A few months ago I hit on the idea of making some wooden blocks to fool around with. My initial goal was to end up making fanciful structures out of these blocks. On the way to that goal, however, I got involved in a detour, spending weeks wrapped up in simply photographing blocks, one at a time, looking for interesting lighting and unexpected compositions.
Eventually I got to photographing 2 and 3 blocks at a time. This turned out to be such a rich exploration I began to doubt if I would ever get to the fanciful structures I had originally planned to create!
Then somewhere along the line I started using markers to do graphic work directly on the blocks. This right away turned into a thing. Night after night I began creating at least one new block.
After making a dozen of these magical blocks, I hit on the idea of working on five 2"×2"×9"blocks to create a sort of abstract puzzle. With no fixed "solution" for any of the 4 sides of the puzzle, all 20 sides of the 5 blocks could be used to create no less than millions of possible arrangements! Wow!
With one puzzle idea leading to another, I soon started doing graphics on a Rubik's cube type toy. Then, while at Walmart the other day, I decided to take a look at puzzles in the toy department to see if anything there could be "graphic-ed."
When I saw a 16 piece Disney wooden block puzzle I knew I had found my next project! This is the project I am working on at the moment. The very first night I began to work on the Disney puzzle a door opened somewhere in my mind, allowing me to access deeper creative sources than any of my other block work had achieved. The Disney puzzle work was way beyond graphic. This was art - explosive, energetic, thrilling art!
While I am able to achieve this exalted state with my canvases, and have achieved the same with other small projects (paper cups, ping long balls, 6" cardboars tunes...), I had not had a complete breakthrough with blocks until the Disney puzzle.
I think the reason “Disney helped me" is that previously I had been working with blank wooden blocks. The nature of the block - rigid, small, rough - was defining my creative efforts too much! With the Disney puzzle I was painting with oil based markers over a complete scene, which caused me to see each puzzle face I was painting over as something like a blank canvas - instead of a wooden block. This, in turn, set me completely free to launch into the kind of creative interior space that I need to get to "me," my personal, interior voice.
This block experience, like all my small projects, has been hugely encouraging for me as an artist. In a way, each project is like a retreat which leads me back to my creative sources, reminding me over and over that no matter how small a project is there is room for explosive originality and communication. O the joy!
