In the open studio show I participated in this weekend I teamed up with with my friend, photographer Mark Peterson, and met hundreds of people who streamed through to view our work. Mark’s studio mate, Kristen Breiswith, also exhibited some prints of her beautiful paintings that Mark made. An interesting development in art, I think, is the way new technology has created the ability to make really sharp reproductions that are affordable. It didn’t mean that people were splashy with the dough though. Art still seems to require courage when it comes to buying.
I visited the studio of one young woman artist who looked like she was somewhere between six and twenty-six, her hair in pigtails, her tight black skirt way above her knees, her legs bare save for knee socks, her feet clad in heavy black boots, her lips smeared with dark lipstick, her face pale. Her work had a kind of punk quality that veered between anger and serene beauty—scrawly, spidery ink lines on old manuscript pages and antique photos. A disregard for the past, for preservation and a statement that the present moment and the hand trumps all. She had one gorgeous six foot long piece of paper on the wall covered in black charcoal lines so deep and insistent that the whole paper was shades of black save for a few holes of light. A dim vision I couldn’t help but love because it is feels true sometimes even if another vision has a greater truth for me. It was so triumphant, obsessive, narrow-focused and emphatic, so over the top, so real and, because of all that, so important. I told her I loved it and she thanked me shyly and said it was all about the light. I said that without the light it would be nothing. She said she’d made a couple of others but got so carried away the light had been obliterated.
It didn’t look like many were buying her work but—but if she hangs in there, if she stays obsessed and raw, if she finds a way to live, she has what it takes. It was real work. There are not so many people who have the courage to be truly present in their work or life for that matter.
Many, many people loved Mark’s incredible photographs and an art agent is very interested in taking him on—the best possible outcome for his day as his photographs deserve to be in the bigger world. I was happy to sell several paintings and prints. Thanks, friends! And a few others! At the end of the event we heard that it had not been a good day for most of the artists in terms of sales. It’s not the best venue for seeing art. It’s dazzling to see so much all at once but it’s still an important chance all the same for artists to share what they’re doing. Considering how little art is valued in this culture it’s fabulous how many are making a practice of it. Under the surface of this culture we live in the human spirit forges on.
