Dear Working to Refine & Define,
I am trying, working, I guess, to find a 'poignant' shape. This is a thing that concerns me deeply- perhaps all artists are looking for a poignant shape. I want an emotional shape that is not defined already. Not a heart or a butterfly, or a hand. I want a shape that feels like something, but is not something. A shape with fullness, and flourish, or a shape with weight and sadness. Or a shape that evokes the moonlight. Or satisfaction. It should be rounded, some, I think, and maybe a bit awkward in proportion. I often end up with something kind of mounded. A half oval. But, I have to be careful not to end up with something too human breast like. Similarly, it can't be too much of a lemon or a pear or an apple. It can't look too much like a mushroom. Blobby, yes, but kind of symmetrical, I think, is what I want. It should be like a view of the sublime, this shape- an awing feel. Maybe bodypart-ish, but not specific. Biological looking.
I once used a shape that was a cross between a wire whisk and a light bulb. I used it enough in graduate school that an artist visiting my studio asked me what it was. I said I didn't know; just a shape. This fellow, then, warned me of the danger of using shapes without knowing what they were or where they came from.
Curious, isn't it? A warning like that? Was it that the gods would be angry that I used a thing that came from the unconscious? He went on to tell me that he had a shape like that, and he used it for years, until he recognized it as something in his studio- perhaps a light bulb?- and then he stopped using it immediately.
Now, I wish, like a wish sandwich, that I could tell you what that all meant. What lesson there was in his warning me about using shapes without... permission? Full knowledge? Clinical trials? I do not know. I know one thing, that if you are going to warn a person, you might take some care, do a little background check, because I think if you warn a person not to go over a certain fence, not to cross a line, they are not likely to obey if they aren't afraid of the undefined monster you say lives on the other side of the fence.
