Event Review - What Ever Happened To Passion

Passion

Raven Mrozek

I recently attended an artist lecture given by two artists out of New York. I will say that If I have learned anything from this lecture, I have learned how not to give a presentation, especially about my own artwork. 

While the first artist's style of painting wasn't necessarily a style I particularly spend time viewing, I did]  somewhat connect to the paintings she  and their descriptions on feeling stuck in a space due to a traumatic event. I respected this  and understood that for her, she was expressing being stuck in an interior space while I connected in being stuck in a mental space. The second "painter" I struggled with most. I put painter in quotations because I felt as though he didn't defend his style of work which was one issue I had with the lecture given. I feel that when you are working in art, defend what you do and be able to explain your choices in a logical sense. He called himself a painter when presenting some of his more recent works. He says paintings and I say paper cut outs, collage, and sculpture. I struggled wrapping my head around the idea that the works he presented were paintings, and I was waiting for an explanation on his process so I could try and understand why he called him self over and over again, a painter. While he spent so much time calling himself a painter and convincing us of his work, when asked a question at the end of his lecture on his work, he told the audience that he "would not call himself a painter."

While I was mildly confused by both painters, the one thing that bothered me most was the complete lack of passion for ones work. The first artist's lecture sounded like she was rushing through a script and breezed over her work, making me feel like I needed her to convince me she loved her work. Granted this is how I felt during the lecture, she did surprise me during her unscripted responses to questions asked by students. There she dug into her work and presented the passion in it, which I appreciated, and just blamed the rushed lecture on nerves. 

The second artist was another story. There was a complete disconnect with him and the audience. He spent the entire time staring at his computer, forgetting what the titles of his work even were then blowing them off, and trying to convince us who he was. Knowing how the first artist operated I gave him the benefit of the doubt which backfired. The entire time students were asking questions he was sitting back in the corner away from them and not even looking at or hardly acknowledging them. When a student addressed him then he would stand up and say "sorry what did you ask me?" He would then respond with maybe a couple sentence answer, but the majority being two words.

I don't mean to sound harsh, because both artists works were interesting in a wonderful way, but I learned exactly what not to do when discussing my work. Art is a tangible expression of human thought process which deserves passion to make it relatable, and if not relatable then thought provoking or powerful even if it is in the most subtle of way.