Erin Clarke

So very much time has elapsed since my last entry, though I had been working on something:

“Last edited by Erin Clarke on 27 December, 2011 at 09:48”

Posted a year to the day later.

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Last month I attended three offerings of AGO artist-in-residence Paul Butler’s Post-Post-Graduate Studies series:

‘What is Art?’ – a panel discussion with Ian Carr-Harris, Yvonne Lammerich, Tara Downs. Both Paul Butler and curator Steven Loft, who were scheduled to be on the panel, were unable to be present.

I took notes, though the most resonant bits continue to reverberate in my thoughts without reference to my little Moleskine.

I summarized the heart (or, at least, what thrilled *my* heart and tickled *my* neurons) of the ‘What is art?’ discussion in a FaceBook comment:

“Well, there’s no single answer, of course, but Ian Carr-Harris had a lovely distilled nugget of abstraction that could apply to the various things people think art is: that recognition is key, where recognition is a mode of connection and art is a connective tissue; that art-making is an attempt to record a recognition and art is a reflection of what the artist recognizes.”

Mixed metaphors notwithstanding, that about sums it up.

There were both encouraging and dismaying aspects of ‘Selling Art without Selling Out’ – a presentation by painter John Hartman and art collector Doug Steiner, who had to cancel due to a family emergency. Now I’ll [de|re]fer to my notes…

Look! Permission to be goofy! Not only that, following the awkwardness will bring you closer to your own artistic voice! Jubilation and glee (sarcasm-free, serious-ly)! Then there’s that whole “getting into galleries & museums” thing…

‘Artists are Different’ by Dr. Jeanne Randolph was an engaging, entertaining and rather validating experience…

…about which I meant to say much more a year ago, likely even including another scanned image of my notes. But now, I just want to release this long-abandoned incomplete blog post!