Making snails

Saturday was spent making papier-maché snails out of old overdraft penalty letters from when I was a student and freelance filmmaker. I figure something constructive should come from these otherwise nasty pieces of paper!

Being a filmmaker, I’m naturally interested in how people engage with popular culture. I cannot profess to really understand art, which sounds really uncultured. I think it is because I find it hideously subjective, and that we are conditioned as consumers to have objective views on quality. For example, the iPhone and iPad are perceived by most as being quality products, either for their capability, their design or their innovation, perhaps all three. But I believe that for some people, quality is determined by the individual and not the organisation selling it. I do not want to be snobbish or pretentious, but sometimes people believe something is quality because they  were told so, not because they genuinely believe it.

I remember being made to feel inadequate when studying art at school because I couldn’t master the objective qualities. I accept that if I were to become an artist, I would arguably need to master such qualities. But I enjoyed art because I could express myself with it, and if people didn’t like it, then so be it. I understand that school were teaching skills that may of helped me to express myself through art, but part of my enjoyment was that it was instinctive, not instructed. I have studied filmmaking to the point where I struggle to enjoy it in the cinema, when I go back to art, it is because I want to be childish and naïve again.

So I am hoping that people can recognise this as a quality within what I am doing with these snails. I’m imagining the character of Sarah to be a little like myself in that she was discouraged from art for not being able to master it’s objective qualities, yet she can find catharsis and relief in being creative.