Art is Power (to the People)

This is an open letter to the art-loving residents of Columbia, MO. 

Many of you know Kate Gunn, the director of the Artrageous program.  On the program’s blog, she makes a compelling case for the importance of art to a community’s economy.  With formidable citations, she quantifies some of ways in which art spreads prosperity, and why it is therefore a worthy investment even–or especially– in challenging economic times. 

[Check it out here.]

Of course, one would not want to reduce art’s value to its potential to generate money.  Its benefit to the human spirit and the fabric of a culture is ultimately priceless, but this truth sounds like ungrounded idealism during budget talks.  In the context of politics, it is important to note that, contrary to popular perception, art is not a generator of wealth only for an elite group.  A community’s cultural life—its art, music, plays, academic ideas, and the people who make these things—constitutes the community’s voice in wider society.  And this bears directly on the community’s economic strength and autonomy.

To put it on an individual and practical level:  People attending cultural events put money into the local economy, not only by buying tickets and art, but by spending their leisure time and money within the community.  Since Columbia’s locally owned businesses–including art venues, restaurants, and retail stores–are concentrated in the District, this is especially true here.  Visiting a gallery and then going out for dinner is not only a pleasant way to spend the evening, it supports people on all levels of the local economy, from table bussers, to artists, to restaurant and gallery owners.  This creates good jobs, and keeps wealth in the community; it stimulates the economy and helps it rebound in a healthy way.

While it should be apparent that art does not only benefit the set of people who bid on pieces in high-stakes auctions, it remains politically popular to relegate art to status of being a luxury.  True, art cannot be ladled into bowls and fed to hungry people.  But any forward-looking recovery plan must both reduce suffering and bolster the industries that will generate a healthy economy for the future.  Certainly, art is one of those industries. 

Arts advocates had to fight to keep the arts from being excluded from receiving stimulus funding.  In her article, Gunn cites an amendment proposed by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), which would have prevented arts groups from receiving economic recovery funds.  The amendment would have blocked stimulus funds from being applied to “any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theatre, art center, and highway beautification project.”   Initially, the proposal passed by a wide margin—76 to 24—but, in the end, the National Endowment for the Arts won modest funding.  This reflects an ongoing battle.

In her conclusion, Gunn states:

The Art Industry comprises not only of museums, galleries and theatres, but also artists, performers, musicians, and dancers.  The Arts Industry is unique in its ability to impact a wide range of industries, entire societies, and also support schools and governments.  By generating billions of dollars in annual revenue, the Arts are able to provide an economic catalyst on the local, state, and national levels.  Additionally, these economic impacts are felt by restaurants, hotels and retailers who benefit from traffic generated by arts programming.  As studies indicate, areas with prospering art institutions aid an area in becoming, or maintain, an appealing place to live, visit, and conduct business.

Recent economic hardships have impaired the arts industry, slashing funding and forcing some institutions and programming to close entirely.  Declining endowments, the banking crisis, cuts in state and federal funding, and a lowered consumer demand have all impacted the arts leaving many institutions unable to pay staff, continue programming or performances, or even keep their doors open.

It is my own conclusion that art can save us, but first we have to save art.  For it to receive the support it needs, we must defend its value—personally, in the art we generate, in the words we use, and in how we spend our time and money, and also politically.  This is not an abstract idea.  At stake is quality of your own community and your own life.

So go make something, and share it.  Or see what others are making–come to the gallery.  The next Artrageous Weekend is October 7th and 8th–coinciding with the opening of the autumn exhibit at PS:, on Saturday the 8th, 6-9 pm. 

As always, thank you for supporting the arts!

-Shea

North Village News: Matt Ballou at Orr Street Studios

Drawings by Matthew Ballou; Photo by August Kryger for Columbia Daily Tribune

University of Missouri professor, and past PS:Gallery artist, Matt Ballou has an exhibition around the corner at Orr Street Studios.  We were proud to feature his prints, and I recommend that you go check out his latest work, which focuses on his classroom art.

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to talk with him about his show for the following story in today’s Sunday edition of the Columbia Daily Tribune.

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/sep/25/defying-gravity-with-mud/

-Shea

Radical Monks and Gratitude, a Nomad’s Perspective

William Claassen will read from his book, Alone in Community: Journeys into Monastic Life Around the World, and discuss his associated photography exhibition “Pilgrimage: India, Thailand, and Turkey,” at PS:Gallery this Sunday, September 25, from 2:00-3:30, as a special Feed your Soul Sunday event. 

