about setting rules
Everyday a little blog entrance, this is the rule I set myself for the next month.
Setting rules was the theme of Christoph Zellweger’s summer workshop at Alchimia.
Setting rules is of primary importance in any creative work.
I need rules to free myself from the infinite…
I need rules to stay on the surface…
I need rules to break out…
I need rules to go deeper…
I need rules to discover the unexpected…
I need rules to reach the infinite…
I need rules not to become crazy…
I need rules to overcome my limits…
I need rules for measuring…
I need rules to play…
I need rules to live my life…
I need rules to jump over my fences…
I need rules to stop thinking…
This summer I was invited to the Turnov Symposium, a gathering of jewelers, we stayed together for 10 days in a wonderful town in the Bohemian paradise.
Each of us had to make a piece for the museum.
We had four days to work on it.
A big problem, four days to make something to remain “forever” in a museum. You want to be good, you don’t want to leave a “bad” record of yourself in a museum.
I searched for a concept, something deep and intelligent which I knew I could not find not like this in four days under the pressure to be “good”.
I searched for the rule: four days of crochet with iron wire, without stopping eight hours work for four days.
I would ask each of my 10 colleagues
to give me something
of their choice
to work into my piece;
like a spider entrapping the victim
I would not stop and had to accept
every gift I got, no choice.
It turned out as an almost mystical journey. I got very unsure on the way.
What am I doing ?
It is getting horrible;
I have to change something, it is getting too ugly;
How can I ever get this tiny granat in ?
Maybe I should just stop it and admit my failure,
But I did not give up I resisted, I made no esthetical decision I just followed the rules and the result has the size of a heart with eleven mysteries in it.
each side is different and even the tiny granat sits on a piece of wax ( a gift because I could not add or choose anything )
and now it sits in the museum and I am proud of it!
see you tomorrow
dorismaninger 