Creatively Challenged

For all the people who are confused or frustrated by the rules for this year’s Diorama Contest and struggling to figure out what Reeves is actually looking for, Welcome to My World. 

I’m not trying to be (that) snarky: I’ve been struggling for years with this contest, trying to figure out what the judges are looking for, and obviously not succeeding. 

At this point I am just throwing caution to the wind: I want to participate, and I can’t participate if I don’t enter something. I’ve got some ideas, I got some bodies, and whatever turns out the best by the due date gets entered, and that’s that. 

(Though it turns out that I may have to rule out one of my ideas because the body involved might actually be salvageable as an Original Finish piece. It’s not a super valuable one, but if it looks like it can be rescued, I always feel obligated to make the effort.)

To be honest, though, I think they’re putting some serious effort into explaining what the contests entail this year, and I really appreciate it. Whether that means I’ll have a better chance this year compared to any other year is still questionable, because I’ve found that the way I see or interpret things is not the way most of the rest of the world does.

Sometimes to my benefit, but definitely not when it comes to BreyerFest-related competitions. 

I know some hobbyists are being very vocal that the artistic restrictions – only public domain images from three specific online repositories, and the artwork in question must have a horse in it – are too restrictive. 

Which… doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

If you’ve been to art school, or taken more than one or two art classes in your lifetime, you’ve sometimes been asked to copy – or at least emulate – the works of previous artists. It’s not to stifle your creativity, it’s about understanding how the original artist did what they did, and why. 

As the famous Pablo Picasso quote goes: Good artists copy, but great artists steal. Rote replication is not the point of the exercise, it’s what you learn in the process.

In other words, Reeves is using this particular contest as an Art School Lesson. The only difference is that in this particular exercise, you’re being asked to creatively insert at least one Breyer Horse into an artwork with a horse in it. As the horse.

That’s actually… a pretty sophisticated idea for a contest. (Claps politely.)

As someone who considers herself an artist in other mediums – primarily quilting – I’ve also found that there isn’t really such a thing as art without limitations: in fact, when presented with every possibility and every conceivable art supply, most people still end up retreading the same topics, techniques and tropes. You are in an invisible box, bound by your previous experiences.

When you’re faced with limitations, you are forced to think outside of that box. That is, to me, the ultimate creative challenge.