Art With Heart

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… a younger, more optimistic version of your humble host and narrator was temporarily involved with an idealistic non-profit gallery-alternative-space known as Cameravision.

Aside from regular exhibitions and lectures, Cameravision featured a weekly gathering called “Exchange;” an open ritual of babble, coffee, wine and two-dimensional work-in-progress-artworks opened to visual artists from any medium with a working project they were willing to share and discuss.

The one rule that most of the meeting’s facilitators insisted on was that we would not approach the question of “what is art,” focusing instead on the creator’s objectives and feelings about the work being shared.

Each meeting featured a different collection of visual artists sharing complete or evolving projects with a small group of curious participants, most of which were teachers, students or photographers.  At any given Exchange you could be exploring creative projects in photography or collage, photo-montage or even sculpture. Sometimes one after the other.

On some nights only a few regulars showed up, but on others lots of newbies were there, making each week unpredictable, stimulating and expansive… like a stroll through Clarion Alley after lunch on a warm cloudy day. Today it may seem odd that different creative disciplines would gather to speak with each other.

Eventually Cameravision disappeared into the era of post-Reagan conservatism, along with common sense and whatever was left of our good manners. But the left-over benefits of avoiding that question of “what is art” helped me years later as I began to photograph street art in San Francisco.

What excites me is not the formal classification of a specific street art piece, or the tools used in its creation, or the work’s dubious legal status, or even the artist’s standing in the art world or police line-up. What matters is the message, and the heart and soul of the work... and the work’s effect on the location; it’s “aura.”

 Does it invite or defy? Does it tell a story? Does it challenge or support an idea? Does it provide some form of value that I’m not able to appreciate? Street art in San Francisco tends to have a lot of heart and soul.

Formal mural or illegal graffiti are often just sides of a coin… just because something’s “legal” doesn’t make it worthy.  It seems odd to also assume the opposite.