Artistic Musings

The Harvey Edwards print is fantastic, it really does epitomize how we as dancers treat ourselves as art. I just finished a reflection for a class, and I really thought that it would be best shared here. It may lead some insight as to why I have been an asshole to some, cranky to others, or flat out unavailable to many as of late. I am strung thin, I don't know what to say, but I think these words speak it best. My biggest fear is that I won't live up to these goals.

Artists are going to be tempted to take the easy way out, or to take the path more traveled in the creation of their work. Twyla Tharp reminds the dancer that the process is important, and that learning through failure is a critical step in the juncture of art creation (An ‘A’ in Failure). The growth that we must extrude from this process will lead us to a formation of truth. The Theologian McCormick states, “the second fact of our human condition is accurately described as a lack of truth,” (4) so it would be understood that as humans we are ignorant of real Truth. As an artist I must strive to distill a moment of honest truth in our work. It is through action that the artist can come to this moment, through acts of freedom we develop a well-formed conscience (McCormick, 7) as well, we are reminded that a well-formed mind will produce well-formed art. Through meditation, prayer, community, and self circumspection I can come to further knowing myself and the art that I will produce in my lifetime, it seems hardly fair that I make work when I am so confused and so ignorant of the ways in which my own mind and processes work. I have to trust that what I do, I do while maintaining my artistic corps. Because “what we do well affects us: if it is done well it betters us, if done poorly it worsens us” (Keenan, 12). The danger is present that I may harm myself in a reckless act of artistic abandon critically jeopardizing my artistic integrity. Ultimately an artist should strive to “produce work that expresses themselves to a point where their work becomes a unique disclosure of their own being, of what they are and how they are what they are” (Wojtyla, 2). In reaching this moment the artist has come into fruition and they have arrived at Truth.