We are caught between a world we cannot stop acknowledging...and a better world that does not yet exist. Though alone we daydream bits of this unborn world. And play at building it.
Artists! I love that urge in you! But I had to stop staring into the empty promotional artworld blather churn, or I was gonna go taser someone.
Two recent pro-arts websites have recently appeared in Atlanta. One, by two art school employees is so far earnest and might-TAY dull. The other one from the owner of a mega-sized art gallery isn't a burning festival of fun either. Yet I'd love to someday be wrong about them. Or about anything allegedly artist-helping. Suddenly something electrifies our world? Great. Still again and again, a thousand predictable gray flowers bloom. But artist, you and I should chuckle and move our gaze on: Art will be art anyway.
I've been checking on what happens to students after the art school experience is done. And verily, the high tuition stress fest and the struggle afterwards take some of them out permanently with spiritual malnutrition. Others just duck down and do their work, and others drop out of art for a long time.
Yet that big ole inner glow that compels survivors to make stuff anyway? It still flares up. And you never know which person it will be. Not always the honor student, for sure. Art can be the law even for the lawless.
Sadly the style & methods of most art promotion is a total world buzzkill.
Once, a now dead organization, Atlanta Arts & Business Council, did an ad campaign. They called it 'Art Happens'. Say what? Um, did anyone there not think of the shit-related popular phrase on which they based that genius effort? Yeah, the tone is just-- off. And these are our friends. Tryin' to help. [ i got their free t-shirt. It cleans brushes ok.]
I have hope that someday something ambitious to be art-promoting won't be so wan, wrong, cautious, denatured, WEAK.
We've had briefly helpful 'scenes' spring up before. But we're not in a great position for another one, what with artists being atomized geographically, spread out all over looking for affordable places to live and work. In the pitiless, expensive cities we're fighting each other for scarce shelter. We also tend to be either poor, or trust fund rich...another great unity builder! And mostly we're condescended to as pointless weirdos. We're not considered useful, unlike say, accountants. Our dream-like methods are incomprehensible. This isn't a soul seeking, shamanistic society and most people are not hungry for the kind of divination that artists do. New mass-market products and celebrity gossip pass for meaning.
So you and I will make stuff just because it buys us a moment of energized solitude.
A taste of a better world.
So is the official, administrated art environment now generally devoid of charm? O hell yeah. That's why I love the idea of you selling your whatevers at arts fairs, on eBay, anywhere that's yours. Only museum-certified art counts? You hear that in art school. That chatter implies that to dare to do your work without fear of art history is a debasement of values, a guilty shame.
But official culture is famous for not noticing the goodness of art while it's being made.
So look away from them. It's the power.
Art's a mystical calling... and your trade.
When you can deal with both, Van Gogh is redeemed.
OK i'm going outdoors, to stare at night things. I've named this visiting cat The Furry KillBot. What godforsaken skink parts has it left me now? But I'm a discreet undertaker.
And I always remember to thank the dismemberer.
the visitor... photo by Anne Cox
top image... painting by Gary Bolding