Vitamins G-S and G.V. for my artistic soul

A wonderful thing about VCU is that while the challenges and intensity of the MFA program might weigh quite heavily on a young and idealistic art student, there are also so many opportunities to be inspired, invigorated, encouraged, and enlightened. This is why I'm in graduate school, bombarded from all sides with stuff to read and look at and listen to, discovering things I might never have found on my own. I feel like I'm in an information accelerator...this can be overwhelming and I must admit that I often feel stressed and off-balance, but maybe the high intensity serves its own purpose...a break-down of barriers, an overload of information, an escape from the comfort zone...will I leave here having grown more than I could imagine? I certainly hope so. Meanwhile, I will hang on, enjoying the ride through all of its ups and downs.
The catalyst for this warm and fuzzy graduate school moment (I must remember to read this one day at 3am when I am wondering why I thought not sleeping for 2 years would help my personal path as artist and human) was a recent lecture from art critic and VCU faculty member Gregory Volk, who was kind enough to visit my critique class and share a bit of his passion for the search of thoughtful, profound, dare I say existential contemporary art. His lecture employed the works of Francis Alys and Ayse Erkmen as examples for thinking outside the box, making art outside the studio, and moving beyond the art world into a universe of limitless opportunities for expression. Quoting Emerson, he emphasized that "art is the path of the creator to his work" and not the final product. This idea, and the connection of the visual artistic process to Emersonian principles in general, is an inspiring and empowering one. Art making is not about being serious, or serving up great profound truths to the masses below. Art is about the creative process...MY creative process...it's about respecting that journey, paying attention both inwardly and outwardly along the way. Like a walk through the woods, the joy lies not in the destination but the experience itself...the smells, the sounds, the thoughts that occur in that magical environment. This way of art making is a way of living, an embrace of wonder.
It's always so helpful when someone can illuminate an idea or value which is important to you, but might not yet be fully materialized in your own consciousness. I truly enjoyed Mr.Volk's obvious passion for literature, and the way in which it informed and enriched his experience of visual art. Though I love to read classic literature from America and elsewhere (Borges, Marques, and Lorca are among my favorites from abroad) and feel incomplete without a wonderful book on the table by my bed, I am ashamed to admit that I never consciously connected the profound beauty I experience when I read the words of these and many other authors, to their ability to teach me something about my own studio practice. And yet it is so obvious: I want to evoke the feeling I get from their words: I want to be a channel for that poetry, that profound beauty, that melancholy and ache. While listening to Mr.Volk's lecture, I realized that this connection I feel to literature is not only valid, but an important voice to listen for when walking along through the forest of my ideas, dreams, and ambitions. So it seems that 100 Years of Solitude might be an appropriate textbook for my artistic study. In addition, as Mr.Volk suggested, I will be breaking out my Emerson, my Whitman, my Dickenson, with fresh eyes and a new context. I think I will need a bigger nightstand.