As readers of my last blog entry know, I decided to put together a holiday treasure hunt for people in my community and I placed seven found object ornaments along a public trail in Redding (they have all been claimed at this point; I’ve been posting updates to my Holiday Treasure Hunt blog entry if you want to check it out). I thought about keeping one of these ornaments as a keepsake for the project but because I created them as a set, I found I couldn’t make myself break them up, that they all needed to be part of the treasure hunt.

 

So I decided to make one specially for Richard and me, as long as I was in the mood to make these things, and I ended up getting fancier on this one since I only had one to make. In fact, it progressed beyond “ornament” into small wall-hanging. As small and simple as it is, it’s amazing how much work goes into something like this. You need a large amount of material to choose from, because what works aesthetically in any particular piece is quite specific. The process involves an enormous amount of trial and error. You get an idea of something that might work, try it out, and then find out it’s the wrong size, color, shape, texture, value, style … whatever. So then you have to root around in all your stuff to find something else to try. The number of decisions to be made are practically infinite, so you have to use some self-discipline to keep from getting incapacitated by this and to use your intuition to establish some limits.

 

Even so, I have often found that when I’m close to finishing a piece, I get obsessed. I can’t stop thinking about it, working on it, or looking at it. And when I’m finally satisfied and it’s finished, I’m as excited as if I’d just gotten a new puppy. If it’s a commission, I hang it up in my home for awhile so that I can bear to let go of it when the time comes. One of my criteria for a finished piece is whether I can tear my eyes away from it—if I can, it’s not done. So they can be a little hard to let go of. (Not that everyone shares my aesthetic, of course.)

 

But others I’ve made to reside with Richard and me, like the one above. The night after I made it, I went to sleep excited about waking up and having a new piece of art in the house, and the fact that it would be the first time I got to see it in natural daylight since finishing it. I could feel it downstairs in the kitchen where I had hung it, generating all kinds of energy and good vibes. I’m thinking about maybe making this the first of a series, Goodwill Generators.