My (now) Long Distance Relationship

It was never my intention to grow so far from what I loved so much but I did. When I graduated college my first thought wasn’t, “I need to find any and all galleries that are hiring”. My first thought was, “How am I going to survive; survive my bills, my rent, and now my very present student loans?” By the time I graduated I had my first job set up working as a part-time sales associate at H&M, a clothing store just a bus ride away. After that it was office job after office job. My position in the art world had grown from a “future living” to a now-and-then hobby. It was depressing, it still is. Every month I would take this huge chunk out of my very small paycheck to pay for an education, for a passion that I was no longer using. The lessons, the artists, the works that had changed my life, all of these things seemed to be disappearing with every shirt that I hung and every copy I made in the offices I worked in. It was never my intention to let go of what I loved so much but I did.

Art in my life was not all gone. I would go to Gallery Nights, local exhibits, or the Milwaukee Art Museum when I could. Though the art now to the art I grew up with always seemed to leave me uninspired. It was no longer “art for art’s sake”; it seemed more like art for showman’s sake. It was art that had the sole purpose to make a statement, to be confrontational. It was telling stories that were no longer personal but headlines we didn't know much about firsthand. Art became theater and I became uninterested. I loved art, I love art, but this kind of art I wanted nothing to do with. It made me more angry now than curious.

To me, the new generations of artists don’t seem to be showing much of themselves or their technique as much as they are showing impressive titles without work to back them up. I am all for new, artful ways to express oneself but when you need a brochure to understand your art, when more than anything else your viewers are saying, "I have no idea what this is “and walk away, you're doing something wrong. I recently went to the Inova Gallery in Milwaukee [http://www4.uwm.edu/psoa/inova/about.cfm] and saw the epitome of what is wrong with art today, IN MY OPINION. A darkroom built by an artist filled with naked dolls both big and small, neon paint on the walls, on the different surfaces, the floors, and strobe lights. It looked like a hybrid of a rave gone terribly wrong and a serial killer's lair. I was hesitant to even step one foot into this place. Everywhere you looked it was one disturbing thing after another and with every step I took I was losing more and more respect for whoever this artist was. It seemed more like a haunted playhouse than art. What was the point? What was the artist trying to say? I had to go back to the beginning of the exhibit to find the artist's statement and then go back to try and see it with the meaning in my eyes, it still made no sense. Needless to say I walked away from this installation confused and wondering how this room could be presented to the gallery's director as art. It wasn’t believable and that's the problem with a lot of art and their artists. It’s just not believable anymore.

This blog is to help me reconnect with my art background on a more consistent level and to show art that I see, love, hate, and everything in between. I want art to be great like it was when we marveled at it for hours and wished we had it all. I want to find art again. Through this, I hope that I will.

Until then.

My History in Art

Let me start by saying I was not a child that always loved art. I was more of a child that loved to watch TV whenever her parents would let her. Most of the time though my parents, my mother, were signing me up for every first year class imaginable. I went from dance classes [tap, jazz, and ballet] to swimming to piano then t-ball and softball, a Brownie to a Girl Scout and day camps in the summer. It was probably there where I first got my taste of art. Putting my hand in wet clay or paint to create something I'd seen on one of the nature hikes we'd gone on or something that was on display in one of the work rooms. I remember one time having to use a mock skunk's foot to make an imprint in plaster. That to this day is the first piece of art that I can remember creating, a skunk's foot, there's something to tell the art world.

I don't remember if it was a field trip with a camp, with school or maybe an art class my mom had signed me up for, but I can still remember my first time walking in to a museum. It was Wustum Museum, in Racine, that was my first [http://www.ramart.org/rams-wustum-museum]; I remember entering the doors thinking this is probably the most adult thing ever. When I think back I can still see the track lights that lit the glass cases and the wall art perfectly, the clean lines and muted walls. I was just tall enough to be eye level to the bottom of the framed art on the walls. Then, when you turned the corner it was this open space with walls dividing the room into Tetris like shapes but floor to ceiling windows outside of the perimeter. I think I'm remembering that right. There weren't great masterpieces hanging on the walls. It was more American Folk art, a term I clearly did not know back then. You wouldn't see a van Gogh or a Matisse but perhaps the latest work of a local Wisconsin artist; whatever it was back then when something was behind glass or had a spotlight, it was art and it was something not to touch but to look at and remember.

After that first trip I won't lie to you and say, "I was hooked, art had me." Mister Roger's Neighborhood still had me; art wouldn't become such a dominant part of my life until much later. Art projects in school, at friend's houses or at home with my sister were always fun don't get me wrong. My sister and I used to have those Crayola watercolor sets when we were younger. We would paint paper after paper and put on our own art shows in the kitchen to no one, copying the likes of Bob Ross from PBS [http://youtu.be/MghiBW3r65M]. It was probably then when painting first caught my eye and what you could create given the right tools, technique, and [of course] the talent.

I was never a fantastic artist; even as I grew up I never fully got as good as I wished I could have. In my last years of high school I was able to take a multitude of art classes as electives, from sculpture to woodworking, ceramics, drawing, and painting. I loved all of these classes, though woodworking and I didn't get along as well as I would have liked. These classes and the lessons that came with each technique would ultimately become the roots to the passion I hold so dear to me now at the age of twenty-seven.

I'm not sure when I was first introduced to Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night but I know that if I ever had to pinpoint where my love for art started it would be with that piece, it would be with him. Knowing that I would never be the next great artist to shake the world to its knees the next best thing for me was to learn who these artists were. My curiosity to know everything about them from their beginnings to their almost always tragic endings was what I wanted to do with my life. To know what their works meant not only to the artists but to our history and how they lived to create such works that would unknowingly but ultimately inspire the world from then on out. In my senior year of high school art in my life was undeniable.

As I talked to the high school guidance counselor about my future art was what I wanted the most. I graduated from high school and got accepted to the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee to major in Art History. Six years later, with a slight detour into Social Work, I graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Art History, a degree that I have not used too much since then.

Enter reality.

To be continued in next post