That’s sophomoric

The Magazine Women Believe In was a spoof of style of 1950s publications. I painted it back in the day; I wouldn't paint it today because my feminist thinking has matured. So has my painting style.

As a young person, my brain was fizzing over with half-cocked ideas. Some of my projects were musical—like writing a rock opera with my chum Michele, or writing and recording a cowpunk album with my husband. Some were literary. Most were visual. But some were just larks, like going on the Maid of the Mist in my bikini or going skiing in grease-stained Carhartt overalls—what today we might dignify with the label ‘performance art,’ if we could find funding for it.

I grew up in a time and a town which was too conservative for performance art, and my parents tended to cast a jaundiced eye on my antics. So I burrowed into the art form I knew best—drawing and painting—and gradually left the more conceptual stuff behind. I don’t think I’m any less creative at this advanced age, but my creativity is more yoked to what I do best.

Submission was painted during the first phase of the Iraq War and addresses the still-thorny issue of whether oppression or libertine impulses are more stifling for women. It's one of the paintings that got my RIT show closed down.

Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity by economist David Galenson looks at the schism between the creativity of youth and that of maturity. Galenson says that some of us work by trial and error, and arrive at our major contributions incrementally, usually in old age. In contrast, there are conceptual innovators who make sudden breakthroughs by formulating new ideas at an early age. Galenson puts Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Cézanne in the “old master” category, and Vermeer, van Gogh, and Picasso in the “young Turk” category.

Would I have painted The Beggar of St. Paul today, with its cynical depiction of Starving Africa as part of the money cycle? Probably not. I'm weary of hectoring people.

I think he has the division in thinking right, but not the outcome. We are all more daring thinkers when young, and more methodical workers when old. The difference is in when we’re discovered and what the society in which we live values. Today we live in a society which values audacity above craftsmanship, which tends to highlight the conceptual over the incremental.

Message me if you want information about next year’s Maine workshops. Information about this year's programs is available here.

The real reason I hate Hobby Lobby (and all those other craft stores)

Coral ranunculus at $9.99 a stem on Hobby Lobby's website. At that rate, a nice floral arrangement would cost what a month's worth of painting lessons would run you. 

The Census bureau reports that the nation’s international trade deficit in goods and services increased to $47.2 billion in April, as exports decreased and imports increased. (Imported goods and services, by the way, were the highest on record.) The May report will be out at the end of this week, but the news will be depressingly familiar; our trade deficit is about $450 billion a year and it only goes down when Americans are too scared to shop.

I realize that very little of this is from the stuff they sell at craft stores, but what always interests me about these places is how useless most of the stuff they sell is, and how none of it is made in the US.

But why pick on Hobby Lobby? I dutifully put all the stuff necessary to make this Pantone Radiant Orchid Wood Birdhouse in my online Michael's cart, and it added up to $81.95. That's about what a factory-reconditioned compound miter saw would cost, and with that you could make something useful.

“Hobby Lobby's main shoppers are women of all ages. Because of the dependence on disposable income, the company's stores do best when located in an area with demographics from lower middle class to upper middle class,” reported a shopping center trade rag.

Crafting used to be about saving money: women sewed, we canned, we remade old furniture. Now crafting is a $30 billion entertainment industry. The irony is that none of the stuff in these stores is cheap, and none of it has much to do with either art or craftsmanship.

We are drowning in all the stuff we buy, much of it which will never be used. Many of us then turn to professionals (like Nestle and Bloom, whose photo this is) to put it into some kind of order. That costs even more money.

Meanwhile, crafting’s target demographic carries significant credit-card debt. In 2012, people with incomes of $35,000 or less averaged $5,400 in credit card debt, those making $35,000 to $49,999 averaged $6,700 in credit card debt, those earning $50,000-$74,999 category had $8,900 of credit card debt, while those making more than $75,000 carried $9,200 in debt. And those numbers are down a third from their 2008 highs.

People borrow money they don’t have to buy stuff they don’t need. It clutters up their homes and will eventually be tossed into landfills. It adds to our trade deficit and our dependence on foreign oil. To me, that's the real moral calculation one has to make before visiting a store like Hobby Lobby.

The heck with that. Come to Maine and learn to paint instead. I have two openings left for my 2014 workshop in Belfast, ME. Information is available here.