ART = What?
It is almost 3 AM. Snow was forecast, but instead, a sloppy rain, the hint of winter coming.
Slowly.
I spent the holiday in California. On a beach, by a pool, in the arms of my love. The first such holiday without my children, who are becoming adults and making their own decisions. The first without a turkey, the cranberry/orange relish I make with Grand Mariner. I spent it dancing to bad 80's music, laughing, thinking little. Reading a great deal. I have been awake for 23 hours (mostly) between planes and airports, rushing deadlines and the wayward acts of a child I hope will soon become a man. I am avoiding ART. I am creating something new. I am redefining, for myself and those who know me, what it means to be an artist. A woman in love. A mother. A member of the world.
Art (dictionary definition): 1. the production or expression of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
What does this mean? I was looking for the etymological significance of the word. Words are usually pretty tricky. I didn't find anything. Latin. Ars. Skill, Art. Not much help as I focus on my current creation of, of all things, a shopping center instead of a sculpture, painting, or even a blog.
Turnbull, about Fitzgerald, said something about a life being a work of art. Implying (maybe even stating) that Fitzgerald's life was somehow more relevant, more profound, than his literature and I am thinking tonight about my last post, Dead or Alive, about living and breath and above all, personal responsibility, non-situational ethics, the pain involved with doing nothing and the pain involved with doing too much. I am thinking about pain, about happiness, about the irrevocable, brutal intertwining of both and how I am never content. I am thinking about what is new. Can we truly reject the pursuit of power, or the pious ablution of that pursuit through an homage to fear?
Another definition. I love this.
Human: Originally spelled Humane. Humane has been restricted in its use since 1700 and takes into account only the nobler aspects of man. Whereas Human, in its current and original forms, speaks to the whole spectrum from weak and pathetic to benevolence, compassion, and refinement. Don't you love it? Keep the word, restrict the meaning.
As artists, it is our job to be "fully human." Fully alive. Suffering. Wise. Creative. Flaky. Insightful. Substance Users. Substance Abusers. Aloof. Leftist. Against God. Talking to God (s) and/or muses. Chroniclers. Mystics. Psychics. Insane. Sexual. Deviant. Passionate. Intolerable. Good god, what we are tasked with! And god help us if we truly take it into the world. Make the world our canvas, our raw metal on the ground -- bringing order from chaos, breath into a day, creating something new (a shopping center, a baby, a garden, what have you?) with the palette at our finger tips and the possibilities in our hearts. This would be better written in the morning. Tonight, in the dark, with sloppy rain falling almost wetly in my desert, it seems that Dionysus will have his way.
ART gets sacrificed, at least tonight, for LIFE.
Slowly.
I spent the holiday in California. On a beach, by a pool, in the arms of my love. The first such holiday without my children, who are becoming adults and making their own decisions. The first without a turkey, the cranberry/orange relish I make with Grand Mariner. I spent it dancing to bad 80's music, laughing, thinking little. Reading a great deal. I have been awake for 23 hours (mostly) between planes and airports, rushing deadlines and the wayward acts of a child I hope will soon become a man. I am avoiding ART. I am creating something new. I am redefining, for myself and those who know me, what it means to be an artist. A woman in love. A mother. A member of the world.
Art (dictionary definition): 1. the production or expression of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
What does this mean? I was looking for the etymological significance of the word. Words are usually pretty tricky. I didn't find anything. Latin. Ars. Skill, Art. Not much help as I focus on my current creation of, of all things, a shopping center instead of a sculpture, painting, or even a blog.
Turnbull, about Fitzgerald, said something about a life being a work of art. Implying (maybe even stating) that Fitzgerald's life was somehow more relevant, more profound, than his literature and I am thinking tonight about my last post, Dead or Alive, about living and breath and above all, personal responsibility, non-situational ethics, the pain involved with doing nothing and the pain involved with doing too much. I am thinking about pain, about happiness, about the irrevocable, brutal intertwining of both and how I am never content. I am thinking about what is new. Can we truly reject the pursuit of power, or the pious ablution of that pursuit through an homage to fear?
Another definition. I love this.
Human: Originally spelled Humane. Humane has been restricted in its use since 1700 and takes into account only the nobler aspects of man. Whereas Human, in its current and original forms, speaks to the whole spectrum from weak and pathetic to benevolence, compassion, and refinement. Don't you love it? Keep the word, restrict the meaning.
As artists, it is our job to be "fully human." Fully alive. Suffering. Wise. Creative. Flaky. Insightful. Substance Users. Substance Abusers. Aloof. Leftist. Against God. Talking to God (s) and/or muses. Chroniclers. Mystics. Psychics. Insane. Sexual. Deviant. Passionate. Intolerable. Good god, what we are tasked with! And god help us if we truly take it into the world. Make the world our canvas, our raw metal on the ground -- bringing order from chaos, breath into a day, creating something new (a shopping center, a baby, a garden, what have you?) with the palette at our finger tips and the possibilities in our hearts. This would be better written in the morning. Tonight, in the dark, with sloppy rain falling almost wetly in my desert, it seems that Dionysus will have his way.
