Yeah, but is it art?

I have been making art off and on for most of my life—seriously for the past 15 years. It's not how I make a living, nor have I ever attempted to do so. It was strictly a hobby for years, and I have only recently begun to answer the question, "Are you an artist?" with a yes. It's a bit of a leap for me, as I have zero formal training, no pedigree, etc. All I have is wit, raw talent, a sure hand and a style all unto my own. (Plus good taste and a good eye that tell me much of the work that is shown is crap.) One would think that might be enough to be given consideration by a gallery. But one would be wrong.

I don't know much about the gallery world or the business of art—although I have friends who do. Artists and dealers and
artist/dealers whose entire lives are invested in the moving of expensive paintings and prints from one wall to another. They like my work—they have even traded pieces with me or asked me to make pieces for their homes—but they can't help me.

I labor along with countless talented artists and artisans in New Mexico, a state locked in a perpetual dead heat race with Mississippi for the dubious distinction of being the nation's poorest. Only the concentrated wealth of Santa Fe and Los Alamos keep us from winning in a walk. Santa Fe has become a self-styled art Mecca, striving mightily to gain recognition for itself as a legitimate market. One to be mentioned in the same breath as New York, L.A. and Chicago. It's all high end stuff—some great, some not—so there's no room for entry level work that doesn't fit the mold.

When Elaine Horowitz was still alive—before her gallery morphed into the oh so tony LewAllen Gallery—she devoted one room to offbeat, funky pieces priced well below the grander work in the main space. I think she might have hung my work. But there is no more room for such work, commitment to the lesser tier of talent. No, every square inch of wall space must be devoted to wringing the highest amount possible out of the deep pockets of the part-time residents with third and fourth homes here.

So I am stuck in between—work apparently too refined to be considered truly outsider, yet too outside to gain access into the inner circles. A gringo working in the Hispanic genres of tin and papel picado. I submit slides for show entries to no avail, and refer people to my three-year-old web site (http://www.fosterhurley.com/flash.html) that has produced nary a nibble. Fortunately I have achieved considerable success as a writer/producer in the advertising/design arena, and have sold a screenplay to Paramount. I know I have talent and have been professionally validated. But not where it would mean the most.

"They" tell me my work just isn't right, that it doesn't fit into their buyers' profile. Well, I'll be the judge of that.

Boomermania

I, for one, have had it with Boomers.

Not so much them, but what is made of them by the media. The endless fawning over how THEY are changing this and THEY are redefining that. THEY are changing and redefining nothing. MY generation—their big brothers and sisters born before and during WWII in 1940-42—blew the doors off everything for the Boomlets to waltz through. We did the work and they get the credit.

My dander is no doubt enhanced by the mixed feelings I have about noting the first direct deposit of my first social security payment. But I digress. I initiate my column here with the opening passages of my recently completed memoirs.



Excuse me, but I seem to have misplaced my generation. Has anyone seen it? Or heard it? High school class of ’59, speak up! Man, we’re so far below the radar we could have nuked Laputa with Slim Pickins. Marketers, the media and Congress give us no voice at all. Bob Dylan’s reportedly my age—although I have inside info which skews him a tad older—but the Boomers think he speaks for them. Tom Brokaw’s in my generation—just one year older—and all he talks about is his parents’! What the hell’s up with that? Traitors. America would have us believe that no births of cultural significance occurred again until 1946. In their book Generations, William Strauss and Neil Howe call those of us born in and around 1941 part of the Silent generation. Google dismisses us as pre-Boomer. Give me a fucking break. I refuse to be defined by a younger generation whose only manifest superiority is in numbers.

How does one ignore a three-year span that produced Richard Pryor, Terry Gilliam, Jesse Jackson, Sam Waterston, Al Pacino, Harrison Ford, Charlie Rose, Barney Frank, Bruce Lee, Tim McGovern, Peter Benchley, Barbara Boxer, Donna Shalala, Michael Bloomberg, Joe Lieberman, Roger Staubach, Jack Nicklaus, Bobby Knight, Bill Parcells, Muhammad Ali, Chuck Mangione, Ricky Nelson, Paul Simon, Paul Anka, Jimi Hendrix, Plácido Domingo, Ann-Margret, Julie Christie, Barbra Streisand, Steve Wynn, Paul Prudhomme, Delbert McClinton, Aaron Neville, Wilson Pickett, Carole King, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and John Lennon? And only a year later came Mick Jagger, Joe Namath and God only knows whom else. Attention must be paid to such men and women! [Unfortunately, I also have to include John Gotti, Gary Gilmore, Richard Speck, Charles Whitman, Ted Kaczynski, Pete Rose, Brian De Palma, Helen Reddy, Neil Diamond, Martha Stewart, Ken Lay, Trent Lott and Dick Cheney. But hey, no generation’s perfect.]

We were born on the cusp, my pre-war babies and me—betwixt and between the bust and the boom. But the early 40s spawned heroes without anthems…rebels without a cause. A mere fluke of historical timing granted those born four and five years later an opportunity they would co-opt and death-grip as their cause—that would enable them to believe they had truly changed the world. I don’t blame them. If we’d had more than goldfish to swallow and phone booths to cram and panties to raid, we would have grabbed it. But even though we didn’t, the times they were a changing well before Master Zimmerman took notice. There would have been no Chicago or Kent State if there hadn’t been Eisenhower. No, my little flower children, it takes a hell of a lot more cojones to lash out at the enemies you can’t see or touch—breaking through layer upon layer of the generational dronedom of doing what you were told, going into your father’s business, doing your honorable time in the military, going all the way with girls who did it and marrying the ones who didn’t—conquering the unbearably oppressive ennui of the 50s. Any impressionable twit can go out in the street and protest a war a million miles away. I fail to see how it ennobled a generation enjoying the first youth fares to Europe to speak out against immorality and unconscionable government actions only after the first guys to lay their asses on the line—my guys—came home to tell that generation that we were indeed participating in immorality and unconscionable actions.

We didn’t get the glory—in fact, we got the shame. But we made it all possible. We who had stumbled through our Wonder Years—those years when a child attains most of his/her adult height, according to the preposterous Wonder Bread commercials of the 50s—with nothing to unite us save one glorious gift. We who had stayed up late at night to catch the waves—not from Malibu, but from Nashville. Those stratospheric-bounced radio beams from Randy’s Record Shop arrived like visitors from another planet, another world. The doors opened and we had our first close encounter with alien intelligence. Forget Gort and Michael Rennie…behold Little Richard, the original E.T. Receive the holy word made true from the Spiders, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Chuck Berry, Todd Rhodes…The Gospel delivered uncut…the real, the original, the one and only Rock and Roll. Free at last, free at last from the bondage of Patti Paige and the Mills Brothers. Everything that has followed is simplistic, derivative homage. [More or less.]



I won't entertain you with all my radio recollections just now, though they are many and rich. I'm curious to see how all this works…who I'll hear from, if anyone. I hear blogging is great fun and an essential form of communication in the new millennium. Well, dear reader, I'll be the judge of that.