art, audience, and distance
This week has had a couple things dovetail very nicely into each other and it has me thinking about the purpose and approach of the things we make. On Tuesday, we had our panel discussion with Bad Art: Kitsch, Camp, & Craft artists, many of whom wander in installation pieces and non-traditional forms--ie the screeprinted underwear on the 2nd Floor, or the giant dog made out of recycled plastic bags. It came up a couple of times the idea of being able to watch how audiences interract with such installations and when presented with such work. I was, at the same time, working on my first freelance lesson writing project--for which I had chosen installation art as the subject. (out of many different options in the arts and humanities.) But I spent a few hours doing some research and looking up good examples, and writing about the ways we experience installations, particularly outside gallery/museum settings. A friend talks often how she likes to make the sort of work that is part social experiment--to see what lathers, to witness how the viewer responds.
As writers, it seems a very different thing. I get super awkward when people start talking about my work and how they respond to it. There's a distance that the page allows between artist and audience. When they creep too close, I just get weird. But we do still like to hear something make contact, just maybe from a distance. A new dgp author told me this week that she had one of my older poems tacked to her wall and it made me so happy on a day that was feeling especially hopeless in terms of feeling like anyone actually reads what I write--anywhere...here, in poems, in books, on social media. But at readings, I usually tried to get away as quickly as I could after reading. When I used to do craft shows, people paging through my zines, my collages, my prints, similarly made me uncomfortable and I wanted to run away, even though I wanted them to look and buy of course. I usually don't go to the openings of the shows I'm in. When we used to do Library general shows and I kind of had to, I was especially skittish and spent a lot of time hiding in the bathroom and escaping downstairs with my plate of snacks. And we all want to feel like their is an audience and interest in our work. Even at the panel this week, though I had my black velvet pieces in the show, I was more comfortable just being moderator than talking much about my practice.
I guess, moreso, I love building worlds, but how and when you encounter them is up to you.
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