This Is the Art Now: Free and Accessible

I have been coming to terms with a lot of things in my life.  The aging of my relatives, my mother's health struggles, my relationship mishaps, my various interests, unfinished business, you name it. In the process of thinking of these things, I started thinking about art.  I started thinking about how it started as a way for me to try to copy what I saw on tv and books.  How it became a way for me to process emotions.  How it became a way for me to change my economic status.  How it became a way for me to seek to connect with others.  And let's be real, a way to remain relevant.  Art will always be relevant, even if the artists change and die--art itself will never fall out of fashion.  It will always, somehow be right where we need it to be to help us grapple with these really wild ideas or these never spoken of emotions.  But in my reflection on art, I came to some conclusions.  Some hard conclusions.  

Art was never meant to be my meal ticket. I was chasing after this "artist dream."  This dream that said I was only an artist if.... I have a bro who told me that I didn't need galleries like Blue Spiral (https://bluespiral1.com/exhibits/current) to validate my gift.  But I felt like I needed someone to do it.  Who was an artist if the artist had no audience? I was fortunate to have shown in galleries like Pink Dog (https://www.pinkdog-creative.com/exhibitions)  and I know wonderful gallery owners like Tracy Morgan ( http://www.traceymorgangallery.com/)  These are the kinds of people who help inspire me to let art flow. Grow with it.  And to put it simply, I pivoted.  

Art and its relationship to therapy/psychology has been a big interest of mine.  It is the motivating reason for why I began pursuing my MA in Clinical Counseling.  I have personally been a witness to the effect art and being creative can have on a life, mainly as a way to process thoughts and emotions, be mindful, and keep you out of trouble--if you live or grew up in a place where there were not too many options to open up the doors of the good things of life to you.  So my art was rarely about aesthetic.  It was always about raw feeling.  Later, it became about more than the feeling.  It became about the concept. 

Image courtesy of USU Special Collections/Merrill Cazier Library. See References for full citation.

I used to dream of being remembered like how famous writers and artists are remembered. I still dream those dreams of having my life documented and shared like an old Ginsberg photo. And, in the context of art, I am going to give myself what I always wanted.  Maybe as slideshows.  Maybe I track the number of days it takes me to get rid of items I am attached to and have them be accompanied by photos or videos to serve as artifacts of the event.  I even plan to share some art from my phone and maybe even photos and images that never made it to social media because I didn't want them to just be scrolled over and forgotten, but instead serve as an additional piece of this really meaningful puzzle that I have been putting together for years, but just getting clear about.  The puzzle that has the overarching theme of how art making played a huge part in me getting through unfamiliar times. This blog is my ongoing art project. I'm inspired by how Nan Goldin once used photos (https://www.moma.org/artists/7532), and I hope to use that inspiration to create and share here in my own way.  And shoutout to Howard Gardner for also serving as an inspiration for me to keep a blog again.

"I suspect that for many of my peers (as well as non-peers), much of what I accomplish with blogs could be achieved as well with tweets, or other entries in social media. But I prefer to be a bit more reflective, more authorial and authoritative, and not to be subject to a word or character limitation" (Gardner, 2018).  

"I suspect that in a good number of cases, the blogs go unread—or almost unread…written but not read. Sometimes, the blogs elicit comments. Occasionally, I nudge appropriate commentators, while at other times, readers discover the blog on their own and comment. But it’s nothing like a major newspaper where hundreds of comments can flood the screen within hours. But there’s another—and (for me) important—reason for the creation and posting of blog: It’s to some extent self- serving, but it’s also done for the record" (Gardner, 2018).

"The blogs constitute my professional diary. They record what I’ve been thinking about and what I want to share with others. They may well go the way of all flesh—that is what happens, after all, to the physical body. But if I die and individuals want to know my 'last thoughts' about 'MI,' 'Synthesis,' 'What’s Good Work and How to Achieve it,' or 'I, We, and They,' such individuals can venture into the blogosphere.  (Gardner, 2018).

References

 

Gardner, H. (2018, December 6). Why Do I Blog? A Blog about Blogging. Howard Gardner. https://www.howardgardner.com/howards-blog/r7nisqx85rmmuciwmiamlv0mf9tbk4

USU Special Collections/Merrill Cazier Library. (n.d.). [Allen Ginsberg reading at Reed College]. Courtesy of USU Special Collections/Merrill Cazier Library. Retrieved from Rolling Stone website