Making Art Through the Seasons
And Why I Haven't Been Making Art Lately
It’s been hot. And I don’t think I need to go into detail about it – the heat is something we all pretty well understand without flowery language or fancy metaphor. When it’s hot enough to notice, any breath spent on more than just a quick acknowledgment seems to just make it hotter. So I’ll leave it at that; it’s been hot.
You might think that living in the brutal Arizona heat for a few years would have prepared me for a summer back in the North East. And it has for the most part, beside two big factors – the humidity, and seasonal artistic rhythm. Humidity is something I certainly didn’t miss, and I think it will take a few more summers to fully reacquaint myself with everything being so damp in the summer months, but I’m managing. As for rhythm, well, that’s why I’m writing.
When I say a seasonal rhythm, I am talking about the cycle that I move through as I work on different parts of my art during the year. It is easy to relate this cycle to the environmental seasons, especially for someone who relies on certain weather to create new work. I have found that my practice shifts between four distinct “seasons” throughout the year, aligning closely with our understanding of winter, summer, spring, and fall. So it may not be a surprise that moving from the desert of Arizona back to the East Coast really threw this cycle for a loop.
Taylor and I moved at the tail end of Arizona summer, around the end of October. This was the end of my artistic “winter.” Winter, in my cycle of working, is the time when the weather and environmental conditions are not conducive to going out and taking pictures. I stay inside and work with what I have, editing projects, seeing how different things fit together, revisiting old work, and preparing to share something with an audience. My Arizona “winter” lasted from around June to September, when it was too hot to even think about walking outside for more than an hour at a time. This last winter period in Arizona was very productive, as I finalized the second volume of Arizona Road Dust - OASIS and started editing down for the third and final installment of the project. I felt that I finished everything I wanted to that brutally hot “winter” and was ready for a change. But when we moved, we landed in what will now be my “winter” here in Philadelphia; actual winter.
During the months between October and March in Arizona, I would enter my “summer.” The weather could not have been better for going out and making pictures, the temperature comfortable and welcoming, the sun low in the sky, no rain or storms to think of. I was out in the field constantly, like a farmer tending to their crops during peak growth. And so arriving here to our new home at the beginning of true winter, with sleet and rain and biting cold, was an unexpected shock. I had nothing prepared to work on, no stores of work or pictures that I was ready to start editing. Not to mention I find it difficult to work outside of a set space (that’s a whole other post), and we spent most of the winter settling into our apartment in Philadelphia. I ended up working on very little this past winter, making prints without a clear goal, and pushing pictures around with a plan. Nothing of much substance came of this putzing around. My writing slumped because I didn’t have much that felt interesting to write about. I thought that spring would bring new life and direction to my work, or at least I hoped.
My artistic “spring” is a time to look for new ideas, start new projects, and plan for the coming summer of creative work. The weather is friendly enough to go out and play with new concepts and explore different ways of making before I commit to diving into something more serious. I plant seeds that will hopefully grow into bigger and more complex branches of my practice. This past spring did end up being relatively successful in that regard. I made lots of pictures as Taylor and I explored up and down the East Coast together, and really got in a groove of working in our new space. I have a stack of prints to show for it, and some aren’t too bad. But when it came to planning for the summer ahead, I sort of dropped the ball.
Instead of having a solid plan for my work this summer, I was torn. On one hand, I knew that I should finish editing the last part of my Arizona project while my time there was still fresh in my head. But on the other, I wanted to go out and take pictures and see what I could make of this region after being away for so long. And so I ended up doing what any object will do when acted upon equally in two opposing directions – nothing. Out of sync with my artistic season, I didn’t get up to much of anything. You may have noticed my posts here fell off sharply, mostly because I wasn’t doing or making anything of note. It’s hard to write about your artistic practice when you aren’t practicing.
And now we’re here, nearing the end of a hot, damp, mostly unproductive summer. I have to say, I can hardly wait for fall. My artistic “fall” is the time when I reap the rewards of the whole artistic year. I bundle everything together, nice and neat, into something I can share with any sort of audience. A great, creative harvest. Two years ago I released Ulysses, NY at the beginning of fall, the biggest and most developed project I have ever put together. Around that same fall, I started writing for SIDEWALK in earnest. A year ago around this time, I posted more here and on Instagram than I did the whole rest of this year. And now I want to make the most of this fall, too.
Unsurprisingly, I don’t have a big project finished and ready to send out. But I do have a whole untended garden of ideas and pictures that are probably worth sharing, even in their tangled and messy state. This fall I will take some time to harvest what I can, share more on SIDEWALK and elsewhere, and all around take stock of the work I have made over the last few months. You should expect more regular entries here this autumn, a discount produce bin of new work. That is the plan.
To be completely transparent, the seasons of my artistic practice that I have just described are not set in stone. They don’t always happen in this order, and I don't follow them religiously. But thinking this through has helped me understand a part of why I haven’t been as motivated or productive lately. Maybe these seasons can help other artists understand their own way of working (or not working) a bit better. We don’t all need to follow a seasonal cycle like a hibernating bear or migrating bird, but sometimes it certainly helps to have the weather help decide what you’re going to work on.
feeling less bad about my own lack of art-making this summer 🤝 lookin forward to what you share in fall!
This post resonates. It's difficult when the creative juices aren't flowing. I was struggling earlier this summer and writing seemed to help. https://www.flakphoto.news/p/what-inspires-you