Most of us seek order in our lives, or at least a sense of order. We want to believe that there are things we can assume and expect and even, if we’re really fortunate, control. Yes, those whose lives full of action and unpredictability and chaos would seem to exclude the possibility–extreme sports aficionados, high-powered businesspeople, rodeo clowns, astronauts, oil-rig roughnecks and those raising toddlers–look for order in their own ways so as make sense of their place in the universe. It might be in simple things like organizing the spice cabinet or sock drawer with obsessive neatness; it might be in the form of how they interact with people outside of the job, or it may be entirely internalized because inside is the only place they can see where they can exert their own opinions and desires and beliefs to the fullest extent.
In art, it’s often what differentiates in its subtle ways between the immature and the mature artist or designer or craftsman. It’s expressed as the creation of thoughtful balances or deliberate imbalances that succeed in creating the visual unity or tension in a composition, between colors, textures, distinct subjects and objects, or other elements of the work. While it’s undeniably true when disgruntled viewers look at abstract and non-objective artworks or some kinds of highly quirky contemporary designs and say “My five-year-old could’ve done that”, it’s equally true that the most sophisticated five-year-old will likely only do so by chance, and then only once, whereas the mature artist usually had a purpose, a process by which he was tweaking the tools and techniques to achieve something that might have as little chance of connecting with any individual viewer as that smarty-pants kid’s work but has a thousand times better the chance to succeed in what the artist intended and is, to boot, repeatable. To live on the less visibly ordered side of the equation is to risk losing communication with a potential audience, but for some artists, that is a worthy risk, most especially because the audience they do reach will be the more attuned to their visual language and will respond in kind.
In truth, the most conventional and marketable of artists and designers may have broader appeal, but can be just as off-putting to some viewers and would-be customers as any avant-garde members of the species. Order, as it happens, is in the eye of the beholder at least as much as is attractiveness in art.
Consider the Desk. Nearly everybody who owns or works at one creates his own environment there, because it’s somewhat controlled, controllable space. For some, the orderly desk is a perfect puzzle, each single item in a particular position on a particular bit of real estate thereon or therein. Some are always en route to that Ideal but never entirely there. And some have desks that look remarkably like bomb sights. Yet never assume that this is truly disorder. I have known people with desks whose archaeological depths of debris and deconstructivist demolition could easily hide the crown jewels, a body, or a small automobile and yet who, when they wanted a particular piece of paper or the mini-stapler, instantly knew the precise spot from whence it could be excavated. That’s order of a higher order.
What all of this means in the grand scheme of things is that it’s merely a set of constructs or ideals that varies so greatly from person to person and time to time that we’re all probably best served by finding whatever forms work for us individually and then allowing ourselves the flexibility to understand and tolerate others’ sense of order or disorder, whether we approve of it or not. Mostly, it won’t lead to apocalypse–and if it does, who among us will remain to worry about it? Maybe the ones with the monstrous, mountainous desks, if they can duck and cover under them fast enough. More likely, we will all muddle along as we’ve always done, some of us fascinated with baskets and boxes and cubbyholes and patterns and polish and others delighting in their weirdly convoluted and inscrutable tangles of Stuff.
And nobody Wins or Loses–except if you count losing that one danged Thing that you’ve been hunting for in the pile forever and ever (usually until realizing it is in your left hand pocket).
Art-Colored Glasses 
At first, I didn’t want to like the first set of drawings – they were too neat, and orderly, and precise. As I continued reading this blog post, I scrolled back up and had to look at them again, because something about them made my eye want to explore a little bit closer. Why eight squares here, but only seven there? Why aren’t all the squares in exactly the same pattern? Why that one missing vertical line? Why do the scrolling waves point left, and then right? It was kind of interesting how my eye kept finding little tiny bits of inconsistency, and how the pieces that didn’t fit the whole were every bit as interesting as the complete picture.
At first, I had seen nothing but Order. As I looked closer, and inspected it with a more stealthy eye, it was the Disorder that kept clamoring for my attention. Then I had to acknowledge an appreciation that both Order and Disorder could inhabit the same space.
Which then sent me back to the middle of the blog post to continue reading about … uhmmm, well … Order and Disorder, and how it would be helpful if we could learn to appreciate both sides of the equation and incorporate some flexibility and tolerance into our vocabulary when noticing an opposing point of view, or an opposing sense of order. Or something like that. I kind of lost part of the message because my eye wandered back up the page to study the very Orderly Disorder of that first illustration. You are a clever girl.
(short attention span) … I forgot that I wanted to mention that yesterday I happened upon a blog that pointed me to artist Steven Spazuk. Don’t know if you are familiar with his work, but he uses candle flames to impart soot onto a blank canvas, and then erases or removes the parts he wants subtracted from the whole. This creates an entire series of small individual abstracts, which when combined, creates a large portrait.
I was fascinated by his Fragmentation Gallery at spazuk dot net, and by a video of him discussing his process, which I found at this is colossal dot com, Feb 2nd blog article titled Drawing With Fire.
I blogged about it yesterday. I was really intrigued with the originality of using soot as a medium, as well as the process of fragmentation. Another example of creating Order from Disorder.
