Tomorrow night I am leaving for Seattle for four days. I cannot express how much I love that town, but really a love letter to the town is a love letter to the people IN the town. In preparation, today I put together some pieces for my friends in Seattle who I didn’t get work out in time for Christmas. I’m stoked to show up with a stack of art for people. I miss them so much.
Which leads me to a conversation that I overheard earlier tonight…
I cooked dinner for a group of my fellow MFA students tonight and the topic of who we create art for and what the purpose of creating that art came up, as it always does in these types of settings. One of my friends was pushing the point that artwork should be in a Utopic setting created by an artist trying to work out the answer to a problem or the means of understanding something, but not to make something that is considered cool or beautiful. Perhaps there is some truth in this, but I think that the greatest challenge of an artist is to make something that people do find cool. Perhaps this is a useless goal, but the feeling that I get when I see a person “get” something and think it is cool or actually burst out into laughter, I feel certain that this idea that the artist is meant to be in solitary creating work simply to satisfy his or her own needs is complete crap.
I love the people I’ve met. Admittedly I make artwork for myself, but in the end I want it to be COOL so that those people will enjoy it, because then we can share. We can share in the creative act. We can create the story together. We can be a community. I can love them for them and for their ideas and they can love me for me and my ideas.
I’m done ranting, but I’d be interested to hear what other people have to say about this. Perhaps I am harping on something that isn’t even really that apparent. Here’s a couple of the pieces that I worked up for my peeps in Seattle today.
Cool or no? I’ll let you decide, but I didn’t make them because I thought they were pointless.
Have a good one. Hope the New Year is treating you well thus far.
Peace
-Mike