[October 11, 2011 - Fairfax, CA]
The Site Metaphor...still unbaked In the Blank Slate process, I’m on a quest to find guiding metaphors that describe what the website will be like.
The idea that keeps coming back to is that you are visiting the live/work/gallery space of an artist.
What if my website were like my live/work/gallery space? Online. Only a little neater.
My actual live/work —
(before I fixed the typo it said: love/work. Another metaphor to think on)
My actual live/work space is my favorite place to be.
I love it when people stop by and visit me in my studio. Especially if it's later in that day and I've gotten around to showering. I work from the minute I get up, until I have to tear myself away to do life things, like bathe. So being able to virtually visit would be convenient in many ways.
Besides my own space, other artist's live/work spaces are my favorite places to be. When I am invited into an artist's studio, it is always a sort of holy moment for me. I want to absorb every detail. Anything that might help me understand their process, what they struggle with and what they do easily, how they manage to work and get other shit done. How they practice their craft and still function in society.
Is anyone else besides me fascinated by how people do their creative work? Where they do their creative work?
How do artists organize themselves, their days, their art supplies, their limited financial resources, and their moods, in order to do their work? Especially if they don't have to get drunk, high or be a prima donna to do it?
In particular, yet no particular order, I'm fascinated by artists who are:
- sober
- kind
- supporting themselves with their art
- earnest
- humble
Now, given the reputation artists have for being the extreme opposite* of the above, you'd think that having the opportunity to observe them in their natural environment would be like studying alien life-forms.
I am lucky to know a few artists like this.
From my earliest memory, that's all I've ever wanted to be.
There are metaphors in there somewhere...I want to build a website that feels like the kind of artist I keep striving to be...and looks and functions like a gallery. But not an online portfolio. Does that make sense?
*BTW, those extreme opposite qualities are rampant in every profession (lawyers come to mind for some reason—not you, Tamara!) they just don't get the same press artists do.