Often we get bogged down by trying to formulate these grand intelligent and serious ideas through image making. We stress ourselves out to the point of sleeplessness and insanity. But we must remember what got us here in the first place.
PLAY!
Why did we learn to love art? Because it was fun. Remember when we enjoyed creating? We'd pick up our crayons and draw what we liked! What defined us as the small person we were! What was fun! Well what in all these years has changed? We are still quite small, aren't we?
We can't forget to have fun. Sometimes doing the things we like can remind us why we photograph in the first place and even lead us to these grand ideas we strive for.
Playing teaches us boundaries. We learn what is too much and what is not enough. It brings about paths we could have otherwise never noticed or carelessly ignored. Play leads to discovery and great inventions are usually mistakes, right?
Think about what you enjoy. What is something you look forward to?
Writing, crocheting, hiking, gardening, painting, drawing, being with friends and family, animals, movies, collecting, crafting, cooking, baking, swimming, being naked, clothes, reading, urban exploration, dancing - Pick yo' thang/s. Do it/them often.
Why not do the things you love, the things that keep you sane?
Here are some artists we found have brightened our lives by doing just that, PLAYing.
Photographer Seth Casteel probably has a passion for dogs and photography.
He's a great and skilled photographer. He's shot celebrities and many animals before. But his interests are animals, particularly dogs. Now, we all know that dog photography can be....boring and not so inspiraisinal...and he probably knows this. He was most likely playing in his pool with his dog, photographing it jump in and out of the pool fetching it's ball. Through this playing process he found a method of shooting dogs that is creative and different from the norms of your run of the mill pet photography.Also - people WANT they're dogs photographed by him. So it doesn't hurt that he's now making money just from playing.
And this doesn't mean you need to take pictures of dogs to play, it's not for everyone. And it also doesn't mean that these have to be serious images.
Another artist, Todd Lamb, makes his career off of playing. He jumps back and forth from crazy idea to crazier idea. He has streams and streams of incredibly creative projects that make one stand back and say, "Well that's pointless...and hilarious!" One thing great about his work is that he doesn't stick to one medium, he plays with everything from performance to illustration to installation and even video. He seems to make art out of creating insanely ridiculous projects that never leave the beginning stages. It appears as if all he does is play. He's definitely an inspiration when you feel that the stuffiness of the art world is too much to handle. Surely he's a reminder that not everything in art has to be serious and that art can be fun.
Click here for one of his videos!
And Another!
We understand that not everyone has an easy time playing or can easily associate with this type of work, but honestly it's not about the work. It's about fun for the sake of fun! So please remember while all of us are busy racking our brains and stressing about our shows that life needs a balance. We all need a break once and a while, a time where we can live and play.
How do you play? Where? How do you find the time?
CAUTION! : Remember - life is a balancing act. Everything must come in moderation.
(work, significant others, parents, friends, drugs, seriousness, fun, alcohol, meditation, sex, rock and roll, taking advice - all in moderation)
This was a nice reminder once again to play! As artists, art is our grandest form of freedom. The creation of art encourages us to explore anything we feel like we need to. Play is done because we lose our insecurities, our egos, and we work from instinct. Play should also reminds us to be more positive about our peer's work, knowing that our own play is a process. Those dogs look like scary sea animals, though.
ReplyDeletePlayyyyy. The best things I have ever made came out of just fooling around, the best ideas came from no ideas, merely the instinctive nature to breathe(whatever that looks like for each of us). Also notice how you never feel bad about playing with art, it always somehow felt productive to me. These ideas stem from process oriented ways of working. Letting yourself move through,under,in and out of an idea that perhaps started as a joke, or as mind-numbing doodles. Play naturally I think is the key, and consistently, almost as an afterthought. Being in an academic system with deadlines and grades and peers looking at your work can often overwhelm and push you into eliminating the play, as if the other things hold more significance-- this is how you burn out.
ReplyDeleteGreat thoughts all around!
