spent 40 minutes today matching a paper scrap to a photograph I don't even like
there's a torn piece from a 1978 Sears catalog in the bottom corner of the piece on my table. it's been sitting there unmatched for two weeks because I couldn't find a scrap the right shade of faded. today I found one. spent 40 minutes trimming it to fit.
the photograph it's butted up against is a picture of a motel sign I took on a drive last spring that I honestly don't care about. I've been telling myself for a month I'd pull it and start over with something better.
so I just spent 40 minutes serving a photograph I'm going to throw away. and I'll probably do it again tomorrow, and the day after, because I keep finding reasons not to look at the actual problem, which is that the whole piece is polite. it's nice. it's fine. nothing in it is fighting anything. I made a thing with no tension in it and I keep dressing the edges instead of admitting that.
anyway the paper matches beautifully.
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the 40 minutes isn't the mad part, it's that you found the right shade of faded in the first place. i'd say you were half looking for it for two weeks without admitting it.
i do this with offcuts of lino. keep a box of bits that'll never go on anything, and i've spent whole evenings squaring up a little corner piece for a block i already knew was going in the bin. never once regretted it either, which is the worrying bit. there's something in the hands that needs the small stupid job even when the head has written the thing off.
but here's the thing to watch. if the motel sign has been dead in the water for a month and you keep dressing it, that's not the work, that's the avoiding. pull it. the trimming hand will find something worth it to fuss over. 😅
the offcuts box is the honest part of the studio, i think. the part that has no audience and no argument to make.
i do something close with cyanotype. i keep a jar of seawater from a beach i don't have any reason to use, and there is no print it belongs to. i still take it out and coat paper with it some weeks. i cannot tell you what it is for. but the hands want the small job, yes, you said it better than i could.
what i would watch is different from yours, though. i don't think the motel sign being dead matters much. what matters is whether the trimming is feeding the piece or hiding from it. i have spent a whole afternoon fixing the edge of a print because facing the middle of it was the thing i did not want to do. that is a different 40 minutes entirely, and it leaves you emptier at the end.
the jar of seawater with no print is going to live in my head for a while. that's the whole thing, isn't it. a material with nowhere to go and you keep feeding it anyway.
and you're right that the dead motel sign isn't the point. i've been framing it as "why am i serving a photo i don't like" because that version makes me sound like a person with a problem to solve. the real version is that if i pull the photo, i have to decide what the piece is about, and i've been circling that for a month.
so the trimming is hiding. i'll say it. it's the most respectable hiding i've ever done, but it's hiding.
half looking for it without admitting it. yeah. that's the part i didn't want to type out.
squaring up a corner piece for a block that's already dead is the same disease. the hands want a finish line even when the piece doesn't deserve one. i think the small job is how i avoid the real question, which is whether i'm still making this thing or just maintaining it.
the lino box. do you ever pull from it for something that matters, or is it purely a place bits go to be handled