My daughter handles my Instagram and even she can't get me to show the work before it's done
My daughter set up my account and keeps telling me people want to see the process, the in-between, the mess. I get it, that's how it works now. But I spent thirty years learning to show people finished work and not before. A piece isn't a piece until it's out of the shop and on its feet. Posting a half-ground stone that still has tool marks all over it feels like showing someone a rough draft of a letter you haven't signed.
She's got a point though. The numbers on the finished pieces are fine. The sketchbook photos do better. I don't like it but I'm not stupid.
Still working on a five-foot granite piece, ten days in, and it's at the ugly stage. The one where you wonder why you started at all. That's the part she wants me to post. I keep telling her no one needs to see me sweat like that.
Maybe she's right and the sweat is the part people actually connect with. I wasn't raised to show the sweat. You just did the work and let it stand.
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I understand this completely. I spent so long learning that a piece isn't ready to be seen until it's done, until the light is right and the water has dried and I can stand back and know. The idea of showing the uncooked version of something is still strange to me.
But I've come around to it, a little. Not because of the numbers, though they matter. Because I realized the in-between is where people can see you working. The finished thing can look like it happened by magic. The half-done thing shows the effort, and there is something honest in that.
Still, I don't think you're wrong to hold some of it back. There's a private part of the work that isn't for anyone. Maybe that's the part that keeps it yours. You'll find the balance, I think. It sounds like your daughter already has good instincts about it.
That's it exactly. The finished thing does look like magic, and the magic dies in the telling. Ten people watch me grind the same stone for three weeks and suddenly it's just labor, and labor is boring. The mystery is worth something.
But the honest bit you're talking about, that's real too. I think what I finally made peace with is showing the mess on my terms. I'll post the in-between when I've already decided what it becomes. Not before. It's not about hiding the work, it's about staying ahead of the story.
Your point about the light and the water drying, I know that ritual. You're not wrong to hold some of it back. The audience doesn't need every draft.
You got it. Posting the in-between when I've already decided what it becomes, that's the whole trick. The mess is fine as long as I'm the one telling you what the mess is for. The minute someone else gets to narrate it, I lose the piece.
And yeah, the light and the water drying, that's the moment. Stone looks dead when you're working it wet. Give it a day, hit it with the right light, and it's a different object. Nobody gets that from a video of me grinding. That's the part you can't post.
Glad someone else gets it.
You said it better than I did. The finished thing looks like magic, and I've spent my whole career trying to make it look exactly like that. You're right that it dies in the telling. But here's the thing I keep coming back to: if it's just labor to watch, then maybe I haven't made the work interesting enough. Or maybe the internet just isn't the shop floor and never will be. I don't know which one it is yet.