What are You Resisting?

The US's political climate today is fraught with all kinds of contested space. Many of us who are not economically in the top 1%, white, male, or cisgendered, may find ourselves fighting against policies intended to benefit anyone but us. As a result, many political activists have joined together to form "The Resistance" to stem the tide of what seems to be a politcal effort to regress back into the social policies of the 1950s. Many are fighting for basic necessities such as clean water (Flint, MI), healthcare, and equal rights like marriage or voting.

And some are fighting *against* the plutocracy's outrageous and evil notions-- such as the efforts to reduce the land in National Parks, drilling in the pristine Arctic, destroying sacred Indian ancestral burial lands, or to kill net neutrality.  Despite some progressives' lamentations that one can't just be "against" the conservative agenda, but that we must be "for" something, resistance is absolutely critical in this era so that we don't just slip into fascism. 

Sue Coe, You Consume Their Terror, 2011.

The question of "what are you resisting?" is a good one to ask when discussing political or social forces over which one needs to have a strategy. But it's also a good question for the artist to ask "what am I resisting within my practice? Is there something that I'm avoiding thinking about or doing?"

Are you resisting tackling a specific thing in your practice? What are the reasons? Are they valid reasons? Is your resistance a matter of not acquiring a skill set, or is it a resistance to navigating daunting logistics like money/ space/ or time?  Do you not enjoy a particular kind of subject matter because you have some kind of philosophical bias or emotional barrier to overcome to get there? 

My grad school mentors did a good job of breaking down our resistance to subject matter or physically challenging constraints like size or complexity. Inertia / laziness can be a mighty obstacle for some, but nothing can replace "ass in the seat time" for gaining important experience within one's practice. My own resistance against depicting babies or children, working large, and working without color, was broken down gradually so that I'm now able to ask myself whenever I feel like I'm dragging my feet about doing a particular thing, "against what and why am I being so stubborn?" From there I can analyze whether there are logistical problems for which I need to find a workable solution, lack of a particular skill set that needs to be acquired, or whether I'm experiencing some kind of bias in my thinking. And then I need to decide whether overcoming that obstacle is in the best interest of my sustained practice. (Usually the answer is yes).

Resistance to destructive social and political policies also provide the opportunity to make great art.

So what are you resisting?

So What's Wrong With Wanting to Do It All?

Not a thing.

Life is too damn short and, in my opinion, you only get one shot to do everything you can imagine.

Luckily, for we happy people who are called to make Art, everything we make or take on is an endeavor to express our unique position as artists and conduits of culture. Our ability to see beyond what already exists into the realm of "what could be" is our gift (or curse?) and the more avenues of expression we have, the more opportunities we have available to say what we need to say.

The past year for me has been... interesting, to say the least. I've been rediscovering my love of clay art, and it is reshaping my idea about what it means for me to be an artist in this life. Additionally, my serious foray into songwriting has opened up even more possibilities... I feel as if I'm in the most creative period of my life.

I did two shows this year, returning to ConGlomeration-- but as a potter; and was juried into a quirky local show called the Market of Curiosities. In addition to that, a local shop in York, PA, "Black Sheep Everything", has taken my pottery in on consignment and is selling the work. The reception I've received for it has been phenomenal and sales have been very good.

In learning more about search engine optimization, I changed the pottery site's name, rebranded it "Kest Pottery Studio" and finally bought a real domain name; you can take a look at it here:
www.kestpottery.com

Monsterpots!

Additionally, I'm exploring some older ideas that I'd generated when I was in my 20s: wall sculptures. I like to call them gargoyles because they remind me of the odd and amusing faces seen on cathedrals. In the past I'd sculpted them in clay that was only oven-dried, but it's more satisfying to fire them to a more permanent hardness. The storytelling aspect of the pieces is something I'd like to push further. Juxtapositions are interesting too:

Grumpy Gus and the noisy Crow

What is in store over the next year? We shall see. I already have a bunch of ideas to move beyond what I'm currently doing, with ambitions to combine my interest in 2-D storytelling with the clay art.

Generating new ideas to be able to sustain your art practice is the holy grail of being an artist. Older ideas carry over and are folded into the new; new materials can be a fresh way to explore older ideas and can generate entirely new work. I can't wait to see what comes of this in 2018!