Reimagining Time With Art
If you had a box of 100 crayons in front of you right now, how would you color time?
This is something I think about when I sit down to create a piece that involves clock imagery. For me, even the smallest subversion of not “finishing” the clock I am drawing and then, in many cases, creating a whole other world around it is a way of creating space to think about time in a different way.
Of course, I am not the first artist to make a piece involving clocks or time imagery, but I find it important to return to this practice of drawing “little” things like clocks, even if someone else has already “done it” before. I return to images like the clock not just to make a pretty picture but to imagine “time” differently, even if it’s just for a few moments.
Clocks, especially as we know them today, are not ancient. Our current ways of keeping up with time may help with modern-day logistics, but these current ways can only explain so much. There are many books written on this (Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman was a favorite of mine from last year, and I’m currently reading How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity by La Marr Jurelle Bruce which analyzes this as well), and with my art, I seek to make a small and humble contribution to this larger conversation by looking at the ways in which “time” and the tools that serve time to us, such as “clocks,” have perhaps created too many limits.
By creating my own image that subverts the lock, I hope to remind myself and propose to others the possibility of something more.
Now, one might think,
“Well, this is a fun little creative exercise, but in real life, things are time-sensitive, and we don’t have time to think about all of this…”
To which I say this:
“When you’re moving through your day, you don’t have to actively think about the meal you ate or every hour of sleep you got in order for it to make a difference that you got good rest and ate a fulfilling meal. The same could be true of an art practice…it’s an opportunity to sit and think about something you don’t normally think about that might end up leading you to something deeper you didn’t even realize you needed to think about.”
And this way of simply being present amidst everyday realities is not only for artists and poets. When we look outside and see the leaves on the trees or an occasional butterfly basking in the light, we are reminded that we are free, if only for a moment, to explore something more…to engage in moments without always worrying about time. We are free to seek out space to be unrushed.
Of course, not all artists who make art with images of “time” and “clocks” have this process, and not everyone is an artist. However, I do believe that taking imaginative looks at seemingly ordinary things to explore their deeper meaning can help us discover new insights regarding busyness, hurriedness, productivity, and so many other things that impact our modern world.
Even in our digitized world, the analog clock on the wall remains a strong image, and perhaps what we can learn from this image is that sometimes there is room to see it as a “prompt” — something to work with, work around, something to find our way through, asking, “Where in my life can I forget about time?”
I cannot tell you when or where you will have to shift your focus to “time,” but I can tell you that there is still room to consider for yourself the ways in which you might “color” it differently…or forget about time altogether.
— MHN
