Do you remember the first time that you fell in love with art? I do. I was just registering for college, trying to find who and what I wanted to become. Totally lost, I registered as a pre-law student. Me. Can you imagine? But then everything changed. I was visiting friends in LA who took […]
Since this global pandemic began, I’ve been calling for artists to lead. But how can an artist lead when confined to their house with no resources? How can an artist lead when the whole world seems to be broken? I’ve been meditating on these questions for myself and I’m starting to get some clarity.
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Do you have a mentor? An Elder Artist who encourages you and shares words of wisdom? I do. My friend Jaune Quick-to-See Smith is a Native American artist whose powerful paintings have been awarded and featured and praised internationally for years. I’d always loved her work, but when I had the opportunity to meet her
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Every creative person I know has certain things in common. We crave feedback. We want our work to be seen and we desperately want to know what our work says to the viewer. At the same time, creative people hate criticism. To be fair, everybody hates criticism. Constructive or not, criticism isn’t nearly as much fun
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Rewind to the Great Recession of 2008. Galleries closed. Art dealers moved on. Curators chased other professions. Karen Jilly, a mid-career artist who unlocks beauty in deceptively ordinary, forgotten cityscapes, suddenly found herself without key trappings of the art business. She was also faced with the immediate need to care for two aging parents. “I
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Wayne Brungard is a self-taught metal artist and experienced fabricator. He creates bold custom art that defines space. However Wayne’s journey to becoming a sculptor, from turning his craft into art, took over 40 years and it’s not been an easy path. Having focused, for the majority of those 40 years, on commissioned work, moving
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I travelled the world, only to find myself back where I began 7 years ago. It’s been 7 years since that day someone made the offhand remark, “Don’t you wish you could sell it all and move to the south of France?” My ears perked up. I love the south of France! But half an
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Say what you will about young people today. this generation makes my heart sing for the future of the planet. Over the course of my career, I’ve worked with hundreds of university art students all over the world. I happen to think that this generation will save the world. But they suffer. We cripple them
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One of the first questions I ask aspiring artists is, “What is it that you want?” Invariably the answer has to do with wealth and fame. Heroes named include Damian Hirst and Andy Warhol. And then I sigh, collect myself, and try to explain that when your focus is on wealth and fame you are getting your validation
I imagine that you’ve heard of the boxer named Mohammad Ali. When he passed away, the whole world mourned. But Crista, you’re probably asking, what does a boxer have to do with art? A lot, actually. Because there’s a lesson here that speaks to all of us who strive for greatness in what we do.
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