feral artists -- free-range art

Today we consider ‘free-range’ art. No, not the kind that pecks a nice green lawn during the day, cozy in a coop at night. We mean ‘free-range’ -- sleeping in woodpiles, running from the foxes, not always looking your best. There are artists over at the university on salary and talented entrepreneurs who find a genre and make art for an established market, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but verily they’re doing ok.

Our concern is for the waitress, mechanic, delivery driver who aspires to one day give up the day job, and to that end spends evenings and weekends in any studio they can afford -- above a garage is sometimes available. Maybe their dream is to ‘break-through,’ suddenly blaze incandescent with glamour and limos, but most just want to paint full-time, someday. Their first goal is paying-the-bills self-sufficiency, and too much thinking about what comes after just turns out counter-productive.

Something interesting happens in a vacuum. Without the attention of the local credentialed critic, tactfully and resolutely ‘not accepted’ in area competitions, and after having cast uncounted grant applications into a black hole, the truly independent artist experiences a kind of lightness. There’s no venal agent demanding more of that stuff like you were doing before, no fawning hangers on expecting you to buy lunch, fancy openings not so often. Slightly eccentric in the eyes of neighbors might turn out to be the only recognition the independent artist receives, how else to explain making art that’s not selling?

With no outside influences, inside a bubble of indifference, the independent artist feels free to follow personal inclinations to make the best art they can. Talent, experience, and vision combine a lot of different ways, and the output of independent studios just about anywhere is more varied and more interesting than all afternoon in SoHo. Now admittedly, without a little cracked-corn occasionally, people give up and move on to something more practical, and those who persist may never reach the potential they envisioned, but if neighbors were to suddenly notice, a crew of field-wise, self-motivated artists would flock home to roost.