In my mind February is an entirely useless month unless one has a 2nd home in some sunny place. As for this year, you might as well ass the month of March to the list. I know the days past but my energy and sense of productivity went down the proverbial drain never to be recovered. Now it's nearly April and all I have to show for the past 3+ weeks is a bizarre painted construction sitting in pieces on my dining room table. There's a bit more to the story than that.
I agreed to participate in "Sisters and Brothers", a local exhibition sponsored by the Council on Developmental Disabilities and funded by the NEA. The premise was to pair 25 visual artists and/or visual arts professionals with 25 adult members of the commnity who are identified as having some sort of developmental challenge or disability as well as having some interest in making art. Once paired the 2 were to collaborate in developing a project concept and the execute it either together or by both addressing the same issue individually. No real propblem with any of this except for the fact that I was a late in the game invitee and there was exactly a month left to do all of this.
I asked to work with my young friend Andrew who could easily be the adult poster child for ADHD. I know him from being my yard helper last summer. He's an absolute charmer with a good deal of serious (albeit totally untrained) art talent. I knew it would be fun to do this with him while at the same time recognized how challenging it would probably be since he has absolutely no "preplan" or "edit" button and I tend to be fairly deliberate when it comes to collaboration. Little did I know how significant these differences would be!
We met on a Sunday afternoon and came up with a concept called "Confusion" and decided to create a house of cards type structure out of painted foamcore boards. We talked about graphics and color and Andrew said things in his mind often seemed muddled to him so I asked if brown was a good color representative for what he meant. He agreed that brown worked better than black as he certainly doesn't have a depresseive personality. Since we both embrace bright bold colors in our artwork we agreed to paint one side of the boards brown and to use primary and sceondary colors on the opposite sides. He took half the pieces and I took the others. We painted the brown sides together and then decided to use black markers to create graphic designs on the opposite sides, rather like stained glass windows. When we got back together several days later we were pleased enough with what each had drawn. At that point we decided to exchange boards so I could add the color to his designs and he would paint the color on mine. Once painted and dry we would cut up the boards and assemble them into a structural form.
All went just fine until it came time to cut the painted boards. I reealized immediately that handing Anderw a mat knife was handing him a one way ticket to the emergency Room. He was unable to stop playing with the retractable blade and I was incapable of acting like his mother telling him to put down the damn thing befoe he slit an artery. Eventually we agreed that his strength with the knife was an asset but hat he had to put it down at all other times. It was morbidly fascinating watching him play with the open blade with absolutely no sense of its danger potential. Then we both realized that the acrylic paint we had used was so much like plastic that it made cutting the painted boards a nightmare and seriously limited out ability to be more structurally creative in building the thing. I took the approach I learned from old world Italian carpenters who worked for my former father-in-law's lumber and millwork company - measure twice, 2 times better yet, and only cut once; that way no waste, no mistakes. Not Andrew. Once I ever hinted at where something needed to be cut he was raring to go, blade open and set to dive in. I knew our structure had to have enough balance to support itelf which meant some 90 degree angles at the base. Some of those cuts fell somewhat short of 90 degrees due to Andrew's impulsivity.
The whole thing was realy fascinating since my daughter was virtually and literally without any impulse control growing up. I was having maternal flashbacks each time Andrew was acting before his brain had the chance to engage an in any sort of editorial thought process. He was equally frustrated with me, I'm sure, for what must have seemed to him like my moving in nearly frozen slow motion. It was an amazing experience for both of us learning when to be assertive and when to let the other take the lead. Perfect example of that was when we got together after painting the graphice drawn by the other person. I had had a fabulous time just pushing paint around and following Andrew's lines and designs. The paint process itself was a delightful novelty for me. Andrew was somewhat less deliberate in his process, starting with mixing the paint. I shook those bottles of old paint for all they were worth having sat unused since May 2005. Andrew wasn't quite as aggressive as I in the shaking and mixing department with the result that my paint was solidly opaque while much of his looked not painted but like it had been filled in with markers. when we decided that several of the areas he had painted would work more successfully if they were repainted, Andrew completely balked at the iea of doing any additional painting.That experience for him was over. All he wanted to do was get to the part where we could chop up the boards and assemble them. His mind had already raced ahead to what he considered the exciting stuff having been forced to slow himself down and paint following MY design. Not a fun experience he was anxious to rpeat. Yet we both agreed there needed to be some repainting. Rather than insisting he fix what needed fixing becuase he hadn't mixed the paint properly the first time around, I just said I'd be happy to paint over the boards that needed more intense color and that I would then redraw the marker lines that separated each color from its neighbor. Not exactly "right" in my book for him not to have completed his task but it was apparent to me that he probably wouldn't have been able to impose that degree of structure on himself without really being bothererd and anxious. Ergo I repainted, I enjoyed the process and he was more than satisfied with the job I did. Mission accomplished.
all in all I thik I have invested about 25 hours in this project. The result isn't fabulous but it is an honest representation of what we set out to accomplish. It juxtoposed 2 diametrically opposite points of view and personality types engaged in trying to build a common ground without either of us sacrificing our individual identity. The exhibit at Louisville's Weber Gallery opens Fridday night April 1. Can't wait to see what the other pairs created.
