A few years ago, I went back to school (yeah, think Rodney Dangerfield) and got a photo degree at Columbia College Chicago. I took nearly all daytime classes because, well, because I could - and also to get the incredible energy that my fellow students had for their artwork. Pretty much every class was basically me and 12 or 14 18-19-20-year-old colleagues. Most of them, once they were able to stop projecting their Dad/Teacher issues (though I was older than pretty much every teacher as well), eventually seemed pretty willing to just take me as another student.
Among the best parts of that for me was watching how incredibly juiced many of them were about their work, and how everything about it really mattered to them. Not everybody cared, of course; some were role-playing "arteests", some were bored trust-fund kids, and some were there mostly because they'd been told they were "artsy" (usually by parents who couldn't relate, wrote it off to "A.D.D." or some other behavioral acronym and medicated them - my informal survey showed that about 1/3 to 1/2 were on something. Smoke breaks were sometimes dominated by conversations comparing their meds. Yes, really).
Anyway, I ended up hanging out (okay, that was MY name for it - theirs was probably "babysitting Gramps") with people who DID care about their work. It MATTERED! It was IMPORTANT to them! A few had RockStar dreams about getting rich at it, but for the most part they did the work for the sake of the work, or getting it out of their heads and into the world, or whatever therapeutic undertones they gave to it. My point is that they cared about it - just because they did. Getting strokes in class critiques didn't seem to be why (those comments were mostly pretty critical, because that's the way to make your work better over time; the teachers managed that really well despite having a lot of fragile egos in the classroom). Getting rich didn't seem to be why. They just had to do it because -- they had to do it. Art for art's sake, or something - their work just HAD to come out. And for me, being around them reminded me - so does mine, dammit. So does mine.
I want that back, and I'm trying like hell to get there.
For a look at how that can work -- at least in my experience -- check out this year's "27-Hour Shootout" films by students at New York's School of Visual Arts:
(see the video HERE)
In this annual event, 1st- and 2nd-year MFA students are grouped into teams, given a genre and some elements to include, and then they get 27 hours to produce, direct and edit a 4-6 minute clip. The results are pretty cool, but watch their faces (esp the kid in the fake documentary) and remember when stuff just MATTERED. That's where I wanna get more often - and actually live there.
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Today's creation is: some updates to my wife's website, including making new buttons (which, as always, took me longer than I expected; I've managed to make it a simple 29-step process, using like 6 different apps and lots of grumbling and bitching):
All of this was to support an additional page about a new workshop she and a good friend are offering: "Parenting For Wholeness". You can see the updated site HERE. (I know: "WOW - Buttons!" Graphic Design work ain't always glamorous, eh?)
Actually, today I realized something else that's really useful for me. I started this blog wondering how I'd find the time and energy to (gasp!) CREATE something every single day. Turns out I've been creating something pretty much every day for a long time. It's not all "⎨ Fine Art ⎬" work, but it still uses the right-brain parts that feel so good; I know this because I do get so involved I lose track of time/food/hygiene needs. That's the feeling I crave. Not the "hygiene" part - the other parts.
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