Category: Uncategorized

Documenting, Drawing, and a bit of Photographing

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

Mark Twain, Rescue Time
Sunny Morning in San Diego
Sunny Morning in San Diego, CA

Light through the Tree, Hendricks © 2021, Digital Work

Currently, I am updating my sites and documenting work I have completed over the years while teaching at Minneapolis Community Technical College. After earning my MFA, at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, students, technology, family, friends, and my Quaker community dominated my life. 

While those activities captured most of my attention, I was producing work. I didn’t have time to display or share my work as frequently as I would like. So now I am working to document it and display it. Apple Photo and other apps didn’t do me much favor. Many original finals are lost, but enough can be found that I am able to create digital galleries. 

Today I created a new page to share with all—

“http://artchangeslives.com/photo-impressionism-hendricks/”
“Seeing is Believing”, a series of photo impressionistic work I have produced.

Currently drawing more… mostly surrealistic work. That will be the next gallery I will work to create. 

Seeing is Believing?

“Wondrous as it is, our sense of vision is clearly not without certain limitations. We can no more see radio waves emanating from our electronic devices then we can spot the wee bacteria right under our noses.”

Adam Hadhazy, 27th July 2015
What are the limits of human vision? BBC.com
Wind & Particles, a drawing by Bill Hendricks 2020
Winds & Particles, a miixed media drawing, Hendricks©2022

Untitled or Titled

“I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.”

Jackson Pollock The Healing Power of Art and Artist
A Drawing of the Known-Unknown
A Drawing of the Known-Unknown, Hendricks©2023

Titling work is hard… In the past, I frequently titled a work only to retitled it later when I have exhibited the work. To me, that underscores that work does have a life of its own. The meaning changes as time, culture, and viewers’ experiences change. I guess the artist’s experience changes too.
This work is my latest, inspired by both the Greek myths and the book “Conversations with God” by Neale Donald Walsch.  I settled on the title-Created. I think it could be Losing it too. Maybe soon, I will think of another. 

A great article in The New Republic, Art with No Name, by Ruth Bernard Yeazell, discusses why many untitled works were produced in the 18th Century. As it examines the subject, it brings forward as art becomes more mobile the need to title a piece increases to provide an entrée into the work.

Titling, as E. H. Gombrich has observed, “is a by-product of the mobility of images,”; and before the rise of the art market, the growth of public exhibitions, and the development of the reproductive print, the mobility of images was distinctly limited.

Process, Product or Both?

A process is a series of steps designed to lead to a particular outcome or goal. It is exploration, a journey, it is fluid, dynamic.  A product is the outcome or goal of a process. It is static, solid, fixed in a single moment, a snapshot, usually an artifact created through that process.

Peter Toth

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Process or Product?

I think for most artists, it should be the same. Each stroke informs the next. Each piece of work informs the next, but remember the key is paying attention.