I’ve known a fair number of so-called “creative” people in my time — I consider myself one of them — and there is one thing that we all seem to have in common: we’re always reaching, unsuccessfully, for control.
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Despite two decades behind a computer (I’m old enough to remember Photoshop 1.0!) I still enjoy getting my hands dirty whenever I can with the kinds of art that don’t involve a mouse and a keyboard.
A big part of the appeal for me of non-digital art is the chemistry of it all: the paints and pigments, chalks and charcoals, glues and glazes. I do a lot of collage and assemblage1, not so much because I feel that I can express myself better with glue and wire than with paint, but because I get to play around with so many different types of stuff.
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I do a lot of photography, but like many people with artistic pretensions I also enjoy working with other media from time to time.
I suppose my favorite plastic medium is assemblage, pulling together odds and ends to make a whole that is (hopefully) greater than the sum of its parts — a useful way, incidentally, to use up the bits of rusty metal and torn cardboard and odd pieces of broken glass that accumulate in my “stuff I might need someday” box out on the porch. I enjoy the purely mechanical aspect of attaching one thing to another, in ways that were never intended by the original manufacturer, to achieve an effect, or make a statement.
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