ART CHALLENGE - 1 of 5
Is there any reason to make art? Why not just sit around with our wine and our friends and chat or watch tv? What does the art we do, do for us? What's it FOR? Does it mean something in our lives? Why do we do it, what do we want to say? Hm - do we actually have anything to say? IS there anything to say, in the long run? Why are we so BUSY?
These are hard questions for most people who make art, and get all mixed up with making money, impressing people, and justifying our habits. Or maybe it's only hard for me?
Anyway, I've tried to get a handle on this stuff for some time by looking at lots of art, reading about artists' lives, and yes, even trying to read actual philosophy by philosophers (not so easy, folks). Here's yet another way to tackle the issue - the Art Challenge.
The Art Challenge is a thread going around on Facebook, letting artists post images of their work without bowing to the day-to-day of life. No photos of sunsets, supper with friends, or kids, no cat videos, no comments on football, religion, or politics. Just the work, and your comments on it. You have to be invited.
At the end of January 2015, my friend Ellen Cornett, a wonderful pastel artist, asked me to join in. Many artists have used this challenge to review their work over time, a fine idea and one that I can follow because I have flash drives with all my images from the beginning of the world, so to speak, in other words from the first pictures of mine to be photographed.
I've been all over the map, in space and in art, and it feels good to look for threads linking my art-making together (if I can find them). Is there any there there?
There, there, don't worry. I've been posting every day, and it soon will be over. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who aren't on Facebook, so I'm reprising my Challenge postings here. Also, I can stick in more pictures. Whee!
At the end of the 5th Challenge I'll try to map out what I think I'm doing with art-making, and what comes next.
CHALLENGE DAY 1. I had a great time going through my thumb-drive archives. I had been painting in oils in Seattle, but by 2004 I was living in Washington DC and trying to find my footing in a new place. Sketching at every opportunity, trying new media. Here are some lively sketches from those times. I have hundreds, these are a few for your amusement.
Girl on the bus in Seattle. People have really original dress in Seattle, or used to, maybe it's more corporate now and we'll have to visit Portland to find weird.
Isn't he a jazz musician in Washington? Hm. I seem to remember a benefit performance at the African American Civil War Museum, for refugees from Katrina. I'm thinking that's him. Julianne remembers the event, too.
Oh, the oompah band in Oslo, Norway. Charming young guys just marching around in the summertime. 2004.
There we were sitting outside a laudromat in Oslo, and I'm sketching. Kitty had left her hat on the bus and was feeling sad. Along came a bus, which stopped - no bus stop anywhere near. The driver leaned out the window with the hat! Go Oslo! These are passersby, 2004.
Jazz Night in Southwest, at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Washington, on I Street SW. Every Friday night. Fish supper. Pretty good time is had by all, and it helped me get comfortable in DC. Still going strong after all these years. This sketch 2003.
