Slab-built clay and stain torso, Down by the River, by Tammy Vitale of Tam’s Originals
Yesterday I posed a question: Is art a luxury?
Be the Change Blog: "Art, culture and corporate social responsiblity: supporting art and the planet through fair trade and eco-friendly business practices. Brought to you by Hoopla Traders, a global boutique located on Capitol Hill in the heart of Washington, D.C." posted an engaging reply, including: "Consider Victor Frankel, who in the midst of the most inhumane conditions of a concentration camp found the space within himself to experience the beauty of life and spirituality. To me, art is an essential of life, and not a luxury." Be sure to check it out.
Disclosure: Hoople Traders Boutique is hosting me as featured artist for July. And if you haven’t checked out their website, you should pop on over to see all the other art and goods that share that space.
Perhaps some who would argue that art is a luxury simply think of art in too narrow terms. Who of us hasn’t at some point in our life pulled a picture out of a magazine and lived with it tucked into a scrapbook of dreams, tacked beside the computer, magnetized to the refrigerator? Photos of distant landscapes (escapes) are wish weavers. What are wishes but the soul longing for home?
And art isn’t necessarily the polished, high-priced Picasso that only the very wealthy can afford. Art can be the workshop sketch made in 5 minutes that hangs on the same nail as your calendar, or the ephemeral baby black snake draped in the branches of the small holly tree off your back deck which refused to be photographed because it blends so well in its surroundings (a happening! once it leaves, the "art" is over). It can be embroidery or a quilt patched together from embroidered blue jeans that have long since (1970s) fallen apart – but the embroidery will outlast even the quilt under which you have snuggled for the last 30 years and which is currently usurped by Dog when joining you in your office. Art can be soup made from scratch that makes the house smell like Home, or a cairn of rocks left on a trail in the Blue Ridge mountains. It can be a seashell that has broken open to show it’s intricate curling interior or the still life with business cards and a found rock nestled on the monitor stand on your desk. It is always and everywhere young children’s crayon on paper proudly displayed and (in my case) framed and hung long after the child has grown to have a child of their own. Art goes on, whether we notice or not; start paying attention to clouds forming and unforming, waves and their detritus on the shore, sunsets painting the sky in a kalidescope of colors almost every single evening whether or not we watch.
Art isn’t luxury. It is the thing which pulls us back into our bodies and causes us to exhale in surprise and sometimes even awe. It doesn’t have to be expensive and it doesn’t even have to last. And the great part is you get to decide what is art for yourself. Go ahead, treat yourself to noticing art today. Once you start seeing it, the world will never be the same again.
Thought for the day: "At the close of the 19th century the entrances to caves in northern Spain and south-western France were rediscovered after they had remained sealed for thousands of years. In these caves lay hidden an undreamt of wealth of artistic works dating from the Ice Age: magnificent polychrome murals and roof frescoes, decorated partly with figures of animals now long extinct, partly with vivid engravings and a vast number of curious signs. The disclosure of such an ancient prehistoric art came as a complete surprise to a world that had hitherto sought the origins of human artistic endeavour in the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt." The Art of the Stone Age translated by Ann E Keep. [emphasis mine]
