Q and A on Art

Reflection Questions to answer in Sketchbook

Please answer questions in your sketchbook due the last class, M 12/1/2014

Reflection:

1. What do you want to do in life with your art? Decompress!!  I want to take life one day at a time and try to make as much art and music as possible, and eek out a salary somewhere.

2. What have you learned in this class about being a working artist?  Peer feedback is critical to success.  Drawing, writing or somehow modeling your ideas will help to determine their viability.

3. Where will you be in 5 years? God willing, I will be recovering from a heart transplant or recently recovered.  I will (hopefully) be enjoying living.

4. Have you considered an internship during your college experience? If so, where would your ideal location be to have an internship? Can you start looking now?  I would definitely love to work as an intern, but I am not sure how that would work.  Ideally, I would like to work in a print shop.

5. What is most important to you in life? My three sons.

6. How will you balance career and family if that is what you want? Family first and everything else when there is time and opportunity.

7. When you graduate, art-making can be lonely and isolating working in the studio. How will you enter an artistic community once you leave art school?  I have a large network now in the Hickory, Lenoir areas, as well as the Charlotte area.  A very good way to connect to the art community is through musicians.  I shoot pictures at many live performances.  Photography is also a gateway to other opportunites.

8. Should art be made for an audience or for ourselves? Yes.  I make art for myself because the process is meditative and the focus helps me to exorcise my demons.  I make art for myself because I have something that I want to say.  I make art for an audience because I have something that I want them to hear (message to receive).  I make art for an audience to create a pleasurable experience for the viewer.  I make art for an audience to shock them and motivate action.

9. Can art change the way people think?  Art can give perspectives that have never been seen before.  Art can show love and uncover injustice, and show the world how it is, how it was, or how it could be.  Art can make us happy, or sad, or offend us—all of which takes thought.

10. What is your responsibility as an artist?  My responsibility as an artist is to make art whenever possible, and to be a full-time supporter of artistic endeavors.  I must be a guardian to make sure that art is plentiful when my grandchildren arrive.