Needed: Your opinion

Topic: art titles

 I had the most fun recently reading “How To Be Interesting (In 10 Simple Steps) by  Jessica Hagy.  Not only is her advice super and fun to read but also this simple little book gave me some great ideas for art titles. 

            Now you need to know that I really struggle with titles for my art.  Either the title comes easily and simply and is perfect (at least in my opinion) or it is impossible.  I have several times put a piece on Facebook to ask for naming help.  The names my friends come up with are pretty fabulous and I always end up using them.  But really, I can’t do that with every piece.  So I’m stuck coming up with names on my own. 

            I started out using quotes, or parts of quotes, for names, such as “The Blue Dream of Sky”.  Then I moved to names that seem to fit the piece, such as “A River Runs Through It.  However, the name may determine what you see in the piece.  Or the name that I’ve given the piece may be totally wrong for what you see in the work.   Such is the dilemma of abstract art.  After several conversations in which viewers saw very different things than I did in a piece, I decided to lean toward abstraction in the names I gave pieces. As well as in the pieces themselves. 

            Here are some of the names that I’ve come up with as a result of reading “How to Be Interesting”:

                        succulent

                        Swagger

                        Bounds (out of)

                        Unclaimed Spaces

                        Leverage

                        Crux

                        Fulcrum

                        Uncharted

                        Vistas

            I’d love to have your view on names.  Abstract?  Concrete?  Descriptive?  Which is best?  What do you want a name to do or say?

I was laughing to myself this morning about being an artist; the stuff that we do, we wear and the stuff we glory in; you know, the reverse, perverse sort of stuff.  So I thought I’d make a list.  Feel free to chime in with your own “you know you’re an artist when …”.

You know you’re an artist when:

*Your joy at mixing exactly the right red is superseded only by your fear that you’ll never be able to obtain that precise color again.

*Your “normal” work apparel is the worst possible clothes you own; indeed, you even went to the thrift store to buy baggy shorts that you wouldn’t be caught dead in outside of your studio and a t-shirt covered by large mens wear shirt that you bought at the thrift store.  (Does it go without saying that nothing is ironed?)

*While working, you wear any or all of the following: a hairnet, glasses, latex or nitrile gloves and a carbon filter mask.  You look dreadful, often like something out of a sci-fi movie.

*You shower after going to work, not before. 

            So, what are your “you know you are an artist when”?