THE ARTIST'S THOUGHTS ABOUT ART
There is an inexpensive version of every official art, and sport, and science. In pursuit of small scale, the unimportant, or the unfunded ersatz, one can find a whole life’s work that can preclude the need to get, spend and compete. Competition’s value is it’s set of parameters. Needing to be the winner is the problem. That’s a poisonous fantasy we push on each other. It creates social pain and wasted lifepaths. We are afraid to talk about the value of being second, or last. Ambition has become linked with money, not acceptable to stand on its own. I have become accustomed to low income as a temporary condition, and now realize it is likely permanent, buying time instead of stuff. Projects save me from feeling deprived of The Gracious Life. I would like to think this works for everyone. To get off the status track and get back on the achievement track. Art made for Art’s Sake, is a tiring set of words that always sounded like the consolation prize for losers. If we could stop worrying about who has more, and could start being selfish and work at skill, theory, science for science sake, sport for practice sake, the species of human might get past the need to conquer and get back to building.
My aesthetic has always looked amateur-ish. Wanting to make a lowbrow appearing object that would hide out in trailers on paneling walls, yet someday when found at the thrift store, be embraced as the refreshing object, embarrassing quirks laid bare, amidst all that properly well-made largeness channeled up in value by the Art~WorLD. To produce a new masterwork in line with the historically endorsed tracks is something I always thought I could do if I had to. And at this moment I am trying that. By succumbing to overly fussy realist images. But immediately wrecking it by gilding perfectly good images with text; making flat works on paper impossible to frame because somehow the best parts fall exactly at the edge of the paper, my plug-in success remains limited. I fail to properly compete. I compensate by adding more layers of time-consuming solutions. Why not make it outrageously complete? A demonstration that hand skill and a person’s time equals so little, after these four decades of stagnant wage, that indulgence in extra labor, is like the dieter’s permanent binge. Smaller samples, like the Kensington Cards and the Recession Leaves are my way of broadcasting, that by sheer numbers, a few might be saved. Wanting our efforts to remain beyond our deaths is a peaceful goal that feels worth a lot of unpaid time. If you can’t identify what you might leave behind, then don’t fall into that “friends and family are all we got” crap. That should be just the start. Being with others isn’t adequate use of a brain. Being with others, at this moment in our history, keeps fueling that irrational need to be the winner.