CHASING A VISION

the new project

A new project completed. A wooden box, fifteen by nine inches, three inches deep. It is for hanging on a wall horizontally. Inside the box is black. The outside of the box is white. It makes a black rectangle framed with a half inch line of white. A string is stretched tight horizontally across the black rectangle half inch above center. I drilled a small hole the same diameter as the string in each side. Then, from the outside, drilled a larger hole on top of the small hole only half way through the wood. Tied a knot in one end of the string, tied  a length of thread to the other tip end of the string, put the thread through the eye of a needle, ran the needle through the hole on the left, then through the hole on the right and pulled the string through by the thread. Impossible to push the string through a hole the same size as the string. It needed an assist. The knot in the string held it in place on the left side. I could not tie a knot on the right side that would fit in the hole snugly enough to hold the string taut. I stuck a thumb tack into the back of the box and wrapped the string around it to hold the string. Dropped some wood glue into the outer hole at each end. By morning the glue was holding the string. I tied a knot in the string, using tweezers and a toothpick, tucked it into the hole, and with pocket knife filled the holes at either end with plastic wood, sanded it later and painted over it. The string shows no sign of how it is held in place at either end. 

african mask I call balance

I wrote here a few weeks ago I wanted my art to be simple as a line of string. Next thought, do something with a line of string. It's been in my head ever since. Now I have a vertical string and a horizontal string. I don't want to get into complex workings with the string. Don't even need to make any more with string. This seems about as simple a statement as I can make with one line of string. I'll not stop looking. Won't worry over it. Will let it come forward of its own will. Already have two more in process, not a string. Both I've been waiting for and the parts came together. Assembling the parts is all that's left to do. The purpose of every project is the word simple. Once a project in my mind's eye takes a turn toward complex, I throw out the idea. This does not apply to construction, the assembly of parts. I don't care how complex putting the parts together may be. The next one has enough complexity in the construction it inhibits me, makes me wait for the day I feel like jumping in and figuring out the details. It has minimal parts. Its visual impact will be powerful and what it has to say is powerful. Fairly complex construction, totally simple result. And I'm scared to dive into it. A lot of measuring is required. And it has to be exact. I'm not good at exact measuring. Like so many steps in constructing a project, everything I do is the first time. Necessary to figure out every detail unto completion. Therein, largely, lies the fun.

car door shadow

Another one I'm imaging on the drive-in theater screen inside my forehead is ready to go, but for the labor. It is all wood to be sanded carefully until it's right, parts fitted together, and two or three coats of tung oil. Much sanding I want to do by hand. Another aspect of the art process I like is so often the first time is the only chance, one time only. I think of it like Zen archery, put out the candle flame with one shot of an arrow. Almost is not close enough. This new one I'm imaging will have two such places that are one-time-only moments. It's right the first time or it's always wrong. No erasing it and trying it again. I recall a time painting portraits of fiddlers, I finished the bow and the bow hair last. Bow hair is a delicate thing to paint. One swipe of the brush from one end to where it touches the string, and one swipe from there to the tip of the bow. On one of Howard Joines I waited two months before I felt it in the day that this is the day to do it. When the time is right and I'm feeling right, the one swipe occurs in a second and comes out just right. It has to be. It is a white line in the foreground and the colors around it largely dark. It also has to be a white that doesn't jump in your face, nor retire to the background. Those moments scare the hell out of me. I believe it works out because I'm imaging it on my drive-in theater screen over and over for as long as it takes until I feel like I understand it. Something like learning the words to a song so well there are no stuttering moments on stage looking for the next word. It has to be flawless as well-practiced.

