Lost my Muse
So I’ve been thinking about what’s next: what project to do, something creative outside of work. Last year I put two books to bed, at least in so much as they are “done” if still partly works in progress while time goes by. “The Muse” sits here on the shelf, with me not having the time or motivation to seek out a publisher after the first try. And “Imagining Shakespeare” is in legal limbo awaiting some discussions with Actor’s Equity so we can get permission to move forward with it. Boring.
Work is unrelenting and we’re in one of those cycles where the work tends to the mechanical. The creative is temporarily on hold and most of the bold ideas get shot down before they even take flight.
Sometimes you do work because it is in you and just needs to come out, sometimes you do it because of the conversations you have with other people and the spark of inspiration that happens. My personal work has never been very collaborative. I usually don’t understand what I’m doing until I’m doing it, and with work being mostly collaborative, it’s a nice break to do your own thinking.
Inspiration comes in many forms. I’ve had it come to me in the classic form of a person, a muse, in the past. There’s a risk to any new relationship which invigorates and tunes the mind. A muse has to be generous: generous with time, and concentration. A muse is someone who invests in you as you invest in them. A rare kind of relationship.
As a child, I had my muses in nature. Just being outside in a field was enough. As an adult, it’s the people in my life. And it gets hard to find those people, and to be with them, and to take the time to know something about what is ticking in them and between you.
So what’s with the pomegranate in the image? I’ve always liked the poetic symbolism of the pomegranate, that ancient fruit so revered in classical times and mostly forgotten now except as an anti-oxidant. It’s a little bizarre, and strange to eat, but so very good. This photo I took a year ago working on the Muse book sticks with me because the fruit has gone over, and is drying out and slightly dessicated, and reminds me of the insides of an old clock. It’s a symbol for the state of mind I find myself in right now.
What’s next? I don’t know. Maybe it will come to me. In the meantime, read this nice post on the creative process from LA artist COOP.
Buy the Muse!
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“Muse” wins an American Graphic Design Award!
“Muse” won an American Graphic Design Award from GDUSA. Cool!
Visit the Muse
You can visit the Muse on flickr
She misses you….
What is this "Muse" project?
“Muse” is a 133 page graphic novel, a story told in images and words. This is not a comic book, but more of an illustrated journey. The story is about the experiences of a woman, who is a muse in the classic sense: an immortal goddess who inspires artists and writers. She does not know this. The book is about her journey through time and multiple experiences and relationships as she comes to understand her existence and struggles to change it.
The story is told in words embedded in the images, each of which is made of many layers of photographs, documents, and textures. The images are not necessarily literal but are intended to convey the experience that she is within both physically and metaphorically or spiritually.
The book is under consideration by publishers now. In the event that it is picked up, it will hopefully be in all the normal channels. If that does not occur, look back for information about how to get a copy once I get it printed. I expect to have a limited number of first, essentially hand-made editions soon.
Roots of the Muse
I’ve been explaining to a lot of people about the roots of the “Muse” book project that I’ve been working on the last 18 months or so. I thought I would jot down the story while it is still fresh in my mind.
Back the winter before last, I was feeling creatively stifled and was looking around for a project that I could do on the side of my daily work that would get things moving. I found this great site Aeclectic Tarot where the author has compiled thousands of tarot designs. It’s a visual feast, and I thought that I would design a deck of cards. There is a great story element in the cards and a surreal quality to the visuals that appealed to me and the way I work and see things.
I played around with the cards a bit, and asked my friend (and muse) actress Catherine Taylor-Williams to help me out by modeling a bit. The results were mixed. I quickly discovered that the rules of Tarot imagery were quite restrictive, and trying to satisfy them was not liberating me much.
But in the process, I had toyed around with the idea that there would be a story that went along with the card designs. I had laid out some pages and used the ibook page size as a format with having the book comped up that way. The pages are letter size, horizontal oriented. In Apeture, you can create a full-bleed panoramic spread of 8.5×22 inches and I started playing around with images of these dimensions.
The panoramic layout is a joy to work with in a composite. It’s kind of cinematic. Over the course of about 4 weekends, a few hours in the afternoons, I compiled a catalog in ivewmedia pro (my preferred image cataloging program) of about 2,500 images from the 300K that I have on the server. I picked images from every part of my life, travel, work, personal, everything. Whatever seemed to stand out.
