Last week I wrote about Claire Henderson, who just finished the quilt she started in my workshop at Quilting By The Lake a couple of years ago and sent me a picture. I looked back in my own photo files and found pictures of her quilt in process, so it was fun to see how she had changed and rearranged the pieces as she composed the quilt on the design wall, and what she changed after she got home.
Vickie then left a comment: "I do love seeing the process. I keep resolving to take and organize photos of my process, and add comments and reflections. But, then, I think I'm too busy to stop and do that. I've got to find a designated time for this. Do you have any suggestions?"
I'm a huge believer in process documentation, which includes both the physical aspects of making a piece of art and the thinking and self-evaluation that causes the making. In fact, I would say that articulating and capturing your thought process is one of the major skillsets of the serious artist. Perhaps there are fabulous artiste savants out there who just channel the universe into their work without stopping to think about it, but nobody I know falls into that category. The artists I admire and respect are able to explain where their ideas come from, how they translate the ideas into tangible form, how their process has changed and adapted to new ideas and challenges, whether and why they want to keep working in this particular vein.
So Vickie is definitely on to something. But how do you develop the discipline to take the pictures, reflect on what you have done, and get the comments into print? Like developing any new kind of discipline, that's hard to do, even for people like me who are obsessively wedded to documentation. Maybe the first step is to divide the project into two parts: one that absolutely must be done at the moment, and one that can be postponed for later (often that means "I need it now").
Fortunately, now that we have digital photography, documentation is much easier than it used to be. But the camera has to be there when it's time to take the picture, otherwise you will either go off to find the camera, and while you're finding it you will hear the dryer end its cycle and stop to fold the clean laundry, and then it's time to fix dinner and when you get back to the studio you still don't have the camera and have forgotten that you even wanted to take a picture. Or else you will say crap, I'm in the moment, I don't want to take the time to find the camera, and there's one more step undocumented.
So step one in the new discipline is to keep a camera or a phone with you as you work in the studio. That shouldn't be too hard, especially now that many of us already carry phones with us as we move about the house. And if the phone is right there, all you have to learn is to use it frequently. I like to take photos every time I leave the studio for the day, of what's on my work table and on my design wall. And sometimes in between, for instance if I'm trying to make a decision about composition.
Often it's sufficient just to have taken the photos, even if you don't have them organized or labeled or carefully catalogued. You can always go back in time and reconstruct your actions, as I did when Claire sent me her photo. I was embarrassed to realize that I had never put my photos from QBL into my WORKSHOPS folder, so I looked into my folder of all photos taken in July 2017, found the QBL photos and put them under WORKSHOPS as I should have done two years ago.
But two years later you can't always remember exactly why you decided to switch gears and go to commercial prints instead of hand-dyed fabric, or what parts of the making were difficult and how you coped, or how you got the idea to work with circles in the first place. So it's a good idea to keep some kind of record of your thoughts before they disappear.
I used to keep a desk calendar at my worktable in the studio, and every day I would write down what I worked on that day, and any comments or reflections that came to mind. I urge my students to do even more -- at best, a written self-evaluation of each piece as it's finished. Some people like to do a daily journal or "morning pages" or blog post or other ritual of writing down what's happening in their lives, and if you like this approach, then I encourage you to write about your art along with whatever other things you like to document.
If you need to set a designated time for your documentation, then by all means do so. If you need to have a designated notebook or a designated folder on your computer, go for it. In any case, you need a routine that feels good for you. Several years ago a friend, knowing that I kept a daily diary of my work, regifted me a very nice calendar book. But it was one of those books that would be good in any year; it didn't have days of the week. I started the year by writing "S M T W Th F S" in the day boxes so I could keep track, but then I forgot to do a week, and then I couldn't keep track of what day it was and found myself writing in the wrong box, and by May I totally abandoned the calendar because it was too frustrating. Sounds like a petty little detail that shouldn't have made any difference, but it didn't work for me. If you can figure out a plan that works for you, you're on the right track.
But in any case, Step One is to have your camera right there in the studio when you work. Try to take lots of photos; you can organize and categorize them later, and delete the ones that are out of focus or duplicates or don't accomplish much. You can do this MUCH later if need be. But once Step One becomes part of your work routine, Step Two (whatever that is) will be easier.
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