Wonderous Things

CAM has just had its Fall Fling fund raiser and now we move on to the Cam Biennial, the Public Hanging. Now before you rush the kiddies from the room this does not in any way suggest that actual execution of artists.

It could cause a few suicides when the guys get to see whats entered in this years show.

When you have an open show the expectation is that the entries will run along a bell curve, some great, some okay and some not so great. That may yet be true but from what I saw when I was taking in art last week the curve is going to be sort of skewed.

The art which came in last Tuesday was without exception excellent. I am waiting with a worm on my tongue for the show to open so I can see all of it.

Sure I have art in the show but in all honesty I don't hold out much hope, the rest of the entries are way too good.

But I entered anyway and my question for the class today is did you?

Every two years the Coos Art Museum holds its Public Hanging of Oregon Art. With rare exception, purely at the discretion of the director and staff and based on contemporary community standards, all art submitted is hung. Now that is a huge task. You let anyone with art work bring their stuff in and you have to find a place for it.

The staff must be exhausted. They've worked day and night to make this happen and all you had to do was show up.

If you did, then congratulations and good luck. The competition will be stiff this time around but the exposure will be great and you never know what patron of the arts might walk in and decide they have to have your work and ask to buy it right off the walls. No, they can't. They have to wait just like everyone else and when the show is over they can collect their purchases and take that perfect picture home.

So how come some of you didn't get your work in?

Now expressing yourself trough art is a major part of the process. The magical creation of a raw idea into a completed fixed image is something which no amount of scientific analysis can explain. It happens and there is magic to it and you just have to accept that on faith.

But there is also a lot of work involved. That work, getting into the studio in spite of all of the demands of the family, bills, lights coming on and staying on, kids screaming, the thing on the couch with the remote which only moves at halftime and the cats, rats and dogs all screaming for attention and service and you have to do all of that and still find time to work between the hours of midnight and dawn which you would otherwise waste sleeping, hard work.

So why if you do all of that to get your expression out of your head and onto or cut out of or blown or potted or printed, do you not take the time to get it entered in an open show?

Sure, there will be only one big winner and they will get all of the prizes and the newspaper stories and they television coverage, but everyone who participates will get their work displayed in a museum. Do you have any idea how difficult that is for an artist to do?

Yes, there are those, the lucky ones, the gifted ones, the ones touched by Fate who do it all of the time and if you were one of them you wouldn't have time to read this blog you'd be out creating more art to be hung in all of those galleries.

But for the rest of us, the artists who devote their life blood to creating without the hope of big sales, big stories or big applause, this is the time. Get your work out in the Public Eye and celebrate the joy with which you mined it from all of that mysterious stuff between your ears.

Okay, so let's say you did, the thing now is to go to the show and look at all of the art. The expression of all of those other artists has to be inspirational. You get to see where in all of this you fit. No, you probably won't be as goo as some of the others, but you'll be a lot better than some and its not about how good you are but what you can learn from all of that art.

What if you didn't? Go anyway and start laying your plans now. It's a Biennial, that means every two years, so two years from now you'll have another chance.

In two years don't tell me you can come up with something. You're an artists, you get those creative juices flowing and the ole thinking cap cooking an an ideal will come and you'll get the spirit and you will burn with passion and pride and before you know it you'll have something you'll want to show.

And you'll get your chance. The CAM Biennial comes around every two years.

Why doesn’t it come around more often? Well first its a Biennial, and if it came more often you'd have to change the name and make all new signs and write new copy for the papers and explain to some obnoxious television talking head why you decided to change the name when any fool can clearly see that if it doesn’t come around every two years it isn't a Biennial and needs to have a different name.

And because the staff at the Coos Art Museum has to hang the show and

make all of the identification tags and log in all of the art and store the art until it can go up and deal with all of the artists who are sure that their work will be tossed on a pile of dirty rags get soiled and then they'll be told it came in that way when of course it didn't and they won't have any way to fix the damage except to whine and complain and would you want to deal with that every year? That's the reason its a Biennial, the staff doesn’t want to pull all of their hair out at one time.

So go and see the CAM Biennial and enjoy all of the wonderous things.

That's what Howard Carter said when he finally opened the tomb of Tut and you know what it works for the Biennial too.