Saying Goodbye to Art

I have a love/hate relationship with my art (I suspect many artists do). If I made it, it must be marvelous, and I love it. Until I look at the same work through the lenses of new techniques or an improved skill set and then I want to toss all of it and start anew.

I have a few pieces of “student art” from my classes at SJSU that I still like a lot — even though they are taking up extra space I don’t have and they are not works that fit with my goals as an artist. I keep moving them from place to place in my studio and often they topple over as I have to push past them to get to something else. Clearly the solution is to say goodbye to this work that is valuable in that I learned techniques doing it, not in its quality as “great art.” Sigh.

I have a hard time getting rid of anything and for some reason these pieces have been especially hard to part with. Perhaps in the case of the paintings it is because I am not a painter and I worked much harder than the results reveal in making these canvases. In the case of the 3-D work I think it is the whimsical and political aspect. I like making political work and these make me smile when I look at them. Unfortunately they’re also the hardest to store.

So. This posting is to give them their send off.

First up, the “make a 3-D form out of shapes” assignment. By the time it was constructed it looked like some sort of dangerous device. Hence the label:

Keeping with the political and 3-D motif, the “How to Survive an Election Year” hat:

And on to the paintings. This painting is as basic as it gets, but it’s one of my favorites:

These last three are a series which include a jewelry box and a tablecloth I inherited from my grandmother and clearly show the influences of Mark Rothko, Magritte and Martin Puryear. With apologies to each of them:

And now that they are documented (for what my husband assures me will be the “early works” in my retrospective at the Met someday), I bid them farewell. Back to the studio where I am working on some new artists’ books in my newly found free space!

~Ginger

www.gingerburrell.com