Stick to your guns

Now that my teaching has slowed down for a short while, I have time to do a little more writing.

My review of the current exhibit at the Marion Art Center in Marion, Mass., appears in today's edition of the New Bedford Standard-Times; click here to read.

I also have a cool story to relate. A friend of mine is member of an artists' group, and the group was invited to create site-specific installations at the local library earlier this year. The group was assigned a book-related theme and allowed to place their installations anywhere they liked inside the library.

For whatever reason (although jealousy is the first theory that comes to my mind), my friend was given a lot of grief about the installation she put up by the other members of the group. They questioned her motivations with her piece, her use of materials, even the work's location, urging her to move it from the spot in the library she had chosen.

But she refused to be swayed by their negativity or bow to their pressure, insisting that her work be left just as she had erected it.

Yesterday was the take-down day, and my friend headed over to the library to remove her work. But when she got there, the librarians told her that they had received such a strong and positive response from the public, that they wondered if she would consider leaving her installation up for permanent display! (This invitation was not extended to any other member of her group.)

The lesson here is: when it comes to your artwork, stick to your guns!