Maybe I just speak for myself when I say that I always felt pushed to create "real art"...stuff that looked like it belonged in galleries or got good crits in class. But if I've learned anything over the past few years, it is that solid, inspirational, intriguing art cannot be made if you don't enjoy what you are creating. I remember when I was first a photo major, I used to find photography homework to be a chore more often than not. I'd get the assignment done, but meh...honestly, I didn't really enjoy doing it. And then after one particularly bad crit, it hit me; I was supposed to be enjoying this. So I started investing time into playing around and finding what I enjoyed doing and what I enjoyed seeing. I think that because of play, I finally found my voice, as cheesy as it sounds. I love what the blog mentioned; "Why not do the things that you love, the things that keep you sane?" I think that without finding a way to play, to do what you love, while creating art, art does become a chore and creativity inevitably will burn out.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a really good reminder. Being in the first semester of senior, I haven't really experienced this much so far in my Tyler time, other than sketchbooks in foundations. I know I'm one of the weird ones that really loved doing sketch books every week, but now that it isn't manditory and so structured, I love it when I get a chance to work on a project that I can really get my hands dirty. Something that becomes more 3d and you can feel the texture and smell the paint and paper. Photo has the opportunity to do all of this as well. So maybe take some time out and work on getting dirty. Doing things in different medium really help me remember why I want to be in art school.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part I tend to keep my "Tyler art" and my play art separate. My play art is made up of a world filled with some of the weirdest looking little creatures who usually end up looking demented or so awkward it's scary. My "tyler art" is still quirky but more sophisticated...or at least that's what I've been telling myself. I dared not cross the two until recently. I felt that my play art didn't have a place in Tyler. I used it as a way to recharge the art part of my brain. With the amount of times I've heard the word "play" over the past year I am beginning to let the two merge. My Tyler work is still far from where my play art is but the gap is slowly closing. It is great to see examples of people combining both ends of the spectrum.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I feel all I have ever done lately is play. I wish I would have played more before senior year. I feel as if 'play' also falls under the last blog about the internet and being inspired. When I'm bored I play on the internet hoping to find inspiration. I wish my images now were better and I guess the only way to do that is to play with my ideas more. I'll have to 'play' with lighting and 'play' with how I shoot.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if any one who is not an artist ever plays any more?
Somehow I've managed to mess up my schedule almost every semester since I've started here. I'm just now finishing up my last three Sophmore electives, I finally took Digital Imaging last semester and it seems like I took a lot of other things out of order as well. I thought I would hate taking these Sophmore electives this year. I really didn't want to waste time in them, but they give me a chance to totally play and just have a good time with experimenting with different things within other mediums of art. Projects in these classes are only little 2 week assignments and the point is to just get a feel for the medium since they're all intro courses. Its great! I love it!
ReplyDeletePS I really liked the artists/images you put up. They really got me thinking about things.
This post was super helpful for me this week. I think that recently ive been over thinking all of my work and producing work that has not been successful to me. With me struggling and overthinking I havent thought about playing and giving my self time to remember why I decided to go into the arts. I went back home this weekened without worrying and I spent time shooting without thinking of my concepts and I doodled in one of my sketchbooks. I had so much fun releasing myself from thinking about all of my school work and worrying about what I was creating that I feel so refreshed and ready to continue working. I think play is extremely important for any career. if we forget to enjoy life we become miserable. so I feel that everyone should schedule some time for play within their calendar to just relax.
ReplyDeleteI agree that play is super important, especially as photographers. I have learned so much about photography and different techniques through just shooting for fun. It is very easy to fall in to a style of shooting that can end up being limiting to us. Our equipment is so versatile and it can be used in so many unusual ways that we most likely never explore. The more time you spend playing with your equipment the more it will become an extension of our mind and our body. It is refreshing for me to go out and shoot something i would normally not shoot, or set up lights and see if i can play god making light do what I want it to. While this play is fun it is also the best way to stay frosty with your gear. This may not seem like playing to most people but it really can be a blast. Another way i find playing to be beneficial is simply kicking back and watching a movie. It is a great way to let your mind take a rest from life for a while. I find that I get some of my best ideas while watching movies.
