Working on the work. This is a phrase I came to use while I was in pursuit of my degree at SCAD. It is something we used to refer to all the time in the painting department. Are you working on the work? I've since come to find out that this is an educational philosophy, although I don't think this was intended at the time. I came to understand the phrase in my own way to constantly reevaluate the way one are makes their work. There becomes a stigma, in artmaking, to classify what you do as art. Is it art? Are you trying to make art? What is art? Is anything art?
Sometimes, especially when you are making for a living, you lose site of working on the work. You work to get paid. You have to pay bills. What you make becomes a product, a commodity. The lines of art and creativity and capitalism become strikingly blurred and apparent.
I don't personally classify anything I do to this day as art, no matter the vocabulary that sometimes spews forth from my keyboard or my lips. I continuously have to remind myself to keep working on the work. To constantly reevaluate my process, my objectives, my goals and find the thin red line that is a balance.
