My most profound art experience(s)

I was awake for a while in the night one night last week and for some reason my mind was fixed on pondering what my most profound art experience has been. And I’ve been noodling on that for a few days now. What’s my criteria for this experience? Memorability? Transcendence? Fulfillment of a bucket list dream?

A few museum memories

There’s the time I sat in the growing twilight inside a sculpture at Crystal Bridges. I was enchanted by the clouds as they slid across the sky through the porthole encircled by gently changing light. The Way of Color by James Turrell remains a moment outside of time, captured by an anniversary trip with my spouse where we were free of young children for a few days.

There’s the time that I got to see a Cy Twombly after having written about him for this blog. I cried while appreciating the piece while at the same time embracing the artist’s deep desire for obscurity.

When I was in college I got to go on an overnight trip to see the Barnes Collection in far off Dallas/Ft. Worth and I remember thinking how the Renoir girls really were as luminous as all the art history books claimed. And it’s not something you can fully understand until you see them in person.

There’s the time I stood in the Rothko Room in the Phillips Collection with the rain patterning gently outside. I cried from sheer overwhelming emotion just as Mark always wanted people to do. And unexpectedly at the Phillips Collection encountering the Laib Wax Room for the first time. Thinking about this installation has the ability to instantly conjure the smell of beeswax. And I think about it fairly regularly. I close my eyes and imaging standing in the small wax room. I remember feeling cocooned in sight and lack of sound, overwhelmed by the complex smell of hundreds of thousands of bee’s work.

My partner surprised me with a trip to Chicago to see Van Gogh’s three versions of the Bedroom paintings in April 2016. I was wildly annoyed at the crowd being in my space with my personal favorite and the two sister paintings. And then I wanted to be overwhelmed with emotion at getting to see the three together but instead I felt rushed and annoyed. I have much better memories of standing in front of the Art Institute of Chicago’s version the few times I’ve been there. I’ve cried in front of that painting more than once.

There’s standing in the desert and seeing the landscapes that Georgia O’Keeffe painted. Breathing in the dry air she loved and feeling the same kinship to the desolate places that she did. Drawing on her grit and determination to be an artist in my own right. Interestingly what has stuck with me since that trip was seeing the places she went and painted and not her work in the museum in Santa Fe. I knew immediately why she loved it out there.

A friend had suggested to me that my work reminded her of Mark Bradford’s work and so I started studying him. I fell in love with his use of paper and have felt a special connection to him through our shared love of paper. When I got to see Pickett’s Charge at the Hirshhorn, it was a profound experience of needing to touch a work of art and not being able to. I break out in chill bumps when I look at images of this work to this day because his interpretation of this historical event is exactly why we need artists in this world.

What does it all mean?

But what do these experiences mean for me? And how do they inform my own work? Is this just a collection of memorable moments that I’ve just spun out bragging about the places I’ve been and the museums I’ve visited?

I think there are hints of what they mean everywhere in these stories. There’s the connection to all of these artists. The feeling that I’m not alone in this seeking. There’s the connection to the work itself because it was so emotionally or sensorially moving for me. Or because of some connection with the artists’ lives and stories.

It is our shared humanity. Imagining our breath as we all do our work. Imagining how I feel being in the zone and knowing that these artists also felt that flow state. How sometimes when you come out of it you realize you’ve made something that is so much bigger than you ever thought possible. That the work is OF you but somehow not entirely FROM you.

Sometimes it’s being amazed at someone else’s thinking process. What possesses someone to think “Imma make a ROOM outta beeswax for people to stand it!” And then you know, just figuring out how to make it and installing it in a museum. And then other times it’s a longer-standing love of the artist’s work: Van Gogh’s bedrooms and Rothko’s color fields. Or identifying deeply with the artist’s need to create and going to such lengths to do it like O’Keeffe and Twombly.

I take all of these artists with me into my own work sometimes consciously, mostly unconsciously. The emotion of it. The problem solving. The beauty of it. May the work of my hands be a pleasing offering. May my work be a fulfilling journey. May someone connect with my work and carry it with them as I do these works.

Side note on museums

I think many people feel like they have to be well educated to go to art museums. You very much do NOT have to have any kind of degree to enjoy museums. Museums are places of learning. Curiosity is the call of the museum. If I was smart enough to already know all about it, why would I go? I’ve had two semesters of art history with my art degree and that doesn’t even scratch the surface of what there is to see and learn from even a small museum. Don’t think you have to be a smarty smartpants to go. Go because you like looking at beautiful things and learning something new. And anyone who tells you differently is being an elitist snob and probably doesn’t tip waiters either. Who needs those guys?

What about you? Tell me your memorable interactions with art. Catch up with me on socials, email me, or go old school and leave a comment on this post to be immortalized for all of time.

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