first full day of alumnihood.
1.
mica’s commencement speaker for undergraduates 2012, was william bailey.
from all he shared in his life experiences and artist experiences, i felt the most poignant things that really spoke to me were:
.. that he ran himself into corners trying to consider and depict mystery, clarity, concepts, etc.
.. that regardless of all those things he tried to be ambitious with, it was in clarity and simplicity that he discovered endless possibility.
.. that all the masters of every period speak to what he does.
this is essentially what my mom and i talk about, except she does so in her layman terms and i try to understand in my art history and art language terms. we talked in our own terms and we could not communicate. i felt that the talk was what she wanted to always push me towards, and that it addressed the areas that i actually struggled the most. and the areas that made me the most despondent and frustrated with art.
2.
today is the last day for the (e)merge art fair in washington d.c. for early october. i intend to apply.
2. with the berkshire arts festival in massachusetts .
i got word back from the rothbarts who head boxology.com, anamericancraftsman.com, and americanartmarketing.com. i finally received word regarding the berkshire festival, which is well known and acknowledged. i’d gotten a phone call a couple weeks earlier saying i was accepted, and given information about where to stay and how much to invest in the show, with some side comments that were intimidating and patronizing. all that was fine and exciting, i just wanted something in written agreement for my acceptance before sending a sum of around 600$ simply to enter the fair. i was declined my request for a written acceptance, so i decided not to do the show. it is all very strange. the strangest sentence is that the organizer felt i am unaware of professional fairs’ processes. if that wasn’t for his own ego, i’m not sure what exactly i’m missing out on. yes he does run three businesses on a very large scale; unless mica misinformed me about what are in my rights and what to expect, i don’t think asking for written proof was in any way derogatory or overly demanding. in any case, i do find this relay of communication very unfortunate. it doesn’t make working with his organizations in the future appealing on any level. but there is room for grace; sometimes people are not as they seem on the phone or internet. and sometimes they are.
3.
it’s another pity that grace hartigan passed away a couple years ago. as william bailey put it in an interview for yale, american abstract expressionism is really the only school of art that is quintessentially american. there is no true “american art”. and even abstract expressionism owes a lot to european masters. this conceives two thoughts for me.
first that ill never have enough art history. ill never feel satisfied with my knowledge of art history. and in many ways i’ll want to abandon art history over and again , only to find myself soaking in more while forgetting some other pieces of information as my sponge oversoaks.
second, if i do indeed go back to school for further education as chezia thompson keeps urging me, i’ll need to find the very best teachers. whatever that means! i know that i want to work with christian artists, and that i need to meet more and more christian artists who take art history very seriously. and in many ways i dont feel that higher education is the most fertile ground for that. i know it isn’t based on the private art institutions i spoke with regarding their faculty panel. it’s this really weird tug of war between “1: do you want to make yourself so called relevant with the art world in conventional-understandable methods,” or “2: do you want to influence the art world by subverting what they presently consider relevant”. i find myself constantly trying to appealing to both questions and becoming some gray middle, but i find myself simultaneously considering the first question to be the more comfortable and easier way, while knowing that the second way is what i actually need to do be doing.
4.
lots of ideas. but ideas cost money. and time is money. not too many hours left to today before my application can no longer be submitted. so for now, adieu. and i’ll write again later to process my thoughts.
