What is an Artist Community?
A loose affiliation of restless stray cats looking for trouble...
'Creative Cats'
There are two types of people, consumers and creatives. Collectors, agents, promoters, marketers, producers, patrons on one hand, and on the other, writers, painters, sculptors, actors, performers, musicians, poets... Which one are you?
Creatives are often loners, requiring solitude to explore ideas and mediums in solace separate from the world. As dreamers, and thinkers, they bring transformation and new ideas into the world. Depending on the scale of the work, this may require studio or work space, which in today's world is at a premium when compared to inflationary mainstream living. Other arts such as singing and writing can be more portable. Still others, are attention whores, who are the performers and love the spotlight, thrive to the energy of gatherings and crowds. Maybe there is creativity in numbers, when reaching critical mass, spills over into a socially creative experience. In the corporate world, an artistic collective is known as a "think tank", or a production team, but that type of creative can be co-optive and predatory stealing or acquiring ideas and ownership from others. Inventors often fall prey to agents, marketers and profiteers. Those users are either consumers, profiteers or desperate wannabes. Yet public attention on that large a scale can also be a lonely existence, as many fallen celebrities have known, with too much of the wrong kind of attention. For the creative, the reward is in the making, engrossed in dreaming inventing and creating new ideas, doing or fabricating, practicing and performing.
Then there are those of us who need people and companionship. That is a more abstract form of creativity, usually connected to theatre and performance art. These people are often co-creative, combining efforts with other creatives to expand ideas into productions or installations of public stature, such as sculpture installations, movies, theatre, festivals or stage performances and traveling exhibits. For true artists who are channellers for creative energy, their reward is in the doing, manifesting a visceral experience that will hold transference of insight for generations of culture to come. Tragically, many true creative types can't even tie their own shoes, let alone balance a bank account.
"Them's that can't, teach." Nobody understands creatives better than another creative. Those who don't create, consume. Creativity is of consuming interest... In a capitalist economy, the artist and his art become a commodity, living a life of its own sometimes separated from the author. Here the reward is in the creation itself as objet d'art, after the work of creation is done. In older integrated craft societies, such as Morroco, life itself is an art. With craft and creativity integrated into every aspect of public society, India, Africa and Asia thrive with trade in local markets with trinkets and artifacts worthy of owning. In our consumer society, we need more consumers, as art appreciators, collectors, promoters, roadies and groupies. Everyone is invited to the party!
Today, everybody's an artist! But few can carry a tune or really sing! Few can draw who try to paint, leaving scrawls of emotional conveyance, like graffiti on the sidewalks and walls of a commercial society. Everybody wants to leave their mark, "Kilroy was here!" Everybody's broadcasting, but few are listening. "Everybody's a comedian", and yes it takes one to know one, otherwise how could there be a mass audience for anything? Nevertheless, there is an audience somewhere for everything and somewhere there is a buyer for everything. As P.T. Barnum used to say, "There's a sucker born every minute!"
Then there are those who steal ideas, wanting so much to be specious and in the spotlight, they will do almost anything to create and maintain the illusion of being an "artist" or being seen as talented. For instance, this is where television ratings come in and mass media appeal, promoters, agents, art directors and producers live in this realm as well. The desire in "the poster girl". Did the Colonel make Elvis? Or was Elvis self made? For conceptual artists, like Damien Hirst, calf in formaldehyde, full of ideas, the hopeful will get other craftsmen to create his objects and just sign his name to them, like a movie producer. We have labeled this as 'conceptual art' and 'post modernism', event art happening in a world of ideas adrift in an abstract space of existentialism.
Finally we come to the patrons, those who not only collect art and follow performers, build the facilities to house the activities, be it a show of paintings, a stage performance, arena of play, or celebratory festival. These are the people who hold space for creativity to create and who also support the arts through funding donations, show attendance, art purchases and promotion. These people see the bigger picture and the relevance of art in the community and its contribution to society to prettify our environs, create dialogue, honour iconic ideas, build culture and provide a 'non-polluting peaceful retirement activity known as a hobby', as outlined in the local 1996 White Rock declaration on the Arts. These patrons hold the key to higher realms, since they have the resources to contribute to a bigger picture, so to speak. A more prudent definition of art would be the Stuckist manifesto from England that says, and I paraphrase, "...to be an artist, one has to sit one's ass on a chair in front of a canvas on an easel, hold a brush, mix the paint and apply it to the canvas of one's own volition. There are no short cuts."
https://www.stuckism.com/
A local musical group from Chilliwack BC also named Chilliwack once sang, " If there's no audience, there ain't no show..."
Chilliwack - Rain-O 1970 from the album Chilliwack
Author, Author!
