To Save America, Visit Your Local Art Festival

Trust me...you'll feel better

She had set up her booth to honor the horses and burros in all their glory.  Burros staring straight at the camera, wondering what this person was doing in their space. She had set up her booth to honor the horses and burros in all their glory. Horses who were in battle with each other over whose territory this was.  And all with incredible panoramas of the parts of the United States to which most people will never venture…the Badlands of South Dakota, Mojave National Preserve in California, and several other of the approximately 111 million acres of preserved wildlife areas in the US.   I spoke with her about her photography, and she recounted with a dreamy, far-off look about the nights she slept on public lands throughout the country to capture these fantastic scenes.  Sometimes in a tent, sometimes in her camper.  Sometimes with her husband in tow, sometimes by herself.  She told me about the difficulty figuring out if you were on private land, public land, or BLM (US Bureau of Land Management - yes, a different BLM) and the app she used to discern which was which.  She clearly loved these horses, and a good percentage of her profits went to preserving their spaces which BLM is entrusted with maintaining.  I am certain there were other topics we could have ventured into, in another place, at another time, when we were would have at loggerheads with one another.  But not here, with me admiring her beautiful photography and discussing with all the love she clearly shares for it and her subjects.

Now that the summer is in full swing, the part of the US where I live is awash in art festivals.  If you want to travel far enough, you can likely find one within a couple of hours, every weekend through mid-fall.  My local town has one that is reasonably well respected, and even though I am not much of an art aficionado (to say the absolute least), I enjoy attending the annual festivities.  There are rows upon rows of tents sent up with artists sharing as many types of art as I could name, from traditional oil on canvas of beach scenes, to graphic novels, to modern industrial lighting, to extraordinary wooden bowls,  and of course, outstanding photography.  Spending hours just walking up-and-down the aisles is easy, admiring all of it.  For me, it is similar to the feeling I get when I would watch Michael Jordan play basketball or listen to Jimi Hendrix play guitar (am I dating myself yet?), I care because no matter how hard I may try, these people portray a level of proficiency I could never imagine, and that is, in large part, what I love about attending.  But there is something else as well.  It is inspiring to be around so many people who have so much passion for their craft.

Some of the artisans are full-time professionals who make their living exclusively off of their art, others are people who have other forty-hour per week professions for whom this is their passion project, some are college students who are making to make a few bucks, and another group are retirees who had to find a hobby once they left corporate life.  In any case, these people love what they create, and equally as important, they yearn to share it with nearly anyone who will listen.  Some of them are more introverted and aren’t interested in “selling” their art, but if you move past that and about the inspiration that led them to create a specific piece, that’s where they shine.  And amazingly enough, during the entire time I was there,  I didn’t see one “Let’s Go Brandon” tee-shirt or one type of “Orangeman bad” hat, and yes, I was on the lookout.  This was a purely non-partisan event where passionate, talented people wanted to share their lives and work with people who simply wanted to admire it (and ideally buy something).  

As someone who pays reasonably close attention to the events of the day and admittedly gets into Twitter spats once in a while, it was refreshing to be in a place where not only did none of that matter, but it didn’t even exist.  And maybe that’s what we need to be doing more of; meeting people on mutual terms where we can talk about the things about which we are genuinely passionate.  Because, let’s be honest, most people aren’t passionate about foreign trade deals or the latest perceived micro-aggression because a girl at a high school prom wore a dress different from one her culture would typically wear.  People just want to connect with people IRL (I’m not too old to use that, right?); to get away from all the online madness of nameless Twitter eggs and just enjoy the artwork, to talk with people who almost literally glowed in discussing it, and connect on terms that have no opportunity to bring division, but instead just utter beauty and joy.

If we want to save our country, we need to start seeing each other as individuals again, not as avatars for a cause or a caricature of all the worst things about people with whom we disagree.  But with people sitting behind screens all day or having social events that involve simply getting together with all the same tribes of people we always connect with, let’s start exploring places where we are forced to come together as a human community.

And there are worse places to start than going to your local art fair.