Why I Make Stuff By Dave Donelson

By Dave Donelson

Not long after my grandson, Steve, was born, I began sculpting a rocking horse for him, the idea being that it would be completed in time for his fourth birthday. That was fourteen years ago and it’s not yet finished. My intention was—and is—to sculpt a carousel-style horse lunging forward with its front legs raised as if to leap a fence. It is fashioned from walnut, a wood hard to carve but which I selected because it holds fine detail like the piping on the saddle blanket and the curling hair in the mane. The horse will be fully decorated as if it had been lifted from a carousel, with flowered ribbons draping the neck and stars and moons studding the reins. The decorations will be relief carved and tinted with carnival reds, blues, greens, and gold that will glisten against the polished walnut of the horse. 

The rocking horse is one project among many, although its progress was interrupted by events and innumerable distractions until, today, it exists as a finished work only in my aspirations. I’ve created thousands of other pieces of art ranging from seventeen-syllable haiku to six-foot paintings of imaginary Mayan glyphs. A piece of my graphic poetry is permanently displayed as a mural in a nearby nature center. I’ve published a memoir, an illustrated journal, novels, short-story and poetry collections. I’ve built furniture, garden structures and decorative fences, even an array of seven-foot working pinwheels. 

Some folks say, politely, that I am a prolific artist. Others, like my wife, believe I am obsessed. At social events, when people ask me what I do, I just say I’m a writer, then wait for them to ask what I write so I can give them a generic answer and move on to the next topic of conversation. What I could reply is more accurate, but it would probably provoke a follow-up question that requires an answer that would exceed the bounds of polite conversation and bewilder the listener. Painting, drawing, collage, photography, prose, poetry, journalism, sculpture, furniture, even toys. I make stuff. 

I don’t know why. Does any artist? Does art come from some universal primordial urge? Is it a cry for help? For acclamation? Is it an expression by one suppressed and seeking escape? Or looking to build a new relationship with the world? Maybe it’s because I want to leave something behind, build a legacy that says “This man was here.” I must confess, that particular motivation looms larger as I grow older. It may be one or a combination of several reasons, but I want to know why I do what I do. 

One reason is that art is a way to open a dialogue between myself and the world. When I create a graphic poem about losing a friend, my audience may learn something that helps them cope with a similar event—or their feedback may help me deal with my own emotions. When I publish an essay about the January 6 insurrection at our capitol building, it prompts a response from my audience, a feedback loop that opens the door to understanding. 

When I make something, a dialogue with myself also occurs. Composition of a street scene on canvas, even selecting colors for the palette, involves deciding which elements to emphasize and which to downplay. Such choices are only partially made on the basis of the rule of thirds or the intricacies of the color wheel. Choosing which photograph of a Black child to illustrate a prose poem about police brutality makes me think more deeply about the emotions I’m trying to convey. The most meaningful part of the creative process is the dialogue with myself about what I really want to express.

When I write a sentence, I ask myself many things, mostly editorial in nature, but the most important question is if the content is true. Do I believe it? Why or why not? Then, what comes next? An explanation of its truth? An apology for its falsehood? Supporting arguments, elaboration, refinement, rebuttal? The very act of writing, whether it be prose or poetry, fiction or non-fiction, forces me to think more clearly.

Doing the work is a solo experience that gives me great pleasure, but I get an even bigger thrill from presenting a book or a painting to an audience, especially when it’s a live public presentation. Not every artist feels that way. In fact, I suspect most actually dread appearing before an audience. Even just releasing work to the world can generate severe angst, a state that sometimes hides itself in a cloak of perfectionism. I empathize with those artists but confess I am not one of them. I relish the adrenaline rush that comes from the hope my work will be acclaimed as well as its opposite, fear that it will be disdained. I am shameless. Even after a quarter-century of putting three million words in print for some three dozen magazines, I still look for my byline and maintain an overstuffed file cabinet of clippings. Over the years, I’ve published a shelf full of books, but I still love to see my name on the cover. And yes, I read my reviews. 

I’ve been a writer and a visual artist all my life, but it’s only been during the last few years that I have been conscious of the most compelling answer to the question of why I do it. I don’t want merely to leave a footprint in the sands of time. I want my mark to be chiseled into the granite of eternity.

If the purpose of an individual life is to make the world a better place, I want to believe I accomplished that in some small way with the tangible things I created. I want to see my books on bedside tables, my paintings on walls, my rocking horse in a child’s playroom. These are things you can hold in your hand, touch with your fingers, even smell with your nose. Once created in this form, they are immutable. Once my book is printed, it will not change. It may be interpreted as something different by readers, especially those who read it years later, but the words themselves are fixed. 

At my age, the urge to create accelerates exponentially. My bad knee aches after an hour of standing at the easel. If I ignore the knee, my hand cramps around the brush within another hour. Yet I endure the aches and pains in the hope that I will finish all the projects I have in mind. Many, like the rocking horse or my coming-of-age novel now in its tenth draft, were begun some time ago. A poetry and photography collection only needs to be edited and laid out. There are new paintings to be made, collages to be mounted. Can I push all these and other projects forward and publish two more books in the next year? I’m not getting any younger, so I will try.

The work gives me a reason to get out of bed and shout at the world. It takes my mind off the impending end. No one knows what lies at the finish line of life, although I believe it’s nothing more than an infinite void. The only thing I know for certain is that I will have left some part of me behind. Last month, I dusted off the rocking horse’s thick body and carried it to the front of the woodshop. I clamped it to my workbench. I pulled on a dust mask and face shield, mounted a carving wheel on my angle grinder, and tentatively resumed rounding the square block into a horse beginning to leap.

–Derived from “We Make Stuff,” an essay published in Still Point Arts Quarterly, Winter 2024. 

Dave Donelson is a freelance writer and artist with some three million words in print covering topics as diverse as the sex lives of American suburbanites and diamond smuggling in the Congo. His work has appeared over the last 25 years in dozens of national publications and he is the author and illustrator of sixteen books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and memoir. You can read all of his agebuzz posts here. Learn more at www.davedonelson.com and follow his work at substack.com/@davedonelson.