I Am My Car and Other Terrifying Ideas

"Whooo!  Whooo!  Whooo!"  The owl outside my window was echoing the question ringing inside my head.  Self-doubts again!  Don't people ever get too old for those?  This time they are about ...well, self-doubts are always essentially about the same thing aren't they?  What is my place in the universe, who will I be in the future; how will I be remembered?  Somehow that owl just knew I was grappling with all the hairpin curves of that question, "Who, exactly, am I?"

TRANSPORTED, mixed media, ©Joy Kreves '12

This particular bout of doubting was instigated by my stupid old car that called it quits. Living in the suburbs as I do a car is a necessity.  Ugh.  I don't enjoy paying this much attention to cars.  I'd rather be transported on a magic settee; I suppose TRANSPORTED, above, is kind of a self-portrait. That's a new revelation for me.  The fact is, artists need cars to transport not only finished works, but supplies.  I've spent hours looking up safety records, cargo space dimensions, finding pictures of how much the wheel wells stick out into the cargo space, and the now all important mpg for various models.  I've interviewed friends about their own Art Car solutions.  I had a hard time making a decision whether to base my choice on mostly practical needs or to leave room for some fantasy.  In other words, choosing a vehicle turned into a marathon self-assessment.  "Am I really going to make any big pieces in the future that would need a truck/van/large SUV, or could I commit to a future of modest-sized (and more ecological) artworks?  What kind of artist will I be from now on?  How much do traction and safety matter to me?" 

Years ago my self-hypnosis teacher asserted that in dreams, one's car represented one's Self.  Here I've found myself, not dreaming, having to re-assess who I am, just in order to replace what one friend aptly described as "a container to move oneself from one place to another"!

As a kid I devoured biographies.  Reading about other people's lives made me wonder if my own would be half as interesting.  I hoped for an interesting life, though perhaps with less drama than those I read about. After all, I could see that dramatic excitement came with a hefty price tag of personal trauma.  Who wishes for that?  Well, I suppose some people do but I'm more risk-adverse.  I'm pretty practical. 

I suppose I have thus far gotten the life I wished up:  a fairly comfortable but not flashy or extravagant life, an interesting life without an excess of sorrows.  An examined life.  Luckily, I married someone intelligent but not unbalanced or bizarre the way it seems so many super-intelligent people are. We talk about The Big Questions over breakfast and dinner often enough that I don't feel swallowed up by the necessary but mundane activities of life.  My daughter is a "good kid" who didn't drag us through arguments over theft or drugs or any of the typical pitfalls of teen years.  I've led/am leading a pretty stable life.  It occurs to me that this is just not very good biographical material!  What an attention turn-off stability is! If my car choice reflects my life, well then, I suppose safety, reliability, and practicality must be part of the equation.  Apologies to my readers for the unexciting biographical material.

I'm feeling extra sensitive to labels of UNADVENTUROUS, or BORING lately, because I have found myself doing...gasp... needlepoint!  (Actually, I'm not sure if what I'm doing is needlepoint or cross-stitch, having embarqued upon the activity with no lessons whatsoever but I'll continue to call it that).  Needlepoint, that craft (still a dirty word in high art circles), that your grandmother or maybe even your great-grandmother did as a creative outlet after all her chores.  And that's not all:  I REALLY LIKE doing needlepoint!  There is something profoundly soothing about stitching little Xs over and over again to build up an image.  That's right, I'm not even doing needlepoint in a modern, abstract way!  I've been making needlepoint CHICKENS, for God's sake, and I'm not really young or hip enough to be making them ironically!

Work in progress, photo ©Joy Kreves '12

The artwork the chickens are meant to be part of began as an abstraction of a waterfall.  The natural shapes on the wood grain panel suggested water, but also the ragged shapes in the work of  painter Clyfford Still.  I planned to follow those ragged shapes, but to coat them out with smooth, slick colors suggestive of water, and leave it like that.  Raw wood contrasted with glossy blue.  I like abstract art.  I do.  It's just that Images keeps knocking at the door and I'm loathe to turn them away, loathe to rudely send them back out into the vast netherland of untethered signs and symbols.

Detail, right upper side of work in progress ©Joy Kreves '12

I cut the "window" hole out of the panel to penetrate the upper right surface space. That caused the main square panel to take on a house-like feel, and the "water"  to pour over and through it.  Something about a watershed?  Sorrows?  Looks like a drenching.  I'm not sure yet what the water is doing.  I spotted a tiny needlepoint rooster on some old napkins in my studio.  The colorful rooster feathers had an affinity for the brilliantly colored autumn leaves already pressed into one of my ceramic elements in the lower edge.  The rooster was tiny, and visually and conceptually lonely, however, so I "needed" to make another.  Well, you know two roosters would be unlikely to share a roost, and so two roosters suggested a tension I didn't want.  Therefore, I am making the 2nd bird a hen.   

Detail, top of work in progress ©Joy Kreves '12

The rooster and the hen are how this artwork informed me that its content is something about the empty nest that my husband and I are experiencing, our only daughter having gone back to college.  The poultry parents seem to be confronting the sudden space between them!  Great!  Now I see I am a chicken!  What a self-portrait!  This kind of thing is what makes creating art so terrifying.  You always are what you create, somehow, even though you might not know it consciously at the time.  Artists are always standing naked in front of the viewers and themselves.  So far, this unfinished artwork has shown me that I am a chicken experiencing an empty nest.  I can hardly wait for the next revelation.  No wonder so many artists talk technique in public.  At least that is wearing underwear.

Oh, this art is not finished yet, and could change drastically; I need to integrate the needlepoint textures into the main body of the piece and haven't resolved the position of the yarn/twines yet. I haven't resolved the edges at all, etc. etc. etc.  Creating artwork is a dialogue, and the dialogue often turns very personal.  Here I am in the flood of time, as a chicken, confronting my empty nest and all the self-doubts that situation inspires.  What now?  Where am I at in my life?  Am I ... BORING? What kind of car best represents and serves all that I am?  Assessment time seems to have arrived, courtesy of this particular flood of visiting images, alighting associations, and via my stupid old car. Magic Settee- -  get me out of here! 

Figurine Detail from TRANSPORTED, ©Joy Kreves