March 13, 2004
Art making and world events
How do we make art in the face of overwhelming world events? Since 9/11, at least three ideas for photo-based installations have come and gone while I sat and did nothing to realize them. Thinking too long brought on doubt.
In a recent issue of Orion Magazine, composer John Luther Adams wrote,
What is the value of art in a world on the verge of melting? An Orkney Island fiddler once observed: "Art must be of use." By counterpoint, John Cage said: "Only what one person understands helps all of us." Can they both be right?
Three decades ago I came to Alaska to help save the wilderness, and I was an environmental activist for years. When I left that work, I did so with the feeling that someone else could carry on my part in it, but that no one else could make my music. In recent years I'm wondering again about the meaning of my life's work...[H]ow can I make art that doesn't speak directly to world events?
I am able to decode how to respond to world events as an activist. Finding myself in direct, desperate opposition to the Bush administration, I write my articles, I register voters.
But as an artist, I am mute on the big issues. I can only observe small things: individual lives and deaths, the map of human nostalgia, loss, sadness, regret and depression. Perhaps a bittersweetness over the mixed blessing of memory.
I made this bowl (and burned the candle) the day after Spalding Gray's body was identified:
