i'm in philly right now visiting some friends for a week. jack the dog is chewing on a bone at my feet. holly and jenny are talking about soup.
holly and i went to the philadelphia art museum yesterday. went walked around til our legs hurt and had to sit down with weak coffee in the museum cafeteria. There are some really great pieces of art at this museum. really famous works that i saw all through my undergraduate degree on slides in classes that i usually had a ten minute nap in every day. if you come here, you should definately check it out.
a couple things struck me from that experience.
one
being a maker of art, it's weird to see a bunch of people pay money and in their leisure time, walk around and look at what people have created. i think what gets me about it is that art seems to be made in boring, lonely places where nobody is watching... namely your studio. it's not a glamorous process. it's just... well it is what it is. for me, it's just what i do. and that process is mixed up with all the doubt, triumphs, hopes of making a living and being profound... yadda yadda yadda.... it's just what i do. it's not an event. i don't think i'm making myself very clear. i guess one of the other things that i felt as well as that being an artist isn't necessarily your parents first wish at financial success for you. i remember talking to a co-worker of my mom's (a doctor) as i was doing my undergrad, and i told him that i was thinking about being an art major. he looked at me and said i should go into business. (nice.) but that's one opinion that i seem to come across a lot. being an artist isn't an easy road and there is not a lot of financial pay off... and along with all that there isn't a general audience urging you on. in fact it feels like a more general cheer is to get a real job and be responsible. so to see people pay and gawk at pieces of work that artists have created as a sort of entertainment... it was just a really wierd experience. i guess it made me wonder if all my hard work would have the same response later on in life.
which leads me to
two
out of all the art that i saw... there wasn't much that really blew my mind. now this could be to blame for my sore legs and possibly short attention span, but nothing really got me while i stood in the presence of it. not like music does at least. you go to a concert... it's a very emotional experience. i want the visual to be like that. i have had some experiences like that with viewing a visual piece. (and i will say that this was my own opinion on one day of my life... so it's not an a across the board statement of belief). and i have liked those pieces i've seen. in fact, the day before we came across the lineage gallery and saw a show by sam flores. very cool stuff. but i guess nothing that day really moved me. it made me think about something my friend jeremy said to me about painting and what to paint. he said that we should paint what we want to see hanging in a gallery. "when you walk into a gallery, what do you want to see?"
i guess this is my burden... task even as an artist. maybe not for others, but just for me.
i do think this will take me a greater part of my life though. this causes me to sigh, yes... but it makes me want to try as hard as i can to accomplish this.
what does art with power look like?
3 comments:
i've recently been checking out some of your stuff and fell in love with what you are doing. i know you probably hear this all the time, but i figured that one more time couldn't hurt.
your stuff/ideas/passion is amazing
really.
amazing.
powerful even.
i know, for me, i dont look at my art in the same way as other people do.....and sometimes it is good to have a reminder that you're doing something worthwhile. so this is me...reminding you....to keep up the good work.
there is power when you do what you do for something that is greater than yourself.
i have no doubt this is what you are doing.
your work is more than just something pretty to look at.
it is moving.
it is you. following your dreams. doing what God prepared your hands to do.
and i thank you for that.
you have encouraged me in more ways that you could know.
Hi Scott!
I came across your blog accidentally and looked at your website - and I really respect what you're doing. I'm a habitual lurker so I usually don't leave comments on blogs, but you posed such an interesting (rhetorical?) question that I couldn't resist.
I'm not an artist - I'm a premed student - but I used to be an art nerd when I was a kid, so I admire artists for doing what they do - it takes courage. I get angry when people look down on artists as not a valid or respectable profession, yet at the same time I understand what they mean. It's not a profession in the traditional sense of making money. Personally, I think it's noble for some people to sacrifice higher income for a certain cause (in addition to artists, this includes professions such as academic scientists, health educators, or nonprofit employees). But I don't know if other people share the same view. Maybe some people just base everything on monetary value, or perhaps they don't understand the function of art.
As for art with power? I'm not sure what you mean by that...you mean like a huge emotional response? I rarely encounter pieces that do that - the few that do have some kind of vivid aesthetic composition. For most art it's more of a cerebral activity for me, something that has a message to be interpreted. Like a poem, the first response might be just confusion, but the more time you spend with it, the clearer the message becomes. Thus power comes at the end when I gradually understand what the work of art means to me and if that message "resonates" within the context of my life.
I once read an article about someone who got his portrait painted. When he finally gets to see the finished portrait for the first time, he feels uncomfortable with it. Every time he looks at it, he thinks he sees something different that may be off-kilter, yet he can't pinpoint what it is. However, after a few weeks of living with the portrait, it grows on him. He still thinks something different whenever he looks at the portrait, but ultimately he feels that it "captures his elusiveness", making it a good portrait.
I think reacting to art in general is kind of the same process.
Keep up the good work!
i wish i could respond to both of these comments. so good. thank you.
for andy's, i heard that good art is something that you see and you keep coming back to it in the days that follow... you keep wrestling with it. not that all visual art should have that kind response, cause going to a show would be so overwhelming. but i guess i want that visual art experience to be like when you go to a concert show... so maybe yes, i want that emotional experience to happen.
and i also want it to be meaningful. sometimes it just seems like it's a big idea with a lame physical manifestation.
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