism being the driving idea and wanting to display that as best I can. But then again, that idea is just to hard when you have nothing but a blank canvas in front of you and you are trying to decide what to paint.