The Prompt: Gordy Ruchti

Gordy:

My Art

I don't make much art anymore.  One could speculate as to when I'm going to start, but that's a really simple bet.  When I make art, I try to think of something I want to communicate.  When I sit down to write a piece of music, I want to get across something, I want to make sure the audience is hearing what I'm hearing.  I am usually lazy about accomplishing this, but I still believe that clear ideas of sound and material gestures are imperative in making my compositions.  In many ways the timbres (for visual artists, this is the color of the tones, the shaping of the sounds) are less important in what I denote than the pitches and chords themselves.  This may be sloppy or exhibition of my technique's unrefinement, but I feel as though my pitches can designate the tone, dynamic, sound that I am trying to capture, sometimes even the articulation and rhythm to accompany the frequencies of vibration.  In many ways I care more about the harmony than several other things.  I will bend the lines up, down, and I will sometimes disregard a greater structure for the musical moment, the present, the now, what melody or chord is necessary NOW.  I hear something, and I know that it is beautiful to me, so I do my best to show those who may listen subsequently how beautiful it can be for them.

 

In Visual Arts, I try to communicate with positive reinforcement.  Toccata is really the only example I have.  It reaches a cloth hand out to the viewer, begging to be touched and gawked at.  This is something I find really important in visual arts, because I myself find it hard to participate in visual art without being very close, almost awkwardly close, to a piece.  I want to see the textures of many things.  Paintings, not as interesting.  I find texture in painting almost absurd.

 

I believe that an artist must be communicating something.  I find the "my work is too heady, too refined, too advanced, and will only be understood by a future audience" mantra to be complete bull-shit.  Rather, I find it completely true, and I think that artists who espouse it are inane.  If you aren't communicating, I don't know what you're doing.  And don't say, "not communicating," hardee har har.  Umm, that's saying something.  But to ignore this factor is more than a faux pas in my eyes. 

 

I like spacing.  I like objects that aren't arbitrary, but in seeing Louise Bourgeouis' installation, I really had to notice that I may not be educated enough in appreciating art to appreciate it the way I want to.  I see her stacks of objects on mini-pikes and they are called people.  I liked the big rods that represented her family (and I have little, but everything against cannibalization of formerly produced pieces), but the ministacks were annoying to me.  Why?  Of course, I have much to understand to understand things the way I want to.  I didn't enjoy some of the drawings of buildings with legs on them.  I find the figure a little arbitrary sometimes.  I think that it is not that important much of the time, but then I guess I haven't crossed the lines necessary to see that to communicate you have to talk to people.  WOOOH people.  I didn't like the buildings with legs on them not for the message, but for the apparent sloppiness in drawing.  Or paintings.  Whatever.  I don't know what it is, but sloppiness in painting, in drawing, can turn me off.  I find it neither nonchalant nor expressive.  However, I find the need sometimes to express myself in a similar fashion, but too often I can't understand what the author is doing drawing legs more sloppily than I would in a game of Cranium Cloodle. Again with my education.

 

I think art is very personal.  I think this stuff should be very personal.  I don't believe that somehow people should take offense.  That's a little weird.  I mean, seriously, we're going to get upset or shy because somebody says something is art and it's not what you thought of?  If we don't accept this, what are we accepting?  If we don't know who we are communicating with, or that we are communicating with, what are we doing?

 

I believe so much of this because Kerry has showed me.  I believe that art is important in whatever way we want it to be, that maybe indie productions of things we know in a more commercial form are truer.  I have seen the sounds and heard the shapes he's tried to make clear to me, and there's so much more to go.  The real clear thing I have is that I need more.  I need to do more/see more.  Synesthesia.  How much can we combine, how much can we bring together, and I'm ready.