I have this silver ring, which I love. It was a gift, made by the giver, a talented artist.*
It’s not a complete, or perfect circle. It’s roughly hammered out, and it looks like there could be a setting for a stone in the space where the ends don’t touch, but there isn’t. There’s nothing there. Just open space.
I love the open space the most.
There was this other artist, also talented, who found the ring off-putting.** It was the lack of closure- this circle with 2 ends that do not touch drove the other artist crazy! We laughed about it of course. I found the 2 reactions (hers and mine) fascinating.
Don’t get me wrong. I love closure too, but it’s not always needed, or even possible.
I first came to love negative space as a trained artist. Negative space holds a shape of its own– a shape that is created by nothing and everything at the same time!
I also came to love nothingness in my college algebra class. It’s beautiful to me how X or Y doesn’t exist, and yet it does! You just have to solve for it (nothing) by calculating the characters (everything) around it.
Not too long ago, I came to understand that strengths can be weaknesses and weaknesses can be strengths. It was the most Zen thing that has ever happened to me, and I was never one to search for Zen things.
But since that moment, I see everything differently. Your positives are my negatives. His dislikes are her likes. Their successes are others’ failures.
Open. Closed. Off. On. Good. Bad. It’s all subjective, and it’s all the same… 2 sides of the same coin.
The coin doesn’t exist without both sides. All that really matters is what we do with our coin, how we see it, and how we interact with the coins that aren’t ours.
*that talented artist is Corey Weiser-Vahey
**the other talented artist is Randi Chervitz
Hand model is Jenn Phares.