the wave -- telling you so

Another milestone, the two hundredth installment of owning art, a cathartic rant from outside the gate. In olden times with matted hair and tattered cossack, that’s me beseeching passersby to harken to the old news rewritten, but do they hear? Well I’m no Colbert, and folks don’t chant my name, but I’m in it for the ‘delayed squelch,’ a humorous filler from a long-ago magazine. In it some lowly character seems butt of the joke until the last line when he turns it all around and leaves them sputtering, such fun. 

Owning art was intended as prophesy, here conveniently documented by date and issue, and by prophesy we mean seeing in real time what will eventually become common thought. The rise of a new populism and its effect on community and individual awareness means the demise of art as signifier of exclusion and wealth, and in its stead the emergence of an art of accessibility and personal relevance. The squelch won’t come along as a punch line, however, since owning art’s stridency and confrontational advocacy become less radical by the day, finally to be not news.   

Eventually art’s charitable bureaucracy with its styrofoam cup conferences, its funding intrigues, those ethically challenged and totally unrelated distillery sponsored mixers and social events will have to find other grass to mow. Single day painting events like the one scheduled for here this coming saturday, will move more people to an active consideration of art than a year of the more elevated and important 'contemporary' art events the charities present with public money -- ‘art for everyone' they lie.

There’s also an outfit, ‘art connects,’ putting up local art in area businesses, just to be seen, maybe to be sold, quiet testimony to the notion that art made around here can be admired, bought, and taken home. Once art becomes a self-sustaining contributor to the area economy, when local artists are recognized by their work, and as artwork goes up in people’s houses and businesses own the art they display, the city council will probably find other worthy causes for our money. The wave is on its way to be.