Artsy Fartsy (Part Two)

Yesterday while the 14 year old spawn was at a marching band competition, Angry Joyce and I took the 9 year old male spawn to a museum down the road aways. One of the exhibits was a traveling gallery from the Smithsonian. This exhibit was ' Driving Force' , which featured the grand prize winner and 14 finalists from a competition featuring young artists between the ages of 18 to 24 with disabilities. The winning entry was a breathtaking portrait of a man in a wheelchair painted by Sunny Taylor. Due to a birth defect she was forced to learn to paint holding the paint brush in her mouth and her feet and rig devices to paint her large canvases. The picture in the link does not give justice to the portrait in it's 6' x 5' dimensions. It definantly was awe inspiring to all that were viewing it on this day.

I am certainly not an art critic but all the artwork seemed aptly judged. The artists delved into their feelings of their disabilities but their work was not defined by their disabilities. Chris Hodge, the artist who created the work to the left in lipstick, perfectly summed up my feelings on art. He stated,"The average guy thinks he knows what art is. The fairly wise man realizes he doesn't. The very wise man isn't even sure if he's actually here, so an art definition might just have to wait." I can relate to Chris Hodge for not only does his view of art and mine coincide but also for the fact that he has Aspberger's syndrome. The 9 year old spawn of Angry Joyce and I was diagnosed with Aspberger's syndrome when he was five. For more info on the artists and the competition and the program sponsoring this event, you can go to www.vsarts.org .

When driving home, I realized that art is all around us. When stopping at a convenience store to gas up, get drinks, and use the restroom, I noticed a spectacular piece of running prose while washing my hands. Written on the condom machine by a true poet were the words 'Fuck Bag', beside it another astute thinker had wrote ' Before writing on this or any other machine, think of what Jesus would think', and to finish the thoughts another wrote beside this 'Vandals for Christ'. Yes art is all around us.