Sally Mann's new book, ART WORK

SO. DAMN. GOOD.

Haven't been this inspired reading a book with creativity/art making as the topic since Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel (and that was several years ago).

In addition to many others, here are a few of the excerpts I stopped to make note of:

I have learned that, even on some uninspired days I can't create, I can always make work. Indeed this is truly the case.  Unfortunately, I still tend to argue with my inability to create INSTEAD OF moving forward onto - work.

Write a letter.  Organize.  Make lists.  Clean out the chicken coop.  Practice your craft.  Do your scales.  Memorize a sonnet.  Copy a Rembrandt.  Over and over.  Do all this so you will be prepared to come roaring back when you have something unignorable and irrepressible to say  AND YOU WILL  

It is the artist's job to facilitate unlikely connections between things. 

Left to me were the exiguous foot paths of art and writing...and those I trod relentlessly. me too, Sally Mann.  me too.  

I recommend writing letters..it puts you in the best literary company you could ask for and it keeps you fairly honest. Pen pals are the bomb! And I can keep it up for a year or so and then I fizzle out.  Literary? Hardly.  Mine are more a stream of consciousness...

...everything you do should be on paper - paper you keep - your letters, your lists, your accounting and your journals Hear Yee! Hear Yee! Everything I DO is on paper

Somehow, despite all the distractions and despair, art gets made.

Artists really get down to the business of making art when it is more painful to not make it than to make it.

We make art because we have to.  If you're not sure you're an artist, then you probably aren't and you should look elsewhere.  There are far easier ways to make a living.

The obstacle was always the cost.  Always the cost.  Never the desire or the unwavering belief that this was my destined path.

Well, there are good days and there are bad days and there are days that I don't even remember but there are no lazy, easy going days anymore (if you live the life of an artist).

If you can pair your daily decisions down...yes, maybe you appear to be living a boring, undeviating life but that is one thing you should not be afraid of.  Your work will not be boring.  SO TRUE FOR ME.  I have blogged about this so many times here.  Austin Kleon talks about this SO MUCH too  

The measure of artistic success is not money.  It is time.  Read THAT again.  Now, read it another time.

When I make bad work...the self doubt within me raises its flipper arms in a triumphant gesture of "Ah ha! See? I was right!" and I always believe it.  No babble of competing voices can drown this one out. Gol', isn't this the case though? It's just VERY reassuring to hear this from Sally Mann.

Perfection...a guarantee of artistic paralysis.

The only way I've found out how to make good pictures is to make many, many pictures.

*This concludes my notes (at the close of chapter 8).  There are 12 chapters in total.