I’m half motivated, have second-guessing my art.
I just got back from an art auction for a theater company in Washington DC. Lorraine Imwold was the one who got me to go down. I went down with Tamika and Edward Williams and Harper Fitzsimmons.
They were a couple other artists that I recognized. Actually, all the artists who were in the auction for people I know. Matt Muirhead, SOGH, and Lorraine all had our up for auction. I brought down some misprints that I had, Oscar Wilde and Bruce Lee. They both got bid on, so I was pretty happy.
However, looking at Matt and SOGH’s work got me wondering if my art has enough workmanship in it. Both of their work has a strong quality to it, and that comes through. You can tell by looking at their pieces that they’re skilled. There’s craft in their work, which is apparent. I also was thinking about the announcement Matt had made today on Facebook that a collector had just bought half of his show.
And I looked at my work.
The question I get most often when people first see my work is “what Photoshop filter did you use?” Which, is kinda painful. My work is so stark, so graphic, that people understand that it’s hand-done. That each piece took hours and hours to complete. It had me wondering whether or not I should start creating more physical pieces.
My friend Christopher Smith gave me a projector. One of those old ones from the 80’s that teachers used to put transparencies on, back before digital projectors and PowerPoint became vogue.
I brought it home in hopes of creating street art templates by projecting onto big pieces of cardboard and xacto-knifing the shapes… But after seeing a guy on reddit recreating a still from Seven Samurai on his wall, I wondered if I could just recreate some of my pieces using paint with the same process.
All this ran through my head looking around at the other artists and watching the bids climb up on SOGH’s piece.
I’m not jealous. SOGH and Matt are both amazing and approachable guys. SOGH is running a Kickstarter to pay for an art truck he’s building, and Matt has agreed to give Screenprinting lessons to Tamika. I’m extremely happy for both of them (I’m planning on becoming a donor to SOGH’s truck).
There are a lot of artists I really love and appreciate.
Which is a big thing for me. For many years, I was not a fan of art and artists for a long time. Especially abstract art.
Even tonight, Tamika was talking about some of the musicians who played at the show. Tamika has been taking guitar lessons from a guy named Gus (Talisha’s neighbor) who is a truly amazing musician. He told her about guitar “hacks”. People who learn a few chords, and them jump on stage and begin performing without training.
Hacks exist in the art world to. In a lot of circles, I’m considered one of them. When I was at Messiah, I was called a hack twice. Once by a faculty member during my Sophomore Review. The other time by one of my fellow students, Todd, who saw my work on the Critique Wall in the studio, and said “I hate that any hack can just jump into the art program without any training an start calling themselves and artist.” He didn’t know I was listening… it hurt pretty bad. Bad enough for me to avoid art for a long time.
Viewing the art tonight has made me take a critical look at my own work.
I guess that’s good. As long as I don’t wallow and feel defeated.
Edward had me show Harper the video of the creation of the Frederick Douglass piece, which she was really impressed with.
I just wish other people realized the work that goes into it. Maybe they’d appreciate it more.