POST #144: IT’S MEDICINAL!

The New York Times recently (7/10/17) ran an article about a non-profit gallery in Chelsea that caters to older artists. Several friends e-mailed me the link to make sure I didn’t miss it. “The perfect place for you,” one commented. The gallery specializes in artists over the age of 60 who have a) never been discovered or b) were discovered and then forgotten. I thanked them for thinking about me but explained that I knew about the Carter Burden Gallery, having applied to it three years ago (July, 2014.) I sent everything they asked for: a CD of my work, a resume, a statement of purpose, copies of publicity etc.  They graciously thanked me and said they had lots of applicants and would be back in touch. I’m still waiting.

The problem is not that the gallery is inefficient, although they might be for all I know, the problem is that there are too many damn artists around, young and old, all vying for a minuscule number of places to show their work. Although it’s worse for older artists, even if they’ve had some prior success, the problem exists throughout the entire art world. Everybody and his brother is an artist and, given what is considered “art” today, everybody can be. It’s the most joyful, pleasurable way imaginable to live ones life. At one time, you needed at least a decade of study to be an artist, hundreds of hours drawing from life, learning perspective, anatomy, serving an apprenticeship, accumulating knowledge that took years to acquire. Now, what we call art is so fluid, requires so little actual skill, anybody can call themselves an artist and refer to their work as “art.” Just give a kid a box of crayons and a paper plate and see what happens. Once it goes up on the refrigerator, he’s hooked!

I feel badly for the people who run the Carter Burden Gallery. They sound so well-meaning; they have such an honorable mission: giving older people some late-in-life recognition, perhaps even some much-needed income. They are apparently inundated with requests for shows. But, please, don’t feel sorry for elderly artists. We made our choice: if we wanted financial security, we could have become accountants or ‘married money.’ If we wanted recognition, we could have run for office.

I laughed when I read a quote in the Carter Burden article from an elderly woman the Times interviewed who had a near brush with success a number of years ago. She had shown her work to Ivan Karp, a famous art dealer in the 1960s, founder of the O.K.Harris Gallery in SOHO. Apparently, Karp had liked it but turned her down, saying he had difficulty selling art by women. I too had a go-around with Karp about the same time. I showed him my slides and he said he would like to pay a visit to my studio.  However, when he heard it was in Stamford, Connecticut, he changed his mind. He apparently had a maximum of ten minutes travel time for a studio visit and I lived a lot further away than that.

Strike One: I live in the suburbs, not Brooklyn

Strike Two: I’m a woman

Strike Three, I’m an OLDer woman. Three strikes and you’re out! 

But no way am I quitting.  My work keeps getting better and better. I may never get near the top of the heap, but I’m having a wonderful climb, and, who knows?  Life is full of surprises.

A couple of days ago I may have discovered the real reason I (and all the other artists I know) keep creating. It’s MEDICINAL!! The most recent issue of the AARP’s magazine, Modern Maturity (they send it free to members) had a short paragraph encouraging the elderly to do artwork. It claimed that spending 45 minutes on an art project reduced levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, a substance that destroys muscle tissue. Who knew?

P.S. The illustrations for this post are all experiments with the overhead projector. It’s an amazing, low-tech tool!