Recently I’ve found myself creating some new work that I can’t imagine ever selling. Not because of deep, personal attachment, but because I’m not sure who would ever want to buy it. My marketing technique has mostly been a lack thereof. I firmly believe that there is a market for everything, but when it comes down to what I want to create it is not often associated with what will sell. The creative process possesses a certain amount of magic. There is magic in everything that starts out as an idea and turns into a physical reality, even things that are created in multiples and meant to be mass marketed. However, sometimes I’ll just look at a stone or an object and it will speak to me and touch my soul. It may sit on my bench or shelf for days, months or years and then it will just happen. It has to be completed and finished and put into some form of reality, even if it is MY reality alone.
When I was a child I was fascinated with a small treasure chest that sat at the bottom of a neighbor’s fish tank. It apparently had an oxygen tube attached under the chest that would pulse and emit puffs of air into the treasure chest. Each pulse forced the lid of the little chest to open and close, revealing tiny sparkly booty that was inside: a golden goblet, a string of pearls and a miniscule ruby ring. I would stare at that little treasure chest for hours and wondered why the fish weren’t as fascinated with it as much as I was. I wondered what else could be in that chest.
Years later, in art school I studied Celtic Art and was obsessed with the buried mounds of jewelry that had been discovered. Buried booty. Large amounts of booty. The sinking of the Titanic and the re-claimed pottery and jewelry from its sunken demise. Pirate lore and the folklore of buried, unclaimed treasure. King Tut’s tomb. The Indian Mounds in Ohio that were small hills in rural areas which were the burial grounds of American Indian Tribes. These still captivate and motivate me today to create my own booty. But what will I do with these treasures if they are not to be sold?
I picture myself, 94 years old with a shovel in my feeble hand, digging as deep as I can. I will bury my personal treasure trove, a testament of my obsessive compulsive disorder: one that is to create. (I repeat:) I pray that I am bestowed upon (by the Cosmic Joker ) to have enough predilection prior to my demise that I can draw a map to the time capsule where it is buried and where it rests as hidden treasure that is a monument to the times in which it was created.
