The Origin of Insanity

We all know that our culture is not right.  I mean “not right”, like ill, the kind of not right you feel when someone laughs too quickly, then looks around and notices that others are upset. It’s that kind of empty feeling that you get when you listen to a passionate argument about a world view, then realize that the scripts to these arguments have already been written, predigested, by that strange hybrid of entertainment and journalism. (What do we call this magic combination?  Journalment?  Enterporting?) There has been quite a bit of talk this last week about the source of our mental instability.  It is good that we are nervous about this.  When you are sick in America, things do not go well for you.  And there is this sense that we all own some part of this mental illness.  As we all know, blaming others, or trying to deflect blame, or making you tube videos about blame is a sure sign of guilt. 

For me, it is helpful to start with some clarifying terms.  Albert Einstein might still hold the gold standard for diagnosing insanity, but when I try to think about someone repeatedly approaching a problem with the same failed perspective, my warped brain imagines cartoon characters, like Wile E Coyote.  This is the problem with iconic quotes.  They may be full of wisdom, but you may not personalize them.  My own definition for mental illness surely would include something about not allowing for new possibilities to exist, and something about balancing the critical brain with the creative brain. This reminds me of a university lecture I attended a few years ago, delivered by the art critic and painter Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe. He was talking about why he felt the need to both write about art and make paintings, and he explained that, from his perspective, criticism was the act of removing things from the world and making art was the act of bringing new things into the world.  He felt the need to balance one with the other, knowing that both the critique and the creation had to answer to each other. When they do, a positive momentum builds.  This idea, I think, is relevant as we reflect on the rhetoric that may be ailing us. We can be fooled, with the magic alchemy of Enterporting (with high definition polish, ever expanding formats, up-to-the-minute nowness), into thinking that something new is being produced- new ideas, new movements, new energies and new solutions (think about Wile E Coyote’s Acme products catalogue that always seemed so promising, while keeping him squarely focused on the same problems). But when was the last time that a biased rant made you feel like the world was a bigger place, full of possibilities?  Doesn't limiting our perspective always lead to us falling off the cliff again?

Please visit my artwork at kevinpkellyart.artspan.com

Renting Space in Painting

Growing up as a mostly poor kid has some advantages.  With eight kids, my family could not keep up with the latest fashion trends, going for the Sears store brand shoes instead of the Nike's.  We were always two or three video game systems behind the current higher resolution system. My parents drove cars that were old, not so old they were cool but more like "what kind of car is that?" kind of old.  Okay, so we were that peculiar kind of American poor where we still had clothes, video games, and cars.  But still, we were continually forced to consider how we could fix up what was broken (like the time my dad used a metal baking pan to replace the housing around our damaged AMC Gremlin's headlight- genius!), fake our way into being stylish (like sharing the few cool outfits that  my older brother and I had between us when we started attending separate schools, so nobody would notice), and in general to just make do with what we had.  I remember countless times getting home from school to find that our living room had been completely reconfigured.  This was always my mom's doing.  Something about living with nine other people always lead her to daydream about a larger, smarter, and more custom built house, one with coordinating, contemporary furnishings.  What we had were cramped "eclectic" rooms furnished with the odd pieces that had been salvaged from the neighbors curb or hauled from a garage sale.  My mom did battle with this state of function over form by constantly reconfiguring the layout of a room, believing that a smart, diagonal interaction between the 1960's hardwood futon couch with recovered blue denim cushions and the 1970's grass green prototype Lazyboy recliner would distract from the large wooden TV (with good speakers) that served as the TV stand.  Or maybe the hunter green Naugahyde-upholstered wooden chest could serve multiple functions in front of the fireplace: accentuate the rust-red carpet, store extra blankets, make another sitting surface, and block sight of the non-usable fireplace.  At the time, we just humored my mom every time she solemnly moved the brass floor lamp to the other side of the living room, but I have grown to appreciate this environment where elements stay in flux and where faith in the saving grace of good design  thrives, despite the tragic circumstances in which it must operate. 

Fast forward from the early nineties to 2007.  I was trying to finish my MFA in painting, even though I had only managed to create a very large mountain of crap in two years of grad school, and I couldn't seem to pull my thoughts together into a coherent and unified artist statement.  Up to this point, I had managed to teach art in a low-income high school for 6 years, but I had taken far more education classes as an undergrad than actual art classes.  I mean, at one point in grad school I had to teach myself how to stretch a canvas, because I had been wrapped up in the history and philosophy of education instead of  foundations in acrylics and oils in my first go round of college.  I was feeling pretty defeated, feeling like an outsider to the world of painting, feeling like I couldn't keep up or fit in with my peers. But then I realized that this was very familiar territory.  It was then that I stopped talking about making paintings in my artist statement, and started using the phrase "using the space of painting."  I knew that I was never going to be a technical aficionado with paint, and that I was never going to discover the next "ism" or movement.  Instead I was going to be a renter in the space of painting, and move in with all of my second-hand, uncoordinated furnishings.  I would fake style. I would survive by being open to new configurations, and not committing to a fixed plan.

This has played out pretty well.  And, as the last few years have taught us about finding a home, ownership is not always superior to renting space.

Please visit my work at kevinpkellyart.artspan.com