 

William Claassen’s photos of holy men from around the world have graced the PS: hallery for some weeks now.  I have seen people wander out of the space after a long while, mystified expressions on their faces.  I understand.  The images portray lifestyles that are utterly foreign and yet attractive to even non-religious Americans.

Claassen captured the images while researching Alone in Community, which tells the story of his global pilgrimage to monasteries of varied traditions, from Buddhist to Sufi to Christian.  But I was curious about the story behind his extraordinary experience.  Who does that? I wondered.  Claassen graciously agreed to help me answer that question.  At Uprise Bakery, he filled in some of his backstory for me.

He was a young activist working on civil rights and tenants’ rights issues with a Vista program in Louisville, Kentucky when he first became interested in monastic life.  Louisville is near the Abbey of Gethsamane, the Trappist (Catholic) monastery where the famed theologian Thomas Merton was once abbot.  Claassen was not initially attracted by the spiritual aspect of the place, but by how the brothers survived communally on their cottage industries.  In 1973, he made his first monastic retreat over the winter holidays, in order to learn first-hand about the lifestyle and economics of the monastery.  While he was there, he found himself attracted to the order’s purposeful silence.  This first experience was so meaningful that he made monastic retreats regularly thereafter.

It was the beginning of his complex love affair with monastic silence—the freedom from judgment, and the opportunity to reflect.  However, for a man who loves silence, he had no shortage of profound words when he told his story.  Monastic retreats have served as contemplative punctuation in his life of great activity.  He was candid in relating his varied experiences.

After his years with Vista, he finished his undergraduate degree in political science at Rutgers.  There followed a few ventures into graduate work, interspersed with international adventures.  He worked on a Kibbutz in Israel, near the Lebanese border, and then worked with Amnesty International in New York City, before trying his hand at acting.  After five years of that, he switched gears and moved to Oregon to plant trees.  For a while, he went to Kenya with the Peace Corps, but he returned to Oregon to work for several years at the public defender’s office, as he considered the possibility of law school.  (Though he ultimately decided it was not for him.)  In Oregon, he got involved with solidarity work with Latin America, relating to the underground railroad for political refugees there.  So, after spending a yearlong interlude living in community with Quakers in Pennsylvania, he went to Nicaragua with Witness for Peace.  He followed up his on-location activism in Latin America with activism in Washington DC, focusing on rights for immigrants.  In his early forties, he returned to graduate school for journalism at the University of Missouri, focusing on international news.  It was there that he did his first writing about monastic life, compiling notes about Assumption Abbey in the foothills of Missouri, which would become the basis for,  Another World: A Retreat in the Ozarks, his follow-up to Alone in Community.

It’s okay if you have trouble following all of that.  He said he needs an outline himself sometimes, and that he was still leaving out some important parts of the story.  Unsurprisingly, he felt he had enough fodder to make his third book a memoir.  I will let him tell the story in his own words from here.

Listen in.

 

Claassen: I just finished my third book, called Journeyman: A Worldwide Odyssey.  It’s a memoir and adventure book.  It covers three decades, starting on the Kibbutz in 1974, and it concludes with me participating in an all-night Native American peyote ceremony on a reservation on the West Coast, in 2006.  There are twelve chapters in the book, and twelve locations—journeys of different kinds: my hitch-hiking trek from New York to Alaska, my journey into character as an actor, my journey into revolution in Nicaragua, my experience with the Mayan cosmos in Guatemala…  The first six chapters deal with the plane we live on; the last six chapters really deal with the spiritual plane.  It’s divided in two.  It was a chance for me to tell new stories, and to share the experiences I have had, on a more personal level than in my other books.

Interviewer (that’s me): Your story is one of perpetual reinvention. 

C: Perpetual discovery.  My politics haven’t changed.  In fact, the older I get, the further left my politics go. I feel almost compelled to say that, because I so often hear the other way.

I: People who tell young liberals, “You think that now, but…”

 C: “But just wait till you get older, and know better!”  Ha!  That hasn’t been the case for me.  I have been blessed to do what I have done, and I never became jaded.  I was able to do it because thousands of people have helped me along the way.  The more I see, the broader the picture seems to me.  Things become less and less black and white.

I: What enabled you to navigate all of the change and perpetual transition that your experience required?

