Art and Community

June 2012

I cannot emphasize or talk enough about participating in an artistic community. I live it. But recently, I’ve realized that I appreciate being a part of an artistic community for more than just the art.

I am a part of a community that democratizes art. I encounter lowbrow to highbrow; trained and academic artist to self-taught, sometimes destitute artist and emerging student artists. There is a very real (though, I’m not persuaded) idea about what art is, and what it’s supposed to be and who an artist is. These days all mediums are subjected to the rebellion of these institutional protocols of what a very thing is. Food and art just happen to be my passions when it comes to experimenting with alternative paradigms.

From farmer to graphic designer, alternative systems of design are popular these days. I enjoy exploring and collaborating on these alternatives. I want to shift paradigms and create new models, new ways of working and being. Maybe one day I will teach workshops that show people how to photograph with old timey cameras that lack the tyranny of digital clicking without seeing. Or show people how to write, cook, plant and harvest food – anything that shows people how to sustain themselves, and perhaps, awaken to the world, if not around them, then within them. I want to sweat and get my hands dirty. I want to challenge my comfort zones, and pursue conscious evolution. The days of deconstructing a thing is past – fusion and new construction is happening all the time in every area of our life. I don’t know if each human is truly alone. I don’t want us to be. I think isolation will lead to our extinction. In order to survive, we must work together.

Collective community efforts are by no means an original concept. Communes have usually been the refuge of the seeker. All you have to do is read Drop City by T. Coraghessan Boyle  to evoke the notorious stereotypes. (The real Drop City being a art of the happening community established in Colorado in 1965.) With so many people operating as “equals,” making decisions as “equals,” the alternative systems are wrenched with the strife of achieving an equal footing. The reality is, we are inexperienced as equals. I believe in the effort to approach community and all persons on equal footing, but I am not naive enough to think that it happens without a hitch. The idea of inclusivity inspires me constantly – but much like my experiences working in community gardens and on farms – living up to it is the hardest thing I’ve done in my life.

One major question I’ve had to wrestle with is, “Why am I doing this?”

I am invested in the social evolution and survival of my species. I believe that what I do has an effect, and I hold myself responsible for my intents and actions.

Perhaps at times, I’ve turned to community to avoid myself. To cloud my awareness of self, focusing instead on outside and otherness. I run the risk of investing myself in something “else” in order to claim a position of righteousness.

In order to remember myself, I must also forget myself.

There is some sort of cohesive sense I am trying to make of my experiences that are centered on the act of service and being a part of a collective effort.

In community through collaboration my ideals and values are tested. This is the place from where I can attempt, and hopefully, one day, achieve equality. Art just happens to be the control room.