People Enjoy Failure
Does that explain why my experimental printing process went viral?
This email falls in the category of “you never know what will resonate with people.” One of my videos caught fire this week. It started because I needed a gift for a friend who was a teacher. I was going to hit the easy button and give her one of my flower prints. Insects didn’t seem right. But I wanted to give her something new and original.
Hmmm. What to make? An apple for a teacher perhaps?
Before long I was trying to make prints from a slice of apple. Things started out rough. I was about 100 experiments in before things started working. That’s when I recorded myself saying this:
Things don’t start out beautiful.
Art starts out as failure. You can stop at this point. Most do. They assume they lack some natural talent. But you can keep going. You can iterate. Experiment. Remix.
As you work, you build up layers of failures. Wrong on top of bad on top of yuck. Naturally you’ll question yourself. But if you don’t give up…
Eventually, inevitably… something will emerge that speaks to you.
It’s not good yet, but there’s something there. So you keep working on it. Rework it. Rerun the experiments until things start working. You will arrive at something you like. And there’s a chance other people might like it too.
Of course to outsiders, the finished object looks like it was one master stroke. All the mistakes, wrong turns and failures? They are invisible to everyone but you. Nobody needs to see your failures. It’s embarrassing. You can perpetuate the illusion that you are a gifted artist who farts gold.
But it doesn’t hurt to share the ugly side of the creative process. Because maybe there is somebody doubting themselves right now. Someone who needs to hear that art is hard. Maybe if this person saw the 120 abandoned scraps that led up to the final work they would summon the will to persevere through their own challenges.
Stay creative.
Your friend,
Ade
P.S. If you want to watch the original post it is on Instagram here:
