Trail of Creativity (gj)

Before starting this blog, I have thought about whether it is a good idea to adopt the medium of writing as a serious method of documenting my artistic process or as a legit method of articulating my intention of creating art works in general.Artist statements, exhibition openings, peer reviews, art critics or even teaching notes and slides are all the writings artists do make, though most of the time out of a certain practical urgency or necessity. 

To me, other than being a formal way of communicating the key aspects of artworks, writing, especially freestyle writing, with more serious editing after, is a formal yet personal way of recounting my train of thought in the process of art making, reflecting on my decisions in choices of materials, forms and means of production, and reconnecting the echoing dots that are scattered in different projects to form a more thorough understanding of my own intention.

I forced myself into a more systematic way of recording a couple of years ago, by creating a naming/numbering system of my notes. After a while, when there is a pile of them (analog and digital), I have then started to create folders to put them into categories. Like many artists or makers, regardless of multiple characters of the different types of projects, there is something in there that connects all of them, and I have created a list of key words.

What has inspired me to start this blogging project with Michael Kellner, is to search and hopefully find, through writing, something more than just a list of key words, by incorporating a more rigorous process of reflecting and reviewing.

The two basic assumptions that I use to set base for my writing project here is that 

1, Art making is fundamentally fun and serious, at the same time. 

(In writing, I can at least try define the blurry boundary between rules and freedom in art, or at least, refer to rule number two here below, my version of it)

2, Art is extremely personal yet universal. 

(This will make long paragraphs of pure narration of what I do and what I think in the process of making a particular artwork, make sense, and understandable.)

And this journey of finding the trail of creativity through a format of personal logging or blogging, can hopefully not only help my own process but also in my teaching practice.

Gweny Jin