Open Letter to Mark James Stanfield

This is in response to a comment left at the bottom of the previous post.

Hey Mark,

That last post of mine was pretty cheeky. I don’t think I wanted to critique Zak Smith’s work as much as I wanted to critique the Chelsea/Grad School scene that puts so much machinery behind young artists. It is like collectors want to buy the work that reminds them of their children. The effects are not devastating to art – you can’t kill that. The effects are devastating for individual artists. Zak Smith is already a brand name – his future potential limited by this fact. Those gallery lights are pretty bright and won’t mind burning him and several hundred other kids to a crisp.

Of course I know what you are saying, but everyone has different tastes. Many of the people working out here are doing so in their own field of inquiry.

I always have mixed feelings about my own work. Usually I feel like I’m chasing down something really important - doing something that few others would be willing to. But, when my work is shown very few people are capable of reacting to it. I don’t think that my work is of low quality (although a lack of craft is part of its demands); I just think that it’s not for everyone. In fact, it’s for very few people.

There is a romantic idea that someone really can express themselves in their artwork. Well, I’ve found that this is true, but it’s not as simple as it first sounds. Since I’ve been in the city I’ve met only a few artworks - by a certain few people- that I’ve truly been interested in. These works don’t express a lot in the romantic sense. They aren’t containers for immense amounts of pain and anguish. They aren’t happy, radiant, or bubbling over with human dignity. They don’t express much in the plain-speak sense of the word express. What these works do is communicate that their makers and I are thinking similar thoughts. I live for these moments. I like to believe that what is being said in these artworks is something that would not be as well communicated in words. I also believe that what is being said could not have been achieved if the artist hadn’t physically worked with material from the world.

It is strange that so much artwork is made, but that I’m only able to find the things I care about in a small percentage of it. It’s like I’m blind to much so that I can have a deeper experience in just one area. At 19 I did not know that it would be harder and harder to like others’ work. At 27 art journeys are already starting to seem bittersweet.

Thanks for the comment,

Roy