Van Gogh was a creative cool cat
; )
.
'Creative Cats'
There are two types of people, consumers and creatives. Collectors, agents, promoters, marketers, producers, patrons on one hand, and on the other, writers, painters, sculptors, actors, performers, musicians, poets... Which one are you?
Creatives are often loners, requiring solitude to explore ideas and mediums in solace separate from the world. As dreamers, and thinkers, they bring transformation and new ideas into the world. Depending on the scale of the work, this may require studio or work space, which in today's world is at a premium when compared to inflationary mainstream living. Other arts such as singing and writing can be more portable. Still others, are attention whores, who are the performers and love the spotlight, thrive to the energy of gatherings and crowds. Maybe there is creativity in numbers, when reaching critical mass, spills over into a socially creative experience. In the corporate world, an artistic collective is known as a "think tank", or a production team, but that type of creative can be co-optive and predatory stealing or acquiring ideas and ownership from others. Inventors often fall prey to agents, marketers and profiteers. Those users are either consumers, profiteers or desperate wannabes. Yet public attention on that large a scale can also be a lonely existence, as many fallen celebrities have known, with too much of the wrong kind of attention. For the creative, the reward is in the making, engrossed in dreaming inventing and creating new ideas, doing or fabricating, practicing and performing.
Then there are those of us who need people and companionship. That is a more abstract form of creativity, usually connected to theatre and performance art. These people are often co-creative, combining efforts with other creatives to expand ideas into productions or installations of public stature, such as sculpture installations, movies, theatre, festivals or stage performances and traveling exhibits. For true artists who are channellers for creative energy, their reward is in the doing, manifesting a visceral experience that will hold transference of insight for generations of culture to come. Tragically, many true creative types can't even tie their own shoes, let alone balance a bank account.
"Them's that can't, teach." Nobody understands creatives better than another creative. Those who don't create, consume. Creativity is of consuming interest... In a capitalist economy, the artist and his art become a commodity, living a life of its own sometimes separated from the author. Here the reward is in the creation itself as objet d'art, after the work of creation is done. In older integrated craft societies, such as Morroco, life itself is an art. With craft and creativity integrated into every aspect of public society, India, Africa and Asia thrive with trade in local markets with trinkets and artifacts worthy of owning. In our consumer society, we need more consumers, as art appreciators, collectors, promoters, roadies and groupies. Everyone is invited to the party!
Today, everybody's an artist! But few can carry a tune or really sing! Few can draw who try to paint, leaving scrawls of emotional conveyance, like graffiti on the sidewalks and walls of a commercial society. Everybody wants to leave their mark, "Kilroy was here!" Everybody's broadcasting, but few are listening. "Everybody's a comedian", and yes it takes one to know one, otherwise how could there be a mass audience for anything? Nevertheless, there is an audience somewhere for everything and somewhere there is a buyer for everything. As P.T. Barnum used to say, "There's a sucker born every minute!"
Then there are those who steal ideas, wanting so much to be specious and in the spotlight, they will do almost anything to create and maintain the illusion of being an "artist" or being seen as talented. For instance, this is where television ratings come in and mass media appeal, promoters, agents, art directors and producers live in this realm as well. The desire in "the poster girl". Did the Colonel make Elvis? Or was Elvis self made? For conceptual artists, like Damien Hirst, calf in formaldehyde, full of ideas, the hopeful will get other craftsmen to create his objects and just sign his name to them, like a movie producer. We have labeled this as 'conceptual art' and 'post modernism', event art happening in a world of ideas adrift in an abstract space of existentialism.
Finally we come to the patrons, those who not only collect art and follow performers, build the facilities to house the activities, be it a show of paintings, a stage performance, arena of play, or celebratory festival. These are the people who hold space for creativity to create and who also support the arts through funding donations, show attendance, art purchases and promotion. These people see the bigger picture and the relevance of art in the community and its contribution to society to prettify our environs, create dialogue, honour iconic ideas, build culture and provide a 'non-polluting peaceful retirement activity known as a hobby', as outlined in the local 1996 White Rock declaration on the Arts. These patrons hold the key to higher realms, since they have the resources to contribute to a bigger picture, so to speak. A more prudent definition of art would be the Stuckist manifesto from England that says, and I paraphrase, "...to be an artist, one has to sit one's ass on a chair in front of a canvas on an easel, hold a brush, mix the paint and apply it to the canvas of one's own volition. There are no short cuts."
https://www.stuckism.com/
A local musical group from Chilliwack BC also named Chilliwack once sang, " If there's no audience, there ain't no show..."
Chilliwack - Rain-O 1970 from the album Chilliwack
Click to viewAuthor, Author!
Van Gogh was a creative cool cat
; )
.