There is a kind of work I have been making for years now that is not for showing. It lives in a folder, then a drawer, then — sometimes — a wall in my own house. I want to talk about why.
The first time someone walked into my studio and asked which pieces were finished, I didn't know what to say. The honest answer was: none of them. I was still living with them. They were still arguing with me. I wasn't sure who was going to win, and until that argument was over, calling them 'finished' felt like cheating.
Most of them I never showed. A few of them I sold, eventually, to friends who understood that they weren't getting the version of the work that would have been called 'done' in a different studio. The rest are in a flat file in the corner of the room I'm sitting in right now.
Somewhere in the last ten years a quiet rule got established in my practice: making and showing are different verbs. They use different muscles. They answer to different audiences — one of which is just the room, and one of which is the world. The room is more honest, but the world pays the bills.
The room is more honest, but the world pays the bills. So I have learned to keep two kinds of practice, side by side.
So I have learned to keep two kinds of practice, side by side. The work I make for shows is taut, resolved, photographable. The work I make for the drawer is closer to journaling. It is the work I'd lose if it didn't exist, but I'd lose nothing by no one seeing.
The drawer work is the work I keep returning to in private. It is the work I learn from. The strange thing is, the lessons it teaches me show up later in the work that does get shown — usually quietly, in a corner, in a decision someone else might not even notice. The drawer is the underwater part of the iceberg. The shows are the tip.
Here is what I have learned about making things that aren't for showing: