Cameraphone image of an untitled Eva Hess watercolor hung at the St. Louis Art Museum

I knew Hesse’s name prior to last week, but I didn’t know anything about her work. Interestingly, I don’t like a lot of it from what I can tell, with the exception of the untitled 1968 watercolor to the right and a 1969 installation titled Contingent, that looks a lot like an installation I did as a college student. The brief at the museum talks about how the two dimensional work was an exploration in light leading up to Contingent.

Both my wife and I were drawn to a beauty within the painting. The shapes reminded me of farm fields adjacent to one another, something I’ve been attempting to incorporate into my own works in the last year or two. But I also took note of her layering. Penciled lines unabashedly bled through the delicate watercolor wash. Such transparency and layering is something that’s eluded my attempts to convey the sense of space a person experiences when supercells roll over alfalfa on the Plains.

Hesse’s painting seems to be just the kind of work I needed to see right now. I’ve started to work on some small paintings, but there was an aspect of the works that was lacking. I was limiting myself to one media too strictly — despite referring to myself as a mixed media sculptor. I realized this before seeing the Hesse artwork, but seeing her watercolor in essence gave definition to my realization.

Now let’s hope I can put some action to this inspiration in the near future!

Sometimes I wonder why I’m so drawn to clay when my inspiration is so ethereal.

It’s more difficult to represent — either realistically or abstractly — such wispy notions with a substance that turns to rock after you’re done with it. Painting allows you to create transparencies on a surface that much more accurately mimic the kinds of light I’m so attracted to in the case of thunderstorms over the prairie.

However, I still want to create a way to beautifully and imaginative portray said supercells with sculptural materials. I believe it can be done, if I’m able to give more time to the idea. Recently I’ve been doing a little bit of painting anyway, as a way to think through the problem. And because the clay around the house (almost all of it reclaim) was either too wet or too dry to work. And I haven’t found a new supplier yet, though have one in mind.

Now, if it weren’t for more work finding me (a good thing) and moving (another good thing) I would have in all likelihood made this deadline. Now that I’m working more and have a home of my own — just begging for walls in the basement and new paint and new kitchen cabinets — I’m trying to figure out how to adjust that goal.

Some of my recent work in the studio, playing around with different finishes.

I’d hoped to actually get my hands into some clay today but my stash is all too dry to work with. Oh well.

However, a question crept into my head as I worked yesterday: Am I a failure as an artist because I spend too much time and energy organizing? I ask this in jest (with a tinge of seriousness on the side). Am I not a serious artist because I spend so much time setting up a space as opposed to actually making work? Would a “real” artist have moved all of their artistic tools first and just left everything else at the old place to collect dust so they could work on their sculpture?

Nah, I don’t really think so (only a little bit do I think so). I have to believe that crafting a space in an organized fashion will result in a more productive studio.

Right?