Rambles On Art and Photography
Saturday, Arti and I drove up to SF to check out some
art that some folks were showing as part of Open
Studios.
This is a great event, and is held in a lot of places
around the country. Artists interested in showing
their work register with the Open Studios
organization, who then includes them on their maps and
in their annual catalog. Each artist is assigned a
“weekend” where their home / studio will be opened to
the public.
It’s a great chance to discover new local talent, and
most of the time to actually speak with the artist
about his/her work. This really adds personality to
artwork, which we usually only experience far far away
in space and time from the person who made it.
Derek and Emily arranged for us to all go to the
“Kick-off Party” last Thursday, where we could look at
one small example piece from everyone involved.
The SF Open studios is pretty fancy — with a
full-color catalog produced every year. On Friday
night, we went thru the catalog and put a star next to
the artists we were interested in. Total of six for
this weekend, and a couple for next weekend.
We saw some neat work, and ended up getting a couple
of pieces — one from a guy we went to high school
with who is friends with Em and Mark.
We saw some really cool photography (yes! photography
that i liked!) from
/>Jeremie Roux (nighttime light and motion
studies) , Rena
Buchgraber (industrial photo transparencies
mounted on brused aluminum) and from Damon Sneed
(digital mirror-manipulation; no web site yet). Very
inspiring
stuff.
Open Studios really presents a diverse body of work –
from things that I really dig, to things I think are
“not art” to (especially in SF) things that I’d put
squarely in the “porno” bin.
And this really hammers home an important point: Art
is personal. Anyone who tells you “this is
art” or “that is crap” or “you don’t know art” doesn’t
know what’s up. Something is art when you have an
emotional reaction to it. The lack of a reaction to
something made skillfully puts that something into the
“craft” bucket.
But here’s the deal — one man’s craft (or porno for
that matter) is another man’s masterpiece. Art is all
about YOU. Don’t see the point in why Picasso is
highly regarded, well no big deal! It’s not art to
you! However, maybe after learning about why others
hold his work in high regard, your feelings may
change, and you may see things in the work you didn’t
see before. Great! You have new art!
It’s rare for me to feel something from photography.
Photography is a tricky medium — since the barrier to
entry is quite low (unlike painting or music),
photography-as-art for me is difficult to come by.
Most things I see in museums are nice portraits,
landscapes, or candid “moment frozen in time” type
journalism shots. For me, these are good
demonstrations of either photography as craft
and/or good luck.
However, innovative artists like those I mentioned
above, who combine mastery of their craft, creative
impulses, and who do it in a manner I like — well,
now that’s what I call art.
So I picked up some good inspiration this weekend from
the work I saw, and took the camera out a couple of
nights. There are a
to look at as a result.