Saturday, November 11, 2006
Art
Amidst the chaos of the last few weeks, I've been afforded some quiet moments where I am reminded of just how good God is and just how beautiful the world can be. I've actually picked up a paint brush more than once in the last couple weeks. It's always like saying hello to an old friend, one whom I've loved and despised. Artistically, I seemed to have gained back a bit of something that I was desperately missing not only at KCAI, but the last few years. I painted, and I really enjoyed it. The end result was nothing to display on a wall, but it didn't lessen my enjoyment of it. I haven't had that feeling in years. Somewhere along the line, art became about striving and performance, and I demanded nothing but perfection. Some things really are more about the journey than the destination I guess, but art seems to be a fine line of both. It's a line I have yet to learn to walk. But the times where I catch it, even for just a moment, are really beautiful. Being able to call myself an artist is something that I struggle with. I have felt so very unworthy of the word, often feeling that I must be an imposter in a world that I don't belong in. Only slowly over the last couple years have I been able to bit by bit embrace the word as a fitting title for myself, yet I am still hesitant. Some pieces that I've created, actually many, if not most, I feel as though I've "cheated". Where is the line between your own work and that of another? Where is the line between using tools to help you achieve accuracy and simply creating a copy? Everything is inspired by something, yet when art is the inspiration for art, who can really take credit for it? When I use a grid, or a projector, can I really actually say that I drew that? Could I have done it so well had I not used the tools? I want to say yes, but there is a part of me that screams no.
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4 comments:
I don't know if this helps at all but I know the "imposter" feeling you speak of. When I first started teaching this year, I really want all my lessons to be my own, I wanted them to be perfect and I thought I could do it on my own. I quickly (out of desparation) came to realize that my life would be a lot better if I swallowed my pride and asked for help. I think it is okay to use tools in our "crafts" that someone else has invented or created - why should we always need to reinvent the wheel so to speak? Why is it bad to use tools from someone else to make our own "art" (I use the term loosely to also refer to my teaching) even better? You may use the tools but you still are the one to put your own touches on it that make it your own. Be proud of what you do, not ashamed of it! I may use a lesson plan from someone else, but I am the one delivering the lesson, so in the end, it probably will look totally different than the lesson of the person who made it.
I hope that makes sense.
You so eloquently put into words a journey I have struggled in for years. As I read the questions you asked at the end of your blog I was thinking about something we talked about in Christian Imagination class in college. There is nothing new under the sun. God is the ultimate creator and everything we "create" came from him first anyway. Who decides what is good art? Its so subjective. I haven't resolved much of this in my head either. A good book for me was "Walking on Water" by Madeleine L'Engle. A quote from the book: "Unless we are creators, we are not fully alive."
You ask what gives you the right to call yourself and artist (or me, myself an artist), but I pose the question: what gives you the right to NOT call yourself an artist?
We put that title on a pedastle strive with all our might to acheive that unatainable plateau. Some would say "I am not an artist; I did not go to art school." Others would say "I am not an artists because I only got a bachelors degree." And still more would say "I am not an artist because my work is not shown in galleries."
So we must take the "artist" down from its high place, examine it, and discover that it is not a title to be bestowed on a select and worthy few, but something to be recognized, accepted, and embraced within ourselves.
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On another note: would you accuse Vermeer and countless other "masters" of cheating for using a camera obscura?
Hey, thanks for the comments!
Sean, good question - what gives you the right to not call yourself an artist? I suppose so much of the art world is made up of exclusion, that to let the word "artist" fall off it's pedastal would be a blow to the community. Maybe that's exactly what rubbed me the wrong way about art school. It seemed that everything was based on excluding or comparing, and no matter what you did, you would never add up. And the funny thing is, you don't even know what you are trying to add up to!
No, I would not accuse them of being cheaters for using a camera obscura...but the issue with that is that I have always been fully convinced that THEY could have done it without - I am not so convinced about myself however. Guess that goes back to the ol' pedastle issue though.
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