All fired up...

Today, I was driving home and a more obscure Clash song, "Ivan meets GI Joe" from their album Sandinista came on the radio, and I was overjoyed. It isn't one of my favorite songs but it still got me excited and then I starting to wonder why I felt that way.

First, the song is catchy. Second, the Clash will always be towards the top of my list. Third, the song is not the usual fodder for the college radio station, as the track is from an album from 1980. The real reason behind my joy...is that listening to that song on the radio gives me a sense of identity and community.

Okay... so what am I talking about?

There are artists in my town and probably your town too who are searching for a sense of identity and community, and they are having a hard time finding it. I live in a nice town, with a University, an arts center, a few galleries, and occasionally, many art events. Culture is touted as a amenity here. We have the Arts festival, Art Market, Art Amiss, BFA & MFA students, professional artists, gallery owners, a few arts collectives, and art lovers all here in this nice little melting pot, but somehow we aren't always melting.

Over the years, there have been meetings of the minds, ideas for studio spaces, and valiant attempts at promoting the arts and culture in this town. Some of us get involved when we can, and some complain about what is not here and yet do nothing. Some of us do both. Then, some of us are on the fringe and don't know about the meetings, or the groups that are trying to do something. Some of us keep our mouths shut as not to offend.

Well, I say enough! There has got to be a grass roots way to get us out of our homes, studios, sometimes cliquish events, and get us together in the same room talking about what we really need and want for ourselves and each other as artists.

I am talking about getting together for fun and community. Of course, not all groups of people are going to get along. Unfortunately, some people are going to think someone doesn't belong in the mix. Labels will be thrown around- crafts, quilts, pottery, fine art, abstract, installation, amateur, - there will be no pleasing all for sure. We all have our styles and our personalities. I still think we need to know one another and be aware of each other's work and aspirations.

My ultimate desire, is that I can keep doing what I am doing, making, showing, selling, and talking about art. However, I want to do that with a vibrant community of artists, talking together, sharing our successes and failures, obstacles, and desires. I want to be a part of an inclusive and connected group of proactive artists.

Anyone want to get together and talk about making art? This means you!

See "Subterranean" at the DDP gallery
7 East Mountain St. Fayetteville.
Open: W-F 12-7 and Sat. 10-5
and by appointment.

"Intuition" Works by Megan Chapman and Helen Phillips
August 15- September 29 2007

No one told me...

I only had an hour, and I wasn't sure who I would see as I had never been to the St. Louis Art museum. It is almost sacrilegious to only have an hour in a museum, but that is what I had, so I had to make the most of it. I knew before I went that I wouldn't have much time, so I scoped out the collection headings online. Modern, Contemporary, and Photography- these collections would be the focus during my time there. We got the floor map as soon as we arrived, scanned it nervously and we were off; scurrying up to the 3rd level.

A curious behavior takes over me when I am in a museum, a sense of urgency rushes through me (perhaps it was anxiety at only having an hour). I want to see as much as I can, and I become a hunter. I search for certain old friends that I must at least give a cursory nod to before I can leave.

At first, I get to the section and I kind of rush through it, "Hello Beckman, I then run into my gang... Motherwell, Rothko, and Kline, (they do always keep you guys together, don't they) Hello Anselm Kiefer... ah, Diebenkorn -west coast in the house." I rush through like I am collecting stars. "Got it, I see you- you are more than a color plate in a book, more than a name and date I had to memorize. You are real, you are a celebrity and around you I am nervous, but because of you I know myself."

Then something in me shifts, now I can relax- I can walk a little slower. I step up and into each piece, I breathe them in, I have my picture made with a few of them, as if it is the artist themselves. "Hey can you take a picture of me with Rothko over there."

I walk around and around the same section. I don't want to miss anything, I want to see the work one more time to make sure I really saw it. Just when I think I have seen it all, I step
into a little room off to the side, and I see a hint of something so familiar that it calls me forward. Oh, my... is that, it is... a Modigliani.

Tears come to my eyes, I am overwhelmed to see a piece of his in person, it is my first time. There has always been a Modigliani print somewhere in the background of my life, so he feels like an old friend. His portraits of women seem like family members to me. I am so excited to find him, it is a painting of a woman but to me it is him. I am standing next to the artist. I imagine his hands moving over the canvas, I imagine his sadness, poverty, sickness and struggles. His tragic life comes out as I look at this lovely and graceful painting before me. Is that why the tears come; because I know of his torturous existence, or do I tear up for the beauty and hope his painting represents? I hope while he was painting he was captured up in a good moment of his life, and transported away from any disappointments and regrets... The painting was made one year before his death. I wonder how was he feeling then, did he have any idea that his life would end so soon. I take it in and I breathe.

No one told me, I would meet you here.