Here is my incomplete essay - lisa pearson

Art will never be done; ever. As soon as we find the most durable materials, the mediums that are the most far reaching, or painting techniques that rival creation itself, we must start again. I wonder at our collective compulsion to make and experience art, 

considering this futility, but I do not question that the compulsion is there, and how it speaks, this compulsion, about our need to find community within the divine.

In some ways the availability of mass produced visual art, contributes to it's spiritual demise. In some ways, the availability of mass produced visual art, contributes to it's spiritual efficacy. As soon as something hits it's saturation point, the artist recognizes the “death” of art, becomes “spiritually bothered” by the vacuum that has been created and once again, is enticed into inspiration. They start to create new works that communicate something true, essential, universal. In the act of this creation, the artist begins the eventual materialization of their own empherial insights, and began the desent into entropy of spiritual revelation. It is mysterious and beautiful, this futility; forever thwarted, forever hungry and yet we all still strive for a permanent renewal.

I want to expose you to three pieces of artwork each dealing with mass production and mass exposure. The first is: Noon-Day Rest in Marble Canyon, J.W. Powell, on page 222 in the butterfly book.


is before the visual flood, when the print of a painstakingly crafted and carved, visual picture could be held, examined and really relished... a butler bringing to us a thrilling visual dessert to accompany the main course of written description, of never seen landscape. Now, the books containing such images, are left sitting in thrift stores, dug up from the attics of our grandmothers tossed into estate sales, tossed brazenly or secretly into the trash. And so, the artist must begin again. It is fortunate, no?


The second, Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe silk screen on page





In audio art, we are also flooded. Our cars, restaurants, elevators, bars, store television are full of musical and audio experiences that can be replayed over and over. It is not novel so it's value starts to leak away...as we become suffocated.


Here is a link the the vegetable orchestra.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpfYt7vRHuY&feature=player_embedded#at=184


Food as instruments is halting. Here are two reasons why: First, we are struck at the abundance: When food is being made into objects for entertainment, it is because we have a great supply. The second thing we immediately connect with is a homesickness; because we eat so much machine made food, never cook for ourselves or handle “whole” food, we have in us a deep need connect with food in it's natural form, as it comes from the earth. We could, at this moment, go to the store, and buy a vegetable, and bite off it's raw head! We won't! There is something in our excess that prevents us! So while watching this, with starvation in some places and obese undernourishment in others, it is almost a misuse, almost a perversion and this, makes us laugh.

Why? Why was this necessary? Why all the trouble? They are likely privileged and have access to the best, so why didn't they use the expensive instruments that they already own? Is the fact that they didn’t use something regular, pre-designed thrilling for us? Why do we respond to the sounds of vegetables instead of to the sounds of violins?

It has something to do with ingenuity of course, but it also has something to do with manipulating something organic in such a intimate way, that we need to see...the work and the thoughtfulness put toward something perishable and impermanent but natural and alive; objects that will become obsolete immediately, (but not not the idea or the technique mind you...) it is strange but it is not strange; it illustrates my point. There is a death in excess, which requires constantly re-invented expression of the collectively, innately felt In a culture flooded with audio “leftovers” we revert back to, intentionally build, something natural and impermanent to let the beauty of art, inside this fleeting quality, brush across us, once again. Knowing that it is both essential and futile gives us the freedom to create like we breath; everyday with relish and for only so long.