Notes on making things badly on purpose

The first print I ever sold had a thumbprint in the bottom corner where I grabbed it too early. The buyer pointed at it. I started apologizing; she said it was the reason she wanted it. I have been leaving the thumb in, one way or another, ever since.

Finish is a kind of forgetting. Sand something long enough and you erase the record of it being made — the hesitation in the knife, the pass where the registration slipped, the hour when the tape stretched. A perfect surface has no memory.

So the practice became: make it well, then stop one pass early. Leave the seam. Let the loop wobble where the splice is. The wobble is the date stamp; it says a person was here, sweating, at a particular temperature, running out of daylight.

The one time I didn't — a commission, immaculate, edition of one — it came out looking like it had always existed. Nobody's ever asked me about it. There is nothing to ask.