“If people think nature is their friend,
then they sure don’t need an enemy.”
~ Kurt Vonnegut
I was once accused of overly romanticizing nature in my artwork.
It was the very first day of our Junior Seminar college art class and I was the first person to have to present to the class what sort of artwork I’d be making that semester. I had been making 3′ tall ceramic sculptures that resembled sea creatures and I loved them, but I didn’t know why I felt compelled to make them. I tried to explain this to my peers and that I wanted to use the coming semester to create more and to actually figure out what the heck the sculptures meant to me. Then my peers were encouraged to critique my idea and as they went around the room, it very quickly snowballed into everyone talking about how nature is so often portrayed as benign and good and romantic when it was actually “red in tooth and claw”. Well, I’m no idiot, but I felt like one and since my ideas were in such a formative stage I kind of freaked out and stopped moving or talking for the rest of that class period, eyes glued to the door knob. As soon as class let out, I ran away and cried about it.
End result? I scrapped the whole project and did something else that I hated.
Luckily, my spirit wasn’t permanently crushed and I let myself create a senior project slowly and true to what was inside me. The piece at right, especially, was created in response to my fellow students who had unwittingly traumatized me by falsely accusing me of creating shallow, nature-worshipping artwork.
You are not a wishy washy sap for thinking that nature is beautiful!
“Terrible” and “gentle” are words that our human minds assign to nature based on how we see it in relation to our own existence. Nature is actually indifferent, but I would still argue that it is beautiful. Beauty is a concept that transcends “good” and “bad” the way that the Buddhist concept of Joy transcends “happy and “sad”.
Nature is beautiful to us, not because it is good, but because it is REAL.
Time spent in nature is meaningful because it’s a return to our true selves. Whether this comes in the form of a home-destroying hurricane or the gentle flutter of butterfly wings through your garden, nature is awe-inspiring. I for one am going to raise my hand and stand up in front of the class for all of us who believe that nature is something worth celebrating, in all of it’s incarnations! Has anyone ever made you feel silly for loving nature? Let us know about it in the comments 😀 Testify!
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Ramona Jackson says
Nature is beautiful, even though it is without compassion. (The phrase “perfect storm” comes to mind.) You are so right to have taken away the lesson from art class that you must decide for yourself what is the point of it all and achieve it in a way that satisfies you. Lucky for me that I only take one criticism seriously, my own! Crazy about your blog and jewelry. Thanks
jennyhoo says
Cool, thanks Ramona 🙂 Another important lesson from the class was a lesson in communication! I knew they weren’t understanding what I was trying to say at all, but I couldn’t figure out how to get them to see what I did 😀
Ruth says
Oh man, what is it with art school and people hating on projects that don’t have a sinister nihilistic meaning behind them? This is kind of random, but in my senior studio seminar I created very large 7″x8″ sumi paintings of cats in all of their crazy shapes, curled up, stretched out, snoozing etc. I liked how the sumi brush and walnut ink expressed the fluidity of the cat form, and mostly I really liked painting/drawing cats (you can see one here http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruthbleakley/1435885480/in/set-72157603040340971)
My class liked it, but during my final end of semester review I was shut down by *some* of the professors on the review board who said “oh but you’ve painted cats so benignly, what about their teeth and claws? What about when they hunt animals? I almost would have liked to see a dead rat painted into one of these”
…
…….
I was denied moving on to honors thesis, but I made the best of it by becoming a Teaching Assistant for a digital media class and also learning to throw pottery, but I was a tiny bit bitter about it for a while.
I really like your sea creature sculpture! It’s like you’re underwater, watching that beautiful motion of the current rocking a plant, or an anemone waving it’s arms, but frozen in time.
Frank says
Nah. Nature isn’t beautiful. It can be awe-inspiring, like the Holocaust or the atom bomb, but the whole system is one big engine of horror. Somewhere, right now, fire ants are eating a baby bird alive. That ain’t beautiful.
jennyhoo says
Good to know I’m not the only one, Ruth! The good thing about being questioned, at least, is it can help clarify and strengthen our convictions. I probably never would have understood why I do what I do if I hadn’t had to go through that.
jennyhoo says
It’s beautiful to me 🙂 Thanks for stopping by, Frank!