Your Real Art is in Your Process

Creating

By Blaine Hogan

Editor’s Note: Today’s feature is an exclusive excerpt from UNTITLED: thoughts on the creative process by Blaine Hogan

“Products have to have an internal signiﬁcance for producers beyond the purely instrumental utility.” – MIROSLAV VOLF, WORK IN THE SPIRIT

My friend is the most amazing singer I have ever heard.

They say that when you write you shouldn’t use cliches because your audience might be bored and think you’re bad at writing, so forgive me when I say that when my friend sings I hear angels.

I recall a conversation we had a few days before one of her performances.

She was fretting because the producers (of which I was one) kept harping on what she was going to wear and after bringing in what felt like her entire closet, we still couldn’t decide.

In addition to her wardrobe issues she was having a great deal of anxiety, fearing failure onstage.

The stakes for this particular performance were so high there was absolutely no room for error.

In that moment she felt a lot like she was being used.

In a word, she felt like a tool.

Literally.

At the end of the day she knew she would be judged by the producers and the audience only by the product of her performance and not by anything else.

When we use art for utilitarian purposes we can’t help but only judge the end result.

There is no art in mere utility, there are just products.

And when there are only products, there is no real art.

And without actual art, there is no humanity – there is no “internal signiﬁcance.”

After telling me of her fears I started to wonder out loud if we donʼt sometimes confuse our products with our art.

Or, at the very least, overemphasize the idea that our products are the most important part of the whole deal.

My friend was coming undone because of the emphasis on her performance (her product) and her performance only. In the end, no one was going to care about the condition of her heart or her soul on the way to the stage.

If my friend only has her performances to judge her success, she’s probably going to end up miserable.

Why?

Because eventually the product is going to fail.

When your art is only in your product and not also in your process, things will always end this way.

You must understand that your art is not just what you make but how you make it.

Your art isnʼt just the “what” of the end result, but also “how” you got there.

When we don’t allow for our end products to be birthed out of true artistic and creative processes that honor the “how” and even the “why,” the artist will be unable to infuse it with any internal signiﬁcance (clients and leaders, Iʼm talking to you!).

If it doesn’t mean something to the artist it won’t mean anything to the audience.

Weʼve all been in meetings or conversations about a piece of art where the following question is uttered:

“Did it work?”

This is the danger with seeing our art (or our artists) as utilities.

“Did it work” is not a question of art.

That is a question for your washing machine.

“Did it work?,” is not a bad question, there just might be better ones like…

Did you bring your insides out?
Did you acknowledge the lump in your throat?
Did you tell a compelling story?
Did you try something new? Something risky?
Did you work from your center?
Did you allow yourself to be moved?

We must put as much time into our “how” and our “why,” as we do our “what.”

This is how we make our process a work of art.

Our job is to communicate the human experience and is something a machine will never be able to do.

About Blaine Hogan

After 12 years as a professional actor, Blaine Hogan now makes his living as a creative director. He lives just outside Chicago with his wife, Margaret, and their daughter, Ruby. Follow him on twitter and his blog where he writes about ideas, hope, and the creative process.

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Comments

emma

i am a photography student at an art college in australia. i googled something desperately for help in trying to think of my current ideas for assessment… i don’t remember the phrase i googled, something about how to be genuine in art work. this helped me. thank you. i think my teachers don’t really guide us with some of these things, like being true to ourselves etc. they just want us to be cutting edge.