"If I had the answer to that, I'd put it in a bottle and I'd sell it."

“Seek not the ways of the men of old; seek instead what they sought.”

This week in my Art 111 class we were talking about art in an ecological sense.  Our reading was from our usual textbook (“Conversations Before the End of Time” by Suzi Gablik) and covered two different conversations.  The first conversation was with Rachel Dutton and Rob Olds.  These two people were practicing artists living in the city and decided to, one day, give away all of their work and take to nature.  I’m not just talking about camping out in your little tent and bringing your portable stove.  I’m talking about utilizing every single resource that nature has to offer.  Honestly, when I first started reading, I thought that it was absurd.  But then I started to realize that I identified with these two artists views exactly.  The first thing that struck me was when Dutton was sharing her view of art, and this totally hits the nail on the head.  “Living on the prairie, in the context of the larger nature that has nothing to do with culture, we slowly started living life as an art” (p.65).  Isn’t that amazing?  They actually believe that everything they achieve in day-to-day life is art!  Imagine going through your life and embracing every minute detail so intensely that all of your actions become purposeful art forms!  I mean, this is just incredible to me!  Olds continues on to say that the art that he made previously, in Los Angeles, was not art; and that it was actually a message to him, personally.  “It was like being shown visions that came in strange ways―they had to come through my hands” (p.66).  Once I read that, I was in shock.  I have been feeling a lot like that myself with my own drawings.  When someone asks me if I am an artist, I say no.  I know I should say yes, but I honestly don’t feel like I am.  I am skilled at drawing and I love to do it for myself, but I don’t make art.  My intentions are personal; it’s almost as if I’m drawing aimlessly.  I randomly have these visions, or inspiration, and the only way they can escape me and be completely understood, is through my hands.  But life, which makes sense to me, life is art!  Art should serve a purpose, it should be meaningful―intentional.  Humans need to treasure life like that.  Life is a gift and everything in it should be viewed as sacred.  “Daily life as a prayer is that everything is holy.  You are holy, everything around you is holy, rinsing a vegetable in the sink is holy” (p.68).  I am so glad that someone finally shares the same view as I do.  Of course I appreciate the so-called “art” in museums.  I mean, I’ve been to Musee D’Orsay and it’s magnificent!  But I can’t help but wonder what all of those artists intentions were.  Degas is one of my favorites, his work just takes my breath away; but who was he doing his work for?  What was his purpose?  It’s incredibly beautiful and for some reason you find yourself feeling privileged to be able to look at it.  But when I look at “art” I can’t shake the feeling that it might just be something that someone felt compelled to draw.  Well regardless of the intention, art should be treasured, I know that for sure.  Art is special and should always be held onto.  Just like life, art is a gift.  It is always beautiful and always changing.  “I’d heard for years that in other cultures the things that are now called art in this culture were part of daily life.  And this is the doorway into that” (p.76).  So that’s it, the answer is simple; combine life with art.  It’s funny how things always have a way of being connected.  So to carry on the idea of continuity, humans need to “Seek not the ways of the men of old; seek instead what they sought” (p.82).  That way, humanity will continue to evolve, but in innovative ways.

“If I had the answer to that, I’d put it in a bottle and I’d sell it.”

The next conversation my class looked at was one with Christopher Manes.  Manes seemed to believe that each organism was just as important as the next.  “Everything is just as advanced as everything else” (p.86).  This thought, I seem to agree with.  My boyfriend is a marine biologist and he has led me to strongly believe in the system of life.  Each organism sustains other organisms and so on.  Manes tells us that the world has developed into this idea that the man is the ultimate being and that everything else around us is insignificant and needs to be improved.  The world has grown to believe that “nature is this immense silence, this immense, irrational silence” (p.90).  He then tells us that this is completely wrong.  I believe this to an extent.  Yes, I think that this is wrong and that we need to pay more attention to the origin of our lives and that, ultimately, humans are animals.  But I think that we were made the way we were for a purpose.  We were made different than animals to cultivate life, to improve it.  We created light bulbs to help us see in the dark, that invention was supposed to be a great discovery.  Yes, it uses electricity and is bad for the environment, but we did these things to help make life easier for ourselves.  No, I don’t think its laziness, I think its genius.  To scientists and inventors, that is their “art.”  We’ve come a long way from what used to be very hard living.  We made things like dishwashers and dryers and cars for a purpose.  They are a luxury that the world is trying to make accessible for every human.  We are not better than anything by making these things; we are just simply trying to live in this world in comparison to everything else.  We are not taking over, or above anything.  As long as we continue to preserve nature and try and come up with eco-friendly ways to keep every invention that we adore, then life can be balanced.

In this way, art becomes super important.  Manes was saying that art needs to be geared more towards emphasizing nature.  Humans need to follow nature, and not the other way around.  My class had a faculty member, Colin Ives, come in and present his work on Tuesday.  His art was centered on the idea of eco-art.  Beside the fact that his work was incredible, his focus was to amplify the behavior of animals.  His most important finding was this:  that a lot of the behavior he observed in animals is almost identical to the behaviors of humans.  This was such an amazing discovery because I’ve never really thought about that before, and it is so true!  Another finding that I couldn’t ignore was when he was talking about his project with Kit Foxes.  Kit Foxes have developed almost in sync with humans.  As humans multiply, so do Kit Foxes.  These animals seem to have adapted to the urban lifestyle and are growing in strength because of it!  Scientists are actually using the urban population of Kit Foxes to repopulate their designated wildlife areas!  Even though humans need to be more sympathetic to nature, there is always a way for the two to live in harmony.