hideous

Whoa! Look what monster came out of the bag! It is so refreshing to see something I did that is not trying to be beautiful. It is like something that has crept up from underground. Something hideous. Something I did on election day. Somehow appropriate.

Honestly though--what a relief to just do something without needing it to be appealing. Perhaps art can only be art when it is something that bubbles up, given opportunity to exist, uncontrolled (although everything is somewhat controlled, isn't it?). Not something forcibly created to fill a certain bill.

Ideally, with calligraphy-as-artwork, the creator does a portion, stands back and assesses what is there, and then decides intuitively what to do next, does it, and reapeats the standing-back-and-assessing procedure again. The important thing is to know when to stop. (I learned this from Steve Skaggs.)