The Joys and Fears of Showing Your Art

Photo Elizabeth Gordon of my Assemblage "Home"

I don't care whether it is Monet or Rembrandt or Picasso or Rauschenberg or Da Vinci or Van Gogh when you show your work you are filled with fears and doubts.  Even the greatest artist or the largest ego has to reckon with the praise and criticism of sharing ones work with others. 

You are sharing the most intimate vulnerable part of yourself when you share your art. It is your creation, your child, your being that is being tossed out to adorning public or to the wolves....or so it seems.  I  remember once an 

artist saying they would rather 

Science vials with cocoon, leaf bug, and cicada 

receive an A or an F in art class and nothing in between.  An A would show success and an F would show an extreme reaction which is what artist want one way or another, but to be ignored, well that would be the worst!

There is a great joy walking into a gallery or show and seeing ones work displayed surrounded by other work.  It is creativity come alive.  So many thoughts artists have, so many ideas that may or may not come to fruition, but those that do become a physical reality in the world. In essence they are born.  

detail with statue of Liberty transfer, home lettering, and Turkish beads

In earlier post I took you through the creation of this assemblage called Home. That was the theme of the Morean Art Center Show this year.  The actual title is Home in many languages.  I talked to you about my thought processes as an artist and decision making along the way.  Every artist works differently, some intuitively like myself, and others that plan every move, cut and stroke.  But we all start the same, with an idea that is vague and begins to take shape and form in our minds.  I think it is the same for writers and musicians and actors and all creators.  The idea is the seed and must germinate in a form.  We, the artist, are the conduit that brings the form alive.  

Assemblage by Elizabeth Gordon "Home"

Assemblage by Elizabeth Gordon "Home"

porcelain glove mold hand, rusted disk and metal ribbon

Hornets nest, letter of home in different languages and rusted disk

When I walk through a gallery I think about how people may react and whether I may see someone look at my work. 

My work is not easy to come to, not like a painting of a person or flower or image. I ask you to think and experience.  

I put symbology of all kinds, as if a language to help you enter the piece and interpret from your paradigm.   I am a Surrealist at heart and I love the artifacts of our culture and time.  I am a frustrated anthropologist at best and at worst a collector of refuse.  I will fight you for a piece of rust!  But I come by all this very honestly.  

Morean Members Art Show 

My Mother loved science, nature, and biology.  We hunted fossils as long as I can remember and studied ancient cultures.  I think my Mother was the original recycler...she was green before people knew what green was.  There was nothing to be thrown away, a depression baby, all had to be reused.  I was an alley rider and trash hunter by 7 years old and never stopped. Symbols and hidden meaning became more and more important to me as I traveled the world and lived in different cultures.  So now you can see how I began to develop as an artist and person.