Saturday, February 16, 2013

These words...

So I have been thoroughly engrossed in this book called
Baltimore '68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City.
Its a book by Elizabeth Nix. I am about halfway through the book and as I have been reading it, I have been pulling words out of it. The words are combinations of names, ideals, class, and race. I have jotted them down a couple of times but I have yet to decide exactly what it all means to me. I have been trying to see the connection with it and my current body of work. I know in the past my work has been heavily influenced by race but the last few years for me, my work has tended to go slightly left of race.

Even before I started reading this book I had started to investigate when I had the switch over...when did I go away from mainly talking about race and class in my work to creating art that was more, how can I say it...more or less tamer than what I was doing the first part of this century. What changed my voice? I shouldn't say change...what caused me to hush my tone? Could it have been me feeling like it was something I needed to do so I wouldn't constantly get stuck or have to deal with the lull between pieces. Because for awhile there it felt like constantly focusing on race to me would come off like I'm spewing propaganda. And that's a message I never want my work to convey. Hopefully soon I'll have a better understanding of what this all means for me in the "now." Until then...

-Namaste

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