Art — an unbalanced process

I’m looking forward to tomorrow evening. We’ve been invited to an event at our favorite local art gallery, where one of our favorite local artists is being honored. A lifetime of work and dedication to the visual arts community.

Our time at the gallery will be spent visiting with other artist friends, who are eager to show us their new work. We’ll have the opportunity to tour their studio spaces, rooms filled with dozens of ideas in various stages of development. Countless hours of concept building, technique perfecting and trial and error will be on display, but most of us will only glance. Hours of work condensed down to a few seconds of appreciation.

As a musical artist, I’m no stranger to dedicated practice, long days devoted to working out one or two important phrases or melodies. Hard work. Exhausting, yet exhilarating. Time consuming, yet life giving.

How easily I’ve slipped away from this practicing life with the advent of Parkinson’s Disease. So many other concerns that center around my management of the ailment. Limited energy. Compromised dexterity. Weakening muscles.

I still appreciate the process, but there’s nothing quite like living it on a daily basis. Since my diagnosis, I have channeled my artistic powers in the direction of writing. Where I used to shape melodies, I now work out sentence contours. What once was balance between melody and harmony has now become words about balance. Structure and form have slightly different meanings now as I trade one keyboard for another. My one hour of writing per day helps me feel like an artist again, getting my hands dirty and experimenting with words and ideas. I love it because it feeds my soul. Hopefully, it speaks to others, as well.

One hour a day is so little time. My wife is engaged in an artistic project with self-imposed deadlines. She works entire days and late nights. She experiments, fails, adapts, succeeds, only to wonder if she will even like her final product. What an inspiration she is. Her project is truly an embodiment of who she is. Truly a reflection of her days that she has so willingly devoted to it. Hard work that needs to be done. Life-giving work that produces joy.

Yes, art is a process, a long, grueling, painstaking process. It demands total focus and large amounts of time. Other tasks fall by the wayside, getting pushed aside until later. I will appreciate the final product for what it is, but we often look past what it came from.

As I write this, I think fondly of the artistic process of practicing. Music flowing through my fingers to fill the air. Imperfect balance, incorrect notes, unrefined musical ideas. I long for the unbalance of the artistic process to create the balance of artistic experience. Perhaps a free-flowing exchange of keyboard time is in order?

Summer of Balance
Day 33: June 20, 2024
Success!