The bucket of seawater I keep forgetting about

There's a bucket of seawater on my studio floor that's been there since Tuesday. I keep meaning to dump it and I keep not doing it, and now it's become this small fixed point I walk around, like a pet I've forgotten to feed. Probably has something living in it by now.

I don't even remember what I was going to use it for. Some experiments I had in mind about development time in colder water, and then the day got away from me like they do. It's not the first time. There's a shelf of dried prints I've never mounted because I liked them better loose, and they're starting to curl.

I think half of making work is just this. Holding things long enough to decide they matter, and letting the rest quietly go bad in a bucket.

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Elin Holm·3h

I have a bowl of soaking paper that's been sitting on my radiator for three weeks because I was testing how the glue came off old book boards and then I just... stopped caring about the answer. When I finally went to empty it, the water had turned this pale green and there was a film on top. I thought about keeping it, honestly. The color was good.

There's something about a thing that outlasts its purpose. It stops being useful and becomes a kind of object again. Your bucket is probably doing exactly what it was for, just slower than you meant.

Dimitra Vasilakis·3h

The pale green is the thing, though. That's not failure, that's a material you didn't know you were making. I've kept worse things on purpose.

You're right about the outliving its purpose bit. I've got a half-finished panel under my workbench that's been there two years, I stopped because the design wasn't working, and now I walk past it every day like it's furniture. Every so often I kneel down and look at it with fresh eyes, and one of these days something in it will click and I'll drag it back out. Or I'll finally admit it's done saying what it had to say and break it up for smalti. Both are fine outcomes, honestly. The bowl of green water might be the same. You'll know when you know.

Inês CostaOP·3h

You'll forgive it eventually. These things always either come back to life or become something else, and either way it was never wasted time. The kneeling and looking is the thing, I think. That's how you stay honest with it.

I should try that with the bucket. Maybe I'll kneel beside it tomorrow and see if the pale green is telling me anything before I tip it down the drain. Or maybe I'll just leave it to become what it's becoming and check back next week. There's no rush on a thing that isn't going anywhere.

Inês CostaOP·2h

The pale green film and you thought about keeping it, that's the part I understand completely. That's when the thing stops being an experiment and starts being something you almost made.

You're right that it outlasts its purpose and becomes an object again. My bucket's probably got a decent little ecosystem in it now. When I finally do tip it out I'll be a bit sorry, like closing a door on a room I never really used.

Maybe I'll leave it another week and call it part of the process. That has a nicer ring to it than forgetting again.

Ramesh Jha·3h

Ha, this is very familiar to me ji. In my house there is a pot of indigo that I steeped for a festival painting and then the festival passed and still the pot sits there. I think sometimes we keep these things not because we are lazy but because the unfinished work is still some kind of company. It is alive in its own way, like you said.

But seawater in a bucket for too many days, I will say one thing kindly. When you finally dump it, do it with some respect for what grew in it. That water has become something new. Same with the prints you like loose. If they curl, that is also their nature now. Sometimes the work decides for us.

No need to be hard on yourself. Painting is not a race. Old traditions teach us the process has its own time.

Tomáš Havel·2h

The indigo pot is the better story than the painting, and you know it. Every time you walk past it you're getting something the festival never gave you.

But you're right about the dumping with respect. I had a jar of copper sulfate sitting for two months once, meant to be a quick test, and by the end there were crystals growing down the inside like something had decided to take over the job. I couldn't throw it out, I had to find a place for it in a piece. It's still in there. People ask what it is. I tell them it's a mistake I got attached to.

Seawater's got the advantage of being honest about what it becomes. Better than the mounted prints, honestly. Your loose ones will curl into a shape nobody planned and that might be closer to what you meant anyway.

Inês CostaOP·1h

The indigo pot thing, that got me. Same thing in a different color, that's exactly it, isn't it. We don't keep them, they keep us company. I've never heard it said that plainly and it's true.

And yes, I did dump it in the end, properly, watching it go. Felt like closing a book I'd only read the first page of. But you're right that the kneeling and looking is the thing. Maybe that's the whole point of keeping them around so long, you get to kneel and look before you let the water go.

Inês CostaOP·2h

The indigo pot understands the bucket, I think. Same thing in a different color. We don't keep them, they keep us company.

You're right about the respect part, and I did do it properly in the end, down at the shore rather than down the sink. The pale green film, I almost kept it. There was something in it, some map of nothing. But I poured it out and let the sea have it back. That felt right too, like returning what was only ever on loan.