More on the Show

Its funny how much I need the approval of other artists. I was so excited all summer about entering the Fiber Artists of San Antonio (FASA) Annual Show.

I worked at my pieces with an incredible intensity. I learned new techniques and spent a, ahem, well, whopping load of cash on the materials. I found that it is hard to make art without the right materials and they cost money, serious money. I've had to admit that I will never have the resources to be more than a dilettante.

As I worked, I was so very sure that I would be chosen for the Show. I even imagined winning a prize. This was the best art I had ever done. And then I recieved that dreaded phone call..."we regret...". My friend - whose things were also not chosen - saved me the agony of picking up my rejected pieces. I was too humiliated to even attend the opening reception.

So what do you do with reject art? The smaller pieces went back on the wall. But the big piece, the expensive piece, still sits on a table in the hall. I have no room to store it. Shall I dismantle it and box it up with other large rejects? Should I just throw it away? Should I leave it behind me or re-work it into a "better" piece? I can see how I'd change it now. But should I?

It would seem that I have less a passion for art than a hunger for approval and admiration.

Lost and Found

The Show came and went and my pieces were not selected. My intellect can accept that this was one person judging on one particular day. But my inner artist was wounded. I reject myself so much that having an unknown judge reject my work feels like a cruel affirmation of some sort. Does this mean I am not mature enough to be showing my work? And yet I am hungry for admiration, for confirmation that I AM an artist; and I am competitive – I want to be “better than” whatever.

For six weeks I’ve done no art. I felt lost. I worried that I was not an artist at all – just a collector of art supplies. I’ve sat at my worktable and played around, reorganized, put things in rows and drawers. And I’ve journaled. Finally I picked up an unfinished altered book that I started for an Artist’s Way exercise. It is tiny – just 2.5X3 inches. My artist voice felt small and this small thing was what I needed to find myself again.





So here it is…”Songs to Aging Children”. I’ve used the text from the Joni Mitchell song because text IS important. Maybe what I’m doing is illustration – but that is art too.