To List or Not to List

On reading Tien's post, my first thought was, I never equated lists, or having lists, or the content of one's list with art/being an artist, (golly, gee, no) but she could have just dropped by and responded without the benefit of my occasional art/artist/craft blather, so my intentions might have been misconstrued. Or not. By the same token, I think it's a good idea to have a simple list or set of principles to check one's moves/progress/directions against; to me, this is traveling with a compass. Except in our case, we can adjust our directions, or fix the compass.

All the more reasons I wished my list was simpler, non-specific, "timeless" (to me), because I'm not heading to just, say, 1 Bridge Street, Nelson, New Zealand, but I'm finding out which way I'm going while I'm proceeding. In which case I agree with Tien's point of art being not what I do but who I am while I'm art-ing, though the way I've summarized it sounds too convenient, and there's probably more to what she's saying. But heck, it's 2AM, I can't sleep and my eyes are so dry!

I have to tell you, though, this past week the pendulum has swung completely the other way, and I've been in full craft/production mode. In the first instance it's out of necessity, (a week before Pat leaves now), but the Practical Me decided earlier in the week I can sit and think all I want but if I don't make, all this thinking is futile. (Does that make me a philosopher, though, and I am being facetious as a person who left college after 3.5 years rather than stick around to do two more courses to get a double major, the second being, you guessed it.) Put another way, the more I weave, the better the chances of ending up with something that might resemble art.

Right, I am confusing myself now. So I'll leave it to all of you to help me untangle my thoughts. Though I have this sneaky suspicion the different approaches and paths make for the variety in what we call art, and in that vein, I can even forgive installation art.

By the way, SSVE closed a little over two hours ago New Zealand time. Once again, I would like to thank all the participants and the visitors for a fun, genial project. (But the beauty of a virtual exhibit is, of course, we don't have to close it, so I'll keep my link on the side bar until the next thing comes along, yeah?)