During this long period of pandemic, the artist members of Eye Lounge have been considering our individual processes for finding and developing our concepts. While in isolation—or greatly constricted social outings—many of us have returned to unfinished or unsuccessful concepts to refine and distill them. 

Shorty Greene created a collaged self-portrait after a former partner gave her a bad report card. Megan Driving Hawk turned the loss of a loved one into an embroidered memorial. 

Revisiting work doesn't necessarily signify artistic failure. Susan Allred cut up and then repaired a damaged fiber sculpture to process a broken relationship. Handed down from mother to daughter, Katherine Del Rosario’s vintage clothes, as portrayed in a self-portrait, inspire powerful connections.

Sometimes creating a piece in one medium inspires a new body of work in a new medium. New Eye Lounge artist member Yuna Kim experimentally altered trial proofs for a print edition, which led her to create GIF animations. 

Many artists work intuitively and say their re-worked piece wouldn’t have been as dynamic without iterations. Christy Wittmer says the clay she works with dictates an improvisational approach, where each stage of work is a dialog between her and the material.

Overcoming obstacles is an integral part of creating art. For Buzzy Sullivan, the process of photography is in itself the process of failure - acting as a two-dimensional mirror reflecting a three-dimensional world. Amy Sansbury Manning’s glaze turned transparent with age, having started out opaque, which created a new look to her work. Hyewon Yoon transformed passing images from her daily life into meditative landscapes under her pen. 

Whatever the reason, whatever the result, revising processes and expectations is the work of being an artist. 

"A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image."

— Elaine de Kooning