howard joines

Some years ago I read results of a study, possibly in the science section of Time or Newsweek, that a psychologist had commissioned two guys to throw a basketball at the hoop from the free-throw line. One was to practice thirty minutes a day throwing the ball for a month. The other was to practice by visualizing throwing the ball at the hoop thirty minutes a day. At the end of the month, both showed the same degree of improvement over how they threw the ball before. I recognized at the moment of reading the article that it works. I've taken it for my principle on how to do something like make the swipe for the bow hair in one gesture and it's right. I probably painted the bow hair a few thousand times in my mind's eye. When brush touched canvas, it flowed like a golf swing. The fiddle bows scared me more for each one I approached. The potential for ruining everything his high. And that's the place I like. Some people like to climb the face of a rock cliff with fingertips and toes or ride a kayak over a waterfall. I like to ride the edge of ruining something I've worked on irreversibly. This thrill of adventure is what making art projects satisfies in who I am. There is also the edge between clever and art. I don't see art in the clever. I see clever an element of a work of art, but not the goal that I think of as art, having that certain smile, ce je ne sais quoi. I don't know that I get there every time, but do believe I have touched it a few times. The only reason that motivates this series I'm engaged in is reaching for that I don't know what.

don't worry ~ be happy

meher baba

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SUCCESS WITHIN

All day today I have felt like a success. Certainly not money or attention success. I have blown my own mind, and that blows my mind. I have touched art for the first time in my life. This black box with the string hanging down, or standing up, whichever, I cannot stop looking at. I prefer to think of the string suspended. Now I'm thinking of other things to do with string, simple, like this one, simple down to just the string. I see one I want to do right now, but have to vision it first and I have only the conception. This is what I mean by success. I'm making things that are my own, that come from my own imagination, like composition did in the time of painting portraits of mountain musicians, but a step beyond. What I'm doing now grew out of boredom with what I called painting inside the lines. One day I said, no more coloring book art. From here on, somebody likes it, ok, somebody doesn't like it, ok. Indifferent to praise or blame, I set out find my own aesthetic besides reproducing faces and hands. I thought of gluing some cardboard to plywood and painting them different colors. Made two and they did not trip my trigger, but felt like it was leaning in a direction I liked. The next one, same arrangement of cardboard on plywood, all one color, yellow. I loved it. Made another yellow one, then a fire orange one, a black one with a faint purple haze in it, different compositions of the cardboard. Each one I liked better than the one before. It has been this way all along in this series, the black box being at least the thirtieth in the series, sometimes sculpture, sometimes to hang on a wall. I can't afford to make big outdoor sculptures, so I make small models of things I'd like to see big in a public space. This part ceases to matter, the model being the thing itself. 

A few friends have seen some of the new things, though I have no interest in anybody seeing them. I'm exploring my own aesthetic for myself and seeing where it goes. Actually, I don't want the distraction of attention. I like showing them to friends at the Daily Creative Practice group on facebook, and like seeing the new things by the different people there. I find it an inspiring bunch of people I've come into contact with. I'm the only one doing what I can only call minimalism. It is natural that I would want to go minimal. I remember seeing minimalism come in after abstract expressionism, seeming so radical, extreme after a period of expressionist splashings of color, though some, like Robert Ryman and Barnett Newman were like the seed of minimalism in abstract expressionism. I took to minimalism with a passion similar to how I took to punk rock after a period of what was then called "underground," and now called "classic," "Sixties" rock. Punk was refreshing and new, as was minimalism. At first, I was a bit ill at ease with the simplicity of it, in both cases. I saw a show at the Whitney (I think), in 1968 or 9, of a blend of Pop and minimalism. I was there to see the Pop, not much interested in minimalism, until I saw a green board about eight feet long leaning against a wall. Upon seeing that board, I felt like I got it. All other minimalist works I saw after that fell into place, I saw what they were doing. Since then, I've found a couple of good picture books of minimalism and a few by artists, Robert Mangold and Richard Serra. I'm drawn to the simplicity of minimalism, both visually and philosophically. In the time of abstract expressionism was a belief that went with it that abstraction was the apex of pure art, the ultimate in art. It was an arrogance. Then came minimalism and pop. There was something next. 

