Weekend Plans

Hey everybody, guess what I'm doing this weekend?

I'm assuming that you guessed right; I'm printing. I'm doing a lot of printing. I'm doing so much printing that I will probably taste ink through my fingers. I'm pretty stoked for this.

If you've read my ramblings here lately, then you probably already know that I have a lot of designs in various stages of completion. What I need to do- will do- this weekend, is work with each one of those designs until they're done (or however far I get!). I need to finish the Take My Love, Take My Land run, pull final proofs and do a full run of Athena, pull final proofs and do a full run of Think Digital/Act Analog (which I have had on hold for way too long), and that's only the projects that are ready to get ink. I have four or five other designs in various stages of production as well. Some are familiar to readers, like In Con We Trust, which I pulled a few months ago. While I loved the imagery, I was unsatisfied with the quality and consistency of the print, and so I am going to start over from the transfer and re-carve it. Others haven't made it to the transfer stage, like Octopus's Garden (which you haven't even seen yet). 

As you can see, one of my problems is that I tend to dive into a new idea while I'm still working on an old one, which is often an idea that I dove into whilst working on an even earlier one. I suppose it isn't the worst problem to have from a creative side, but it doesn't make my completion rate very efficient. I'm going to try to rectify that somewhat this weekend, and get some of these designs completed. I keep saying that I have cool stuff in the works, (oh, and I do!) but to get to it, I need to keep moving forward. 

Which can be admittedly difficult following up the day job (which is a fine job, to be sure) at a one bedroom apartment that I share with my fiance (which is a fine situation to be sure). I'm sure that you've noticed that I don't have a studio. I work on a table, and the washing machine is my drying rack. I'm sharing the space with a jewelry maker who does yoga all over the place. None of this is a complaint, mind you; this is exactly where I ought to be right now and I like where I'm at (both literally and figuratively). However, it does speak to the limitations of where I'm working.

Limitations. I recently tweeted about the limitations of my materials and tools. Now I've brought up the limitations of the space in which I work... I've been thinking about limitations a lot here lately. My mentor used to say, "the only limits are self imposed," and I believe this to be true for the most part. After all, the limitations in my schedule could be removed if I left my job, the limitations in my materials and tools could be remedied by replacing them with more expensive items, and the limitations in my space could be dissolved by getting a bigger place or by booting the fiance out (we're speaking strictly hypothetically here, I promise). Sure, there is a financial limitation here that binds all of these things in place to some degree, but if I really wanted to I could work around that. So why don't I just cast these limitations aside?

Because limitations can be enabling. They can empower us. Limitations can be liberating. Look at Haiku for example. The poet is severely limited in what he or she is "allowed" to write. Sure, the easiest thing would be cast aside the limitations of the medium, and just write however one wants, but by staying within the confines of the Haiku, accepting the limitations, and working on their craft, they get better. Twitter is another great example, especially fresh on my mind because I'm working to get better at expressing myself via tweet. It's an incredibly limited social medium; we only get 140 characters to say what we have to say. Yet we all know someone who is a social media mogul who seems to be able to craft intelligent, witty, funny tweets. They also seem to get a load of followers with whom they can share their message. Would they be able to amass such a following without the limitations imposed on them by twitter? I'm sure that many of them could, but undoubtedly they have become better at honing their ideas into skilled writing because of a limitation of 140 characters or less.

So why do I continue to work in my shared one bedroom apartment space, with simple tools and materials, after busy workdays, aside from the financial limitations? Because those limitations are forcing me to focus on the work. Would it be easier to make good prints in a dedicated space? I'm sure it would. Could I more quickly make superior prints with more expensive equipment and materials? I probably could. Would it be easier to churn out more work if I didn't spend eight hours of work every day? Indubitably so. But these limitations are what help me improve. Working my "9 to 5" keeps the bills payed and the art supplies stocked, making sure that I have everything I need to create. It also keeps me balanced and forces me to exercise my mind at other things. Working with good simple tools forces me to rely not on the materials, but the implementation of the designs to produce good work. And sharing the space helps me learn to clear my own head, and focus myself on my work without forgetting that the outside world is there. I won't deny that someday I would like to have my own dedicated studio space, a nice printing press, and a work schedule that I set (though that last one may be a pipe dream). But for now I accept my limitations and will use them as a means to improve, instead of as a crutch to hold me back. I hope you all will do the same in pursuing the things that you love.

Thanks for checking out this most recent update everyone. Hopefully there will be lots of pictures coming in the next post! If you're interested in getting any updates on when new posts are coming out, or if you'd like to read about the experimental art project that is my life via 140 characters or less, follow me on Twitter: @CaptGam. Likewise, if you want to see some of the world through my eyes, you can follow me on Instagram at http://instagram.com/wdtellett.

  

Unless otherwise noted, all work by Wade Ellett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.