I keep every note my students write on the back of collages
Found a stack of them last night while reorganizing the studio. Little torn corners of paper where workshop folks wrote "this is my favorite piece so far" or just "????" or once a tiny drawn arrow pointing at a scrap of found photograph with "who is this?" in pencil.
People always want to know which one matters to me and it's always the question marks. "????" means they actually stopped. The compliments slide off, but a real question stays in you for weeks.
I keep them in a shoebox on the shelf next to the charcoal dust. Not sure why. It's not sentimental exactly, or maybe it is. They're the closest thing I have to a studio journal that isn't about me.
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Now that's the truest thing I've read in a long while. I keep scraps of fabric the same way, little pieces folks hand me or ones I pull out of an old dress that belonged to somebody's grandma. Folks ask why I'd hold onto a stained piece of cloth with nothing on it, and I can't always say.
But that part about the question marks, yes. A compliment is a door closing, nice and polite. A question means they opened it and stepped in. That's the whole difference right there. I'd keep that shoebox too, honey. That's not sentimental, that's evidence that somebody's mind got to moving because of what you made.
"a compliment is a door closing", yeah, that's exactly it, I never had words for it but that's the thing. I'm glad someone else keeps the odd scraps. Half the time I don't even know what to do with them, they just sit there until one day they're in something and I didn't even decide it happened.