Featured Artist Tara Zanzig is constantly contemplating the image and how it is influenced by context. Check out Tara as she walks through her process and answers some questions along the way. | tararchy.com ____ Tara Zanzig was a Featured Artist in AnySquared’s Fall 2014 Because Art Exhibition.
Angela Davis Fegan, aka Lavender Menace, has been a longtime collaborator with AnySquared. We are pleased to share this video on her thoughts about her process and whether she considers herself an artist. | AngelaDavisFegan.com____ Angela Davis Fegan was a Featured Artist in AnySquared’s Fall 2014 Because Art Exhibition.
What does it mean to be an artist?
Artists do not create, they restore existing elements to life. Artists are interpreters, translators of emotions, ideas or random thoughts that sometimes are complex to understand or too mundane that we may take it for granted. That said, doctors, lawyers, drivers, teachers, painters, dancers, and any other person can be an artist translating the world around them to connect with other human beings.
What is the function of art?
Catharsis, not by the simple act of doing “art”, but by exercising the technique, challenging or supporting strong statements for ‘artists’ and audience alike.
What is more important to you the process or the result?
Although they are cyclical and with different levels of relevance depending on the project, the part that I enjoy the most is the process. Research, development, planning, exploration, talking to people, improvisation, intuitive procedures and adjustments that build an illustration or a project.
Do you label yourself as an artist?
Artist pursuing a human degree.
In the book Rooftop Soliloquy, Roman Payne writes, “…all forms of madness, bizarre habits, awkwardness in society, general clumsiness, are justified in the person who creates good art.” To a degree I think this is true, if for no other reason than its acknowledgement that society allows artists to break social norms because it’s understood art will allow us to see things in a new way.
Arts function is to take both extremes as well as the mundane of existence and present it in a way that offers some sort of commentary or inspires new thought. It’s for this reason the “bizarre habits” and “awkwardness” are condoned, understood, and sometimes embraced.
While it’s easy to romanticize the value of the process – embracing the journey rather than the destination – for me the essential factor in art is about the actual creation of something and that goal is not reached until the end. The process becomes an important factor over a period of time of the development after many different pieces – recognizing how that has changed to reach finalized goals.
I don’t label myself an artists but rather as a creative person who associates with other creative people. I’m sure in using the word “goals” would rub some the wrong way, but all the art I create – in music, photography, etc. – is not tangible until something is complete – until there is something to show. Prior to that, it’s only an idea. Because my friends and I are artists (if we consider ourselves such or not) we do everything we can to see our ideas into realization.
What it means to be an artist. To see and define the reality around me and the world I live in.
Its function defines who I am as well as what others might perceive it to be. Not always makes one feel comfortable but what makes us feel awakens who you are.
The process is work, discovery and the joy of satisfaction that you have created. It leaves behind your legacy and it gives you immortality.
I label myself and I am labeled an artist. But I define and seek who I am and who we are through a creative process that narrates in a visual and at times a conceptual field.
What does it mean to be an artist? I can only answer for myself—being an artist composes of constantly absorbing, observing, and reacting to my internal and external worlds and then morphing that source material into something that is entirely outside of myself. Although artmaking is deeply personal, it is important that the work is distanced from me in order to function as an autonomous entity. There is a point in the making process at which I, as an artist, am mastered by the piece and I only exist to serve its needs. An artist could be defined as one who has such a relationship with their work.
What is the function of art? Art as a category is functionless. Having a function implies some sort of inherent motive or reason for existence. However, art can do many things—change our perceptions, call for political action, improve a community, represent a culture, make us feel a range of emotions from outraged to enamoured. Art can be used as a tool to fulfill a means or simply exist in a space. These roles exist solely as possibilities and not expectations, which is why I would argue that art is functionless.
What is more important to you — the result or the process? The result and the process are two inseparable terms for me, or rather the result is a part of my process. I rarely find myself completely finished from work; even if I can no longer physically change the result of my labor, I continue to understand the work in repeatedly shifting ways. Certain finished pieces will spontaneously pop up in my mind as I am creating. Finished works act as additions to a library which I can reference and reinterpret as needed. Even works that feel detached from my overall practice often find themselves in conversation with the rest of my oeuvre and serve as potential solutions to questions I often ask in my practice—how can I abstract the social or how can I transform a commonplace material into a complex bodily surface for the organism that is my sculpture? I would thus say that the process is more important to me.
Do you label yourself as an artist? Yes, I do. Accepting this label has been a result of increasing confidence in my work and in my own identity. As a student, I could avoid the label—I was not an artist but a Visual Arts major. My work answers to homework prompts. The stakes for making good work were very low. However, as I invested more of myself into my work, the stakes felt raised despite nothing else having changed. At the end of my undergraduate courses, my expectations for my work rose from making good student work to making good artwork. It was at this moment in which I routinely and comfortably could refer to myself as an artist. Now, as an artist without attachment to an institution and with no real artistic obligations, I continue to be driven by my reflexive expectations. That my drive has not evaporated with the disappearance of these obligations has solidified my identity as an artist.
What does it mean to be an artist? Being an artist is a way of seeing and experiencing life. Paying attention to one’s surroundings, contemplating, noticing things, knowing one’s thoughts and feelings. As an artist I have a curiosity about the external as well as things going on inside of me. Being an artist also means a commitment to a practice of expression, whatever form that may take. An artist is both an experiencer as well as a creator.
What is the function of art? I like to say that art is the soul of the society. It doesn’t seem right to say that art has a function but it has a very important place to occupy. It is a necessity in its own way: while not necessary for survival it is essential for a fulfilled meaningful life. Art brings us together and often provides an opportunity to relate to each other. It inspires us, reveals new truths, gives pleasure, offers new ways of seeing things.
What is more important to you the process or the result? My work is born out of my process and the process is inspired by my life experience – things I am going through become the essence of my work. The end result is merely a stopping point when a certain process appears to be exhausted.
Do you label yourself as an artist? I define myself as an artist. I try to experience the mundane, the everyday as a work of art – reading into the meaning and form, looking for shapes, content and lyricism everywhere I go. Sometimes I share my observations with others. In addition my ultimate goal that I am subtly pursuing every day is to produce artwork. Many decisions I make are made with that goal in mind. Essentially my biggest and constant desire is to make art.
What does it mean to be an artist? An artist is one who lives a creative life. A creative life is when one creates something where there was nothing before.
What is the function of art? The function of art is to give oneself, or others, deeper insight and meaning into the world around them.
What is more important to you, the process or the result? The result is based on the process. The end result is what is witnessed and should communicate an idea effectively, hopefully the idea for which the artist was aiming.
Do you label yourself as an artist? After many years of labeling myself a “painter”, I finally feel I can label myself an artist. I now recognize that I do create something where there was nothing before. I realize now I have the ability to effectively communicate, through a visual means, an idea that can give deeper insight and meaning into the world around us.
What does it mean to be an artist? I think being an artist means having a perspective and being able to manipulate things in the world to present it as best you can.
What is the function of art? If you’ll accept a Sunday-school answer: beauty. As far as I can tell, the choices are to waste and consume or to create, add something to the world, and move culture forward. The function of art is to counter waste, destruction, and awfulness with beauty.
What is more important to you the process or the result? The process, doing art, for me, is being part of the solution. It’s something I have to do, but it doesn’t mean much unless someone else sees what I do and is, I hope, moved by it. That being the case, I’d say the result is more important.
Do you label yourself as an artist? I’m learning to.
