Like those attempted definitions, creating artworks can also have failures, and from those failures new and better works can emerge.  My kinetic sculptures have reached 10 meters in height and my instinct is to work larger.

I believe in pushing the envelope.  I have heard arguments against any need that fine art tests the established boundaries, but I remain unconvinced.  It may be a matter of degrees, each work is unique and therefore contains some “newness.”  I see careers made from creating art from a formula that essentially reproduces the line of inquiry of another artists’ work (take any object and make it larger) and I have difficulty appreciating it for the redundancy.  I see careers made from pushing the limits of visual art into new territory that is seemingly irrelevant to the medium.  My essay in progress, “The Fine Art Formulary,” addresses some of this, I’ll post pieces of it in future.

Today I am trying to find a tube of anti-corrosive compound in my studio.  The studio packed to the gills; my wife says there isn’t enough room to swing a cat, so I am packing everything tighter to the walls and higher to the ceiling hoping to run across the errant tube hidden somewhere between dozens of models, boxes of smaller completed works and a plethora of parts on their way to becoming integrated into a new piece or scrapped.  New works barely fit into the shop, some hang halfway out the door while I’m working on them, others are built elsewhere.

I’m thinking that if I worked only on really large works I could own less stuff.  Perhaps I could scrap anything weighing less that 50 kg and clear a larger space in my studio to work on smaller pieces and organize my miscellany better.  But it’s likely a vicious cycle I’m pedaling.