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Tuesday, August 5, 2014

The Practicality of Art

Art. To what purpose does it serve? 

You can Google that very Question and receive 169,000,000 results and if a person was to ask another person that very question,
To what purpose does art serve?, there would be more answers than a person might care to count.
Art should cause a person to think, to relax, to feel affirmed, to appreciate beauty, to pause and ponder, to encourage, to appreciate the sheer talent and vision of another. I'm sure you can add your own description of what art does. 
And I would love to hear your thoughts!



With the re-evaluation of Life has come the re-evaluation of my art. To what purpose does my art serve. 
In the beginning, I wanted my art to bring a smile to a face, to make the audience feel like they had met an old friend. I enjoyed creating small folk-artish figures and other tokens of realms unseen by the mortal eye. And while I still want that, I have found myself questioning the actual items I was creating. 



As I clear the clutter, I look at things with a new eye. I have come to realize that so much of what I have made was 'dust collectors'. Items that were fun, that brought a smiles to faces. But they were small bits and bobs that could somehow make themselves at home with the dustbunnies and cobwebs. Was my art collecting dust? Does it sit on a shelf visiting with its neighbor whilst the vestiges of time marched on?



With a more purposeful LIFE, I have felt a need to make more purposeful creations. So, I have begun to delve into something I have always wanted to try. Concrete. My interest began decades ago whilst lusting after garden ornamentation. I gathered books and read.  A few times in those many years, I had tried my hand at some aspect of the craft but without a bit of guidance, I became frustrated and didn't delve much further. 
Until recently. It began last autumn when I made sculpts of leaves for a local decorative concrete guy. This then led me to being taught the art of mold making and the art of decorative concrete work.




My main focus is Faux Bois. Here are two benches which I recently made. My very first two faux bois benches. They were fun. And even though these are a bit primitive, an artist needs to start somewhere.  While the guy I work with has no experience at Faux Bois, he does know his concrete and that is what I need to learn.
Concrete is going to fulfill that need I feel in my art - to be creative but yet functional. I foresee a lot more work in my future.

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