The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling!

Enjoy public scrutiny? Hard work for little or no pay? Willing to sacrifice your time, money and dignity? If you answered yes to all these question you can join an elite team comprised of just about anyone who can afford the supplies. That’s right, you to can be an artist (can’t afford supplies? be a conceptual artist – then all you’ll need is your imagination).

In my experience, nothing provokes eye-rolling or makes a usually well mannered person utter a contemptuous “mmm” whilst waving their little finger in the air, more than telling someone “I’m an artist.” I really do try to avoid using the term “artist;” it can sound a little pretentious and does invoke the image of a fancy man wearing a striped shirt and beret, sipping wine and pontificating how “no one gets me.” That’s not me – I prefer beer and don’t even own a beret (not yet).

As of late there’s been a call for artists, and advocates of the arts, to “get more involved” and “support the art scene” from various groups and self professed arts leaders. Ignited by the closing of yet another art gallery: Paperboat (the latest of over 30 galleries that have come and gone since 1999) and the uproars surrounding a couple public art projects (Lincoln Park and the Zweig project).

Since I’ve been in Milwaukee, and involved in the art scene, for a little over a decade, there’s always something: Blue Shirts, Bronz Fonzies, Beasties, contempt for the Di Suervo Sunburst, etc., and not only is it artists versus public consensus, it’s artists versus artists, gallery versus gallery, and Calatrava versus Godzilla. What will come from the latest debacles? Probably nothing.

After this public furor settles down, and the smoke clears, the fine folks in the Milwaukee art scene will get back to normal; complaining, finger pointing, and calling each other names – in private.