Friday, June 6, 2008

The Ina Archer Effect

Ina Archer is a fellow RISD alum. I used her name to randomly identify a phenomenon in my life now and the general context of my identity ( or lack thereof) in the artworld. I dropped out of RISD in 1983. I treated it like expensive summer camp and not like a serious place of study.I couldn't get my head together up there at the time and withdrew to sort myself out. I spent the next two decades going thru alot of soul searching, pop psychology, new age culting, re-entry into the artscene and so on. After 3o years though my peers have something to show for their lives and I do not. Ina was someone I bumped into on the subway. I handed her my card with the blog address. She probably visited and was turned off by the thinness of what she saw at the time. She like many other people blew me off after that and suppressed themselves around me. I saw her on the street in Park Slope and she totally tried to pretend she didn't even see me. I'm surrounded by lots of people like that now. They may make an effort to front sociability but they don't honestly see me as a worthwhile artist. I don't blame them because their considerations are true for the most part, but for me, the results of all that spiritual work left me able to be honest with myself and others where people like that withdraw from truthful communication. Nevertheless with the new studio what's missing in my return to serious study has to be produced. Here goes.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chris, Chris , Chris-- Don't use me to beat yourself! I'm sorry I missed you in PS--I keep my head low there. Say something next time.

And I harbor no judgements on your life choices, art or blog. Just began a blog about a month ago and i'm enjoying it.

christopherlee said...

AHA..GOTCHA..MS "ANONYMOUS"! :)