Invertebrate Art or How to Sing Your Life
We got a little Art Tour going on this weekend on the island, about 50 artists, then about 50 more who’d rather ride the coat tails of the ones who advertise and promote this event. Since I was one of the original artists at the beginning some 19 years ago and watched it grow into a successful regional event, you might think I’d resent all those artists who avoid dues and meetings just to profit from the work of others.
But I don’t. It warms my cockles to see the entire island — for two weekends — celebrate art. Sure, there’s the profit motive, but the island is in America, land of capitalist excess, a fact even us artists can’t ignore though we try our damndest. My old shack (let’s call it a studio) was on the Tour for 9 years at the beginning. Had four of us starving artists down there and by the end we had 3000 visitors in the 3 days we were open back then. For you non-math majors, that’s a thousand people a day who drove clear to the South End for aesthetic entertainment.
I didn’t sell much except the notion that the island was the Art Island, plenty enough for me. Folks wandered the acres of gardens the mizzus had planted, saw how we lived, how artists lived and maybe where their inspiration came from. What we wanted, of course, besides getting filthy rich those few days, was offering a glimpse into our own creativity, how art isn’t so much just an art form, a blown glass vase or a pastel painting, but a way of seeing the world, then creating one. Gardens, tool shed architecture, found object sculptures, hand built houses, all of it a tapestry flowing from the imagination.
What we hoped was to inspire others to explore their own world. To the folks who told me they didn’t have one single artistic bone in their body, I always said sorry to break the news, but we all create our lives, some consciously, some not. We’re all of us artists, but some of us fools try to make a living at it.
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