C: Probably dropping out of school early on and getting a broader perspective with Vista, and learning to live on a very tight budget, was an advantage to the kind of life I have had.  I learned to live collectively, and I learned about labor politics, and I got to know people who considered themselves revolutionaries, and met people who spent time in prison for it because of the House of Un-American Activities Committee in the McCarthy Era.  It opened my eyes, and made me braver.  I had grown up in a very Republican, conservative family—but they were also very compassionate and open to dialogue.  Then I moved into this Vista situation, where my assumptions were turned upside down.  That was a good experience.  It gave me a support group, and basic income during that awakening.  I had two and a half years to maneuver my way through my changing politics…

Nonetheless there have been difficult periods.  It was very dark for a while.  I wasn’t sure what was next.  I have been good at navigating cultures, and novel situations, and dealing with change—but there have been times that I felt stuck, too.

I: Sometimes the path is clearer retrospectively than it is looking forward?

C: For sure.  When I finished the traveling part of the Alone in Community project, and came back to the US to write, there were six months of darkness.  I was overwhelmed by all this material, and by so many photographs.  How was I going to put this together in a way other people would understand?

I: You hadn’t gotten the book deal before you went, so through this project you were acting on faith.

C: Completely.  And I did that with my second and third books, too.  I still haven’t  found the publisher for the third.

I: So you were probably working other jobs, too, trying to piece all of this together.

C: Sure.  I was on the West Coast before I came back to Missouri, and I was teaching part time and writing.

Also, during that time, I spent a long while trekking around Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia.  This experience speaks to the darkness:  I was in Vietnam, in a small village, Hoi An.  I had a hop-on, hop-off bus ticket heading across the country.  I got to the village late at night, and was able to secure a room in a hostel.  I woke up the next morning, and I was frozen.  For some reason, I don’t know what had happened, but I thought I can’t do this anymore.  I can’t get up and struggle with the language, and go out on the street…  I was just blocked.  And I had never, ever experienced that on the road.  I can’t tell you why it happened when it did.  But I was stuck in my bed.  And I just took a couple of hours, and I talked myself out of it.  The first step was to get out on the street.  The next step was to get a cup of coffee.  By the end of the day, I was fine.

I: It struck me as I was reading Alone in Community that even though you were participating briefly in the same lifestyles as the monks in these places, the fact that you are traveling is giving you the opposite experience from what the monks experience, being bounded to place.

C: That’s right, stability is such an important part of most monastic traditions.  Not true with Hindus, because they are always on pilgrimage.  But it’s true of Buddhists and Christians, Sufis, and Jain monks to an extent.

 I: Did you find as you were traveling that the monastic framework gave you some stability, and enabled you to understand what was important to a culture more clearly? 

C:  Silence was part of life in these places, so they were ideal for sitting and observing, to write, and have intimate conversations—as opposed to some of my other experiences, being in a war situation where everything is chaotic.  These monastic settings were ideal places to collect my thoughts, and to see how the communities interact within their larger communities.

I: From the outside, it is easy to focus on what one gives up to be a monk, and to wonder why someone would do it. I think the answer to that question may be inherently difficult to articulate—writing about it from the outside, or even talking about one’s own experience.  Could that insufficiency of words be a reason for the silence? 

C:  What you say makes me think that I didn’t address the reasons for monastic life in the first book.  I think I did in my second book on this subject.  There are significant advantages to having community, knowing they are going to be there for you.

I:  Do you think it is more stabile than having a family in the conventional sense?

C:  If your order entails stability, you know this place is going to be here, always.  Those basics—a roof, and food, and a daily schedule—are given.  There are other things to deal with on top of that, but you have a foundation.

I:  I think in the US, especially among young people, stability may be a lost value.  It jumped out at me that in several of the orders stability was a vow.  I am thinking that many of my peers’ response to that would be that, if you were really dynamically engaged with your life, you wouldn’t need to be focused on stability.  Even though they would agree that monastic life is incredibly difficult, they would see it also as a cop out. 

C:  In this country, especially, I hear that a lot—that the lifestyle is escaping from the world.  But in fact, all monastic communities relate to surrounding communities to survive.  There is lots of give and take, even more so now that so many communities depend on income from people making retreat—outsiders coming in, and people writing about them, like me…  I have never seen their lives as an escape, just as a choice.

I:  Do you think it takes a special personality to successfully be a monk?