Abstractionists went nuts when pop came along, some calling it propaganda art, and minimalism wasn't even worth noting. Who cares about a plywood box? I never dreamed I'd be entering the minimalist arena. All the years of learning, enjoying, appreciating 20th Century art, I preferred to do figurative realism, because I live in the country and wanted to paint in relation to the culture I live in. I wanted to paint mountain people. I wanted to validate mountain people, say these people are worthy of note, worth remembering. The greatest gift from God in my life has been landing my parachute in the Blue Ridge, no more knowing where I was going than a dandelion seed in the wind. I'd only seen Doris Ullman photographs of Appalachian poverty. In the first months, I was afraid to walk anywhere, afraid I'd come up on a still and get shot. Pure fantasy. The Ullman portraits were the tail end of another time. I feel like I've made my contribution to my community by now, seven years with the radio show of regional music, four years a store that sold regional cds, five years a column in the local paper, involvement in this and that. A time came after the heart acted up that I felt like I've been given a stay of execution, not borrowed time, but a gift of time. I thought, this is my time. This is I dive in to find out who I am time. Time to explore my attitude toward life. Since Jr died, I felt like I've fulfilled my service to humanity give-back and may have been given extra time twice to advance my search. It is time I don't want to waste on distractions. And if I'm going to find my own art, which I felt I'd been creeping toward all the way along, reaching toward art like grabbing the air. 

Finally, I feel like in the black box with the string I have touched art. I'm not putting this up for debate, just reporting that within self I feel like I have, indeed, touched art. It's a quiet, humble feeling. It is something I feel like matters to no one but me, aint nobody's business but my own. It's mine to work with. Next, the step beyond this. Everything I've done in this series, I love it upon completion. It tells me I am in touch with my own personal aesthetic, informed by everything I've learned since birth. Every aesthetic consideration comes from my own visual sense. Feeling visually. No consideration of selling eliminates the money distraction. I am the only one it is necessary to please. At this moment, each one I do I love more than the one before. In October I'll show them in the Sparta library for a month. It will be a fun month. Few people will see them. Nearly everyone who sees them will see nothing. This guy's trying to pull my leg calling this shit art. And that's ok. What somebody else sees is neither here nor there for me. Like a Rorschach ink blot, it is what the individual sees. Now that I've reached an ideal, it's kind of like coming into a place I cannot transcend, but I can, and will. The significance of the black box for my own development is what comes next. It put me in a new zone. I even feel like this is worthy of Francis Picabia, an ideal for me. Dada post-dada. The Dadaists of 1915 and a few years after were the punk rockers of the art world. They did something that was new in their time. I am not. What I am doing has gone before, others did it first, a century ago. It is new to me, coming into dadaist way by way of minimalism is a perfectly natural progression for me as these are the periods of 20th Century art that appeal to me most. A long way of saying I feel successful within.  

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THE BLACK BOX

richard tuttle

Something is happening in the heavens this week. I am lit in creative inspiration manifesting in all kinds of ways. The part that has me most lit is painting a box black today. I drove to town to buy some black paint at Chris Davis's shop, loving the black it makes and the way it smooths brush strokes. It is paint for furniture. I needed a paint that would finish smooth without spraying it. The box, itself, is the work of art and I want the paint smooth. A flat black not too flat, an imperceptible bluish haze in the black. Just enough to take the dead out of the black. Black is a very sensitive color to work with. I prefer to make my blacks mixing alizarin crimson and thalo green. They make a vibrant black that comes to life. Black out of a tube is dead by comparison. The box I've had probably twenty years, one of those things picked up along the way --- I can do something with this --- that clutter the house and I can't get rid of it, it has such potential. I brought it out of its corner and propped it up on the leg of the table that holds the home entertainment units, to see it all the time. It is the place I put things I want to do something with. Look at it, get acquainted with its shape and imagine possibilities. The cedar board I glued the cardboard pyramids on leaned against a bookshelf for a year. This box has been out a few weeks. I swept cobwebs out of it and kept it in my mind's eye. It is a couple feet long and ten inches wide, two inches deep. 

