Public art is beginning to hit a stride here in Bay City, and it's great to see. It's a little baby seed of excitement and momentum, and I can't wait to watch it grow into a community covered in art that is both beautiful and community-driven.
And on a deeper level, something I love about public art is its ability to confront us with three important questions:
1) Who are we?
2) How do we see ourselves?
3) How do we understand community?
The conversation in the attached screenshot references a recently completed mural, and it got me thinking.
Now, before I get into it, a disclaimer: this is NOT about having high standards for public art.
We absolutely should, and need to.
I DON'T believe that art and beauty are wholly subjective. There IS such a thing as good art and bad art, and we're making some preliminary moves now to help ensure that the art being placed on our finite number of buildings is done at a high standard. Our community deserves it.
Another disclaimer: An important element here is that of *preference*. Here is an immutable fact: we like things and we don't like things.
But not liking something doesn't make it bad.
I just had a conversation with the chain-smoking Yoda of public art here in Michigan, a person who led the charge on bringing over THREE HUNDRED murals into a single community, from both local artists and artists from across the world.
And guess what? He doesn't *like* some of them.
"What you think of as 'great art' and what I think of as 'great art' might not be the same things," he said. "You know, there are very few murals that really reflect the style and flair that I love.
But they're beautiful pieces of art beautifully executed, and I love them all the same."
Preferences aren't final verdicts. They're not standards, and they're not the final say. You're going to like some of the public art and not like some of the public art because *that's just how humans are and how communities work that are full of people who are not. just. like. you.*
This confrontation isn't aggressive, it's expository. Public art is a visual aid that helps us understand who lives in a place and what they're all about.
A beautiful thing, because if we want to build and experience a better community, we've got to know who we're working with first.
One more beautiful thing: public art exposes what we don't understand...and then presents us with an opportunity to learn.
Earlier in this screenshot conversation, the person I replied to referred to an element in the mural as "those obnoxious skulls".
But "those obnoxious skulls" are actually Calaveras, an important part of Dia de Los Muertos. To many, skulls are about death, but in the context of Calaveras and Mexican culture, skulls are about LIFE.
Here's how Larry J. Rodarte described it to me during an interview:
"Perhaps the most recognizable part of Dia de los Muertos is the Calavera face, where people paint their faces to look like skulls. The reason they do that is NOT to look scary, but to look at death in a way where they are saying, 'Well, we all have to die, but Death, you cannot defeat us!' We are almost mocking death with the Calaveras because we have eternal life. We celebrate and remember the lives of the people we have loved and shout, 'Death, you cannot defeat us!'"
Calaveras may not be a part of *your* culture, but what person, from any culture, can't take comfort in imaging laughing and throwing rotten tomatoes at Death, faces painted, and shouting "Death, you cannot defeat us!"
And while it may not be a part of your culture as an individual, the culture of a community is collective: your culture, their culture, and everybody's culture mixed together is what makes *us*.
We are a product of countless people across generations of infinite experiences, all culminating in this one moment in time. It's almost unknowable, and when we describe a community's culture in words, we are not giving a definition, but only a biased and limited best guess. There are people we haven't met, experiences we haven't had, and things we don't know.
All this leads us to our first two questions, with a little more meat on their bones:
1) Who are ‘we’…and who am I willing to include in that definition?
2) How do we see ourselves…and how do I see others?
Then, question number three: how do we understand community?
I recently heard something great: that in constructive discourse, competing opinions aren't presented to create conflict, but critical thinking.
For me, critical thinking always starts with good questions, and looking at a mural can present us with a whole bunch of them, such as:
- Do I like this? If so, why? If not, why not?
- If I like this, why do I like this?
- How does this mural make me feel about my community?
- If I don't like this, why don't I like this? Do I not understand it, is it not my preference, or is it just not any good?
- If I don't like this, do other people....and am I OK with that?
- How do I deal with not getting everything I want?
- How do I handle something directly benefitting someone that doesn't benefit me?
- Am I racist?
- Do I see myself and lead my life as a contributing member of a community, or am I an individual who sees where I live the same way I see Amazon: I should get whatever I want, how I want it, and when I want it?
- Do I believe that it's the responsibility of others to create a community I'm happy with, or is that my responsibility, too?
And so on and so on.
It's easy to hide who we are as a community hidden inside our houses, offices, and within the relative anonymity of the internet.
But when someone spray paints it on a building, in bold lime green with skull-painted faces, for all to see?
That's something we can't - and shouldn't - hide from.
So, three questions:
1) Who are we?
2) How do we see ourselves?
3) How do we understand community?
Questions I can't wait for us to answer.