On discovering vs. finalizing

I’m in the process of recovering from a surprisingly robust bout of Covid — my first time. For record, I have been vaccinated five times. And on top of that stroke of bad luck, I contracted bronchitis to go along with it. Anyway, my point in mentioning this is twofold: first, I have been extremely limited in the work that I’m doing; and second, I was lucky enough to have a fever on more than one occasion. 

Fevers are really trippy. Some things become very clear and, at the same time, some things morph and transform, and it can all be surreal and vague. 

I wasn’t feeling up to the work I know I want to tackle next in my The Last Jews of Liuh body of work. So I tried something completely new. I took some of my work where I photographed into mercury glass, then rephotographed back into the glass several times, aiming for distortion and disorientation in a lens-based photograph. 

I pulled up some of the portraits and “fed them” to DALL’E2. I asked the AI algorithm to create a variation. I gave no prompts at all. 

The result was so interesting to me. It was a fever dream. Vague, only slightly perceptible, out of reach, coming closer and then slithering away again, elusive. The imprecision of the fever state. And also the tantalizing nature, the allure; followed sometimes by a slightly grotesque or scary moment. 

Now back to the title of this blog post. Discovering is one activity; finalizing is another. In the looseness of discovery, we follow instinct, intuition, and the what if’s. When we finalize, we know what we want, we are tactical in our approach to getting it, and we do not need to consider loosening the reins in order to let curiosity take over. Finalizing is about control: knowing what you want and, gosh darn it, getting it. 

They’re both useful. But they’re deadly when substituted. The finalizing mentality rules out possibility, the change of course, the new idea. Discovering prevents us from committing, getting specific, making choices. Printing the damned thing.

For the image at the top of this post, I took one of my Fever Dream pieces, in all of its dreamy romanticism and mystery, and placed it in a Paris salon. Dark walls and detailed cherubic sculpture, vines, molding. But I made that decision — about the possible installation — after I discovered my way through to he image. 

(This is a fabulation, by the way. I use an app called Smartist to see my work in situ. I love it. The possibilities are endless.)

For me, and this is a personal thing, there is greater joy in coming at my work with more discovery. Of letting the detailed stuff wait and letting the creative muse dance around the studio and invite in all the what if’s I can think of. 

Finalization can wait…!