From May to November, I sculpt every day in my clay studio. I think of my studio time as my "Hemingway hours". The idea comes from one of Hemingway's novels, "Islands in the Stream", in which the main character, a painter named Thomas Hudson, says that the important thing is to just work in your studio every day no matter what. If you're stuck, just sit there anyway. And the funny thing is that it works. So I keep to a strict studio schedule, working every day, no days off, no vacations, no nonsense. I demand of myself only that I work at least two hours in my studio making sculpture, which sounds like nothing, but this is two solid uninterrupted hours of purely sculpture - no phone, no computer, no iPad, no coffee/tea/food, no nonsense, just sculpture. Since I'm a morning person, this means I could be done with the real point of my day by 9:00 in the morning. But often, I work long past the two hours and am surprised to find it's lunch time, and then dinner time. Those are the days when it's hard to get out of the studio at all. Those are the good days.
But the other days, the ones when I don't feel well or something is wrong, are when the Hemingway thing comes in handy. I go to the studio planning to put in my time, possibly to just sit and stare at a wall, but because of the years of plugging away I always find my way back to getting something done, in spite of myself. Other times, I'm pulled in a lot directions by appointments and deadlines and various innumerable distractions which encroach upon my time so I have to rope off at least two hours that are sacred and can't be used up on anything but sculpture.
As a sculptor, I have an endless list of physical work related to sculpture that isn't actually making sculpture - preparing clay, making armatures, making molds, casting, kiln loading, etc. and none of that counts as making sculpture. And none of the busywork of exhibiting counts either: the exhibition entries; writing those god awful artists statements; shipping; framing; etc. That's all just stuff that has to be done, like washing the dishes. But that's also stuff that I can do if I'm feeling so terrible I can't sculpt or even draw, then I'll pound the clay, sweep the floors, make some armatures. And the funny thing is, I invariably end up playing with clay, goofing around with shapes, doing what I love. Hemingway was right.
PS. This is irrelevant, but my cats come from a line of polydactyls, like Hemingway's six-toed cats. Peter the Wondercat has normal toes, but his sister Wendy (above) has two extra toes.
