sometimes in the day,
sometimes at night
I walk outside and in,
all around the wooded property
not looking for anything
in particular, nothing really
but this and that, hoping,
no, not hoping: wondering
if the incessant searching
or hunting or waiting
for something to happen,
to move, from beneath
the thing I call my life,
will give it buoyancy.
chris woodhull
Where is joy? I’ve been struggling with this. Studying art as an undergraduate can make you either a robot for craft or concept. And even if you excel at both something feels missing. I think it’s love.
I’ve never attended a critique where the love an artist puts into a piece is discussed or perceived. Instead we drill down into the formal and conceptual aspects of the piece. I think people get uncomfortable with love. And talking about love under the umbrella of art feels ambiguous.
Recently I had a conversation with a friend and they left me with this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet”:
“You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself.”
So what I’ve been insisting myself to do is this: encourage my love for making. My love for putting pen to paper. My love for thinking. My love for the process. My intense desire to create a window to the world.
So to all the artists and tender creatures out there; peace be with your heart, soul and weary hands.
Go get your love back!
-paris
You’re studying art? But how are you going to make a living?”
SStahhhp this!
Why do we keep asking artists this question?
If I counted how many times I have been asked this question and gotten the “look” that comes along with it I could….I don’t know…But main point, is that artists are bombarded with this question. And BELIEVE ME we are already thinking and worrying about it. Why reinforce that self-doubt? Artists know that their profession includes daily risk taking.
I recently attended an art lecture given by the artist Sharon Louden and she said point blank that “It takes a community to be an artist.” Hell yeah. And not just a community of artists, it takes all types; left-brainers and right-brainers alike.
And so with that being said I speak to everyone, lets become a community of challengers, motivators, appreciators, lovers, and thinkers.
-paris / art by patrick bremer
“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.” Miles Davis
We all begin as children. Playing. Wondering. Exploring. Touching. Curiosity is sparked by anything and everything. The world around us invites us. Children know this. They teach us that nothing is boring, really. Everything has the potential to excite, reveal, enliven. But only if you can see what’s really there. As artists we need that unending interest to survive. We thrive on thresholds. We need to find the chipped paint on the frame of an old door and say, “that looks like an elephant!” not, “dang I need to repaint this door.” Every fold, crease and crinkle in life holds a story. Artists and children know this and depend on this!
Monks and Mannequins is about beauty, the beauty in us, on us, around us, among us and all about us.
christopher & paris
Monks & Mannequins 