Artist Statement
This work is a host for those who wish to remember our creativity. This is a home to speak the language of necessity. This is a place to make our own comfort and community. This may not be art.
If this is art, it is art because it has what we need.
If this is art, it does not fit inside. It will not grow in this light.
If this is art we may find it walking along the shore or down a long dirt road.
It has woods and fields, fence lines and foot prints. It has a beach.
If this is art, it is rich with history both human and natural. It is an art that has been neglected. It is a heritage for a generation of youth who are indigenous to globalization.
If this is art, it will be tilled and sown and harvested. It will have cattle and chickens and goats and pigs. This art will have gardens.
If this is art we will build a home and a hearth and a table for our time inside.
We will share the fruits of our labors and lay in the sand until the tide pushes us home.
We will sit warm around the fire until we fall quiet in anticipation for tomorrow's sun.
We will live in the beauty, and what we will make is everything we need.
This is only art because we need it to be art.
We need this because we have forgotten what to say when there is nothing left. What happens when we have nothing to communicate with but our own voice and gesture? Exposed to the elements we should not stop making. We must build a fire, build a shelter, build a home, and build a community. We build what we need.
It is time for a new condition, or rather the oldest condition. It is a condition where we cannot wait to make; we must act because we need warmth and food and company. With this condition we find our true creative agency, inherent in all human beings. To create, to innovate, and to adapt, are mindless pursuits as vital as our sex drive. They allow us to exist. But today we are being rendered impotent, as our ability to innovate is slipping away as we are provided for so carefully in the habitat of our institution.
It is a profound admission to say we are losing our creativity. But it is not the fault of any individual; blame can only be placed on the stale warmth of our galleries and classrooms. It is so comfortable to wait inside with all of our friends. It is the world we know. We wait for the weekend, wait for our paycheck, and wait for graduation. We wait for our economy, wait for our government. We wait for the right person or the right time or the right place. We wait for retirement. We wait because it is the only thing that is asked of us. The boredom this has afflicted on my generation is strikingly apparent. The boredom starts in the classroom.
It is impossible for any student indoors to engage the wonders of life on Earth with the same fascination as we do when we are a living as a wonder of life on Earth. Our insulated walls keep the wind and the rain and the sun and the snow from influencing our discussions. They keep the wonders of life on Earth out. We need to let them in.
The classroom we are building has no walls or roof or desks or chairs. There is no overhead projector. There are no computers, there are no televisions. We have replaced text books with advice from good neighbors. There are now forests and fields and sand and soil. There is our majestic river. Here beauty is unavoidable; the artists can rest from their attempts to make it. We can find comfort in the simple making or a warm fire, a garden, a house, or a movement.
We must bring down the walls of our classrooms and galleries and let the light shine in because the sterility of the institution offers no connection between humanity and what we need.
What we need is here, but we do not know it.