I understand where Suzi is coming from with this perspective, especially after attending art school. I do feel as though she is over simplifying the cliche of an artist here. From my experience, artists tend to be very thoughtful people who are considerate of the world around them. This means loving the beauty of life, while empathizing with how intensely dark and horrible it can be simultaneously. To be considerate of these things is a struggle. If that struggle is misconstrued as a cliche then that is unfortunate.
To deny the fact that artist communities do in fact exist is odd to me. I recently took a glass blowing class which taught me so much about working with other artists to complete a single piece of work. Glass blowers have to work in a very tight social environment because if team members are not on the same page while working with hot glass then it can become very dangerous. How it works is one person is leading, while they have one if not many more helpers assisting with blowing the glass, keeping the main artist's arms from burning, as well as many more complicated actions. In my opinion, this is deeply empathetic because without understanding the intentions and feelings of the artist leading, the assistants would have no way of helping. Another example exists here at the University of Oregon. Every Saturday, painters and drawers come together to do live drawing of nude models. Now having experienced this I know how empathetic this situation truly is. If the model is upset or has a bad attitude, all the artists are able to pick up on this and it makes drawing much more difficult. And when the model is truly feeling what they are doing, every artist in the room is aware of it and the drawings usually express this. Between artists during an experience like this, there is an understanding of proper curtesy toward the model as well as toward each other. Even if it is not spoken, the artists are working off one another and it is absolutely a communal experience.
My vision of the artist is very broad. To me, an artist can use any profession as an outlet as long as they use creative and thoughtful methods to create or complete the task they are posed with. An engineer building a sturdy bridge is an artist. A teacher figuring out creative ways of connecting with students is an artist. A homeless person writing interesting signs to collect money is an artist. The only thing that differs between these people is the medium in which they have chosen to express themselves. There is not one personality for an artist. How I see it is each personality finds the right profession or style to properly express themselves the way they see fit. A painter may be a more isolated person, while an actor may be a much more extroverted social person. Different types of artists connect to their communities differently.
I think it probably took more than one lone genius to create this bridge that I perceive to be a piece of art.
After seeing Ty Warren's presentation of her work, I was very deeply effected. I left the classroom and had to just walk around for a while to fully absorb what I had experienced. I deeply respected how honest she was with her work. She said that she is very transparent with her teaching methods, but I also see this within her artwork. For me, creating art is something I do to let out all of the strong emotions both light and dark within me. It's easy to forget how exposed this leaves the artist. I felt like by seeing the path that Ty had taken with her work, I could easily see the mental state she was in during all of these times.
Her earlier works dealt a lot with facing what Suzi is speaking of in the quote above. A denial of the conventional idea of what art is and how it is perceived. I feel like this is a phase that all artists must go through in order to expand how they see art. First understand how the world sees it, then realize you don't necessarily agree with that view, then fight it. Soon you realize that fighting won't solve anything. What you really need to do is just show the world how you actually see it. I think it takes this process in order to come to that conclusion though. Her early work says FUCK YOU, then after she gets that out of her system, the true emotion shines through. The piece that effected me most was the push ups. How can you say that there isn't an empathetic social community in art after watching something like this? As our entire class watched that video, we all felt different things, but we were all connecting and attempting to feel as Ty felt during this experience. I see that as a community.
For people who are unable to understand art. You may say that I have an elitist view, but I think that they just don't care enough to make the effort. It is the same with any subculture. There are those who understand it and live for it, and there are those who pass it by without any consideration. There are even those who hate it out of lack of understanding. I don't think that this necessarily means that artists need to change the way they work in order to better publicize themselves.
Thoughtful comments on community.
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