Fame

A British weaver of extravagantly beautiful pieces (she weaves with monofilament that is thinner than hair; you can see her pieces here, but photography doesn’t really do justice to pieces so dependent upon ambient light) was visiting Point Roberts this weekend. In fact, visiting another weaver who lives here and is a friend of mine. The two weavers came round to my house this morning so that I could show off my abandoned house quilts . The British weaver was much taken with them and said I should be famous.

It’s always extremely nice for me when someone speaks well of my work and even nicer when they can tell me what they like about it, suggesting that there is some actual communication between creator and viewer. But, I’m glad not to be famous. Of course, it’s easy to say you’re glad not to be famous when you are not famous. You will have to take it on faith that I really am glad. When you are famous, in this culture, you get to spend your time on your fame. Journalists may interview you (and you get to worry about whether the published interview will make you sound self-important or your work look trivial). People who are responsible for programs of some sort will ask you to come and speak to a lot of people, most of whom will never have seen your work, and your slides or your power point presentation will fail to have sound or be visible or some such. People will want you to help them with their work, so they can be famous, too. And so on. What you get is a lot of time spent on talking about your work or preparing to talk about your work, but much less time getting to do it. I think the purpose of doing it is doing it. But I may be idiosyncratic in that respect.

I read a few days ago that Doris Lessing judged that receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature was the worst thing that ever happened to her. At 88, she is awash in interviewers, and fears that her actual writing career has ended because she will never again have enough solitary time to think about and write another book. Sounds about right. Sorry for your troubles, Ms. Lessing, but thanks for all the books that got to us when there was still time.

One advantage, of course, of taking up an artistic kind of career in later age is that you may very well have already had enough success (fame of a sort) in some other career that you don’t really need any more fame or even additional money; or, conversely, you may have come to terms with not being famous and along the way discovered some other and more rewarding pleasures, including the sheer joy of doing what you want without having to think about who will pay you for doing it.

Point Roberts has more than its share of people with artistic careers, but few of them here, like anywhere else, are making a living at it. But now and then you can see their work in one of the local galleries, especially The Blue Heron, or its cross-the-street neighbor gallery, The Maple Studio. Maybe there should be a Point Roberts Artists Association to advise the Community Association on artistic matters? It is an extremely odd thing about our culture that art of any sort (visual, written word, object) is very highly valued only as long as it can be made out to be extremely rare. That’s why artists do better after they die, I suppose: they don’t risk adding any more pieces to their oeuvre, thus diluting the value of the previous work.

On the other hand, there is an enormous amount of creative spirit out and about, and extraordinarily beautiful books, poems, music, quilts, paintings, sculptures, weavings, and other forms of art abound in most places, but most people never see it, and certainly never buy it. Such work is here in Point Roberts (well beyond the boundaries of my workshop), as it is in New York City and in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, too; work that goes unseen and unsung. Art is a commodity that is labor intensive and it is one-of-a-kind. For labor intensive work, we look to Asia; for one of a kind work, we look to the past. So, perhaps I will not be famous until I’m dead; at least it won’t eat into my time.