Constraints

Took a rare Tuesday off to prepare for tonight's appearance by novelist Doug Nufer at the Belmar Arts Council. Although this has been in the works for almost 2 years, I finally met him for the first time when we got together for lunch. His absence from the Jersey Shore all these years left him with some culture shock- the place he suggested to eat was replaced by condos over the winter.

After lunch he went off to do more exploring, while I went to the Studio. Mostly it was a drop off/pick up day, but while I was there I put some sealing tape on my box for Tom, and added a little more color to the 2nd St Eustace print. I didn't have my camera with me, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

In the evening we met up again at the Boatworks for Nufer's performance. (top photo) Some was acted out, some was read. Featured was his double novel set in our local area, The Mudflat Man/The River Boys. Before and after we spent time discussing some of his use of constraint fiction. This is a writing strategy that requires the author to start with a specific set of rules that must be followed while writing the book. For example, in his novel Negativeland every sentence has some kind of negative construction. His Never Again started with the rule that each word is used only once, then never again. When asked, he said he was very comfortable using constraints and doesn't foresee going back to using conventional writing strategies for novels.

I can't get inside his head to know how this helps his creative process, but I have found that setting up structures can have surprisingly creative results. Perhaps the best example of this in my own work is shown in the other photo, an installed (at Kean University) version of my Fourth of July series. Inspired by Frans Masereel, I created my own autobiographical woodcut novel, with a print for each day for a year, starting July 4, 1993 and ending July 4, 1994. The subject would be something related to that day- something I did, saw, heard about, read about, dreamed, etc. The prints are black and white and identical in size. And while there would be some common themes, no two prints could show the same thing. Some might assume that producing the 366 prints would be an oppressive task, but I found the opposite. Taking the decisions about size, shape, color, and subject matter out of the process let me concetrate fully on choosing the event and designing the composition of the rectangle. Took a lot of pressure off as well. If the day's print didn't turn out to be a masterpiece, no problem, maybe tomorrow's will be better. No single print had to carry the whole set, and the lesser images gained meaning from the context of the series. I continue to do prints in series on many occasions because of the advantages- fixed structure, additional layers of meaning, the chance to explore an idea in multiple ways. And if I have an idea that's more suitable for a unique print, I have that option as well.