Why I Still Make Things

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.