Jewelry vs. Graphics
February 25, 2010
In a former life, I’d fill sketchbooks within a matter of days. Most of them are still around, though looking through them is unpleasant to say the least.
Surrealist overtones were present in most of the work, as Dali was (and still is) one of my “Big 3″ of inspirational artists (the others are Jim Henson and Shel Silverstein). The ability to package an extreme personality in an irresistibly cool way was always something I aspired to. Unfortunately no such thing was within my ability, and most of my pieces had the unintended effect of inducing furrowed brows and long term relationships with school administrators.
During my brief yet memorable adventures at the prestigious Cheshire Academy in Connecticut, the art teacher (can’t recall his name) was a temperamental character who understood the relevance of 50 people drawing the same frickin’ basket of fruit. He told me something that pieced together every intentionally artistic experience up to that point in my life: everything is a self portrait.
Whoa.
I drew for a few more years with this in mind, and became decreasingly comfortable with the figurative mirror emerging on every page. Looking at the work objectively, the reasons for being escorted on to the short bus as a teenager became more apparent to me. After awhile, everything besides technical sketches and schematics faded into memory.
With little effort, an observer see right through the artist whether it is the artist’s intent or not. A person can’t hide from anyone (including themselves) in drawings and paintings. Having jedi-like powers when it comes to repression, I shifted focus to less telling mediums and evolved into a jeweler.
