In the empty room

In art school, I'd have long midnight discussions with friends on the nature of art. Aimless, wandering things without a point, which were never intended to come to any conclusion. So, of course, I have.

Basically it came down to an argument of Expression versus Communication. If you're there merely to express yourself, then at the end of the day it doesn't matter if anyone else is actually there in the room with you. The room can be empty. You can be the tree in the forest, falling in silence with no one to hear, left to wonder if you really made a sound. Or you can be the sculptor who rinds the tree and makes a totem pole to go in the middle of the village. You can be the lone voice in the middle of the stadium, shouting to maybe one or two people in the stands, but shouting none the less. Or you can be the person singing softly in an empty soundproofed room, ensuring no ne ever hears.

Now, I'm obviously in the camp that values Communication over Expression. But in school I was surrounded by artists who argued the Expression point, saying they made art because they had to, and not for any commercial reason. As if creativity was somehow sanctified by solitude.

I can't name two famous artists whom I emulate or respect who didn't do the work for communication. This is a simple fact because artists who create for communication get their work seen as a path to that communication. Exposure leads to fame, while hidden, self-directed expression gets directed toward, again, the empty room. I say two in the first sentence because I can name one—Emily Dickinson, who wrote her poems specifically for the empty room. I'm sure you can name more. I'm sure there are geniuses out there dying every day whose art is lost with their death, their silenced voices remembered only by the crickets.

But I never wanted to be one of them. They're characterized primarily by the fact that they are not in the arts. They're businessmen or plumbers or teachers or doctors or any other number of honorable professions, hiding their talent at poetry or painting or music under another vocation. My dream, and the reason anyone goes into art, is to make a vocation of an avocation. To do for a living what you would do for fun, and, in fact, what you can;t imaging life would be like without doing, is a gift only a privileged few receive. Which is primarily what ticked me off in those midnight conversations with artists who looked down on trying to find commercial applications for their abilities, preferring instead the purity of purpose enjoyed by the professional waiter or day laborer. (Does that sound snotty? I suspect it does, but having worked as a waiter and a day laborer, it's not really intended to.)

The fact is, I realize in retrospect, that any one of those artists could have proven his or her point by leaving art school, saving 20K a year, and making their art on their own. But of course, unless we were forced to (and after that first year, some of us were...), none of us did. We valued the feedback from fellow artists, which helped develop our work and voice.

But I recognise the ability to spend thousands of dollars without a concrete goal or thought of return is the providence of the rich. Where I grew up, college was no guarantee, and my parents made it clear every year that it was a struggle. I saw kids from similar situations not return, each of my four years in college. So, I never thought of creating art for the empty room. I wanted as many people in there as the walls would allow. Not for fame, but for a good return on my investment.

That said, there is art I create merely for expression. There's stuff I develop—mostly writing and painting—that I specifically don't intend anyone to see. But at the same time I have a keen awareness that the art I spend most of my time producing is intended to be shared, looked at, touched, held, passed around, read, read again, and, if I'm lucky, remembered.