I find the concept of keeping up with the techies overwhelming and exhausting. I Became an artist because I loved the feel of a blank, fresh sheet of paper gliding over my fingerprints as the canvas accused me of my former efforts to fill in other pages of my life. The smell of Lavender essence mixing with poppy oil and pigments fills me with the same comfort as the sound of our family's creaky old antique rocking chair. My father used to read to me while I sat on his lap. Snuggled in his arms, he'd screech the chair back and forth, back and forth, taking my cares and complaints away with each word he read. As a child, I was seduced by a cadmium lemon yellow crayon dancing on the canvas before me at the age of 3. The feeling that crayon left in me still haunts me most pleasantly.

The end-all of this is I feel art is a very physical act. It, in my opinion, requires all five senses. When I became an artist, I did not know it would require so much more screen time out of me. I am at the moment, overwhelmed by creating a social media presence, knowing how to take my art and put it on the internet correctly. Learning about hashtags, how to use a touch screen, Creative Cloud, Adobe, creating blogs like this one, making a website, finding grants, juried shows, and, and, and...
There is so much screen time needed, I feel like quitting to have some fun in the studio. But this year is the start of new things. I will no longer avoid making a website. I will take the photography class and invest time on the screen sucker printing a blue light glare into my eyeballs to make myself more modern and known to the rest of the world. I will let go of my paper preference, which never deletes my work and embrace the fickle feend of Microsoft Word. I will learn to be a better operator of today's devices and platforms. I will complain less, and not overstate too much: it would be more comfortable to do the old fashioned physical version of today's tech-y world long-winded options. I will learn to embrace becoming a modern artist, which means I will surrender to the will of the twenty-first-century internet wisp and its demands on my soul to stay updated, downloaded and screen savy.
Step one, take writing for professionals class. First Assignment: Create a blog and become more one with the tech world. Check!
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