A bench at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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When a person works in an advertising agency, this person has the opportunity to work with probably the most intelligent and creative group of people in an office environment. I had that opportunity: at Cargill, Wilson and Acree, a subsidiary of Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), New York.
When I was working at Cargill, in Atlanta, I started something that turned out to be more far-reaching than I had intended. Eventually, an article was written about it in Adweek.
This far-reaching act on my part was called The Wall.
I set up “The Wall” as a place where coworkers, passersby and friends could come into my office and write one or two line quotations on the large blank pieces of paper I had tacked up on my office walls.
These large drawing papers on my office walls soon grew in numbers, enough to cover my entire office. Every time I changed offices, so did The Wall.
The “quotes” were not those of famous people. But some funny anecdotes. Things that happened during the day. Things that had made everyone present laugh. The agency would talk about The Wall in terms of “having a wallie.” (Then they would come rushing into my office and scribble it down.)
The Wall was so popular among everyone, including the principals of the agency, showing it off was a part of agency tours. (Even to perspective new clients.) The Chairman would stand there and read off selected lines and everyone on the tour would laugh.
A book containing quotations from The Wall was published.
When I left the agency, The Wall was taken down and rolled up. It is now yellowing in my basement. Vibrating with good times, stress relief, brilliant creativity and sometimes things that just don’t make any sense; I am absolutely positive that those folks who were working at or associated with Cargill, Wilson and Acree during those years remember it fondly.
This is about painting bad work.
As painters, we know it is disheartening to paint, day after day, trying to get our actions to meet our goals. What we see in our minds is fluid, a wise professor once told me, and cannot be translated into an image on the two or three dimensional surface. Ever. But it does not stop us from trying.
We are constantly surprised by what comes about, sometimes good, sometimes not.
When we paint tirelessly everyday, we keep going. It is so hard to spend, as David Lynch would say, most of the time looking at the work and very little time altering what we have done. It is hard enough just using that part of our mind which is non verbal. It puts us in a different world.
When we see that we have produced bad work, we are inclined to give up.
I learned through experience, that it is in those very bad paintings, the truth: That, we have reached a higher level. And we need this challenge to break through. When we do, we create something better. Better than all the work we have done before.
I see it this way: We practice (a plateau where nothing changes and we are satisfied with our work), we rest (giving ideas time to develop), and we learn. It is in the learning that we create bad work. And that is a very good sign.
Refrigerator Art.
There is really nothing creative about people tacking things up on their refrigerators. It’s so common, it’s boring.
But I wanted to share some tiny little drawings I unearthed while cleaning our space out. (Still have not found a home for those Martha Stewarts I have collected since the first issue. Prison years included.)
These drawings are done by my family. some by my daughter when she was very little, some by me and one very odd and indescribable animal head drawn by my husband. I put them on the refrigerator in a little grouping, not really knowing where else to put them: They are so small.
A person could look at them as similar to those words that were popular years back. Those words you could string together and make a poem.
Maybe my collection of tiny drawings is like that.
I have photographed this site before and have posted it on Facebook. But I love it so much, I wanted to put it here on my blog. The moving vehicle passing by gives you an idea of the scale.
“The Sketchbook Project Is A Traveling Library Of Artists’ books Created By Thousands Of People from Across The Globe.”
The company is based in Brooklyn, NY.
I decided my latest work, would be to do a sketchbook. The theme: “Capes, Masks and Tights”, focusing as you can see on “Tights.”
I have not even begun, but already the images of the lower half of figures in tights has woven its way into my thoughts.
Anyone can do a sketchbook, have it digitized and then let it travel around the country as part of a library. The idea for this was formed by some folks from Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta.
I find these origins appropriate for me, since I live in Atlanta, did postgraduate work at Atlanta College of Art (now Savannah College of Art and Design), grew up, in part, in the New York area. And exhibit my artwork in New York and Atlanta now.
The sketchbook is a great way for artists to get “unstuck.” To keep doing work. Get ideas flowing, and to enjoy the finished product.
This sculpture reminds me of the shape I used in my video “Bread In The Sky.”
This is the finished set for Maniya Barredo’s “Nutcracker.”
Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 