ReplyDeleteFor me, what I do for play and what I create and show at school have often been very different things. I have made the unfortunate choice of showing them together, and often they don't make sense in any way. I never really thought of it seriously but actually play has often been a way for me to express the ideas and images I deal with but without worrying if there is any concept, or if they even make sense. Play I think also means not just working within your medium, or even doing something artistic. I love to paint because I find it a totally different experience than making a photograph, and I find I create work that is polar opposite from my photographic work. Also I think it's important to occupy your mind with other things, be it studying another topic of interest, like history, or language, etc. When I was growing up, my mom in particularly emphasized doing well academically, so it was always hard for me to simply not focus on that exclusively, but play can help remind me that what I enjoy doing isn't necessarily something I have to push to my free time. If anything, that's one of the overall things I learned in my time at college, that making successful work has to be achieved by creating alot of unsuccessful things as well.
ReplyDeleteThis post is very relevant to what I've been thinking about a lot lately. Over the past two years as I'm getting closer to graduating, I feel like I have to be super serious about my image making, that I HAVE to have serious concepts with deep meanings and make perfect inkjet prints. But last week when I was thinking about what direction I was heading, I realized that all of those things have nothing to do with why I became an artist, and that I should do what I want to do because I want to. Coming to these realizations has helped me as I'm moving forward with what I want to work on this semester. All I want to do is play, and have fun creating my work. And who's going to tell me that I can't?
ReplyDeleteI chose art because it IS fun, inspiring, and exciting even during the most stressful times. Even when art gets boring because of in-class exercises and whatnot, it's all for the sake of enriching my knowledge of art. I love art. I love it so much I hate it sometimes. Sometimes I want to make art in a very specific manner that when it turns out differently than expected, i get frustrated.. and i hate it. But at the same time, i can't learn from anything else the way I learn from a mistake in my own art making. Only mistakes in art are fun, for me. It's pretty awesome that as art students, many of us are hoping to graduate and get a job in that relates to art...and then get paid for what we love to do.
ReplyDelete"Playing teaches us boundaries. We learn what is too much and what is not enough. It brings about paths we could have otherwise never noticed or carelessly ignored."
...I agree! Playing teaches us what our own limits are that we wouldn't have known otherwise. If we set boundaries, rules, formulas, and strict guidelines all the time, we're never going to know what we're capable of beyond those boundaries, and we're not going to know how to handle & appreciate surprises and unexpected outcomes if we're so focused on "getting things perfect".
I know people might strongly disagree but I felt that foundation year-- 2D class--with Katie Murken's-- was a great class to combine play with learned techniques. The sketchbook "assignments" were opportunities for me to "play around" with ideas that I never knew I could come up with.
-Eunice
I needed this blog post, especially at this point in the semester, to bring me back to reality a bit. Although I'm sure every one of us came here because we love what we're doing and we're having fun doing it, sometimes this place can literally make you think too much. Yes. It is totally possible. I've gotten to points in past semesters where I was trying too hard to think about what I wanted to say with my work, that I forgot why I was making it in the first place. When it comes to photography, sometimes we need to think less and do more. I’ve realized that if I consider what I’m doing “work” then I’m doing something wrong. The photographer Seth Casteel you mentioned is a great example of play. He’s making a living doing something that he no doubt has a great time doing. For all we know, the little things we do to keep our sanity could end up being how we make a living. Constantly photographing the people I know and the experiences I have is what I do for fun. Every person I meet and place I go influences me in some way that will ultimately get me to where I’m going in life. And not to mention it always keeps a camera in hand.
