Last week I posted 50 blank Art-o-mat blocks I was prepping for artwork. After I finished sanding and painting them, I struggled for several days to come up with an idea that I liked. Sometimes after thinking a lot and then “sleeping on it” something appealing occurs to me. It was then that I remembered a series of woven papers I created a while back from acrylic monoprints that didn’t turn out as I imagined or were otherwise ugly. I hadn’t done anything with them after completing them and since I was able to find them buried in a box in my studio, I decided they would be perfect for this project.
As I just mentioned, the papers I used to make these weavings from were what I considered mistakes, and although not all fails in life can be corrected (horrifically, some errors are fatal but thankfully not in art making!) I think it’s often worth exploring alternatives instead of simply tossing them in the trash. Cutting apart and weaving together those boring and/or hideous monoprint fails completely changed how I saw them. To my mind the random patterns, colors and textures created by new adjacencies transformed them into satisfying works.
Now that these weavings have been cut down to the cigarette pack size of the Art-o-mat block and have been shipped off to Winston-Salem for distribution to one of their 120 vending machines spread out across the country, they will get to be adored (I hope!) as little works of art.
Those are very cool; what a great way to re-purpose a "mistake."
In jazz music I was taught there are no "wrong" notes, only poor choices. The trick, I was taught, was to make a poor choice sound good. That's the difference between the technical and the artistic.
This is a great example of a "wrong" note sounding good!
To add to erniet's spot-on comment--what we also do in improvisation if we play something that didn't work, we play something after it that makes it sound like it worked😉