Brushes, Blues and Bridges

try saying that ten times fast...

Sarah's hands...


  

  

sweet.

i can't believe how much i have to do!!! I haven't spoken to any of my friends in nearly a month. Well, except for pip and Andrew because they just showed up one day but besides that...
i'm sorry everyone! there's just so much going on and i'm just trying not to get overwhelmed.
lots of it is good...the rest is just my stupidness.

anyway.
okay.

so, there's this class.
i have an assignment wherein, i have to do a painting about "what i feel art is"

or something

it's very vague

and it has to be figurative...hmmm

this assignment is the result of a big ol' controversy that happened here at LCAD a few weeks ago when one of the teachers (my figure painting teacher, actually) put a painting into the faculty show that was...well...a bit explicit.
Now, in figure painting, there's artful nudity, and then there is tastless nakedess bordering on the pornographic. This painting was without a doubt, the latter. Anyway, i was shocked, appalled and offended when i saw that the painting was going to be put up and displayed. What were parents supposed to think...? Young prospective students...? Families? This wasn't a show in a museum focusing on erotic paintings of females...this is a private school!
I was so close to saying something about it. And i think i would have.

Thank God, however, someone came to their senses and the piece was pulled from the show. My teacher, of course was beside himself with anger and offense and considered himself as being misunderstood, censored, etc...in his class we got to hear allll about it. Not surprisingly, everyone in my class was in passionate agreement with him.
So, my teacher gave us an assiggnment, due at the end of the semester, that is supposed to portray what our feelings about art are, what it is, what it should be or some other mumbo jumbo. Using the human body as the focus, of course. So, many of my classmates have been talking about what they want to do. Brilliant ideas like gigantic paintings of male genitalia, transvestites, or just about anything shocking or offensive. How immature and pointless can you get...?
Talking about the whole situation with another one of my teachers, Betty, she agreed with me. What happened to art that is meant to be beautiful? Art that is uplifting? Art that is...HEAVEN FORBID...Godly?

Granted, some of my favorite works of art (visual, musical, &c...) revel in the dark, the melancholy, the downright depressing...
Yet that is only one side to being human. One of my all tima favorite artists, Alphonse Mucha, celebrated beauty, life, color, delicacy, and hope. I wrote in a paper recently:
"Mucha was once quoted saying: 'The aim of my work was never to destroy…but to build bridges.'
...He built bridges, and that’s what I want to do. I was inspired by individuals who tried to be a part of something bigger than themselves, to celebrate darkness and beauty; death and life; joy and sorrow. We weren’t created to do without one or the other. To forget that there is love and bliss to be had in this fallen world is to fool yourself into the belief that there is nothing worth living for. To ignore the existence of hardship and strife is to cheat yourself of the pure joy of being joyful! Mucha found this balance and flourished within it. As an artist, that is what I so desperately hope to do."

Why is so much art created only to destroy?

Betty suggested to me that i paint something religious (as much as i hate that word, it will just have to do). I said that i had actually been considering doing that, and i told her some of my ideas. I mean what could shock people more these days than a well-executed work of art that is rooted in spiritual truth? That is inspired by the character of Jesus Christ, and depicts what and who God is? i don't know...it's a beautiful dream (as Pip would say), but it could come off as pretentious and cliche and altogether unsuccessful so easily...
i need to be very careful and prayerful about this...

and prayers and suggestions from anyone would be greatly welcomed. i won't say any of my ideas yet...not until they're a bit more concrete.

i need to go eat lunch and go home and do homework now. and try to get the paint off of my shirt...

thanks for reading (: