November 20 - Inspiration
Just a cam snap while I'm writing... a make-up-less unwashed grubby fiend today <smile>.One of the things I loved best about doing my BFA and being in the shabby little run down portables reserved for fourth year students studio spaces was the flow of ideas. (How run down? We'd lose ceiling tiles daily, when I couldn't afford paper or canvas anymore, and realized no one was ever going to bother re-installing them, I started painting on them). The air was alive with chi that vibrated with creativity and inspiration. We never had enough heat, we crammed in there, each studio with at least two sometimes three artists working out of it, the doors all open, peoples music mingling, some lucky people who had heaters or hot plates ( I used to wear fingerless gloves to keep my hands warm but still be able to hold brushes and pencils properly), some people slept in their studios, there were odd parties at all hours. Sometimes I'd pull an all nighter working, and sleeping, or whatever, in the studio I shared (with this beautiful boy and a very talented artist). It was like a totally unique environment on the big university campus, miles and miles of campus, lots of different types of buildings, people, and subjects. But nothing on campus compared to the 4th year studio portables (well except for maybe the animal labs hidden on the top floor of the psych building where I worked for a bit as a third job cleaning cages during my psych BA, trying to get research in and money at the same time, so I could keep myself in Mr. noodle and paper...but that's another story).
Anyways, back to the studios in the portables, and more importantly, the sharing of ideas. Artists have forever come together in small groups to support one another, to critique one another, to learn together. We had a wonderful sense of camaraderie. Even someone like myself who is so often a loner, a combination of being shy and very focused on studying rather than making friends and partying (I think I was also fearful of eventual rejection, and so never bothered letting myself get too close, I would just hold myself apart). But still, I was part of this swirling colorful group around me. And the inspiration... the ideas, ideas that we shared. Ideas that would start in one persons studio on one piece of canvas and migrate and evolve as someone else would be inspired by it, take it up in a new direction, and run. (trip, fall, fly...) Artists have always formed such groups. Be they painters, writers.. or? Little pockets of creativity. Where people go "ah-ha! I love that paint application, I shall experiment with it myself!" or "I've never seen poetry executed like this, I think I'll try to create something like it, it speaks to me" or "wow, what a beautiful word, I'm going to use that in my next piece" nothing is sacred really.... even artists models (I know because I was and still am occasionally one) are passed around within a group. I make it sound idyllic, and I shouldn't because even within these close families of artists there is sometimes fighting, but you would be surprised really I think, how little. (someone even stole one of my ceiling tiles, but that's okay, they did something totally different with it, and it was amazing) I don't know much about music, but I think musicians, creative ones, must do something similar, work with others they respect, who do similar types of things, and inspire one another, share ideas.
One of the reasons I think that I enjoyed art so much, was all the rule breaking. We were allowed to be disrespectable.. in fact, it was EXPECTED of us. <laugh>. Taking an image by another artist and incorporating into your own work, was maybe or maybe not seen as stealing, either way.. it was applauded. In fact, in art history, we'd been shown example after example of people taking images, like Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup cans (to use an example just about everyone is familiar with) Artists taking famous images, taking corporate images, taking famous artists, taking famous words, and with the artists freedom from conformity.. with some strange 'artistic license' we would slap around and toss around ideas, images, words, concepts, like hot potatoes, and they would explode. Someone would gestate, give birth to an idea, and then it would start to multiply as everyone wanted in on raising it to it's full potential. It was like working together, even though we worked separately... we had this unity.. this incestuous sharing of putting the art before anything else, and there could be nothing found offensive in the process. Even when we disagreed, even when there were minor conflicts, above it all was the acknowledgement that you were motivated out of your creative drive, to express yourself, and whether we could understand the work or motivation or not... we could all respect that part of it. That sacred part of it. We could hate the work, shudder at the concept, think the execution of it done poorly, and still, respect that this was someone else's 'work of art'.
Not that people didn't find plenty offensive... and we had plenty of forums to hear about that in. We'd have public critiquing of our works, and sometimes our fellow classmates would be the harshest of critics. The thing though, is everything was said and heard, with a kind of respect and honor, without hurt feelings, without blame. Just plain... I like this, I don't like this, I agree with this, I don't agree with this... and this is why. I know, I got a lot of that criticism.. we had a lot of feminist thinkers in our classes, most of the women there, and then me... doing prints and paintings and drawings of demure traditional looking Japanese women giving head... well, there was a lot to be said about that. About my use of so called dis-empowering imagery... about my use of stereotypes, etc, etc... of course, I did lots of other imagery as well (not just Japanese girls and oral sex <laugh>, that was just my most controversial area of work...) surprisingly enough the hardcore bdsmy type works were not politically thrashed by my classmates, because I was doing women with women then, and I was not using traditional stereotypes.. so then.. it was okay. Even though to me, they were all in the same genre of work: 'painting things I find "hot"' <grin>. (At any rate, those works don't exist now, over the years I've destroyed most of them.. that's yet another story).
It seems people always seem to get the MOST vocal when they have a cause to struggle for, and a place they can see it applied to. I had pretty tough skin then, and I believed in what I was doing, as I still do, but it was still a small pain in the heart, to be misunderstood. Labeled one of 'them' one of the bad guys that are participating in some socio-political crime against "fill in your group or minority here" by my personal creative process. It's still wounding when it happens today. Though I've gotten less of that than I thought I would doing "p-o-r-n" for a living.
I've been visiting a few message forums on a few different sites lately, which I haven't done for years, that and e-groups I tend to stay away from because of the inevitable bickering and slamming that arises. And I've already started to feel my over sensitive defensiveness triggered. Already started to have my lower lip quiver a bit as I spy out potential areas where I may be attacked. Too sensitive.. yes, I am way too sensitive. Why do I care so much... who knows, why do any of us. Want to be loved, hate to be rejected. Especially when it's dis-respected, misunderstood, rejected. The worse for me (due to my own childhood issues) is when it comes from women, until I've had barbie in my life, I've always felt completely locked out of the 'world of women' and that I would never be truly loved or understood by another woman in my entire life. Perhaps it's been the thing I wanted most badly that seemed to be missing. So... women have the potential to wound me like no one else.
How does this relate to my studio days/daze... just that I think I lured myself into those forums, hoping... for that same collective understanding, that same camaraderie, that respect that here are other people who have similar creative motivations for self expression, for sharing thoughts and ideas with the world... People who are exploring some of the same horizons perhaps, who maybe even not only share a similar venue, but similar struggles. I don't think I'm going to get that. I think.. if I'm wise. I'll not check the forums again. I'll keep my loner ways, I'll find solace in my own written words, in the arms of the beautiful woman I love who loves me, and of Wolfe, and I'll find my inspirations closer to home. Within the community of my physical neighborhood, and not the cyber parking lots where people like to stop by and see whose engaged in what brawl.
Keep it positive, keep the peace, tend your own gardens, before you venture to pluck the weeds from others...
XO
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Come on.... just a little something, money for tea? for Christmas dinner? for toilet paper? for shaving cream? for a puppy? for oranges? for tampons? for paper? for Mr. Noodle?