(72) Support
My folks are big into supporting current artists. My dad is an architect and my mom is an artist (I grew up with her strident paintings all over our house), although she has spent much of her life being flawless doing whatever the hell she feels like doing, including catering, logo design, and starting and running her own preschool. This does not even include the two decades she selflessly gave to raising me and my brother. (She is one of those intrinsically self aware peeps who fight for equal footing without even realizing they are actively participating in something as ‘fringe' as social justice.) Ok, but I digress. They are both heavily into live artists and supporting their work. Which, all on its own, makes my folks the definition of admirable. That’s how you go into a field; you immerse yourself in its history and the technique, and when you get to a place of relative comfort, you put your hands out and open your eyes and invite others to the party. That is support; it is life, and care, and character.
Their collection of art has grown exponentially over the last decade. They keep finding new artists/paintings that they love (there’s the occasional sculpture, but it’s mostly paintings) and they are running out of places to display all of it. (They’re sending me one this week. My house is officially artsy-fartsy and I’m not even a little bit sorry.) They want to open a gallery and have it be a kids-focused experience, where children get to learn about new art and experience making it after being exposed to different mediums and concepts.
I was thinking about how they give back to their field and I realized, it’s not their field. It’s their community. When I was a kid, and we had seven cents between the lot of us, they were forever at their friends’ studios, taking me to art classes and museums, and going to other artists’ shows. They showed up for their people even before they had means to fund any of it. They followed through with their care and interest, and made a point of prioritizing that action in our every day lives.
I’m excited, because if I use my folks as a long term example, I can see how communities of creation, whether they are science based, or music based, or painting based, do the same thing. Sometimes it never gets as thorough as it did for my parents, but I think that we are maybe tending that way, generally, in a lot of artist communities. I read Michael Adewunmi’s post on how Medium is a medium to build families, and it blew my mind, because…that’s how it’s done. And it doesn’t need to involve financial wealth! The concept of competition in a country of unchecked capitalism can be so convincing. We have to prove we are the best! We have to beat x standard and y person! We have to have more and the most and better at every juncture! It’s pervasive and unrelenting, and it changes the essence and necessity of the creative act.
So…Michael is spot on. And it’s why I’ve loved my time on Medium so far. Sure, there are ridiculous swatches. And maybe I’ve just been supremely lucky in my exchanges (I’m sure some of you have caught sight of my BHD and Kim exchanges lately; I hope those guys know how unutterably magnificent they’ve been to me. I’ve told them but like let’s just say it again ok). But either way, Michael is right; it is not a simple issue of followers; it is family. It is support and growth and awareness. It’s a living, versatile, creature that exists because of the power in a single idea, and in the act of reaching out. Treating our ‘fields’ as a sort of family that warrants our care and attention is exactly the type of atmosphere I want around my art. Fuck competition in its current tantrum state. It can sit in time out with my sobriety.
I’m excited. I love this mindset towards art so thoroughly, I can feel it in my palms and across the back of my neck. Who knew that the alternative to the blistering callousness of competition was something as innate as family? ❤