1. Do I still want to look at Byzantine art?
Yes. Byzantine religious art is what visually interests me. I need something to respond to and for the next while, it is Byzantine art. As a Mormon and Christian, I am a visual and spiritual descendent of that historical period. There are several aspects of it that I find interesting and I am trying to learn all that I can about it. Byzantine art is powerful and I find meaning in responding to it as I consider the role of religious art and spirituality in my own culture. At the same time, this is not just about Byzantine art, I don’t want to look at Byzantine art forever. I will never really completely understand the Byzantines and their culture. It is not a diversion from real issues, but it serves as something to look at, and respond to as I learn to see my own culture through looking at another. I am at a religious university with a distinct culture, and I believe that this exploration of Byzantine art allows me to discover things about myself and my culture by looking at another. Again, I believe this is a specific and short-term goal, but it is important to me as a student here at BYU.
2. Do I want to focus instead on organic farming?
No. Organic farming is a long-term goal of mine that I want to be part of my life and will naturally penetrate my work. I have considered abandoning Byzantine art in favor of focusing on organic farming, which is a more long-term goal. At this point, I do not feel like it is time to make any distinct connections between my art and farming. I believe that will come later, if it is meant to.
3. If not, why not, and what will I do to learn about organic farming?
Of course, I am not putting off organic farming to something that I do “later”. My recent reconsiderations of my travels have led me to include learning about farming when I can. I have since become more active in searching out farms and volunteering on them. I have a good sized garden right now and have spent several evenings canning and drying our excess produce. I don’t feel that I should be doing any more than this at the moment.
4. Why do I have to go to Europe instead of somewhere else?
To be honest, if my exploration is more about recontextualizing myself and my religious culture, then I could go anywhere in the world and do that with other religions. I chose Europe because I am looking at Byzantine art.
5. What will traveling do for my art when I can look at printed pictures of Byzantine religious art?
I have been learning about how culture is not something that other people have, it is something we all have. We all exist in the context of culture. I believe that traveling enriches life in the sense that we are removed from our context into someone else’s. It seems that there is much to be learned about self in a new context, and about your own context by being in a new one. It is also important to learn about others, because they become less like “the other”. It seems like we can talk and talk about our own culture, but we can’t really see it for what it is until you leave it. There is also something to be said about leaving your comfort zone, and culture certainly is that. I don’t even have to hop on a plane to leave my context. I could sit in a classroom at UVU or drive into the other side of town. If I am looking at my own religious and academic culture through the art of another, it makes sense that I additionally leave my comfort zone. Europe makes the most sense in where to go to do that.
6. Is there any other visual reference that I am interested in besides Byzantine art?
Yes, I also look at the work of Henry Darger, a well known outsider artist. There are lots of formal elements in his work that I respond to, although I am not sure at this point why I look at it. Perhaps it is just the novelty that all his works and writings were discovered after he passed away, but I hope it is more than that.
7. Why am I staying at an organic farm while in Europe?
It is a good logistical option for us. We will be working several hours a day on the farm and will be eating meals with the family whose farm it is. I think it will be a beautiful experience to get to know the family and will help us integrate more in Greek culture which is why traveling is important to what I am doing. The fact that I want to farm and garden is simply a really fortunate bonus at this point. I would be doing it even if I was not interested in farming long term. It will be interesting to see if and how my work changes when working on the farm for several hours a day.
8. What did I learn from entertaining the possibility of completely changing my focus? What did change?
I understand better why I am choosing this experience. I think that by asking myself these questions, and perhaps scrapping my plans has helped me to be more honest with myself. I was not lying to myself or anybody else before, but I don’t think I was really in touch with that part of myself (the more sincere part of myself?). I didn’t realize that there was more to be understood about why I was doing what I was doing. Before, I had this idea that I would be making small paintings and making commentary on Byzantine art by making large paintings out of them. I don’t think that is a bad idea, but now, I have a less generic idea, and a more fulfilling purpose. I plan on painting many small paintings, and that is my end goal. I recently had the epiphany that I am a student. Nothing I make right now is that good. My goals now are to be prolific and to make a large body of small works, to understand what I am about. This is a response to my context of being a student, and that my studies are not about Byzantine art, and that is ok. If my work is about anything right now, it is a direct response to my culture: my friends and I are mostly students at a religious university. I feel like I understand better my potential contributions to my culture. This is an excerpt from a paper I recently wrote, explaining my newfound direction:
“The focus of my current work is to make tons of bad art. What I mean by bad art is being aware of myself. Lately, I have felt myself being too careful with my paintings and I have been over-analyzing why I do what I am doing. It is paralyzing me. I heard Brian Kershisnik casually say at a lecture, “If you wanna be a painter, then hurry up and make your first 500 bad paintings”. It actually hit me quite hard: this is where I am at! My art is not good because I am a student! This quote by Ira Glass explains this beautifully:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple of years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work… It’s only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap and your work will be as good as your ambitions… It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just gotta fight your way through.”
This is where I and many of my friends are. We are students and our work is not good. But we have potential! If there is anything that bothers Mormon students, it is that we are not perfect, and sometimes it makes us unhappy.”
I have only told one friend about this new focus and his response was, “Wow, I really needed to hear that right now”. My purpose right now is to do what it takes to get through a volume of work. I think this is the most powerful message I could communicate right now. This is why we are here: to learn to be honest with ourselves and to make bad art.
I would not have understood this if it were not for questioning everything. My logistical plans are remaining the same. I am not sure that the content of my actual proposal will even change that much and my logistics are not changing. But this project will now be much more meaningful than it would have been otherwise.
9. How will this experience contribute to my long-term goals as an artist?
Something that bothers me and often inhibits me from making art is the concern that there are starving people, governments rotting, and the environment is dying. Then there is me, painting in my studio. How is this helping? I have had to accept that I cannot fix all of these things, even if I went to environmental studies, studied sociology, or went into politics (heaven forbid). If all I do is enrich my world around me wherever I go, and ask good questions, then that is all I can do. Lift where I stand, not lift the whole dang earth. This can only happen if I work hard at doing only what I can do (by being prolific), and to be honest with myself and others and to learn how to pay attention. I believe my preparations for Europe have done that, and I am sure the experience in Europe will too.
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