Between the Cracks, by Embry for Shangri-La

Despite the fact that there is rivalry between artists, there is often camaraderie too. Such as when a fellow artists says, “It’s so degrading to be setting up to sell your work at an outdoor show and find the booth next to yours is hawking crocheted dollies or produce!” Only someone sensitive enough and intelligent enough to produce art can appreciate the utter humiliation of this situation.

The truth, however, is that most people are not perceptive enough, nor sensitive enough to begin comprehending what creativity is about. Our world is outer motivated and not inner motivated. It is directed outwardly. Therefore, those who are directed from within seem alien to the “average” person. Because people often feel uncomfortable with the creative process, it causes them to look upon those who produce art as if they were magicians of some kind. This gives way to the common perception that artists are freaks of some sort. The fact that artists comprise a minority segment of the population also has a great deal to do with how society treats us – since minorities are always considered outsiders. So, given these facts, is it surprising that artists feel the need to band together?

The very same critics, who would judge us, and our skills, have no idea how much effort it has taken to hone those skills. Many of us have spent a lifetime cultivating our talents. It is ludicrous that unskilled casual observers of the arts, not even amateurs, are measuring our worth. Yet, this is frequently the reality of the artist’s lot in life.

Our tenuous worth and professional predicament has been greatly exacerbated by mass production, which has given rise to people seeing everything produced by human hands as being inferior to anything machine made. Whatever is mass-produced is completely uniform, devoid of individual character or personality. But since the rise of the industrial revolution, uniformity has been equated with perfection. This then is the twisted, crooked measure with which artists are beaten over the head all our lives.

I did a large oil painting, measuring about five feet tall. I was amazed to see that the framer put a “dust cover” on the back! Most framers are used to catering to customers who expect the framing job to resemble something purchased at Walmart. The average client wants something slick and not too individualistic, which would differ from the norm. The reason is that whatever stands apart is often perceived as threatening. What we do not understand, we fear. We are a nation of fast food, fast entertainment, fast fix junkies. Of course, there are the exceptions, but they are by definition just “that” and they do not balance the vast majority who find creativity to be threatening.

Status quo social values are narrowly defined by a commercial culture of the absolute. They are values that hold to strongly and fit us to a narrow boring mold. This society casts each of us like concrete. For example, I think much faster than I type, yet I have the audacity to believe that my creative ability is of more value than my typing skills. Does the world agree with me? No. Of course not. Typing skills make one functional in this world of machines. But what use has this world for beauty? Just look at any major city and ask yourself if it was designed with beauty in mind. If aesthetics were considered at all, they were an after thought.

Artists by definition are people who fall between the cracks, and the cracks keep getting bigger all the time. That we are forced to compete with one another destroys our creative integrity by compelling us to try to do what will please others in a commercial sense, and not ourselves. This is the “price of success” we are glibly told. Thus we as artists are encouraged to participate in the orgy of greed that is the cornerstone of capitalism, raping the creative heart. Art is the antithesis of that. To paint, sculpt write, dance, act, sing, compose or do whatever we do to express our hearts and souls is not about money, yet we conform like everyone else who is part of this well known rat race. It is truly a race toward extinction.

If the human race has any saving grace, it is the arts. That much maligned and vastly unappreciated activity.

RETURN to the art of Evelyn Embry