On Flatworms and Freeeeedom!!!

“Like a flatworm, art possesses the astounding ability of regeneration.  Split your work in any way--lengthwise, into irregular pieces, using just one idea  or element from the whole--and it can grow into an entirely new organism.  This is true down to the 1/279th of the organism.  Every part of this new entity, in turn will have the ability to engender another new form--which may itself grow into a self-sufficient organism that retains the memories of the original.  In this way, art remembers itself. 

Vivisect yourself.  Any material, gesture, color, surface, idea can grow again into a new branch of your work.  It will have the potential to develop in unforeseen ways, to accrete and conjoin into new structure that will almost inevitably mean more than you’ve intended.  This work of severing, reconsidering, repositioning, is the origin of what Salvador Dali called “a delirium of interpretation.”  It’s why art has likely been with us since the beginning.  Art is like a burning bush: it puts out more energy than went into its making.  This is what is meant by ars longa.”   From: How to be an Artist, by Jerry Saltz, 2020, pg.45, Chapter 20, "Art is a Flatworm".

This small but potent book of thoughts on art arrived via Amazon at the end of March to sit alone in the darkness of our garage for a day or two and decontaminate before being opened to reveal a collection of words and pictures set to support and encourage creativity and artistic expression.  This exercise below followed the words above:  

“Exercise:   Using projection, tracing paper, or any other appropriate technique, make a drawing of a found image or photograph.   Make it as perfect and as true to the original as you possibly can.

Then draw the same object in the exact same way-but this time invent 50 percent of it.  Adlib, riff, change it slightly or greatly or entirely for that half.

Finally, put the image away and render it from memory.  When you recreate something from memory you’re necessarily putting yourself inside the work--between what you saw and what you think you saw, in dialogue with the image, the materials, your memory, yourself and more.

Those last two drawings?  They’re flatworms.

(Although the illustration included with this chapter was a drawing of a man using parts from one sculpture to create another, the real life illustrations revealed here at Levity in recent weeks seem more apt--from a woman using callas as canvas, to a color challenged craftsman incorporating incorporated blocks of colored wood with naturally lined pieces to turn out bowls as vivid as the colored flowers, each recreating unique, one-of-a-kind visual experiences in the material that put out energy, even now as this is being read!) 

Vīta brevis, ars longa! Here's to vivisection and regeneration!!

And flatworms!!! Here, there, among and within.