Recycling, community, sustainability: they begin inside us
all. These three pieces were created for Downsized
(http://artistrun.org) and speak to
our need not to just recycle the tangible in our lives, but the important
intangibles in our communities that most often cost nothing: giving,
sharing, and acknowledging. If
we start there, then there would be few who could view their bureaucratic ability to
cutback the funding to the arts with anything but what it is – an open,
gnawing, gash in the ability of this society to maintain its physical and
emotional well-being.
"Allow Art
In"
8 x 8" mixed media on canvas
The
process of creating these pieces became organic.
I chose not to think about it and not to decide ahead of time what
I was making or why I was making it. I
let the concept of downsized and lack of funding to the arts be front and
centre and then just made art. This
is not my usual manner of creating work.
I used found materials, objects, paint… things that did not cost
anything or much of anything. What
I discovered was that I created a mess: a disconnected jumble of colours
and things and ideas. It was
not coherent. It didn’t fit
together. It didn’t make
sense and I nearly threw out all three canvases.
In fact, I bought three more and was going to try another way of
approaching the issue of sustainability, consumerism, and the drastic cuts
to funding in the arts. And
then, I stepped back.
"Invest In
Yourself A Lot"
8 x 8" mixed media on canvas
When
I took a second look at my canvases I realized that, in fact, what I had
produced is consistent with what happens when we cut 92% of the funding
away from the arts: the art
community becomes fractured and desperate while all compete for whatever
small funding might still exist and morale drops as we try to make due with
materials that are not quite right, don’t quite work, and are not quite
what we need to make our message clear.
Programs and theatre companies disappear.
Artists leave town. Galleries
shut down or must downsize their yearly number of exhibitions.
The only thing that ultimately held my three paintings together was
the act of tinting the entire canvases with black paint and glossing over
it all with varnish. A simple
cover-up. A
cover-up not dissimilar to the spin BC's Ministers have attempted to
assign to community outrage around the cuts and then the censorship
they have imposed on granting any funds that remain.
"Free Me
From"
8 x 8" mixed media on canvas
Allowing
art in: allowing ourselves as a society to recognize how essential it is
to the sustainability of our own communities, however, large or small or
how connected they are to the larger cultural community.
That is the starting place – just letting art in.
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Progression Photos:
 all canvases began
with a magenta pink background
Invest In Yourself A Lot
 
 
Allow Art In
 
 
Free Me From
 
Bernadine Fox in studio - photo by Valerie Arntzen
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©2010 BernadineFox.ca
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