Musing: April 2011
“I haven’t failed; I have found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” Thomas Alva Edison
Failure. Not a word any of us likes, but it is an important word nonetheless. Our failures as artists are important. Our failures mean we tried, we searched and we risked something. It can also mean we have a sense of discernment; we can look at our work either as individual pieces or as an entire project and discover success or failure.
If we can’t acknowledge failure then we can’t truly recognize success. As artists we should know when something works and meets our ideals or when something fails to meet those standards. Those who don’t create failures are those who continue to recreate what has already been successful for them. They quit growing and maturing as artists. Not all projects succeed. Some fail, some never begin, some disappoint, and some need re-thinking.
We had a lot of snow this winter and it stayed around. When driveways were shoveled, parking lots cleared and streets plowed the snow became heaped into great piles. The pile at the end of my driveway was almost as tall as the garage. The ones in parking lots were often twenty feet or taller! I wanted to photograph all this snow in a different way. These huge piles of snow interested me because they were structures built by man out of snow, temporary, fleeting, evolving. I set out to find the beauty and uniqueness in these structures, to photograph Maine-artica.
I decided to use my 8×10 and 5×7 pinhole cameras. Both of these are extremely wide-angle cameras so they would enhance the size and scale of the “bergs” and their extreme depth of field would provide plenty of sharpness for the object to be recognizable. In addition they would be easy to use on cold winter days. I spent January and February photographing the “icebergs” and ice trails in the area. The result: after shooting and processing nearly one hundred sheets of film, little of it excited me. I haven’t found that signature image that informs me where the project is going or even if the idea was working visually. I went into this project with some ideas of what I wanted the images to be. However, the images I created didn’t match my preconceived ideas or my expectations. Is this project a failure or does it need re-thinking?
I also worked on two other projects recently. Last fall I spent a week in western New York photographing and scouting along the Erie Canal, photographing along the remains of the original Erie Canal as well as the new canal from Lockport to Seneca Falls. I went on this trip with no expectations, just curious about what I would find. After processing the film I was excited by some of the images I had made. I am determined to continue shooting along the canal and to lead a workshop there in October of 2012. It is going to be a great workshop location, so make a note to join me!
In addition to the Maine-artica project I wanted to find a project I could shoot indoors this winter. I began thinking about the artists’ studios I photographed in my visits to Orkney and it dawned on me that we have a wealth of artists here in Maine, too. I decided to explore the places where creativity lives, where art is made, where artists work. I have gone into each studio without expectations or a plan, simply observing and looking for what makes each studio, art form, and artist unique. One artist noted, “It’s like letting you inside my head; a frightening thing.” Jewelers, sculptors, paper artists, metalsmiths, felt artists, potters and clay artists have let me spend a few hours with my cameras in their working space this winter. It has been a wonderful experience for me and it has kept me making new work through the dark of another Maine winter. For now, I have no idea where it will lead me.
Three projects “in process,” one of which didn’t meet my expectations. Have I failed, as in “abandon the project” or do I set about re-thinking this project through? Perhaps, to paraphrase Thomas Edison, “I made 100 images that didn’t work.” I have all summer to ponder this and be ready to search for Maine-artica when the snow flies again next winter.
Have a great spring!
Tillman