Art & Community

Artist and teacher Deidra Doan sent me a note this morning about a post on her blog in which she muses about The Rules as they apply to the mixed media art community. While I know nothing of the situation that sparked her post, I thought it an excellent topic for discussion.
On the surface, the idea of having Rules for Making Art seems ridiculous, you know? Isn’t the most memorable art of any era the art that dared to break the rules? Maybe not:  I’m not A Trained Artist, nor am I An Art Historian. Nor would I be either, given another life. Following rules for making stuff just seems way too anal for me, and y’all know how I have to avoid that inclination. Next thing you know, I’d be doing nothing but those paint by numbers kits, obsessing because I didn’t have the EXACT shade of red.
However:  if you look at it, instead, as The Rules for being a part of the Mixed Media Community, ahhh:  it becomes an entirely different question, requiring, first of all, an exploration of exactly what The Mixed Media Community is.
I would argue that it’s a huge, free-floating, amorphous thing, much like the community of, oh, say “gardeners”: there are many thousands of members, but they don’t all know each other or keep up with what everyone else is doing. They each go about doing their own thing in their own way. Some take classes, and some read books. Some teach gardening workshops, and some sell gardening supplies or the things they grow in their gardens. There are large businesses that cater to them and there are small mom-and-pop operations, as well. There are professionals, and there are Gardening Experts. There are competitions and awards. There is money to be made, but most gardeners will tell you they do it for their own pleasure and the beauty it brings to their lives.
Nice analogy, don’t you think?
In reality, though, things are a bit different. Look at the books and classes, the workshops and art retreats, the blogs and e-groups. You’ll begin to get the sense that there is, indeed, an actual community, and that there is much overlap between the people whose names you’ll find in, say, the mixed media section on amazon.com and the teachers at any of the larger retreats. If you attend the retreats and also join on-line groups, you’ll see the same names come up over and over. Soon you’ll begin to notice a hierarchy, with some artists serving as Experts, while are Promising Newcomers and others as Wannabe’s—and then you have to stop and go, “Huh? What’s going on here?”
Is this about Art? Or Fame? Is it about community, or is it about celebrity? Well, as usual, I have an opinion. What a surprise, right? And here it is:
There are two different things going on here. One is about art, and one is about community. The making of art—or, if you like, the making of “stuff,” of anything creative—is about only itself. It’s about you, the maker, going to your room or studio or kitchen table or back porch and making whatever it is you make. It’s you and the materials and the idea, together in some space, working and making something new, something that means something, even if only to you.
That’s art. I don’t care what anyone else says. The making of art is never about the critics or the public or the community. Oh, sure:  Art may be about all of those. But the MAKING of it is not. The making of it is about you and the tools and the materials working together. Period.
I will posit that, if you’re thinking about selling the art or marketing the art or showing the art to someone else, you are not in the middle of the making of the art. When you are—when you’re truly engrossed in the process of making something—there’s no place in your head for how much you’re going to charge for it or where you’re going to show it. Those concerns can come before—when you’re deciding what to make—or later—when it’s finished. But the true making is only about the process itself.
Then there’s community. For many people doing mixed media today, as it manifests itself in our culture, the most important part is the community they’ve found. They meet people online and at workshops and retreats, and they discover they’re not alone in liking to make things with paper and glue and fabric and metal. They discover a world where they’re not odd, where other people get excited by old rusty stuff at flea markets and thrift stores. They find like-minded souls who share ideas and tips and techniques, who swap bags of scraps and boxes of fabric.  That’s the beauty of the community:  the other people who value the things you value and are doing the things you’re doing.
The problem arises when people confuse the two:  making art and belonging to a community. You make the stuff you make because you can’t help but make it. It calls to you, it pulls you, it wakes you up early and keeps you awake at night. Art is about you, about bringing out an idea that’s in your brain and making it concrete somehow, either on paper or in words or song or whatever.
Sharing it later is something else entirely. Just like weeding and fertilizing the garden, down on your hands and knees in the dirt, has very, very little to do with putting on your fancy clothes and taking your irises to the show at the Garden Club and talking to other iris growers. One thing is you and the dirt and the bulbs, and the other thing in you in panty hose or a tie, with breath mints and a bow around the flower pot.
Both things can be equally rewarding, but they’re rewarding in different ways. They mean different things, and they fulfill different needs. For some of us, the sense of community is what draws us. We like sharing, we like being a part of something larger, we like the sense of belonging to a group of other people like ourselves, something that, for many of us, may have been lacking everywhere else in our lives.
For others of us, the community is of little importance. What’s important to us is getting that stuff—those ideas—out of our brains and into some form we can see or hear or taste. For us, it doesn’t much matter what anyone else thinks of what we do:  it’s that we have to do it or go crazy, we have to get what’s in our brains out of there before we lose it or it drives us nuts or we forget the spark that will get us started.
Neither way is The Right Way. Neither part is more important. What’s important is knowing that making art and belonging to a community are not the same thing and that we can have one or the other or both, but they will always be like a bouquet, rather than a grafted hybrid: they will always be separate things, each to be appreciated for itself, sometimes to be joined in a riotous arrangement.
Next: The Rules