Why I Still Make Things

Making things, circa 1978.

I’ve always made things. Paintings, music, writing, photographs, design, event decor, holiday decorations, painted clothing, painted chairs, painted pine cones. If something sits still long enough, there’s a decent chance I’ll eventually want to put color on it.

As a child, I loved to draw. My mom used to say she hoped I’d marry an Italian paper maker because I loved two things so much: spaghetti and drawing. I remember drawing and coloring as early as preschool, and I remember going to the Art Institute of Chicago when I was very young and standing in front of a huge Monet painting. I imagined myself running through the field. I don’t think I understood anything yet about art history or museums or what it meant to be an artist. I just knew I wanted to get inside the painting.

There have been periods in my life when I didn’t make much art, but I never really stopped thinking of myself as an artist. Life was simply taking up all the room. I was touring with my band. I became a mother. I was sick for a while. I got absorbed in event production. Other things demanded my attention, and making moved to the side.

Eventually, though, I always miss it. I miss the mess and the color. I miss moving my arms and pushing paint around. I miss wondering what two colors will look like next to each other. I miss getting excited about some material I haven’t used before and wanting to see what it can do. More than anything, I miss moving my body like an artist.

That is usually how making begins for me. I don’t necessarily start with something important I need to say. More often, I get curious. I want to try a medium. I want to see a particular color against another color. I want to find out what happens if I do this instead of that. The idea comes first as a kind of itch, and then I want to follow it.

I’ve always liked working in different mediums because they each ask somethingdifferent of me. Painting isn’t music. Music isn’t writing. Writing isn’t designing a room or making an object. I think of it a little like food. You can really love pizza, but you can’t eat pizza every day. Sometimes you want a burger. Sometimes you want Indian food. Sometimes I want paint. Sometimes I want sound. Sometimes I want words.

What hasn’t changed much over the years is who I’m trying to please. I’ve never really thought about what other people might want me to make. I never imagined painting commissions or trying to predict what someone else might like. That seems almost impossible to me. I only know what I like. I want the work to look the way I wanted it to look.

I want to recognize the thing I was trying to make when I finally step away from it.

The biggest difference now is time. I wish I had more of it. When I was younger, I don’t remember feeling its scarcity in quite the same way. Now I’m constantly aware of how many things I still want to make and how quickly the days fill up.

I also notice what happens when I go too long without making anything. My mind starts folding in on itself. I begin talking to myself more in my head, and the conversation can turn negative or dark. Making interrupts that. It gives all that energy somewhere else to go. Into a canvas. Into a song. Into a sentence. Into a chair. Into a ridiculous painted pine cone.

Maybe that’s really the answer to why I still make things. I can’t help myself. I like creating stuff. I like the feeling that something exists because I spent time imagining it, moving it around, messing it up, fixing it, and eventually making it real.

And when I finish something that didn’t exist before, even something small or strange or completely unnecessary, I feel like I’ve contributed something to the planet.

That seems like enough reason to keep going.