As I’ve mentioned before, I plan to take part in Masterpiece in a Day, an all-day event hosted by the Big Car Gallery here in my fair city.  It takes place in the Fountain Square area of town, and apparently kind of takes over the area, as my brother described it as being a bit like “a low-buck Burning Man.”  You basically have from about 9am until 4:30pm or so to complete an entire work of art, starting from scratch.  Pretty neat, huh?  Opportunities for all kinds of wackiness abound, I’m sure.

Upon hearing about this from my brother, I immediately wanted to take part.  Said brother is doing a 20-foot canvassed graffiti art project.  I’ll be doing a rolling ball sculpture.  Now, this all sounded awesome and oh-wow-that-is-so-cool-and-what-an-opportunity(!!!!) the day I heard it.

Now I’m vaguely freaking out.

The day I learned of it I imagined me sitting at my rickety card table with a propane torch, bending up a bunch of wire and just having a ball making whatever the heck I wanted and enjoying the outcome for what it was.  However, Other Me, Perfectionist Me has shown up to try and rain on the parade.  Perfectionist Me is saying that it’s “just not going to turn out right, your design will suck, you didn’t plan well enough, you don’t have enough experience to turn out something superfab in just a few hours, blah, blah, blah…”

Perfectionist Me sucks.  I don’t really like to invite him along to stuff, but he shows up, like the friend at a party who can never seem to keep from drinking just a little too much at the end of the night and starts making off-color jokes or unwanted advances toward the womenfolk.  However, since Perfectionist Me is what you might call family, he kind of has to come along wherever I go.  It’s my job to keep him in check so that he doesn’t break stuff, make a jack of himself, and kind of hose the whole party.

In order to kind of take care of all those unhelpful ramblings that have been cropping up in my head, I hereby restate my initial purpose in this event.  It was NOT to create HOLYCOWINCREDIBLE work of art that was going to impress everyone in Marion county, plus those living in Allen and Howard counties.  It was not to put myself in the blast furnace and sweat out something “perfect.”  It was not to win an award.  Here was and is the purpose: to get involved with a fun public event that encourages the arts, have a good time creating a finished piece of art, and to enjoy and accept the results for what they are.

That’s it kids, and I’m sticking to it.  I’m going to pack up all my supplies as well as my original statement, and look forward to a day among creators, probably sipping a Diet Mountain Dew, bending wire, and making something fun and cool.