Earlier this week, I went to see a retrospective on Ruth Asawa's art at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art. The exhibit was a comprehensive look into Asawa's work, tracing her first obsessions with overlaid patterns using laundry stamps on paper, through to her more mature work of woven metal wire sculptures. I've always loved these pieces, how they’re at once abstract yet evocative, highly manipulated yet still totally organic. They remind me of flowers, of strands of DNA, flowing lava, even pods of string beans, all at once. They are elegant and gorgeous objects, and the breadth of MoMA's exhibit made me marvel at the sheer quantity of what Asawa produced during her lifetime.
What struck me maybe even more than the art, however, was how the exhibit portrayed Asawa as a human being. Her art was always at the forefront of what she did, but it seemed to pour out of her. From paintings of eggplants growing in her garden, to clay 'life masks' of her loved ones, to the giant carved redwood doors that she sculpted to mark the entrance to her San Francisco home, she was a practicing artist through and through. She seemed to lead her life with an open mind, selflessness, and an unwavering trust in her own self and intuition.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently: how can my own art be a life-long creative practice? I've struggled over the years with seeing how playing the violin fits into the art world at large. Most of the time in my life and career, I travel to perform a piece or program pre-determined a year or more in advance, then go home to prepare for the next. Where does the creative journey live in that equation?
I feel that there is opportunity to squash creativity out of classical music at nearly every turn: it takes incredible skill and specificity to hone one's technique on an instrument, then some amount of brain to analyze and interpret an already-written score. With these parameters, it’s easy to fall into the trap of attempting to be perfect and pristine. The flip side of this is that one can become so fixated on the pursuit of perfection that we lose the essence of what the music is trying to say. I've personally tried to shift my mindset into one of more creativity: I try to really listen to myself and let intuition dictate my decision-making when it comes to music. Much of the time, these days, I consciously avoid making any decisions about phrasing, fingerings, or bowings in advance of a performance, and let pure intuition and feeling guide me through the piece. I find this is helps me stay present, even when interpreting a score that may have been written centuries ago. I think this is why I also enjoy playing new music and working with composers: I love getting close to creativity.
But is what I do inherently creative?
A lot of my time this year has been devoted to exploring things outside of music. This is something I've always done to an extent, but either never allowed myself to fully commit to a hobby, or just thought I didn't have time for them. A freelance musician's schedule, after all, is a chaotic mess, constantly swinging between having all the time in the world and being away from home for weeks on end. This year, I'm trying to be more intentional with my time, and more protective of my time off. In a way, this is in order to explore other activities (pottery, dance, languages, fitness), but on a deeper level, it is to attempt to reawaken my creative spirit. I say 'reawaken' as I remember a time when I was a child that I made art for art's sake, in any medium that spoke to me. I feel that that spark has dulled over the years.
What this will lead to, I'm not sure, but I'm inspired by Ruth Asawa (as just one example) to find art in the everyday. For us artists, ideally, art is holistic. It is of course our livelihood and our work, but I believe the spirit of art should glow and encircle everything in the artist's life. I love the idea of treating art as something intangible; not a mission with a destination, but a passion, a practice, an exploration. And in our high-energy, fast-paced world, where immediacy and efficiency is valued over all else, it takes great strength to let things unfurl.