Play is healing
February 25, 2025
I have just started taking an introductory pottery class. It's genuinely so hard. I have heard throughout my life how difficult using the pottery wheel was, but nothing could have prepared me for the reality of it. My instructor asked everyone what made them decide to take the class. I told a cute story about how I wanted to engage in creativity. This was a lie. An outright lie. I couldn't tell these people that I was about to spend the next six weeks with that I was there out of spite.
My high school art teacher mentioned to another student that my art project was a "waste of clay." Naturally, I felt ashamed. My project didn't turn out how I wanted to begin with and now my worst fears were confirmed. The shame has since turned into a type of rage. How dare he talk down about one student's work? I recently became interested in trying to improve my ability to engage in traditional art mediums and settled on pottery because I needed a weekly reason aside from work to get out of the house.
I have just started taking an introductory pottery class. It's genuinely so hard. I have heard throughout my life how difficult using the pottery wheel was, but nothing could have prepared me for the reality of it. My instructor asked everyone what made them decide to take the class. I told a cute story about how I wanted to engage in creativity. This was a lie. An outright lie. I couldn't tell these people that I was about to spend the next six weeks with that I was there out of spite.
My high school art teacher mentioned to another student that my art project was a "waste of clay." Naturally, I felt ashamed. My project didn't turn out how I wanted to begin with and now my worst fears were confirmed. The shame has since turned into a type of rage. How dare he talk down about one student's work? I recently became interested in trying to improve my ability to engage in traditional art mediums and settled on pottery because I needed a weekly reason aside from work to get out of the house.
Consuming is not doing the work
February 24, 2025
Many people were talking about Kendrick Lamar's performance at the Super Bowl. It's Kendrick. Obviously, it was great. I'd expect nothing less. What intrigued me was not the casual racism or even the Drake of it all. What intrigued me the most was people who felt that he didn't do "enough." His message was not explicit enough. Some people didn't feel he really said anything at all. Media literacy rates aside, I think what these people were really looking for is a feeling of catharsis. They were looking for their frustrations with politics and the current state of the world to be expressed through Kendrick as a "gotcha."
Art has always been extremely important to any social or political movement. I believe it is the job of the artist to spread a message. It is NOT the job of the artist to do the work. You on an individual level need to do the work. You should be contacting your representatives. You should be organizing in your community to improve the issues that you're seeing in it. Consuming art is not activism. Being a cheerleader is not activism. Posting (without action)is not activism. We cannot expect artists to do for us the things we should be doing for ourselves. Art has always been an accompanying piece to activism. It is not the activism itself. There's a lot to be said about celebrity worship, but that's another post in itself. You have more power than you think. Stop giving it away to other people. You can do it. I believe in you.
