For the last 15 years or so, my art practice has largely been focused on my experience with mental health. It’s hard to not make overly serious work when your mental health experience is steeped in suicidal thoughts, extreme depression, debilitating OCD, uncontrollable anxiety, and frustrations with ADHD. The importance of delivering lessons about these experiences overshadows the ease of making lighthearted or fun artwork. I’m not at all saying that these two are mutually exclusive. In fact, whenever possible, I have tried to imbue some fun into my art. But oftentimes, the weight of these topics takes precedence over finding a joke or something fun to include.
Over the last 9 months or so, however, I have had a pair of similar questions at the forefront of many of my artmaking decisions: Is it stupid? Is it silly?
I ask these questions as positively as possible. I don’t mean “stupid” or “silly” derogatorily. Neither is an insult to me. They are just simple, guiding questions that help me remember to try to include some fun wherever possible.
The path of the art making process is littered with points of decisions. Each choice offers new choices for an artist to make and new directions to take the work. When I come up to two or more equally good decisions, I find these questions perfect for helping me progress. Between two equal decisions, I now always choose that which is stupider/sillier.
Similarly, artists can hit a deadend in the art-making process, unable to proceed due to a lack of quality options. Again, these two questions can be a perfect tool for pushing through, carving a new path that is at least fun and lighthearted.
These questions have not failed me yet.
I wanted to make a video work for an exhibition I created about self-care, self-help, and self-medication. The final film shown was the third attempt. The first video was going to be a first-person POV video of me going on a routine walk I go on everyday. I filmed the video and began editing it to be hit with the realization that it was incredibly boring. I tried again in the vein of a first-person POV video, this time adding other self-care habits I use. This video was also incredibly boring.
Feeling stuck, I put these questions to the test. I went back to the drawing board, thinking about how to make a video about self-care habits, only this time, I let the stupid/silly threads lead me, ultimately weaving together a video far more compelling, entertaining, and impactful than the previous two could have ever been.