I love your description of how you went through the post!! Glad you found the tweaks upon primness in the first drawing tolerable after finding the variations within! I’ll certainly go over and have a look at Mr Spazuk’s work; sounds very inventive and promising. It’s an intriguing variant of a monotype printmaking technique that Degas used, where he applied ink to a whole smooth plate and then worked ‘backward’, drawing and painting on the plate by removing ink to create the images. I tried it a little bit years ago and loved the subtractive process; maybe I should revisit that idea . . .
Personally, mine is ordered chaos with intervals of order. Your sketches are so fresh..enjoyed!
Thank you, Terri!
I really love that insightful comment about ‘order of a higher order’! Nice to know the post-apocalyptic world would be in such good hands, isn’t it! I really enjoyed this oh so soothing post.
Very kind of you, Chrysalis, I appreciate your coming here for a read!
You make a good point of encouraging us to accept the different ways in which people order their lives. I like that first picture – variations of a theme, all related, but each one different. I’m a minimalist and need empty spaces in my life and home, although I can appreciate and enjoy what is wild, chaotic, and disordered. Somehow for me, ordering my outer life helps me order my inner life, which tends to the chaotic and disordered. 🙂
Clearly you have learned how to import Order and internalize it beautifully–your post on practicing death is a gorgeous testament to that zen-like ability.
Mine is a world of disorder but there is a simple rule to be followed. Within the chaos, certain things must have a place. For reasons known only to me, this goes here; that there. Failure to follow that rule is guaranteed to upset my universe and could even deprive my friends the exquisite joy of my presence — or at least its full allotment — because “I can’t find my keys!”
This sounds familiar. I’m often in hot water around home because of altering the Natural (Richard’s) Order of Things. Sometimes in utter innocence (that is still, of course, utterly stupid) like forgetting that there *might* be a very particular reason this or that object is in this or that particular spot, no matter how not-obvious it seems to me. Poor man. He tolerates me, somehow.
My surroundings have to be very neat for the creative work to start, and then I like to have a certain amount of mess just on the desk. The pens, journals, books and camera all are around my working surface keeping me company, if you will as I start or continue what I am working on. I would not call it chaos, but it is definitively not neat.
I love this post…then again I love all your posts 🙂
I’m envious of those of you who achieve even a general sense of order or at least predictability for your work spaces. I’m starting to think I have something like a Hansel & Gretel version of a workspace, where I wander around the house doing intermittent laundry, cooking, home repairs, cleaning and so forth in between bouts of writing or drawing, so I drag my laptop and sketchbook around with me and then after a while I’m lost and have to follow the trail of the last couple of projects back to find them when I have a moment to write and draw again. Messy, but so far I haven’t *completely* lost my tools yet! 🙂
I think I live on the cusp of order and disorder. When thinks veer a little to far to the disorderly side I only feel easy when they are pushed closer to the mid point. I really like the second illustration. 😉
I’m on the cusp of trying to transform my disorder *back* toward order again, so the house looks half-disastrous with tools and vacuum and boxes scattered hither and yon as I’m trying to finish up a bunch of *almost*-done tasks and get the areas tidied back up.
I find that I am missing a few of your wonderful posts, however it is such a late hour and I am so tired that as I read, I am not comprehending a single word. So, I look forward to an extended visit tomorrow when I can savor every single word.
A big ol’ batch of love comes your way from the North. ♥♥♥
I send you warm hugs back, knowing you can use a couple of extra degrees these days! Maybe it’ll make you warm enough to get some good restful sleep, too. 🙂 🙂 🙂
nice drawings…your sketches can express itself very meaningfully.
Sometimes I think I should practice simplicity more often in my drawings and see what I can learn about it instead of being crabby because I didn’t take the time to do very fussy drawings. Thanks for the encouragement!
Reblogged this on Conceptual Art.
Thanks, Muse, glad you liked it enough to re-post it!
I come in here regularly, and your words and drawings set many things pinging around my mind, so many things to think about and comment on. I struggle to order my words, to frame something coherent, witty or insightful. But what I want to say is how much I appreciate your words.
And I, in turn, deeply appreciate *your* words, Claire, both here and in your wonderful posts. 🙂
The desk desktop is neat, except for dust, and in order. It’s the laptop desktop that specializes in disorder. You have no idea how the transition from one to the other was resisted by this writer…
Don’t worry, you’re talking to a champion Luddite here–I’ve resisted pretty much every technological “advance” until dragged in kicking and screaming, and continue to push wrong buttons and keys at every opportunity! What it results in for me is a whole *new* understanding of what constitutes order or disorder, now that I think of it!!
Your sketching is absolutely stunning! What a remarkable talent you have! I also thoroughly enjoy reading your posts.
I am very much on the organised, neat (painfully so) side of things – even if its in the back of a cupboard for nobody to see, it must be neat! I am however s l o w l y learning to relax more about it.
🙂 Mandy
My parents are both neatniks, so I have a tendency to want tidiness in my environment, but I’m only periodically willing to go on the rampage of cleaning required to achieve it, so mostly I’m in some weird stasis between, where things are *sort of* tidy with sprinklings of mess here and there and lots of fine dust over the top of it all. 😉
Kathryn
I think I lie between the two.. chaos and order.. without chaos I don’t think I could be creative and what a bore it would be? I live with an “orderly” sort of person and he’s often driven crazy trying to find specific items that were lost… years ago. As you early posts would indicate.. life is too short trying to organize and live the perfect life I think:)
You are *so* right! I love the *idea* of order more than I love order or am willing to labor toward it! 🙂