Motivation

I’m working on a small sculpture for the upcoming Future Perfect exhibition in Hobart where artists and writers collaborate to create their exhibition pieces. When I go to bed at night my fingers go numb and my back and neck hurt from the awkward contortions my body has to get into in order to carve, but I fall asleep with a smile and a deep sense of satisfaction that what we are doing as a group is vitally important for the arts in Tasmania, for Tasmania’s future, and in no small way, for peace in our forests.

Personally speaking, I like what I see emerging from my studio and this would never have happened if I had not been asked to collaborate with Barbie Kjar (printmaker) and Heather Rose (writer). Just the simple task of talking through various options with these two artists opened my mind to new possibilities of work that most likely would have remained hidden from me. For this I am thankful.

But what I am most thankful for is the opportunity we artists have been given to express our moral, spiritual and political beliefs about the direction Tasmania can take into its future. This has excited me from the beginning and I have felt better about participating in this one exhibition than any exhibition in my life, group or solo.

My sell out show in Philadelphia means what it says: I sold out. I sold out to the wealthy and to a system that sees art only as decoration, status, a collectors item. Any depth of meaning was lost behind the “name” of the artist and collector. I took my money and went back into my comfortable American life of denial to create only more objects of desire.

In preparing for Future Perfect, I have been buoyed by the heart swelling of intention that what we are presenting to the public will be powerfully beautiful. Powerful because our groups’ overriding concern about the future vibrancy and quality of life on this wondrous island will make it so.

I, myself, have been partly driven to do good just to refute the claims that those artists who oppose Forestry Tasmania as a sponsor of the ‘1080 on the Island’ festival are nothing more than a “motley bunch of greenies with no standing outside of Tasmania”.

More importantly, though, I have been inspired to work long hours for the simple fact that I am proud to be one of the members of a coalition of visual artists and writers who love their island and who are willing to devote their energies and talents to help direct the public towards a deeply imaginative vision for this state.

The arts cannot serve a more noble purpose.