It's not a simple dichotomy of quick and slow, but recently I've noticed that people are often surprised to learn when paintings take years or to see art made in moments. Right now my examples are all potters (Richard Aerni*, Julie Johnson and Molly** and Scott Oliver** had an open studio today and it was full of things they made 'quickly'). The time artists train is always invisible and nobody sits down at a wheel and makes a graceful and balanced bowl without first spending time putting in the practice...but what of the turtle and the bunny? Why do we think of art as a short sprint and not a long distance race***?

Quick muse is a chance to see what big shot poets write quickly and under pressure. While I loved the honestly and immediacy and humor of Marge Peircy's poem about how poetry gets taught, I cringed at a couple of misspellings. Watchman, not watchmen. The guy whose idea it was wrote a short essay in Fast Company which led me to a longer essay from Poets and Writers. But even with quick muse the improvisation experiment is tested with the sure bet writers not a bunch of joes off the street...

Maybe it is that most favorite poems are the slow-wrought kind. Made deliberately through the time testing process of scribbling and rewriting. Maybe that's how Piercy herself wrote her poem after September 11.

Or maybe you stop practicing what you will say when you truly find your voice. Experience and talent and hard work make artists and poets nimble enough to make magic quickly, though revision sharpens more than it dulls. And if artists keep trying, testing, changing, improvising, they can stay honest no matter if the work takes months or moments. It's a good think Frank didn't clean up his collapsing starlet) and Kandinsky didn't beat those early Improvisations to death (oh the later work is so restrained and sad it seems) but rather let them live, be messy, and exist somewhere between line and color, cannons and anxiety.
The great Improvisation #30 in Chicago is the one I'm thinking of...
None of this changes much my own preferred process or my appreciation of the slow projects (how much time did Fun Home take Alison Bechdel? and it is magnificent!) and I am maybe more curious than sure of how and why we make art but I do have some thoughts on how I'll be making bread.
Thanks to Jim Lachey's recipe from the New York Times, I made some ridiculously easy and enormously satisfying slow bread this weekend.

Take care and go as slow or as fast as you need to, following traffic regulations of course...
Rachael


disclosures:
* I didn't bring a digital camera and so this is an image I found on the web of a display by Aernie from a local art show a few years back. His studio looks even better.
** These are good friends as well as good artists. I'm not objective...
*** I think that was from Gregory Armeoff's letter in Letters to a Young artist from Art on Paper and now a book