Category: Creating or Constructing

Every Work of Art

“Every work of art is a culturescape of you, your memories, the moments you spent working, your hopes, energies, and neuroses, the times you live in, and your ambitions. Of the things that are engaging, mysterious, meaningful, resistant over time.”
― Jerry Saltz, How to Be an Artist

Digitally enhanced photograph by Bill Hendricks
Digitally enhanced image, Hendrick©2022

Finally, I got a gallery set up. I have to explore more because I am still determining if the plug-in NextGen Gallery is worth it.

I am reading Jerry Saltz’s book—Art is Life. I like it. He is very entertaining. I am unsure if I like him, but he speaks his mind. He seems to have compassion too. So I guess I do. But he would be a challenge, I think.

Loved his story of himself laying down the idea of being an artist. He speaks of creating art… akin to meditation and communing with the unknown. His question about … Is There Great Art on Instagram? I appreciated that he seemed to honor all the artists working… discovering… exploring… and most of all, creating art as an unknown but still creating. 

Then this article/chapter—Iconoclasm Now: Charlie Hebdo and the Lethal Power of Art. That chapter was a show-stopper for me; as a Quaker and even as a young man, I believed that what I created on paper, sculpted, and images I made, I breathed life into the work. So whether it is seen or unseen, it has life cause it was/is a part of me. He didn’t go there exactly, but when he spoke about the image breakers that believed the images that “the thing itself and, as made not by God, they contain demonic spirits.” So I identified with that some people believe similarly about an image as I do—the demonic bit … not so much. But as a Quaker, there is the “Light of God” within the work. 

The short of it, I am learning a lot, and Mr. Saltz’s book is good. It is approachable and entertaining.  

Creation or Construction

 

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. 

G.K. Chesterton’s “Are You Creating or Constructing?”
Drawing on Paper
Tumult, Mixed Media, Hendricks ©2021

This article came to me through a friend on LinkedIn that I respect very much, Chris Zuege. The article is by Robert Rose. Chris posts on LinkedIn often, and I always find his posts enlightening.  This resonated with me because the work I do is very off the cuff.  I often wonder as I am working and when it is done. Am I the tool or the creator? For me, this quote and article gave me an answer. I am the tool, and what I create was loved before it existed. 

I know it has been quite a while since I posted to this blog. The truth is that I was off learning. I studied color… read philosophy… learned more about  3D digital art. I will be posting more regularly again.  

Today’s post was important to me. First, to wish everyone a great holiday and an even more fabulous new year and then share my last drawing of 2021.  Its title is Tumult. It fits for 2021. 

The Painted Work—What’s mine?

 

What I saw before me was the critic-in-chief The New York Times saying: In looking at a painting today, “to lack, a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial.” I read it again. It didn’t say “something helpful” or “enriching” or even “extremely valuable.” No, the word was “crucial.”

Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word, 1975
https://www.billemory.com/NOTES/wolfe.html
Drawing working with pen and ink
Experiment … Part of the Process, Mixed Media, Hendricks©2020

The quote above was written in response to an article in the New York Times, on Sunday, April 28, 1974, by art critic Hilton Kramer.

This blog is a journal of sorts, featuring my artwork and my ideas about art as I understand it. After 67 years of living, I now get to start practicing what I believe I am meant to do. That is to do art.

As I work, read, and reacquaint myself with myself through my art and studies, I seek a theory of me. It is becoming more and more apparent that I am emerging both intellectually and spiritually through my art.

I have never been keen on the significant art pubs or the art critics. Only because, through big words and lengthy explanation of what they see or how they interpret, the work often shuts out, divides, or disqualifies the everyday joe or mary from viewing, collecting, and enjoying art.

I guess part of objecting to the art authoritarians is that I never felt like I fit in being a blue-collar Catholic boy that is gay, not queer, dyslectic, alcoholic, and Quaker. So I often had to forge my own beliefs and codes of conduct.

