more thoughts on art

Over at The Voodoo Cafe's Blog Ricë Freeman-Zachery has been talking about her trip to California and how the pictures in the LA Art Museum just didn't do it for her

Its interesting timing that she wrote about this now as I've been thinking about the whole "what's art" thing for the past few days

I got a copy of this book for Christmas, and I've been slowly working my way through all 400 quilts, reading the artist statements with each one, examining the descriptions of the materials and the techniques.

Let me say very clearly first that I ADORE this book. It takes you WAAAAAAAYYYY out on the edge of "quilting", and challenges your preconceived notions about just what a "quilt" is.

I must also say, however that there are a number of these quilts that even after reading all the stuff the artist says, I still just don't get it. In fact there are a couple of them that reading what the artist says makes me say even more "HUHH?!"

As someone not having a degree in art, never worked in oils and can't draw a representative picture, I figured it was just that I was not educated enough to understand what was going on.

Guess what -- after reading what Ricë had to say about it and having recently had a conversation with a friend that does have an art degree -- I'm feeling much better about it

I'm thinking that art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder --

so is my work in fabrics and beads art? I think so. Is it beautiful? Yup, or at least some of it is -- some of it also meets the other definitions of art -- it communicates ideas -- and if I'm doing that, I think I'm doing ok