We take the position that art is not a luxury. Art making is not frivolous. It is critical to sustain one's soul. It's essential to our lives. It informs us about ourselves in ways that words alone can't. -Bay-Nimoy
I believe in this because my struggle as an artist always comes down to the question of this need I feel to express myself and its validity and significance on the grander scale of life. I have to insist that there is not a better use of my time. I think your first blog posting was on this subject of "is art a basic need?" and you presented an interesting anecdote that I am recalling today...
for example, i went up to my boss yesterday and we were talking about how art is or isn't important. he was telling me that after the concentration camps were "ended," when people got to go home, a lot of little notes were found stuck in the walls, in between bricks, with letters and poems and thoughts on them. he was pondering over what courage it took these people, in the middle of concetration camp hell, to scrape a pencil and paper. to risk ur life for something like that, for expressing urself, for art, in a way...
2. Today, Greg was featured in Communication Arts' Fresh Online and there was something he said that made me think...when asked about his cultural influences he said:
Public radio and the New York Times Magazine. I really love the real people stories I hear on public radio: “StoryCorps,” “This American Life” and “Radio Lab” are remarkable. They underscore how necessary it is to see the commonalities of our lives and not get lost in the details.
I read this and felt immediately that I have lost sight of this - the commonalities of our lives - and I have been lost in the details. So I am back where I always am trying to figure out how to stay grounded, more rational, less emotional...because right now I am somewhere above my head and the sky and I feel I keep floating further and further away from reality. I just read some of your old posts I had missed and realized you have so much wisdom in your almost 30-years. I will take heed because I feel like it's time to come up for air and observe my own life from a bird's eye perspective as sometimes I do in my dreams. Somehow I feel I have become so narrow minded and obsessive-compulsive in attaching myself to some idea of who I want to be and what I want to do that in doing so have forgotten some essential facts. I know this is really vague.
But there it is. My two cents today.
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