Art kid: "I created this piece because the telephone wire really spoke to me."
Professor: "Yes, using wire to create a ball is brilliant. It's brilliant because it isn't just wire, it's telephone wire."
Art kid: "Exactly. There was something about surreptitiously coiling the wire until it created a ball that made me think 'This is more than art. It's really talking to me. And it told me I was doing something new. Something never done before. I'm onto something here!'"
This exchange can be heard at any moment within the art studio walls. After years and countless hours of pondering how these kids talk people into thinking that their display of 5 red bricks neatly stacked against a white studio wall is art, I thought I understood. I thought I figured it out. And I did- but not completely. I thought that in order to get through the b.s. of the Webster Art Department all you had to do was create a work of "art" and give it a very kitchy, catchy story that everyone would just eat right up and voila, A+! While that does help, it still hasn’t been working for me 100%. So, this still leaves me wondering why. Why does it feel that there is a group of art kids, a group of professors and then me? This isn't a pity on Tera party, this is pure quandary.
Earlier today I walked through the studio once again, saw a stack of red bricks once again, almost tripped over a coiled up piece of telephone wire once again, and then WHAM! The answer hit me like those damn bricks! It's so simple. High School. Every student and to a lesser but notable degree, every professor, is nothing but a character. In high school, kids are figuring out who they are, where they belong and how to get where they think they are going. Hormonal teenage angst floods the hallways as students rush to join their cliques. The jocks playfully push each other against lockers and excitedly talk about their Letterman Jackets while the cheerleaders strut their high end fashion and gossip about who is dating who. The goths wear a constant frown on their pale face and choose to sit quietly in a secluded corner. Meanwhile, the stoners laugh and kick around hacky sacks in the courtyard while the metal heads discuss System of a Down's hiatus but it falls upon deaf ears-literally. These groups are all very different but they share a common thread. The thread is composed of the need for a sense of belonging and insecurities are woven in along the way.
Much like high school, the art department is divided into groups. The most laughable group, the hipsters, can be found in costume huddled around an outside ashtray, puffing herbal cigarettes as they critique the latest foreign film. Their mop-tops bob up and down to their favorite never- heard- of -before Indie band as they all push up their big, black glasses overwhelming their snooty-nosed face.
Of course you can’t have hipsters without hippies. You always know that you are within a few feet of a hippie because the studio is filled with the smell of Nag Champa. The Bob Marley tye-dyed hippies stroll around the studio barefoot with eyes thickly glazed over like a Krispy Kreme doughnut. While the hipsters listen to crappy music that is “good” because no one has heard of it, the hippies wildly dance to reggae or sway their dreads to the beat of Dylan.
If you aren’t a hipster or a hippie, then you most likely fall into the “I’m going to do whatever I want” group. Personally, I don’t like groups but at first glance, these group of students seemed okay. Why subscribe to all that nonsense when I can be friends with people that do whatever they want? They dress outside the norm, believe that if something is thought to be cool they should do the opposite and hell, they are even open to such characters like Billy who is "weird in a good way" because he wears a belt made from sheep intestines and totes around a voodoo walking stick he bought from coolrelicsofafrica.com for only two dollars! Wait, they can't fool me, this is just another group. I enjoy the way I dress, I like my goofiness, and I am comfortable being who I am. All the characters of the art department, including the hipster art history professors and the studio art, dazed and confused professors, are simply people who are insecure with themselves. Perhaps they like who they are now but it took pretending to be a hipster, a hippie, a weirdo-ultimately becoming that someone else to get there. Overall, I think art is a subject that attracts insecure people. In art, anything goes as long as you are going along with it. Otherwise, you are the person on the sidelines looking at all the silly groups with a puzzled look brushed about your face asking yourself “Why, why am I here?”
