Art is essential to the human experience

Got Art?

By Mollie Fager, 2-13-06

Greetings from Boulder Colorado. This is the beginning of a regular blog from myself about, you guessed it art. Although I'll be waxing on from my own perspective and opinion, I do have the opportunity to be regularly involved in the arts in my daytime job as the director of a community arts center. As is the case for any non-profit director I have the arduous task of raising awareness and money for the cause or charity that I represent. Well-- try defending the need to keep or increase funding for the arts when the local fire department needs a new fire engine or the cutest jumping mouse you've ever seen is endanger of going extinct and its prime habitat just happens to be in your community. It ain't easy.

In my many moments of pondering this dilemma, (often during my morning routine -- it can take 10 minutes to brush my teeth if I'm really in thinking mode) I've arrived at the answer, which is the question that I posed to you in the title of this blog. Got Art? I'm betting that each and every person who reads this humble rambling has art in their lives in some form or fashion on a daily basis. Do you listen to music on the radio every day on your daily commute (I mean how much NPR can one person do?) Or unwind to cool jazz after a hard day at the office? How about that great black and white Ansel Adams print you've got hanging in your living room, the Aspen trees standing like ghost soldiers reminding you of a memory, or sense of place that stays with you for the brief moment that you grab your keys to the car as you head out the door? Maybe you like the literary arts and end your day with a chapter from the latest and greatest selection in Oprah's Book Club. Or it could be that all you do is sing your heart out in the shower. But my point is that whether you are conscious of it or not, you've got art. In fact you couldn't be human without it. Art is our expression of being human. It is our need to take emotion outside of ourselves and tell the story of our humanness. Think about it. What did early humans do after a big event, such as a mammoth hunt? or tragic storm? Someone, somewhere in the caves of France grabbed a burnt piece of charcoal and scratched pictures on a wall. That person, animal skins and all, needed to tell a story, needed to take what he experienced and put it outside of himself for others or only him to see.

I am sometimes told that art is a luxury for the rich and elite and not for the common man or woman. That certainly doesn't fit with my personal experience. I had the opportunity to live in East Africa for a couple of years when I was in my early twenties. I was studying Swahili and basically just experiencing life in a third world country-- a big wake up call for my relatively privileged American upbringing. While I lived there almost every day was spent in song of some sort as my African friends were constantly singing, especially during morning chores to fetch water or cook breakfast. I witnessed amazing village dances filled with primal rhythms that to this day echo in my heart. I watched the painstaking craft of Makonde carvers as they sculpted the hard wood, mahogany-- burnishing it black with simple shoe polish. And I saw a starving, AIDS stricken woman on the street swaying back and forth, humming a mindless tune while her malnourished children drew pictures in the dirt at her feet. Art permeated every aspect of these people's lives. Maybe it was an escape from pain and suffering in the case of the sick woman but it was there and it was necessary.

I would really like to see everyone get more involved in whatever art form excites them. Maybe it's trying something brand new such as sculpture or painting. Maybe you need to stop singing in the shower and join a local choral group or take some voice lessons. There are a courageous few among us who choose to practice art. And those folks, while they run the gamut of healthy normal people to wow they really need therapy, are making the world a better place one poem at a time, one dance at a time, one glorious oil painting at a time. I'm glad they've "Got Art" and that they want to share a piece of their human experience with me.

That's it for my first blog ever. I'd write more but I've got to change my clothes. I've got rehearsal.

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