ART gets sacrificed, at least tonight, for LIFE.
Labels: art movement, arts movement, Creative process, metal art, metal sculpture blog, Santa Fe sculptor, sculpture
posted by Destiny Allison at
1:42 AM
4 Comments:
Transitions are tough, kid.
Hang in there.
You'll center yourself again soon.
"I am avoiding ART. I am creating something new. I am redefining, for myself and those who know me, what it means to be an artist. A woman in love. A mother. A member of the world."
You're not redefining art, Destiny. You've rediscovered it, in the truest meaning of the word. The Latin *ars* goes beyond the noun "skill" when coupled with a particular skill, and becomes a verb. Think *Ars Poetica.* It's not just "the skill of poetry," but *doing* the skill of poetry, and "doing" is not far removed from the verb "be."
I once knew a precocious girl in college who was wise beyond her years, but she was still young (a college freshman at 16, if memory serves) and trying to figure things out.
The stuff she was trying to figure out, however, were the same kinds of things that Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard grappled with when they were significantly older, so she had quite a bit on her mind.
That girl pondered subjects that you've often discussed here, and she wrote down some of her thoughts in correspondence with me, long ago. I'd like to reproduce some of those written thoughts for you because juxtaposing them with yours brings things full circle, and closes it in a very beautiful way, for she was searching for something that you have arrived at.
However, as an intellectual, as a wise, suffering, creative, insightful but suffering artist, and flaky, insane, and deviant, to boot (your words, not mine), you've been searching for so long that, sometimes-- like Odysseus waking up one morning on the beach of Ithaca, but not sure where he is, or if he's dreaming-- you don't seem to realize that you've arrived. You don't seem to realize that you're finally home.
As a matter of principle, I respect, cherish, and protect the privacy of personal correspondence entrusted to me, but I think, in this context, under the circumstances, this one time, that I would have her blessing in resurrecting some of it here (and believe it or not, this prodigy is around 18 or 19 when she wrote this):
"So John, what is to be? It is not existence, or rather, existence is encompassed by it, but not the all of it. And so if I define it by saying that to be is occurence continually within time well, hell, that's just as obscure and abstract as to be, and yet that's the closest I can get to a tangible explanation of it...if I can break to be, I might actually have something here, or at least which step to take next..."
But she takes it:
"You said how the only thing you really wanted to do was to make someone happy, and you were right John. That is the only thing really worth doing, though there are probably several ways of accomplishing it. The difficulty is in finding the person who will let you do it. Or through art, and its ability, after its birth, of changing someone's life. Why else would we be alive. What is it, without this, to be human?"
Indeed. Note the girl's recognition of the nexus between Life and Art.
Let's close the circle:
"I am avoiding ART."
Perish the thought. Not while you still breathe. Remember what my friend wrote: "Why else would we be alive. What is it, without (art), to be human?"
But you sunder:
"ART gets sacrificed, at least tonight, for LIFE.
But Art is Life and Life is Art. You must know this.
You say (to spite art!):
"I am creating something new."
What else is new? You are an artist. You are "occuring continually within time," as my friend also wrote. You *Are*, And To Be is to be forever new.
You do not move in linear perpetuity, but reside in circular eternity.
Wait, what? Well, you know, that "occuring continually within time" stuff. Hm. Maybe "this would be better written in the morning", too, but anyway:
"I am redefining, for myself and those who know me, what it means to be an artist."
Pah. While you think you're showing art the door for tonight, you're simultaneously engaging in art for art's sake, because you're a definitive artist. You can't help it. It's who you are. There's no escape.
But don't despair. You don't realize it, but you've actually broken "to be," as my friend hoped to accomplish:
"...if I can break to be, I might actually have something here, or at least which step to take next..."
And she peered down this path, and asked:
"You said how the only thing you really wanted to do was to make someone happy, and you were right John. That is the only thing really worth doing, though there are probably several ways of accomplishing it. The difficulty is in finding the person who will let you do it. Or through art, and its ability, after its birth, of changing someone's life. Why else would we be alive. What is it, without this (i.e. art), to be human?"
And you answer, 20 years later:
"A woman in love. A mother. A member of the world."
And an artist, too.
Welcome home, Odyssean.
Have a Merry Christmas. :)
P.S. "But Art is Life and Life is Art. You must know this."
Correction: Art is an imitation of Life. Or at least it was in Aristotle's day. Perhaps that is the reason for your angst, a sense that your cerebral and dextrous and ponderous creations in your Hephaestian studio are mere imitations and lack a certain and simple authenticity derived from the sweet nothings of daily palaver and crossword puzzles, the squeezing of melons and tissue paper alike in grocery store aisles, filling the car with gas to drive around and go back and forth and here and there and back again just to get out of the house, but sooner or later eager to get back to it, if only to pay bills on time, watch TV, and go to bed?
Maybe the rind and grind of authentic "Life" is precisely why you can see more and more of Life trying to imitate Art in this Post-Modern Age (or are we at post Post-Modernism now? Wherever we are, it ain't pretty for a great mass of people who live lives bereft of any art).
So my advice to you is: Stick to the production or expression of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
We need it.
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