The Conceptual Artist and the Globalized Age
An interview with Sylvia Bueltel reveals the hard truths and simple joys of pursuing art professionally in the 21st century.
It was an idyllic, sunny summer afternoon at a friend’s soiree when I overheard a California state senator behind me say, “There aren’t enough fine artists in this world. And you need to be one.” I didn’t need to turn around to know who he was speaking to. I smiled at the generosity of the comment and at the thought that the senator’s statement affirmed my decision to ask this person to write an interview piece just a few hours earlier.
I had grown up with Sylvia Bueltel in Minneapolis. We had similar upbringings and similar personas. We were both daughters to Polish immigrant families and we both lived in Chicago for some time. We were both stubborn, both opinionated, and both emotional. I was much louder, though, and she was quiet, so her love for art developed subtly until she decided to study fine arts at Loyola University Chicago; it was a bold but confident decision, so foreign to a generation that stereotypically only pursues explicitly lucrative career paths, and so foreign when art today seems to have become cheapened by inexpensive, quick, superficial, and mass production: “Instead of becoming a slave to the economy, I decided to do this for a living. We only have one life, and I want to do what I love.”
Art takes time, patience, emotion, solitude, and silence — all of which Bueltel has and reinvests into her work. She invited me to her studio in Chicago last year where I was first exposed to her world. Since then, Bueltel has become a guide at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, has painted numerous commissioned works, and, most recently, has sent a sculpture piece (“HELLO?”) to a curated art exhibit in Santa Monica.
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She doesn’t consider herself a painter, however, and she doesn’t limit herself to creating works specific to a single style or source of inspiration. “If I didn’t have to do any commissioned work,” she told me, “I would become a fulltime conceptual artist.” Represented in art by visual artists such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996), Bueltel explains, “every piece of conceptual art is intentional, which is suitable for me because I am a perfectionist. Like the ears I sculpted for my ‘HELLO?’ piece. Evolutionarily, the physical shape of the ear has developed in humans for a purpose. When I make art, everything I add serves a purpose. Nothing is accidental. That is conceptual art.” The intention behind each piece is evident not only in “HELLO?”, but in “What Remains”, “THANK Y:)U”, “Smoking Kills”, and “Madonna and Child” as well.
Bueltel is an artist for a living, but she is often humble and cautious to consider herself talented. She acknowledges that there are better artists than her and that her art may not be unique: “There isn’t anything new in art; it’s just ideas that are recycled because we are all human. That’s why concept in art is more important than simply being a good painter. I may not be the first person to make art about grief, but I am sure that the way I interpret grief is different from anyone else.”
When mentioning grief in my conversation with her, Bueltel is specifically referencing her award-winning performance piece “Surprise!” for the Department of Fine Arts at Loyola University Chicago. The piece at the exhibit involved balloons popping with darkly satirical “Sorry for your loss” confetti over a sadly festive birthday table, embodying the shock of death in an otherwise joyous world. It is a performance piece that happened once, perfectly, and unrepeatably. To this day, no video recording of the piece is accessible publicly; Bueltel explains that the reason for this is to protect it from unsolicited social media consumption. I asked about her perception of this Digital Age and how it has impacted her work and any dissemination of her art. Expecting a rather negative response about social media, Bueltel happily replied, “The cards have actually been very well dealt to me. I’m connected to people I would have never heard of and who would have never heard of me. I can’t imagine handing out business cards to promote my art today. Instead, everything is through my website and even my Instagram account!”
Bueltel’s confidence in her work breaks through that aforementioned humility. She describes how she knows she has talent and that her talent has room to grow: “I went to a Laurie Simmons exhibit that displayed almost every piece of art she ever made in her life. She had so many different styles and periods in her career… I may not be there yet, not all my pieces are cohesive, and I may not have it figured out yet. But that’s ok.” It’s more than ok. An artist who hasn’t grown into to her full potential is simply a risen sun that hasn’t hit high noon yet; daybreak has already come for Bueltel, age 22, and the first light of her art has already shone on those who have turned their face towards it. But talent cannot be rushed and the heat of her potential has yet to ignite us. High noon will come.
Bueltel’s passion explodes for art, and she wishes to share that emotion with others. In her performance piece “Surprise!”, audience members were so overcome with reactions of gratefulness that some even approached Bueltel in tears, thanking her for sharing her interpretations with them. Bueltel is fulfilled by these interactive experiences, but that by no means makes it easy for her to be a professional artist, especially in the 21st century, when she is competing not only with other artists, but with other mediums of self-expression which society consumes more easily and less expensively. She explained to me, holding back tears, “The hardest part about being an artist isn’t just convincing someone you are good enough to be an artist; the hardest part is genuinely feeling that I’m supported.”
I thought about how easy it is to decorate our homes with the affordable, mass-produced art that we could buy online from Target, Ikea, or Home Goods and have shipped to our home in two days. And then I thought about how Bueltel’s success in art, a path she risked her future to pursue, depends on a much different business model. Her commissioned works take time and inspiration and they most certainly cannot be delivered to a customer in two days. But they are full to the brim with emotion and intention. They are personal works and they are not made for profit; if Bueltel wanted a stable source of income, she surely would have studied something else. Instead, she sought purpose through what fulfilled her and the talents she possessed. Yes, it was her decision to pursue art, but it is society’s responsibility, our responsibility, to support these young artists. Painters, musicians, actors, and writers fill our world with color, song, entertainment, and prose. These artists choose to create, and we must choose to love, to appreciate, to support their gifts; we indulge in these gifts every day and shouldn’t short change the creators behind the art. For me, that means indulging in something less mainstream, less known, less trendy, and less globalized. Art is closer to you than you think, and perhaps if we spent more time supporting those around us who create, these artists could feel more supported and could bravely create not just more, but also better, art.
To Sylvia Bueltel, to the starving artists, to the street musicians, to the local theater actors, to the short story writers: there aren’t enough of you in the world. I hope you continue to choose to create, and I will help support you.
This is not a paid endorsement of the artist. For more on Sylvia Bueltel and contact information for commissioned works, please visit her website at sylviabueltel.com or Instagram at @sylv.x
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