The Not-So-Well-Behaved Artist

by Byron Belzak

The funny thing about this column-writing business is that the most innocuous columns inevitably bring the most vociferous reactions. I thought my investigative journalistic days of yonder were the height of controversy and potential danger. Wrong. Writing a local color column in Asheville that has the remote chance of ticking off a gaggle of artists and assorted creatives can be far dicier; and, I should know-at times, I consider myself to be part of that crowd, when I'm penning a poem or strumming a guitar.

Take my December 2002 issue column in Rapid River, entitled "If Money Were No Object." Now that was a lob-ball of an essay, if ever there was one-so I thought. For those of you who missed my stellar attempt at making what I thought was going to be a popular point resulted in a flurry of hissing and spitting in disgust. I hate to think that my mind has anything in common with Trent Lott's, but I can't avoid thinking how I just might be an even bigger dunderhead than him.

The gist of the column was that I went around to a bunch of galleries and shops in Asheville with an unlimited checking account and proceeded to clean the walls and shelves of all my favorite artwork. It ticked some people off.

Perhaps you saw that recent Michael Jackson video clip where he's prancing through some upscale boutique as he points his index finger here and there, saying, "I'll take this. I'll take that." Jackson doesn't even evaluate what he's buying, much less ask the price. Well, I guess that's what ticked the local creative community off about my column. I guess I did that Michael Jackson thing. Not the baby-dangling business, but the spoiled brat buying routine. But I'm still not quite sure. Trent, where are you?

Anyway, all my dream purchases of paintings and sculpture were then going to be installed in my mansion and on my hundreds of acres of gardens, which, of course, I don't own. But, hey, I was dreaming. You have to remember it was the season of dancing sugar plums back then.

So the long and short of it was that I intended to encourage Asheville area holiday shoppers to buy handmade art downtown, instead of manufactured muck at the mall (not that there is anything wrong with manufactured muck). But the ripples of ire I stirred are only now beginning to die down. The word "boomerang" keeps popping up for me.

So I tossed that column out there for all to dream with me. But boom; back comes not flowers of love and adoration, rather passionate words of indignation. My commercial crassness, it seems, offended more than one creative out there. And, for that, I am deeply appreciative.

It offers up the opportunity to begin to discuss openly what has been seething under the surface here in Asheville, and that is this: Is Asheville a creative, vibrant, cutting-edge art scene? Or has the Asheville art community-including artists, fine craft artisans, merchants and gallery owners-simply become servants to the well-heeled residents and tourists, who are assumed to prefer safe art, non-controversial art, art that does not examine, incite and inspire, rather soothes, smooths and matches the sofa?

Where is the cutting edge art community? Has it holed up on Carolina Lane? Is is barely keeping its head above water in the River District?

So that's where I went in search of answers as to why my commercially crass column of good cheer struck such a deep chord of concern among the art community. Who does this guy think he is anyway?

On Carolina Lane I found lots of colorful, artful grafetti. (No, don't clean it off, Mr. Worley. Leave it. It livens up an otherwise dingy alley.) All the gallery and studio doors, however, were locked. I looked in through the windows. No one was around, along there was some weird looking things hanging on walls and taking up floor space. I'll have to return on a day when there is a major show, or make an appointment.

In the River District I did make an appointment and spoke at length with local artist Monika Teal, who has a studio in the RiverLink Warehouse Studios building. She was willing to smack me around face-to-face, verbally, that is, explaining that art is to be done for art's sake along, that to compromise would be to sell out, that she refused to bend to commercialism, as my article promoted. I respect her point of view, although now I prefer to call her Demonika.

Demonika paints with passion. She speaks with passion. Her best works live up to what her ex-husband used to call, "The Real Teal." She has a national and international reputation for creating and showing artwork that provokes and challenges. Her most provocative works have been censored in more than one town. Maybe it's the sensual nudes, the vivid colors, the broad strokes, the large size, the forcefulness of her distinctly personal message that people either hate or love with a passion.

Another passionate Asheville-based artist, Sue Millon, who recently opened Ring Dang Doo, a shop full of original art and Dang Weird Stuff at The Orange Peel, tells the story of her giving her Pure Art guidance speech to her, then, 15-year-old artist son, Andrew, who was readying for his first art show.

"I told him it was nice to show his art," said Millon, "because you get input from other people, and people get to see what you're doing. Sometimes their comments are going to be positive, sometimes negative. But you make your art for your own reasons. It doesn't matter what people say about it.

"I also told him that he shouldn't at all equate the worth of his art with whether it sold or not. If it didn't sell, then he shouldn't take that as any reason why he shouldn't be doing what he is doing. It's just that they didn't like it enough to want to put it in their homes.

"So I gave him the big art talk. We hung his art. He had the opening. He had a huge turnout. He sold almost everything on the walls at the price he was asking.

Copyright 2003 MediaBear

NOTE: This column first appeared in Rapid River Magazine, Asheville's Arts and Culture Monthly.