Joyful Creation

I had originally entitled this post "Liberation (from The Cosmos) Finally!!!" Then I preloaded the pictures that I intended to use with it and came away with unexpected feelings. I will start this post as I'd initially thought I would, with the whoa-is-me weariness of a project that grew and grew until it absorbed too much of my time and threatened to smother me. In true narcissistic fashion, I have installed the pictures that include me or my project at full power so that the detail is available with a click of your mouse, while reducing all the others.


These pictures show the pain that I am willing to endure for Art (spoken with a tongue-in-cheek pretentiousness). They also demonstrate a certain idiotic perseverance. I could have reduced the extent of the scratches on my hands and arms with the judicious and arms with the judicious use of masking tape. Though the amount of time that I spent working on The Cosmos since my last post exceeded 50 or 60 hours, I couldn't be bothered with spending less than an hour to make it safer.

One of the most satisfying parts of my project was the involvement of The Public. As I wrote in my December 3rd post, all objects except for the glass "stars" were made mostly by kidlets, but also by some adults, at the Sculpture Jammer week-end on October 3rd and 4th. I felt a strong commitment to include everything that they made in the finished Cosmos. Securing them to the window screen that I used to create "the fabric of The Cosmos," to use the title of Brian Greene's wonderful book on the subject, took eons of time. The attachment had to be strong enough to withstand my rugged handling as well as whatever nature will throw at it in its outdoor setting. Many pieces were complicated creations and had to be virtually sewn on to the screening. I spent about 3 1/2 hours trying to secure in a prominent position an "alien" that a woman spent at least 40 minutes making. The final position is indeed prominent, but the alien is irrevocably deformed. Were I ever to do a project like this again (which is to say "Were I ever to totally lose my mind"), I would know that the intended back should be secured first and the pieces in the front should go in last. There is a very good reason that I didn't plan to do this, yet the intended back (which is slightly smaller) ended up being the actual front. (Have I lost you all yet??) If I'd have known that this would happen, I would have had to spend significantly less time on the alien and the alien would not have gotten deformed. The (clickable) picture above and to the left is the intended front, while the (clickable) one to the right of it is what ended up being the front.

Another satisfying part of this experience is that my involvement was with the Sculpture Jammers, a group of other creative people who committed themselves to the larger project. What we intended to do was create a meditation space honoring "the elements." My idea in creating The Cosmos was not just to create the material aspect of stars and the like, but to also give a sense of unseen forces like gravitational and electromagnetic fields and the space-time continuum. The (clickable) picture is of Susandra, who helped me create the container (I'm sorry that I can't think of a better word) for The Cosmos. Susandra is a sculptress who works with welding metals; her knowledge and experience saved me numerous missteps. Other sculptures in the meditation space honor the sun, the moon, fire, and wind. The pictures are of these other pieces and of some of the artists who worked on them.
























The meditation space came about through the brainstorming and work of the group as a whole. After I loaded these pictures, I began to think of the experience of the people who would come upon our creation with no expectations of seeing expectations of seeing anything there. I smiled as I imagined this. Before this, I was satisfied but disappointed with what I and what we had created. I saw many flaws in The Cosmos. The meditation space looked ordinary to me, a result most probably of working the nitty gritty of it over the course of many months. When I imagined how this would look to passersby or people just out for some fun in the park where the project is now installed, I saw it with new eyes. And I smiled and felt joy.