C:  Oh, clearly.  I think there are a lot of reasons for men or women to enter that life.  I think it takes a lot of strength and capacity for self-searching, and a desire to be in community, but also to be able to be able to be alone in community.  And that varies with the order.  There is more balance of communication and silence now among the Trappists, for example, than there used to be.  You know before the late ‘60’s they didn’t speak.  They only used sign language. But regardless of tradition there is a lot of time to deal with self.  And that is really hard.  We see that, as things get noisier, and people are plugged in all of the time.  I see constant attunement to “news” as an escape rather than an attempt to understand.

I:  In the introduction to the book, you said that you briefly flirted with the idea of a monastic life for yourself.  It’s probably a complicated and personal question, but why did you decide against it?

C:   There are so many reasons!  It is complicated and personal.  But I heard somebody say, “As long as I keep moving, I know who I am,” and that has been part of my life.

I:  I wondered about that—if the very thing that compelled you to see all of these monasteries would prevent you from committing to one. 

C:  I am very attracted to community, and I have lived in community before—though not as a monk.  But for various reasons I haven’t been able to stay in that situation for an extended period.  I have a pretty broad spiritual perspective.  So dogmatic theology is a real block for me.  Whether it’s Buddhist, Christian, Hindu…  The more I saw, the broader my perspective became.  That is important to me.  I am most grateful to be able to enter these communities, and to make retreat, and to be silent.

But I like that these communities are radical, in a way.  I see them as democratic, socialist communities–although the abbot has power.  But they challenge the economics of the community around them.  They are actually sharing their goods, and they all receive what they need and give what they can.  So they manage to be radical communities within the umbrella of a dogmatic theology.  It’s an interesting dynamic.

I:  I can’t even think of another community of that type that has been successful in the long term. 

C:  For centuries!  The Catholic Church touts monastic life as a higher calling.  It is interesting that you have a church that is in general so conservative—more so now than ever before, in my opinion—that lives side by side with these communities that indirectly, by their existence, challenge conventional values.  That is true in how they live, day to day, and it’s true in the fact that they usually embrace people of any tradition, or of no tradition, to share their lives for a time.  Hospitality is so important to them.  I am grateful for that.

-Shea

Strength and Beauty, from Pam Caidin

Some people think jewelry is frivolous, but it can instantly elevate a mood, not to mention an outfit.  I love helping ladies try on jewelry, for the expression on their faces when they look in the mirror and know something is perfect for them.  Any lovely and well-suited piece functions like a crown for the woman wearing it.  It brings out the part of her that knows her own beauty. 

And human beauty is marvelously diverse.  The jewelry at PS: encompasses a variety you would never find at the diamond stores in the mall, with their rows of nearly identical styles.  I could never get excited about them, despite their sparkle, because they seemed to assume a homogenous vision of beauty.  A classic look is beautiful on many people, but it is reduced to blandness if it stems from lack of imagination.  Our artists could not be accused of that.  The variety they have created begins to compliment the many kinds of beauty found in women. 

 So it’s exciting to see a new collection—to honor another kind of beauty.  Pam Caidin’s new pieces, crafted from mixed precious metals, have a totemic quality.  They have a satisfying heft and texture when you pick them up.  They would suit a strong, self-assured woman—or would encourage those qualities in whoever wore them. 

I enjoyed the project of photographing her pieces, because they  ask to be individually considered and rendered large.  I hope you like them, too.  And, if they speak to you, please come try them on.  I would like to meet the women these were made for.

-Shea

M.W. Mantle and the Art of the Tiny Horizon

Mandrake Waltham Mantle is a complex and chewy pseudonym.

By contrast, Mantle’s landscapes are objects of refreshing simplicity. Each oil painting on board resembles in scale and dimensions an old-school, self-developing photo–the ones you waved back and forth to make the image appear faster. You know what I am talking about. I am not naming any brands.

You can hold Mantle’s miniatures in your hand. Doing so contrasts with the subject matter of the landscapes, which is the expansiveness of the horizon. Each piece is composed mostly of sky, with a mere strip of Earth at the bottom: mountains, hills, or prairie rendered as tall as a tongue depressor is wide.

As a collection, the paintings call to mind freedom of mind and motion—as though they had been spontaneously taken on a road trip across the middle states to Colorado. (Anyone who has earned their mountain views by driving across Missouri and Kansas knows the importance of appreciating the sky.) Such a unique and articulate concept is rare in art. It seems effortless in a way that can only be called hip.

