Ynotartblog's Blog

In checking out an interview with Elizabeth Murray on the Art21 site, I related to much of what she was sharing.

“Wow I’ve got it, I’ve got it!” And then I come back in the morning and it’s gone. It looks awful.

In describing how she felt when first seeing the wooden forms for “Bop,” which were cut out by her assistants, she exclaimed:

What was I thinking of? This is going to be horrible!

Those splayed bursts! The Wow Factor was there as I made them, and now it’s history. I am not giving in to the Awful Factor yet, but the critic is seated. We are now at a stalemate. They remain unchanged for the moment. They are looking at me as much as I am regarding them.

Further into the interview, she talks about how the act of arranging forms and color is so “integral” to everyday life and how the process of arranging these artistic elements is play.

Arranging = playing. Moving the cutouts around until they click for me in some not quite easily describable way. Or, as Elizabeth Murray explains it:

It’s like being a safe breaker in those movies where they’ve got their ear up against the safe and you are listening for the right click, for the right cylinders to drop down.

I still have my ear up against the safe.