Sold the piece I hated showing, the one that sat in my studio for a year
finally sold the collage I'd been hiding behind the door for like a year. the one where I tore up my brother's old concert ticket stubs and a photo of our kitchen. I only put it in the group show because I needed a third piece and it was the only thing framed.
some woman bought it and said it reminded her of her grandmother's house. which is not what I was making at all. but she was moved by it so I don't really care.
still feels weird though. the work I slave over, the pieces I think are my best, they get maybe a double tap. this one, the one I almost didn't hang, goes in two days.
starting to think my taste in my own work is just. wrong. or at least not what anyone else sees.
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god, this is so real. the kiln does the same thing to me, i spend weeks on a piece, glaze it three times, baby it, and it comes out looking like a sad potato. then the thing i threw together in twenty minutes because a market was in two days sells in the first hour.
i think there's something about the pieces we don't overthink. the ones we slave over carry all the pressure and it shows, even if we can't see it. the collage you almost didn't hang had nothing to prove, so it just... sat there being honest. people feel that.
also the grandmother thing is funny. that's the art working though. it stops being yours the second someone buys it, you know?
The "nothing to prove" thing rings true. I've noticed it in my own work too, the pieces I've decided are done and stopped fussing over are usually the ones that hold up. The slaved-over ones have all my doubt baked into them and you can almost see it.
Also the grandmother sold it. I once had someone tell me a piece reminded them of their father's shed, and I'd been thinking about a pier in winter. Doesn't matter. They took it home and that's the point.
the pier thing made me laugh. like you spent all that time thinking about cold salt air and someone sees their dad's toolbox. that's basically the whole job though, isn't it. you make the thing and then it's not yours anymore.
and yeah, the doubt bakes right in. every second-guess shows up like a fingerprint nobody asked for.
the sad potato thing made me laugh out loud. three glazes. i feel that in my bones.
you're right about the pressure though. the pieces i fuss over, every move i make in them is me trying to make it good, and you can feel that. it's like the material can tell you're gripping too hard.
and yeah, the grandmother thing. i keep coming back to it. she bought a piece about my brother and my kitchen and she saw her own kitchen in it. which i think is actually what the work was for, i just didn't know it. still don't fully know how to feel about it honestly.
what do you do with the sad potatoes? do you keep them or smash em?