Precision and Integrity

I am fascinated by mediocrity, probably because I spend so much time wallowing in it.

My father was a self-taught graphic artist. He graduated high school, but did not pursue a formal education beyond that point. After high school he went into the army, and then came out and started painting. In our small town there was virtually no place in town that did not have a hand-painted sign that my father created. He painted the mascot on the high-school gym floor. He did all of the signs at the fair grounds and the "Old West" town. Every year the city hired him to paint the welcome billboard, and one of the grocery stores hired him to make the weekly special signs.

I wish I had pictures of those signs especially. They were done on simple white paper and thrown away each week. Yet each and everyone of them was flawlessly done. Fluid.

In addition he designed and made huge logos that were stenciled onto railroad cars, trucks, company cars, etc. All of this was before computer. It was all done by hand.

When my father died, the man who had employed him for more than thirty years told me, "He always took a little longer, but when he was finished it was always right." That was an amazing thing for me to hear because my father was an incredibly impatient man. There was nothing that would frustrate him more than to be walking along and to get stuck behind someone who was just meandering along. That's a trait I inherited.

Yet, I also remember my father spending hours in the garage or in the basement working on his signs. In the winter he could sit at the kitchen table and work late, late into the night making fishing lures. Had the Internet been available, he would have been in heaven researching fishing resorts and just generally surfing. But I don't believe he'd have ever used it to do his signs or design work.

I remember when I was very small asking him why he didn't just trace the letters. He'd bought me a set of stencils so that I could make my own signs. He said that would be cheating.

As I look at my work, both as a photographer and a writer I can see the flaws. I don't always know what to do about them, but I see them. And I wonder if my father looked at his own work in the same way. I suspect that everyone does.

But the difference, I think, between mediocrity and greatness is that in mediocrity the work is diminished by the flaws and in greatness the work is enhanced by them.