Friday, January 30

gracefuller than me?

I just finished a series of black pieces called "Everything Went Black." I am super pleased with how a few of them turned out. When I focus on my work in the proper way, just doing what I do, every once in a while I look up from my work and think "how did I do that?"
This dress
came out so solid, so graceful, so coherent, so self-contained in a way I love.

I don't mention this to brag. I mention it because I am continually baffled at how this art thing works. I feel like a fumbling baffoon - awkward, bumbly, full of neurotic striving, with a constant chant (sometimes whispering, sometimes pounding loud, accompanied by tablas and backup singers) of FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE always playing in the background. But somehow I made this very confident, graceful, standing-up-straight dress.

Can I make something that has qualities I lack? Or does my creating them mean that I have all those things in me somewhere?