appropriationappropriationappropriation

Anything we produce is essentially a gathering and rephrasing of various bits or ideas that we come across. This process of appropriation is everything we do as artists. Well, not just as artists. But for the purpose of this blog, we appropriate others throughout the creative process. We learn from artists about artists and about how to be artists. We are constantly gathering the tools, technology, and ideas of the appropriators before us. In fact, I would say it is our job as artists to do this.

When I was looking through all my photographs for my presentation last week, I realized that I went through phases of very directly imitating stylistic or content information from artists' work I had seen. When what I was creating didn't stick with me or it didn't "feel right," as Miss Helen Stoddard says, I would completely move on and try on a different artist's suit so to speak. After some period of time however, the different experiments build upon each other and something not so straightforward comes out- something that doesn't so clearly resemble the work of one or two artists. Those are the pieces that are considered good art. Those are the pieces that are worth appropriating.