I started building composites in photoshop. I would open 6 new documents at a time and bring elements into the layouts. I gave myself a 3 strikes and you’re out rule. If it took more than 3 attempts to make the layer “work” I chucked it and did something else. In a few hours I had some 20-30 composites done.
I started to feel a theme, and subsequent compositions became more focused. After I had about 50 done, I sent the files in to Apple and made my first book. This was just a sequence of images that I put in order with nothing more than intuition and chance.
Having something bound and printed changes its qualities. It becomes more “real”. I showed the book around and it was interesting to see that while some people “got it” others were baffled without a text to lead them. This really got me thinking. How do you make a book with this kind of visual experience and bring the structure of text and story to it?
Within this moment, I had an epiphany, one of the few I can say that I have ever had. There is a small spring pond in the wooded park up behind my house that I have walked by for years. As I was working on the tarot project I kept imagining an image of someone in the pond. It came to be October, and the leaves started to turn and fall, and I just up and asked Catherine if she would go into the pond (she’s Canadian, so she’s tougher than the average model). She said yes. So we went up early one morning, she stripped down to a slip and started in. Unbeknownst to us, the pond dropped off quickly. As she stepped in, she sort of slipped and was instantly in the deep water. This was a surprise, but once she caught her breath she was ok. She swam out to the center of the pond (me snapping from the shore all the while). Out in the middle there were some weeds and lily pads. She swam out among these and for a moment, she was tangled up in them. It was scary, and she panicked a little, and I thought for a moment that I would be jumping in to help her. But the moment passed, Catherine recovered, we shot some pictures, dried off and went home.
But that moment of panic stuck with me. I started thinking about the root idea of the Muse in art; that notion of a godlike being that inspires artists to greater deeds. It occurred to me that Catherine’s willingness to put herself at risk was based on no particular reward other than helping me achieve my vision. It’s a strangely self-sacrificing kind of attitude, and one that I had encountered before, in the willingness of others to contribute to my creative vision. I imagined a “what if” scenario, where there actually was a real muse, a spirit that might inhabit a person for some period of time, creating this attitude, causing a person to “become” inspiration itself.
In any case, this event and these thoughts led to the creation of the story within my images. I imagine not the life of the artist, inspired by the muse, but the life of the Muse, an immortal being endlessly cycling through the mortal world, “charged” with the task of being inspiration. The book is her existence, a dreamlike chaos of memory and experience. Being immortal, I figured, would be a confusing state of mind, especially if you aren’t allowed to be entirely aware of it.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Muse at the Berkshire Museum II
The Museum reception was great and a lot of people had nice things to say about the Muse prints. Thanks to Jason Houston for taking this nice photo of me there. Make sure to get there before mid-june (2007, it’s closed now) because that’s when it comes down.
The Show is Open
The show is open at the Berkshire Museum. I think it looks great. Make sure to get up there right away as it is only up for a month. Kudos to the Museum and the folks at Berkshire Living for coordinating this whole thing. It looks great. All I can say is that Will Wendt has a lot of really good looking friends.The Berkshire Museum
Framing up for the show
The prints are almost done framing. Ron came down to stretch them and has done a great job. Now, how to get them to the museum?
A lot of people are asking about the show. The show opens on May 12th. There’s no “official” opening that day, but on the evening of the 19th during the annual Wine Auction at the museum the show has its official reception, but you need a fancy ticket to get in. On May 31st Berkshire Living will be hosting a reception for the artists and friends sometime in the evening. More details to come.
Onward and Upward!
Wow! What a response. To all of you have ordered your books a great big thank you! If you haven’t ordered yours yet (click on the button over there in the left column) time is running out of the very first limited edition. Thanks!
The new books are here!
40 perfect-bound copies of “Muse” have arrived from Book1One, a book printer in Rochester, NY. They did a great job and it’s nice to have these copies in time for the Museum show. One is winging its way fedex to Chronicle Books.
Muse Flickr set
I’ve posted the Muse pages to flickr. It’s not ideal (the text is hard to read) but I wanted the pages to be in a more public place.
MUSE at the Berkshire Museum
4 very large prints from the book “Muse” will be on display at the Berkshire Museum as part of “The Photographers of Berkshire Living” exhibit on May 18-June 1, 2007. I’ll also have a copy of the book that people can browse through and may have a limited number of copies for sale. The Berkshire Museum.
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