Mr. Magoo Out of Control

This photo is called "Driving Really Fast Out of Control." I made it in the spring of 2002 with a series of self-portraits that I felt expressed my feelings toward the American government's decision to go to war in reaction to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01. Anyway, back to the photo. It hangs in our living room at the rental. I look at it all the time. The other day I realized it does not look like I am driving really fast at all. Erin agreed. She thinks I look like Mr. Magoo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Magoo). I think I look a lot like my dad when he drove the wrong way down a one way street to protest the changes in our little mountain town, Quincy, California.

Why do artists make art?

In putting out a Call for Entries, curators at The Lab in San Francisco state, "The situation of the artist in America is not one in which the public is hostile to contemporary art, so much as it is unengaged with it. The emerging artist is thrown back on her own devices-- 'Why do I do this? For my peers, for those who care about art, or for myself?' What can we ascertain about why artists make work for themselves? One answer might be that artists have a yearning to see what it would look like, referring to odd visual juxtapositions, social engagements, cultural interrogations, new ways of seeing familiar things, political intrusions, or formal innovations."

Recently, I attended a presentation by Shirley Watts, San Francisco garden designer and builder. She stated something to the effect of, "We are impacted by beauty and compelled to capture it." I might add compelled to record and reproduce it. And not just beauty. As The Lab curators suggest, artists are occupied with many issues outside of beauty.

Just idle thoughts . . .

What is art?

To the question
What is Art?
I might answer

Art is the product(s) of human creativity.
Art is what is made by an artist, form combined with content, originating with compelling intent.

and then
How does the world get shaped by what artists do?
In a capitalist world the shape is very different from a world outside capitalism. Like the cave dwellers and pyramid builders, the hunters and gatherers created a different shape world than the Young British Artists with their Saatchi money. They create a different shape, but the world is none the less shaped by those artists and all others. Art is a way of communicating the experience of the artist, seen by the viewer who judges if they can relate or if they cannot relate. That makes the viewer something of a critic. The critic is changed and makes a statement resulting from the art they have seen. Their statement is the product of human creativity making it art. Then it is passed on, and on and on, a web ad infinitum. People make comments to express themselves. It's all communication.