On artfulness . . .
Humans escape the great pull of entropy through creation. Chaos and disorder are the fates of time, and yet within the spasms of falling apart are moments when particles are joined together, spliced and merged into something new, either following a worn path or linking something new. Universal patterns of entropy are buoyed by syntropy, negentropy, or simply the grace provided to humans to create something beautiful when all else is falling apart.
I cannot escape creation. Living with eyes and hands and different minds, from a lustful depth for touch and feel, crafting is a drive, a need, an obsession, even when pulled into the couch with lavender screens to watch creations of other humans about how they interpret their humanness. I am entranced by sudden quips, tacky revelations, and pranks as they prance across screens; not so much because of the novelty but because I fashion myself capable of creating the same. I could do it too, if I put it all down, stood up, and found something to do with my hands and minds.
When doing, the glory. Cranks and blades carve wood across, within, and beyond the grain. They shave and bump, revealing different colors and lines, different chances for a subtle curve, for a new form, for it all to come together only to fall apart. I learn to manage the tool better, to hold it better, to let it do as designed rather than as I fashion. When will and a tool’s capacity meet, my vision alights; I can see what I want to create and ways to get there, even if it is still trapped within horizon haze. I shift the weight of the tool, refine the angle, make gentle with my grip and it conforms to the vision, ever so slightly, and so I repeat, and repeat, and repeat.
The form emerges and we introduce ourselves, like characters in a novel, unsure of which is real or imagined. The form dictates a thousand possible courses, and I hew to those that align with our vision. I am in command and a mere servant, tooling way, glance by glance, metal against wood, with a tidy pile of shavings toiling away on the floor. It is crude and gross in this early stage, but I see the potential; I forgive the sloppiness. My hands and eyes and tools remain focused and diligent and with each new pitch, with each new grind, behaviours and attitudes change; they interact with the rest of the form differently, looking askance at how the curve above drifts too sharply downward or how the seam below becomes a hostile intruder upon their adolescence. The light changes as I work and different imperfections emerge, shaved down and away, new lines with each glance, feather flat and laden with remaining dust, they stand, and scuffle, and I wear my servitude as joy.
With form intact, new work begins. Paper laden with grit marks the wood down, leaving more dust on the floor. My hands are upon it, rather than steel, and as gentle as the grind, it shines anew, with troughs and crests tossing against each other with my hands rising and falling, shaping and forming. The grit becomes finer, the dust like flour, as the muscles in my arms squeeze and release my hands to refine ever so more. This is when the wood’s voices sing in chorus, clanging rings whose outlines mimic one another and the seasons, from dry and hot to cold and wet, recording the time in different shades of its natural color.
Burls and knots, twists and splits, require additional friction to conform as they hark about past wounds. While staring at these, with each pass of sandpaper, they swim with my vision of what this form may be, dictating what it actually is or was and the links back to a tree and the wind and the sun and the rain and the snow and the people that played around its trunk. There are no clues as to how or why it was cut down. It was and it still breathes, contracting and expanding with the weather. Am I killing it, with my knives and rubs? No, it is like all else, slipping between entropy and syntropy, engaging with something I see, something I want, something I call my own.
Creation is always based on such mingling and yet artfulness is in recognising how elements swirl together from nature and the past to the present.
