art's got the beat down on me...

tired...just plain ol' tired.
trying like hell to make some headway on a couple of studio projects so I can get to the art pieces for next weekend's show...

had a good day today on a building address marker and accent light for a client downtown...couple more hours tomorrow and I can put that one to rest...
also tomorrow I need to put in a major effort on the 23 Street Courts plaza project so the electrician and landscaper can finish the front planters and accent lighting for the trees...

donated a piece to the CHEH neighborhood party to basically get an invitation to the gig so I could schmooze, booze and eat free...it worked, and I scored two new clients in the process! a building sign for a new salon going in off Western and a balcony project in Crown Heights...oh yeah, the schmoozing was fun, the beer cold and the food was to die for...

listened to, and read, more on the "what is art" discussion and 3:40AM says:

"While it may be appropriate to ask in a broad sense, 'What is art?' I think it's dangerous to look at a particular piece and ask, as we did hypothetically that evening, 'Is this art?' When we look at something and ask, 'Is this art?' we begin to distance ourselves from it. It is another example of having an experience and, rather than letting the experience speak to us directly, forcing it to compete with a bunch of stuff we drag out of our footlocker of memories, opinions and preferences - all the stuff we use as benchmarks for classifying, measuring and pigeonholing. Better to simply experience the thing - nothing else.
The danger in this approach is that crap becomes accepted as art because although everyone sees the emperor has no clothes, no one will say so, and the next thing you know the crap's being sold in mass quantities on cable shopping channels. But that doesn't seem to me to be as much of a danger as letting our experiences be limited by our preconceptions and judgments.
(There are exceptions to this rule. Somewhere in my brain is stored the notion that being hit by a semi on the highway hurts. I'll live with that prejudice - I won't stand in the middle of I-35 to experience it directly.)"

Well, OK...I guess.

I for one see no sense in experiencing something and nothing else... Part of the need for me to produce my art is to have people experience it and share what they think of it... The point of saying "what is art" is to encourage those experiencing it to express themselves and hopefully enjoy a richer experience because of the dialogue. The hands-off approach is just what the problem is in so many areas of our lives and in our community. Without discourse artists, designers, architects just simply keep doing what they've been doing forever and we don't reap the benefits of could be achieved with a little more interaction with each other. What irritates me is when I hear someone offering their opinion about something without directly engaging the person or subject they're talking about. I think this is a chicken shit approach to living. If someone was to walk up to me at my show and say "I hate this work. It is not art to me.", I would take that as an honest assessment of how they feel. It might hurt to hear that, but again, if you put your work out there you should be ready to hear any and all reactions to it. I would hope that they would offer an explanation of why they feel the way they do, but hey, that would force them into having a conversation and we are only wanting to take baby steps right now...

I'm not sure what the being hit by a truck analogy really means, but I do know that there are a lot more people out there smarter than me about such things...

I think I'm going to sleep now...