A Primer on Why Art Now (for the people in the back)
Close up of a youth photography exhibition in Perry, Iowa, 2016. Every fifth-grader in Perry was given a disposable camera to document what they loved about their community. The photos were printed and installed in a downtown storefront for the 2016 Art on the Prairie, a yearly arts festival in Perry.
One of the most challenging and invigorating things I’ve had to do over the past few years as a community arts specialist for ISU Extension and Outreach is to underscore, time and again, just how art adds to our communities, to remind (and sometimes convince) people That Art Is Vital. That it is more than main street planters and historical murals and public sculpture exhibitions and music festivals. Yes to all of these. And more than that.
Art is small-p political.
It always has been. Thank God for that. And by political, I mean Merriam Webster’s definition. Art is “the total complex of relations between people living in society.”
Artists and art-experiencers know this intuitively. This is for the people in the back.
I credit three wise artists and thinkers that I very much admire with the following perspectives. They put to words the feelings that I have had for decades, and way more eloquently than I ever could.
1. Art as pleasure.
I just finished adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good over the weekend. The way amb describes how pleasure-seeking as vital to supporting and strengthening social justice movements is profound, period. Pleasure as political. Of course, I thought of art as pleasure. Art as pleasure is not a new concept. But to some of us, pleasure as political may be. Particularly in our time of busy-ness as status.
brown writes, “I would dismiss myself, try to dedicate myself to more “serious” things. And then pleasure would save my day or my week or my life. Pleasure reminds us to enjoy being alive and on purpose. Again and again I have realized that our misery only serves those who wish to control us, to have our existence be in service to their own. Again and again I have had to surrender to the truth and freedom of pleasure.
True pleasure- joy, happiness, and satisfaction –has been the force that helps move us beyond the constant struggle, that helps us live and generate futures beyond this dystopic present, futures worthy of our miraculous lives.
Pleasures- embodied, connected pleasure- is one of the ways we know when we are free. That we are always free. That we always have the power to co-create the world. Pleasure helps us more through the times that are unfair, through grief and loneliness, through the terror of genocide, or days when the demands are just overwhelming. Pleasure heals the places where our hearts and spirit get wounded. Pleasure reminds us that even in the dark, we are alive. Pleasure is a medicine for the suffering that is absolutely promised in life.”
2. Art as a community-building process.
According to the Iowa Small Towns Project, local civic engagement ranks as one of the highest indicators of quality of life in Iowa communities (and I bet my life that we are not an anomaly here in Iowa). When residents get involved on a local level, their sense of belonging and empowerment increases. When folks feel like they belong in a community, their quality of life increases exponentially. And they feel more empowered to create real change where they live. In other words, a community can have fancy infrastructure and solid tax incentives and a stellar park system, but if folks don’t feel like they belong there, then game over. Quality of life is low.
News flash: Art (artists, art events, art sites and organizations) can provide creative and empowering opportunities for showing people that they belong in a community. Theatre-maker and community arts developer Patrick Overton states in his book Rebuilding the Front Porch of America:
“Community arts aren’t about art as a sign – a noun, an object. They are about art as symbol, a verb, a process. Our work in community arts is about creating a process that invites individuals to participate and experience the arts on a personal basis. It is, in essence, a paradigm shift from ‘art as product and citizen as patron’ to ‘art as process and citizen as participant.’ It is called community arts development.”
3. Art as processing.
Shit is hard right now. This may be the most understated thing I’ve ever written.
(I’ve been watching horror movies as a way to get my mind right and cope. I honestly thought this particular strategy was an escape, but I just read an article about how horror movie fans are psychologically more resilient during the COVID pandemic. So maybe not.)
Most of us who create, create to process our lives, the world, trauma, pain, joy. It is a form of active thinking and feeling, not of escaping our realities. Akwi Nji, a Cameroonian-American artist creating in poetry, non-fiction, and visual arts, explains this in a way that really resonated with me. Akwi is also the founder and director of The Hook, a Cedar Rapids-based organization that produces “live literature events of spoken word, stories, and poetry that creatively tell a community's stories on stage.”
Akwi writes, “Art is not an escape from, in my world. It’s an invitation *into* expansion. It’s a gateway to understand the why of our worry, the what next of our actions, the I see now of another’s circumstance/culture/voice/life/humanity, the more intimately present of being, the open door into feeling more alive and not numbed.”
As always, I love your insight. What does art provide for you? For your home? For your community?
Perry Youth Photography Installation, Art on the Prairie, Perry, Iowa. 2016.