June 23, 2009

I have just returned from the artists' co-op I belong to after gallery-sitting for three hours this afternoon. There was not a solitary soul that dropped by, but I met my obligation to put in time, and I read quite a bit of Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth. I stretched my legs every hour or so and browsed the inventory. Again.

This is what I'm thinking: I'll bet I've seen more bad art than anyone I've ever known. Than anyone in the whole world, maybe. This is both good and bad: good, because it means more and more people are getting involved with art and dreaming Big by putting it out there in the public space. It's bad because, predictably, it's so damned depressing to look at.

My mother was a violinist. She believed there were two kinds of violinists: one was either fantastic or terrible. There was no in-between. She would say there was "fine art," or no art; that "bad" art was an oxymoron. She was not one to suffer fools gladly. If you weren't a competant violinist, you should repair to the privacy of a soundproof room and practice scales until you were fit for the human ear.

I think of her and wonder if I'm as getting as bad as she was. I started off encouraging people, and now I'm just much less enthusiastic. I think I've just reached a saturation point with effort and would welcome some accomplishment. Even from myself. Especially from myself.

Maybe thinking Big is overrated. Maybe doing a small thing well would not nauseate others in the way that rendering a big thing badly does.

I'm still trying to reorganize the turkey.

PW