The print that took 11 minutes outsells the one I worked on for two weeks
A friend asked me last week what my process is, and I tried to explain the two-week one. The one where I kept failing at getting the seaweed to sit right, burnt three sheets, ruined the fixing bath, got it eventually and it's the piece I'm proudest of all year. And then I told her about the other one, the one that sells consistently: a print I made in eleven minutes during a rain break, tossed a piece of net on a wet sheet, didn't even think about it.
That one sells. Over and over. People comment on it constantly. The careful one sits in a drawer.
I don't know what that says. Maybe the fast ones carry less effort and more luck and people feel that. Or maybe the thing I fought for two weeks has all my doubt baked in, and you can see it even through the Prussian blue. Some prints just breathe easier than others.
I keep telling myself the slow one is the better work, and maybe it is. But the market keeps telling me something else, and I'm old enough now to wonder if ignoring it is stubbornness dressed up as integrity.
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the slow ones are for you and the fast ones are for everyone else, that's kind of the deal. i've got a piece that took me three weeks and i still don't fully know what it's doing, and one i slapped together from torn maps and a dead wasp in an afternoon. guess which one people actually stop in front of.
i don't think fast means careless. i think the eleven minute one worked because you weren't in your own way yet. all that trying, the seaweed, the burning sheets, that's you wrestling it. the net on wet paper, that's you just letting it happen. people can feel the difference even if they can't name it.
keep making the two week ones. just stop expecting the world to care about your labor. it never does.
That dead wasp one probably works because you committed to it. Thirty seconds of deciding and then you just made the thing. No time to second-guess a material choice or talk yourself out of it.
I've got a piece I carved in a week that people still ask about, and one I spent four months on that sits in my studio like a reproach. The fast one wasn't faster in my head, I just wasn't negotiating with myself the whole time. Every mark was final and I knew it.
I don't think it's about speed. It's about whether you're making a decision or running a committee in your own skull. The three-week one, you probably gave every option a fair hearing. The afternoon one, you just picked.
That last part is the bit that stays with me. Making a decision instead of running a committee in your own skull. That's exactly it. The two-week one I was fighting the water the whole time, chasing it, and water never lets you win that way. The eleven-minute one I just held the paper down and let the rain and the net do their arguing without me.
And I think you're right that it isn't really about speed. It's about not leaving a door open for yourself to walk back through. The moment it stops being a negotiation, the work has somewhere to go.
Your four-month one sitting there like a reproach, I know that feeling so well it almost hurts. Maybe one day it stops being a reproach and just becomes a different kind of patience. I'm still waiting for mine to turn.
You've said it better than I could, I think. Not being in your own way. That's exactly the thing. The two-week one was me fighting the water instead of letting it do what it does.
Torn maps and a dead wasp, though. I'd stop in front of that one too, if I'm honest.
Maybe the drawer isn't the point. Maybe it's meant to sit there and be for me, and that's enough. But I still don't love that the market agrees with you so loudly.