ReplyDeleteOverall, what was written up here had some awesome points to remember, I really can't ignore it. The opening statement talking about play in childhood reminds me of my first sketchbook. It ran 300 pages in length by the time I was finished, and was worked on while I was learning how to write. Some pages were even taken up by endless loops of different heights, which were my illiterate young minded idea of what cursive was. The Alphabet was only made up of lowercase L's and E's, but what did it matter. I was playing to try and figure you the world. Fifteen years later and my sketch book is made up of only notes. Things to do, things I've been told, things that have been suggested, and only things in text, but did I stop playing?
ReplyDeleteLast week I was putting make-up on a 26-year-old man to try to figure out how to make him look old. The other day I told my parents to look into each other's eyes and they just started smiling as a result of 27 years of marriage. The past weeks have been spent running after moments in an old oil town to find the right moment, and damn-it, I'm getting it before the snow melts! I don't think play has ever stopped for me. Hell, I switched majors when I realized it was coming dangerously close to an end.
Play is a simple word that has everything to do with the worthy-of-my-life's-time experiences of the human soul. Play has lead me to help my father in my sister's first steps as a little person of 11 months. Play has lead me to enjoy every job I've held. Play has helped me appreciate the most gratifying relationships in my life, and now it is helping me to build a career I hope to move into.
-Victoria
Playing reminds so many people of things from childhood, even though it really shouldn't. I feel bad for people that don't give themselves time to play. Everyone needs at least a little fun in their time, or insanity will take over. As long as you get everything accomplished that you want to, why not play all of the time? I find that the best things in life are work and play combined... ya know photography, writing, painting... all of the artsy stuff we're all so talented in.
ReplyDeleteThe dog photographer is really inspiring! Lately, I have been exploring so many options in my mind of what I could do when I'm done here. I love animals- especially doggies, and just yesterday I realized that that could become something. Pet Photographer! Playing all of the time!
It helps me, personally, to get through some stupid homework assignment for a gen ed if I somehow think of it as playing. Remember, when we are putting together all of our shows, if you get stressed out, just think of it as playing house. Play photographer. Ready, set, go.
Playing is of uber importance. Obviously. Finding yourself doing anything that makes you laugh and brings a smile to your face is what is really important in all aspects of life. Especially the aspects of life that you focus all of your time and money on like your degree. Playing within the art world is so crucial to the process of making art. your end product may not be something that is full of smiles and rainbows, but in order to not drive yourself insane and cut your ear off, you need these playful aspects.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy seeing artists, like the ones above, that create art that conveys so much of who they are as a fun person. It is such a relief to see someone put everything they have into a piece that comes out so lighthearted and enjoyable.
Where would we be without play??? I'm sure that almost all of our photos originated from an idea we just started "playing around" with.. at least that's how it worked in my case. For example, the images that I'm working with for my thesis show originated out of boredom and play. A friend and I decided to combine gear (speedlights, stands, gels, etc) and set up a small in-home studio. The results were amazing! The photos I got from this play-session were some of the most inspiring images I've made all year! This led me to continue this idea and try and develop it further, all thanks to just a bored night of just "playing around".
ReplyDeleteI am a firm believer in playing! Otherwise I'd go crazy. I think I may be an example of playing around too much, because sometimes I can't find myself focusing on one idea because I am having too much fun trying other ideas. However lately I've been playing around a lot and I see it becoming more and more focused. Hopefully I didn't just jinx myself.
ReplyDeleteI seem to make the mistake of often taking work to seriously and being too serious about it. I am often scared to make a mistake (or play around) because I feel that my deadlines are by far more important than learning from those mistakes, I forget that mistakes also open up doors to different possibilites and in the end can inspire you to take a different route in your work... a route that wasn't apparent beforehand. I'm so focused on what I want the outcome to be that I stress out... This post has kind of inspired me to take it easy and relax, to remember that by playing around with work you'll see so many different options rather than just seeing it in one serious way.. which can inhibit you as a creator.
ReplyDelete