I am inclined to put them all in my pocket. But they are for you. We are hanging them today—come get a closer look. -Shea

On the Need for Good 9/11 Art

The planes flew into the World Trade Center a few days before my sixteenth birthday.  I am about to turn twenty-six, and Americans are still hashing out our disbelief over what happened that morning.  What did it mean?  The bearers of political rhetoric have crystalized our collective grief against us in different ways— to justify war, or doubt, or fear.  But that isn’t the kind of meaning I mean.

Some people turn to religion for answers.  Me though, I am putting my faith in art—despite the fact that most of the art that has so far explicitly dealt with this subject is terrible.  You’ve seen the propaganda images.  They are often printed on souvenir T-shirts— paintings of semi-transparent eagles and flags in the sky over the smoking towers. 

An event so emotionally volatile and politically loaded blocks creativity.  No one wants to exploit others’ suffering, or reshape something so much larger that oneself into one’s own narrow aesthetics.  Perhaps tacky art on the subject is so widespread because it is hard to make meaningful art about a fresh wound.

(Side note:  The Independent ran a story on just this subject two days ago.  It came up when I Googled “9/11 art.”  I am not the only one thinking about this, it turns out.)

Ten years on, we have begun to transcend that first stunned moment.  Every time I happen across an unflinching, honest artifact from someone’s inner world in the aftermath of that event, I breathe a sigh of relief.  It is often painful to behold, but this is what we need.  If we cannot articulate our experiences, and bring all of our senses to understanding others’ experiences, we are powerless and alone in our sealed up worlds.

This Huffington Post article from Scott Cairns, a former poetry professor of mine, strikes a chord.   As a preamble to sharing the poem he wrote that morning, he says,

“I offer it now as something of a continuing meditation on the perplexity that lay before us then, that extends before us now, here in the meantime, the exceedingly mean time, the time being.”

That is an apt description of the gift that art can give us in difficult times.  Whether we are talking about poems or paintings, successful art gives us common ground to experience the irreducible.  It is the externalization of the internal processes that we would otherwise have to bear alone. 

Certainly, great art will be made about this influential event.  If the World Wars, such generators of inhumanity, could give us moving depictions of profound humanity, 9/11 will not forever be an untouchable subject. 

 I am waiting with both eyes open to learn, again and again, what it means.

-Shea

A Spiritual Journey with William Claassen/ Hallery Exhibition and “Feed your Soul Sunday” Event

 

As you walk down the Hallery, you find yourself transported.  Dervishes whirl; a contemplative young monk bathes a statue’s feet; an elderly ascetic begs; two child-initiates in robes link arms.   This is the exhibition “Pilgrimage: India, Thailand, and Turkey,” by William Claassen.

Claassen, a graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, is a career nomad.  He has traveled to more than forty countries for projects ranging from social activism to journalism, but his special interest in religious diversity has been a thread tying together much of his wide experience.  The images in his current exhibition come from the two and a half years that he was researching his book Alone in Community: Journeys into Monastic Life Around the World.

On September 25^th we will have the opportunity to discuss the images with the artist, and to hear a reading from Alone in Community.  So stock up on local produce and art at the Sunday Farmers’ and Artisans’ Market, and then come to PS: for a journey to more exotic climes. 

2 pm on Sunday, September 25^th, in the Hallery. 

The exhibition is up now through the end of September.

I hope you will join us.

-Shea

The Big Questions, with Joel Sager

As they say, art does not exist in a vacuum.  But it can seem that way when you are looking at a canvas suspended against the white sea of a gallery wall.  It is fun to guess about the origins and meanings of a painting, but the questions of context loom large.  And the creator is one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle. 

I hope this blog can be, among other things, a window into the minds of artists.  It seemed natural to begin this project with Joel Sager, because he is a good-natured guinea pig, and because I was curious myself. 

He has an abundance of self-effacing charm;  I haven’t met anyone who didn’t like him.  But he is not given to expounding on his work or himself.  He can be mysterious.  This quality spills over to his art, which seems purposefully enigmatic, even as it is intimate: domestic objects rendered with melancholy singularity; portraits of thoughtful-looking people (and one I particularly like of an equally thoughtful black Labrador Retriever); indistinct landscapes…

What is going on before, behind, underneath his art?  I armed myself with a notecard of questions and had a cup of coffee with him to find out.  

The Interview:

Let’s start with the big questions:  What is the purpose of art?

Holy cow, you don’t mess around…   I think most artists, including myself, strive to create something that makes the viewer see in a new way.  When I look at art, I am hoping to see the world in a different way.

Your work is thoughtful, but it’s also usually pleasant to behold.  Is beauty in art important?

