The First Thing to Learn in Art School

My Vermont residency is coming up and this time I'm in a special workshop called "Visual Poetry," led by my first semester advisor Jody Gladding and hopefully-my-third-semester advisor Jen Bervin. I'm not entirely sure what to expect, but our pre-req reading is Kit White's 101 Things to Learn in Art School, a 6x6 book of gems!

As White says, "Art is not separate from life; it is the very description of the lives we lead." Art is important because it "studies the world, in all its manifestations, and renders back to us not simply how we see, but how we react to what we see and what we know as a consequence of that seeing..."

There is more to say, of course, on the necessity of art in our lives, but for now I want to share with you the first thing to learn in art school:

"Art can be anything: It is not defined by medium or the means of its production, but by a collective sense that it belongs to a category of experience we have come to know as 'art.'"

Note, however, that this is not to say that "anything can be art." As White states in lesson #36, "Don't just make designs--say something." Which can be applied to poetry, and to photography--don't just string words together, and don't just snap away without saying something. Says White,

Pleasing design alone does not make interesting art. Design is only the first step in making something substantive and convincing. To succeed, an image (and words are images, by the way), must lead to something beyond the mechanics of formal arrangement. It must be integral to a larger discussion about the world in which it was created, and the history of its own form...

The forms that this discussion can take are endless, and the specifics of the discussion itself are endless, but what remains at the core is discussion about the world. Art is an ongoing and engaging process, yielding discovery for both the maker and the viewer/reader/etc., and I think that's what drives me to write. When I write it's pretty much the only time I make sense of the world, of my self. It's both discovery and meditation, because I hate to be stagnant--not discovering, not creating, makes me anxious. Writing (and by "writing" I'm referring to writing poetry) is where I find peace, even if the writing itself is not necessarily peaceful. Which only makes sense because the world is not necessarily peaceful, bringing us to lesson #38 (and then I'll leave you alone. For now):

Complexity derives from the presence of contradiction: The world is not simple. It is rife with complexity. The impulse to eliminate the contradictions that create complexity is natural. But to simplify may be to render a false condition and therefore an incomplete description. Embrace the irreconcilable elements, the contradictions. They are part of any portrait of a moment.

 I don't make art, and I don't necessarily want art, that simplifies the world--that would be a silly illusion (would it be art....?) Rather I make art and go to art in order to ease my anxiety about the complexities of this world, and also to celebrate the joys of this world, of being human, here and now...