Over the past few weeks, I’ve been writing about ideas—questions of permanence, memory, meaning, and even the Japanese concept of mono no aware.

Those ideas matter to me. They help me understand why I make things.But eventually, every artist arrives at the same place: The studio — and the work.(Remember that country song, A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action? 🙂

Right now, I’m preparing for a small exhibition in the Members Gallery at the San Antonio Art League & Museum. That means spending hours surrounded by scraps of paper, bits of wood, old photographs, thread, wax, and all the other materials that somehow find their way into my collages and assemblages.

It’s satisfying work. It’s also surprisingly difficult work.

For me, the challenge is rarely technical. The challenge is making decisions.

A piece may sit on the table while I sort through dozens of scraps of paper looking for the right one. Sometimes I spend thirty minutes searching for a half-inch fragment that feels exactly right. Other times I’ll rearrange an assemblage element over and over before finally committing to its placement.

Elizabeth’s Crow

Experience has taught me that there is a difference between a piece that is merely interesting and a piece that belongs. When I find the one that belongs, the work becomes quieter. It stops arguing with me.

To an outsider, this might not look like work at all. Many people wouldn’t call this “work,” but if you’ve been there, you know what I mean. If you’ve ever made something—whether it’s a painting, a poem, a quilt, a garden, or a piece of music—you know that decisions are the work. Every choice closes one door and opens another.

One thing that helps with decision-making is working in a small series. If you decide on a connecting thread—several similar figures, a collection of windows, a recurring symbol, or a particular color palette—you can limit your choices from the beginning. You might make each piece the same size and use many of the same materials.

For example, I’ve just completed a series of three small 5″ x 7″ encaustic collages called Lifedance. The size was already determined. The figures were already chosen. The palette is related across all three pieces. Those decisions are made before I ever begin searching for the perfect collage scrap or deciding where an image should be placed.

The challenge then becomes a more interesting one: how do I create three pieces that clearly belong together without making them duplicates of one another? What can change, and what should remain consistent? Instead of facing an overwhelming number of possibilities, I’m working within a smaller set of choices.

Lifedance #1

Lifedance #2

Lifedance #3

These three small Lifedance collages are modest works. They were created for a small exhibit, and I doubt they will change the course of art history. But while I was making them, I realized they had become a useful reminder of how much of life is shaped by choices.

Each collage is the result of dozens of decisions: which image to use, which papers belong together, what to leave out, what to emphasize, when to stop. None of those choices seems especially significant on its own, yet together they create something that did not exist before.

As I worked on the series, it occurred to me that we spend much of our lives in a similar process. Most days are not defined by dramatic turning points. Instead, they are shaped by a succession of small decisions—what to pursue, what to postpone, what to keep, what to discard, where to place our attention, and when to let something be finished.

In that sense, these little dancers feel like a metaphor for everyday life. The collages work as a series because they share a common thread, but each one has its own character because of the individual choices made along the way.

Perhaps that is true of our lives as well. We are connected by common themes and shared experiences, yet our paths are shaped by the countless small decisions that belong only to us.

Art doesn’t move forward in grand gestures very often. More often it advances one small decision at a time –sort of like life, right?

Next time I’ll show you some choices I am struggling with to finish a series of four Crow Reliquaries. And you know that decisions are the hard work! Never forget, though, that there is always more than one right answer.