Well, here I am, back to using what is quite possibly the cheapest possible "sketchbook" in the world--the school writing tablets you get at discount stores for a dollar (sometimes 50 cents) a piece. The lousiest type of paper outside of newsprint and whatever they use to wrap dead cod at the fish store.
Recently, I treated myself to a couple of really nice Moleskin watercolor books. But I just can't get myself to use them with the same anything-goes spirit that I use these throwaway tablets.
It's not that I don't feel that I deserve to use fine materials, that I'm somehow unworthy, or that I'm afraid to "ruin" them with anything less than perfection. Okay, there is that, but it's not only that.
It's not that I grew up in a single-parent household where money was tight and we were taught to keep anything we did have in as pristine and unused a condition as possible for as long as possible (--just try doing that with a piece of paper!) Well, this is true, too, but it's not the all of it, either.
Maybe I don't respect myself enough as an artist, or take myself or my work seriously. But I do, maybe even too much so.
So what is the problem? What is the antagonism between me and fine materials?
Maybe, I've begun to wonder, if the problem isn't a complicated combination of all of the above and the equation somehow resolves itself in this way: that when I use fine archival papers I feel that I need to be certain that I have fine, archival stuff to put on it. And I don't. Or I might. But I can never know until after the work is done.
Sometimes, of course, I know beforehand: like when I'm pasting library receipts or recipes into my sketchbook. Or pressing lipstick prints onto the pages. Or making quick sketches of stuff I ate. Or jotting down lists of things I did on this or that particular day, or phone numbers I need to remember, or advertising slogans that caught my attention. Quotes from authors I've read, sketches of authors I'm reading, pictures cut out of magazines...none of this is "archival quality" work and I don't feel right putting it on archival quality paper. Doing so, I feel like I have to talk myself into the idea that I'm doing something important, archivally important. Something meant to last, to stand the test of time. And I'm not. Nor do I have to be.
Using crappy paper, I'm making a sort of Declaration of Creative Independence. I'm saying: "I'm not doing anything important with a capital 'I'. I'm not doing anything for the gallery, the museum, for Posterity. I'm taking myself seriously; I'm taking my "now" seriously, and nothing more. I'm enforcing my freedom to do what interests me in the moment because whatever I'm doing this moment is guaranteed not to last much longer on the recycled garbage I'm creating upon. I'm thinking now of the Chinese poet who sat at the back of a drifting boat writing verses. As each one was finished, he put a match to it and set the paper to burn on the river.
I've come to understand that this is the best way I can enforce honesty and integrity into my work and my life. The best way I can make my life and my work one--and make of their union an end in itself which, as I've come to see it, would constitute at least one good reason for living.
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