drawing a day - week 2

drawing a day - week 2 Originally uploaded by dressform.

i kind of went all over the place this week... but that's really what the project is all about huh? you can see all of them [last weeks, this weeks, individually] here . i have one that took like 10 minutes and one that took 3 hours +. i wasn't really bargaining for that, but that goes into this whole thing i'm really interested in. the idea of work ethic - which has been wading around in my brain since helen molesworth [now curator at the wexner ] came and spoke to us in grad school about her show at the baltimore museum of art titled: work ethic .

here's the gist. how does time factor into an artmaking practice? especially when you start to consider performance or long term conceptual pieces [like this drawing a day - or self-portrait tuesday]. if i remember correctly molesworth sort of broke it down into 3 categories. [i really need to get the catalogue to that show! especially since i want to do a project in a class someday based on this idea]. 1. Artist as manual laborer & and own manager [the traditional mode of making where you create with your own hands. 2. Artist as manager - you set the task for someone else to complete [think Donald Judd calling up to have a plexiglas cube made, or Christo having the gates put up]. 3. Artist as experimentalist - where you need an audience to complete the piece. it cannot exist on its own.

what also fascinates me is the idea of time + labor = value. the longer you spend the better? if you labor over something intensely does it make it better? what if part of the labor is in your head, the thinking and planning. how do you account for that? sometimes it is the quick sketch on a napkin done w/ a sharpie that has that essence of amazement while the painting that you've spent 6 months on still looks like crap. i guess i'm saying that there is no magic formula. is that why we are compelled to keep going?? hmmmm