That being said, I do believe there has to be some theory, some idea, path, or journey the casual viewer might need to understand my work or any artwork better.

Although, Wolfe is critical of Kramers’s reference to the “crucial” need for a perspective theory. Wolfe doesn’t say no knowledge is necessary. Thus every artist usually provides an artist statement for the viewer and gallery visitors.

I guess Artchangeslives(dot)com is where I work to find the theory of Bill.

Perception—No Brown

There’s no such thing as brown light! The color brown doesn’t exist in the external reality, but only in your internal reality: it’s simply what you perceive when seeing dim orange light against a darker background.

Max Tegmark, 
Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality;
Good Reads
Triangles, an image drawn by Bill Hendricks
Triangles, 5″ x 5″ Mixed Media, Hendricks ©2020t.

Still fascinated by Perception Vs. Reality

I have been doing a lot of work, surprisingly. I am still coping with learning the new media and focusing more on drawing with more control, as tempted as I am to use straight edges and drawing(technical templates). I believe a hand-drawn circle is more revealing about the artist and skill. Not that skill counts a lot, even if the world disagrees.

I suppose a bit of art speak is necessary at some point. If I have to put it in one word right now, I choose Creation, if I need to provide two words, Creation and Chaos. If I must give the reader three words… Creation, Chaos, and Order.

My friends tell me that the found paper I am working with isn’t such a good idea. They say it must be acid-free and have the ability to endure time. I understand their reasoning, and I guess to preserve the value of the work. I have two pieces of art that I did when I was very young, and when I open a drawer and see them, I think how beautiful it is that they are fading and turning a warm patina of age. By not worrying about the paper’s acidic nature, I feel I am embracing nature and time as Stefan Sagmeister did in his ‘Lisbon Billboard (2009).

I am archiving my work. Being that my drawings are small, that is easy. I have been digitizing them as well, building a body of work. I am having an opening of sorts on Second Life tomorrow.

Stay healthy… Thanks for reading,
Bill

Information about Bill Hendricks (Shadowmason)

About Me… William John Hendricks

I am what I amAnd what I am needs no excusesI deal my own deckSometimes the ace sometimes the deuces. 
~ Jerry Herman, Composer (Wikipedia)

Bill Hendricks, (Shadowmason)
Bill Hendricks, 2021, in my office at Minneapolis College.

I’m a Minnesotan who has spent much of my life between Los Angeles and New York City. I consider myself a digital artist, but my work moves between tactile and virtual forms — printmaking, photography, drawing, and interactive installations.

My work has been shown in Minneapolis and New York and is held in several private collections throughout the United States. It has been exhibited in The Intimate Gallery at Gallery 148 in Minneapolis — a group show that explored the idea of collective consciousness — and in Postcards From the Edge, presented by Visual AIDSAttachment.tiff at the Robert Miller Gallery in New York City.

My digital work has also been archived by Rhizome ArtBaseAttachment.tiff, where my interactive piece Interpreted, Obscured and Sought (2005) is featured. Rhizome’s collection focuses on pioneering internet-based art, and being included there connects my work to a larger history of experimental digital practice.

For over two decades, I taught Graphic Design, Web Design, and Fine Art at Minneapolis College (MCTC) and also taught at Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), where I earned my MFA. Teaching shaped how I think about art — as a dialogue between thought, feeling, and craft.

After retiring, I returned full circle to my studio practice, creating new work that blends ink drawing, photography, and 3D modeling. I continue to explore how the digital and the handmade can meet — how systems and structures can hold emotion and spirit.

My work also appears in Second Life, where I exhibit under the name Tap Quentin. In January, I was invited by the Second Life Endowment for the Arts to participate in a group show featuring digital prints and drawings. You can view some of my virtual work on the Second Life Marketplace at Ephemeral TracesAttachment.tiff.

Learn more about my current projects and reflections in the 2025 Mixed Media GalleryAttachment.tiff — where I continue to explore the quiet space between order and intuition, stillness and play.