richard tuttle

The box had a door, a wood frame and plexiglas. It was made to display something to do with pipes in the carpentry department at the old Dr Grabow pipe factory in Sparta. A friend was working there when they closed down and threw everything out. He brought several boxes and boards home. He gave me several of the boxes. I've used three of them before, that I can think of, in art projects. This box has been a puzzle. I was looking for something to put inside it, make a kind of 3-D abstract environment. It never seemed right. Nothing that came satisfied what I was looking for. Didn't know what it was, but knew I'd know it when I see it. Reminded myself, simple, repeatedly while looking for possibilities. A few days ago I saw I could take the door off. It would make a frame with the plexiglas I could use for something else. The box by itself was beautiful. Nicely made, simply made. The wood is soft, easy to sand. My friend Crystal has been buying old frames, cutting a piece of quarter inch plywood to fit inside the frame. She makes the frames beautiful with an antiquing process she uses and paints the board black with paint to draw on with chalk. She sells them to hang in the kitchen to chalk notes on. They're beautiful. I saw in her shop several of them leaning against the wall. I said, "You painting abstractions in black?" She explained their purpose. I was stunned by the beauty of a rectangle of black in a beautiful frame. I felt like I was seeing a show of black paintings.

richard tuttle

It stayed with me. A few weeks ago, possibly around the same day, I was writing about wanting my art to be simple as a line of string. From that moment on, I saw doing something with a piece of string in the front of my mind almost continually. I saw the box painted black, all of it. The sides of the box make a frame. The plywood bottom, now the back, it will hang vertically on a wall, is a black abstraction in a black frame. I put an eye-screw on the top, the underside of the frame about midway. Painted it black with the whole box today as soon as I arrived home from town. The eyescrew will suspend a line of string three feet long. It will hang straight down the middle of the black and the extra foot of string will rest on the inside of the bottom part of the frame, a two-inch shelf. Whatever shape the string takes in its squiggles is ok. It's ok even if it hangs over the edge. The string will hang down the middle, an inch from the back, and curve at the bottom making the squiggle. Thought about leaving the eye-screw silver, liking utilities to show, but it would distract. I wanted the white line to be it. To almost everyone who sees it, the string will be the subject, a piece of string. For my eye, the whole thing is the subject, the frame, the back and the string. The string is, nonetheless, the subject. It is the visualization of my will to find art expression simple as a line of string. There it is. The black amounts to a presentation of the white line. It is taking the most common, like cardboard, displaying its beauty against a surface that enhances its beauty. It's saying a string is a beautiful object seen separate from its utilitarian role that makes it too common to notice. 

richard tuttle

It is a way of saying an individual is a beautiful thing looked at with compassion as art. I have found living among American hillbillies, people looked down upon from everywhere in the country as too common for notice, people who live their lives true human beings. Working class people. Stay away from them. The gum chewers. They've not been to college, so they can't know anything. Mountain people are at about the bottom rung of status among white people. And mountain people don't care. They like being dismissed. The exurbanites look past them and don't see them, and that's just how the mountain people like it. When it gets down to the nitty-gritty of a collapsed economy, the mountain people know who the exurbanites will be turning to calling for help, because they don't know how to do anything. Can't work a chainsaw. Thirty-eight years of living among the most common people, from the point of view of flatlanders, I've seen deeply enough inside the culture and the people to know that of all the varieties of people I've known throughout my life, it is the mountain people I am glad I live among. It's something you have to be on the inside to see. It's a matter of living by the heart. Outsiders see it as emotion, but from the inside it is heart. I'm saying with the string that common has art in it too. If I were to be a novelist or playwright, I'd write about mountain people and put them in relation to the invasion of the flatlanders as a contrast to bring out their beauty, like the black pushes the white line of the string forward and says, behold beauty. I'll wait til morning to attach the string. The paint dries fast, though I want it to dry overnight before I handle it. I've spent the whole evening practicing waiting. 

richard tuttle

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