Hard-Won Revelations About My Own Artmaking Process

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I have just now compiled some rules by which I (and I alone) can gauge the potential of any one of my art ideas, before committing to the grueling task of giving it tangible form.

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• If it isn’t funny (at least to me,) it’s probably a dead end.
• If it doesn’t have an elegant internal logic (with some peripheral room for interpretation) it’s also a dead end.
• If it relies on absurd amounts of obsessive labour just to get to the point where I can visualize it as an idea, it will never happen. (Obsessive labour is fine and necessary in the later fabrication stages.)
• If it has the fussy/trippy complexity or "density of information" of an image that I might see in a dream, then I won’t know how to actually make it visible to others, and I should accept that I’m not the right artist to make this piece.
• If the “style” an idea requires is not dictated by the story it tells (its internal logic) then I will change my mind so many times that I will never commit to it. I am enthralled by style but I tend to want to show my appreciation for all possible styles rather than accepting that I have to exclude most of them…
• If I start with an abstract concept (like “animism,” for example,) and try to summon an image or object to embody that idea, I am doomed to failure.
• Only when the image or idea arises fully-fledged as the result of seeing an existing physical object in the world and envisioning a specific alteration to it, will the piece have a coherence of materiality and concept. Alternately, if the idea arises from a word or phrase that has caught my attention, the piece may be successful.
• If the title isn’t obvious to me and crucial to the idea from its inception, then the piece lacks clarity and is most likely doomed.
• If a two-dimensional image is to be the final product, that image must arise from a preordained system that is integral to the concept. Generally, my own interpretation and “intuition” during the making process have no place in such a system. It is the system that saves it from being “picture-making” and makes it sculpture. I am, after all, a sculptor.:-)
• If the project isn’t virtually impossible to realize, (with my limited means,) then it’s probably not worth making.
• I should never agree to "edition" an artwork or to make another identical piece to suit a collector's custom requirements. I am only happy when I am problem-solving the first time around. Remaking a piece is hell, and never ends up having any benefit.

--> Other notes to self about the “physical manifestation” of an idea: -->

• Materials testing/ testing of the fabrication process must happen before too much labour is invested in “designing” the object. The convergence of an idea and a viable means of realizing it can easily extend beyond a year.
• If the finished piece could be (mis)taken for design, then I guess that makes me a designer as well as a sculptor.

Will my list save me from further agonizing and wasted energy? There's no telling.