(Speaking of…) Next person who gets all I DO WHAT I WANT AND I DO WHAT I LIKE FUCK EVERYONE ELSE with me about making music is getting bopped on the noggin with this quote. IT'S NOT A CRIME TO HAVE MOTIVATION OUTSIDE YOUR OWN SELF-GRATIFICATION. (ahem, aka musical masturbation)

(emphasis added by me)

“If art is about self, the widely accepted corollary is that making art is about self-expression. And it is — but that is not necessarily all it is. It may only be a passing feature of our times that validating the sense of who-you-are is held up as the major source of the need to make art. What gets lost in that interpretation is an older sense that art is something you do out in the world, or something you do about the world, or even something you do for the world. The need to make art may not stem solely from the need to express who you are, but from a need to complete a relationship with something outside yourself. As a maker of art you are custodian of issues larger than self.

Some people who make art are driven by inspiration, others by provocation, still others by desperation. Artmaking grants access to worlds that may be dangerous, sacred, forbidden, seductive, or all of the above. It grants access to worlds you may otherwise never fully engage. It may in fact be the engagement — not the art — that you seek. The difference is that making art allows, indeed guarantees, that you declare yourself. Art is contact, and your work necessarily reveals the nature of that contact. In making art you declare what is important.”
— Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

Is the all-encompassing quest to become a self-sustaining artist worth the sacrifices it often requires? Is art enough?

At the end of the month, we'll wrestle with these questions alongside author and UNC-CH professor of creative nonfiction Stephanie Elizondo Griest, who will be sharing her latest book "Art Above Everything: One Woman's Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life."

Stephanie, whose books and journalistic writings have taken many awards, is a globetrotting author/activist originally from South Texas. In "Art Above Everything," she draws on interviews with over a hundred artists to offer a a sweeping exploration of the sacrifices women make to pursue their work across borders, disciplines, and decades.

Learn more and find copies of the book on our website at https://firestorm.coop/events/3410-art-above-everything.html

#WomenArtists #ProfessionalArtists #TheCreativeLife #ArtistsAroundTheWorld #FeministBookstore #AvlArt #ArtAboveEverything #FirestormCoop (- L)