Last Sunday I was at Pocket Utopia for a blogger meet up hosted by Sharon Butler and Austin Thomas, which was great. It was also great to be able to meet some folks I read a good deal of and to put some faces to names, and maybe make a few new acquaintances, truth be known I’m not as nearly social as I probably should be, so this is something that I saw that would be great for me. You know, I like people and all, but I just don’t do openings the way that I should.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand, it was great to be in a room where even though not everyone agreed about everything, people still had a ton of respect for each other – and that part was amazing. I’ve seen it go the other way more times than I care to admit. The other thing that really got to me was how kind and helpful everyone was to me – I knew absolutely no one, also I know almost nothing about Brooklyn because I’m never there, I live in Washington.
One thing that was not discussed and really I only figured it out after I left, is that Bushwick really reminds me of the east village in the early eighties – in all the best ways. The small spaces that are popping up, call them micro galleries, bedsit galleries or what ever, these are spaces that may be open like a gallery or only on the weekends or only for openings. These spaces are really taking the notion of an arts community and putting the community in front of the art part and this is an exciting prospect. If you have followed this blog when I spoke of the Jerry Saltz conversation at Art Basel Miami Beach, this is exactly what he and by extension I am talking about, and am very excited about.
Back to the blogger meet up – probably the biggest question posed to the group was about, for lack of a better word, “Obama art”. I think the real thought behind the question was really about hope, and of course I read it as artists trying to makes a fast buck, while others thought that we are really discussing the idea of injecting hope into our art and lives. I think we all need to inject some hope into our lives, but i think that the art we make will continue to focused on the thing that we currently think about – I don’t see that changing. I do however think that we are about to have some really great things happen, while at the same time, we will have some large obstacles to overcome.