Visual Art must be seen to be critiqued

I never went to Art School. But that never stopped me from hanging out with the art students and professors at Augie, heck, I have even been restoring former art professor, Carl Grupp’s old bike. Let’s just say when I am finished, the bike will be very ‘Carl’.

One thing the students would stress about, and after it was over, bitch about for days is when they would critique each other’s work in the classroom studio. If you are not an artist you would NOT understand this learning process, and since I never went to art school, I am not sure I fully understand it, but I will describe it briefly, IT IS EMOTIONAL, STRESSFUL, HUMBLING but most importantly NECESSARY to help you grow and prosper as an artist.

Basically students go around the room and tell their thoughts on the weaknesses and strengths of your work.

An art professor told me once, “The critique process is integral to learning how to be a well rounded visual artist. How do you improve if everyone is constantly telling you what you do is fantastic?”

Exactly.

I will re-iterate, I have NO DOUBT in my mind the visual artists who prepared the first mural design for the Bunker Ramp were CENSORED by the Mayor based on institutional racism that exists in this community towards Native Americans, there is no ands or ifs about it. But where it takes a strange turn is the artists that were rejected waited until a 2nd mural was painted on the building before really telling us the entire story, and worst of all they still won’t show us the image, which is the real story here.

As I said above, it is hard to CRITIQUE an image without seeing it. So while I will defend the original mural artists and the way they were poorly treated and CENSORED by the mayor, it’s hard for us to go to bat for you when you won’t show us the design. It’s visual art after all

Trust me, I would prefer never to blog about this issue ever again, but more crumbs come out every day;

I have been really distressed about the one-sided debate online about the mural on the parking ramp. Social media becomes toxic when one side puts out information and everyone gets sucked into debating something that isn’t the entire issue. Thank you to Argus Leader Media for providing the artists who were rejected an opportunity to say a couple of sentences of their point of view. From my perspective, which is informed by reading one side on FB and conversing and listening to the others who are directly involved, this process was wholly inequitable. 100%. One person decided what would be on that garage.

If we truly want to be anti-racist, inclusive, diverse, progressive people and communities – we have to actually know what we are fighting. When there is an inequitable process can you see that it could be racist, exclusive, and privileged?

Even well-intentioned people who have done good things in the community still choose to participate in systems of oppression. This is why these systems still exist. And it can be really easy to gaslight the issue and completely ignore the voices impacted by sustained systems of oppression. We all know that our systems are based on these inequities, but we are so oblivious when we are presented with it and fall into its trap because it involves “good people we know” . This is exactly how we perpetuate the inequitable systems we say we are trying to dismantle.

This mural has triggered intense emotions from a lot of people. And the ultimate question for me is what is the controversy behind the art that was proposed and rejected by one decision maker, rejected not only the art, the artists but the entire process which was instituted to create equity? The artists say they have no idea because the mayor did not give them a reason and didn’t return their or the Argus’ call, but the funder for the current mural clearly posted that he saw the art and he also saw what the mayor said that “it looked like a 50′ homeless Native American laying on the ground…”

And therein lies the controversy, the inequity, the racism, the regression, the privilege and the enforcement of a perpetual system that seems to be insurmountable because the people I thought were in this movement didn’t do better. When you take part in the system and benefit from it over and over and over and over that is systemic oppression YOU perpetuate, it is privilege you benefit from, at the expense of those without access and privilege. Nothing else. Nothing more.

“One person has the power to define the arts culture in a major part of Sioux Falls,” the artists wrote.

Taneeza nails it. It’s NOT just about the mural artists, who as I understand consist of at least one artist that is member of the tribe. (Hey Paul, it is OK for Native Americans to paint images of Native Americans). Basically if you continue to allow the mayor to participate in questionable closed government procedures, you are also a part of the problem. This is bigger then some shirtless dude dreaming about butterflies, rainbows and buffalos, it’s about a procedural (authoritative) process that this mayor engages in, and it must stop TODAY! That could start if you would show us the image! You can’t complain about a closed process when you yourself are partaking in that closed process.

But where it gets interesting is how a handful of rich donors think since they have the money they get to control that process;

I saw this occur the other night at the planning commission when a gentleman who owns a very successful national financial firm wants to tear down his self admitted dumpy house he has done very little maintenance to so he can expand his parking lot. He went on to say TWICE that he bought up all the housing around his property (4 lots) so he could CONTROL THE NEIGHBORHOOD and only ONE commissioner voted against the rezone.

But where I take issue is MP’s statement about the jurying process;

Art by committee doesn’t work.

Not sure I would take art subjectivity advice from a guy who owned a lime green Lambo. It is also clear that Mr. Paulson either doesn’t understand the jurying process or just chooses to ignore it because he can buy whatever he wants to, you know like a lime green Lambo.

But in a modern society we have a well established process that works very well.

Years ago when Sculpture Walk started the jurying process it was closed to the public, and after I needled them for several years about this closed process they changed it to an open, public, jurying process, and guess what happened after they made that change? The program grew by leaps and bounds and the art has gotten much better and diverse.

The process works even if you trying to decide between a hot pink Lambo or a lime green one

WE HAVE ALL THE ELEMENTS OF A HOT MESS; CENSORSHIP, INSTITUTIONAL RACISM, SUPPOSED CONTROVERSIAL ART, AUTHORITARIANISM, ETC., what we don’t have is an actual piece we can see and critique and make a judgement on, but whatever, I heard the image was FANTASTIC!