People talk about beauty, but I think a better word is usually “truth.”  Any form of art should speak to a greater truth—which can sometimes be pretty, but it also can be something very ugly.

So great art can be ugly?

Absolutely.

Are there any misconceptions people have about your art?

I don’t think I would ever tell someone their interpretation of my work is wrong.  I try to be open to the response, even if I learn that I made a mistake in communicating clearly with the viewer.  But I also think one of the most amazing things about art is the subjectivity–that one person can approach an artwork and have a different reaction from someone else.

What inspires you to create?

Antiquity inspires me: old objects, old trinkets, old furniture.  I try to surround myself with things I have gathered from flea markets and antique stores.  It’s not just for the fact that the objects are old, but that they have become archetypal, that they represent essential form and function.

Is there anything you can’t work without?

I have to listen to good music when I work.  With paints and my iPod, I can work pretty much anywhere, as long as there aren’t a lot of distractions.

What are you listening to these days?

This sounds really pretentious, but I’ve been listening to opera lately.  One of my mentors (Richard Harriman) passed away recently.  He was the founder of the Harriman Arts program, and he brought a lot of opera to Kansas City, and that inspired me to start listening.  He had a big influence on me, and my exposure to the art world.  And after he passed away I decided to start listening to opera and trying to understand it better.  It’s one of the things he taught me as a professor, and I just hadn’t given it the time.  But I also listen to Elliot Smith.

What inspired the portraits currently on display at PS:?

The show prior to that had sold well, so I told myself that I wanted to go into the studio with no preconceived notions of subject matter or medium.  I have always loved portraiture, that play between an expression that is rendered and how that can affect the real person looking at it.  I just love that interaction.

 How did you pick your subjects?

When I decided this was the direction I wanted to go, I kept my camera with me while I was strolling around, and I stopped people.  I’d say, “I know this is a really strange question, but I am doing a series of portraits, would you mind if I did one of you?”  I didn’t go into detail.  I think a lot of them thought I was doing a J-school (University of Missouri Journalism School) project.  And I would do a quick sketch, and I think a lot of them thought I was taking notes, but I was actually drawing them.   I took 25 or 26 photos of interesting faces, and then I culled it down to the 8 that I liked best.

When did you feel that you had transitioned into being a professional artist?

I… still don’t feel like feel like a professional artist.  (Laughs)  If I had to pick a time where I was like, “Wow, this is really cool,” it’s every month that I am able to pay my bills and support myself financially.  It’s not that selling work is the ultimate thing–but to feel that someone appreciates what you’re doing enough to financially support it.  And Jennifer Perlow and Chris Stevens have been so supportive, continuously over these years… I have my moments  when I think, “Wow, I am really doing this.”  But I do still feel like a little kid, playing all the time.

Was art something you did when you were a child?

I wasn’t very good at sports.  I played soccer a little bit, but I wasn’t any star athlete.  But I was just always, always drawing—always had my head in a sketchbook.  And I loved it.  So it seemed like the logical thing to do for a career.

How would you say that your work has evolved since your college days?

I look back at my some of my college work and I wish I could get back to that way of seeing.  Sometimes I see a small aspect that I feel like I’ve lost because maybe I have become jaded…  But of course over time any artist develops their technical abilities to be able to communicate more precisely.  So I hope I’ve become more succinct.  We’re all kind of scatter-brained when we’re in college, and you hope to gain focus over the years. 

 Do you have a favorite piece you’ve ever done?

Sadly, after I have time away from paintings, I go back and am critical about what I would change about it.  I think some part is weak, or some part is off in color or value or intensity…  But at the same time it’s like getting a tattoo.  You have to think, “That’s where I was at the time, so it’s right for that reason.”

I did a painting of a priest seated in a wingback chair.  It was pretty big.  There are images of it on my site, but the impact of seeing it in person is really important for me.  It’s like a life-sized person in front of you.  And this priest had these really beautiful blue eyes and grey hair.  But he was very modest and pious, you could tell in his disposition, and the way he carried himself, and in his face.  The weather of his face told a story…  in real life, I mean.  And I tried to capture some of that.  That was a fun painting to do, and to see people react to.

Is there a certain mistake that you think you’ve learned the most from?

It’s important not to take yourself too seriously, but there have been times when I didn’t take myself seriously enough.  Both sides of that are slippery slopes.  On one side you have complete obsessive compulsive behavior, and on the other side apathy and cynicism.  I try to find the place in the middle where I can be real.

***

Shea