The Influence of Art

The influence of art in my life.

I’ve never really had the urge to make any art even though I’ve been living and sharing my life with an artist and art educator for the last 44 years. I was a media arts major in college and studied film and video but it was more of an observer and commentator rather than a maker of the art. I always liked writing and my interest in media eventually led me to computers and librarianship but from early on as an adult I was fully surrounded by art in all the various forms.

Our home is full of artwork. I recently went through the house and counted 53 pieces of original art framed and mounted on the walls of our home. Our bookshelves are also filled with art books of all kinds.

I married into a family of artists. Both of Becky's parents have been exhibiting artist throughout their lives.  The paintings in the photo above are works by her mother on the left and her father on the right. Her parents owned an art supply store from the mid 70's through the 90's. It was a family business and I worked there from 1981 through 1989. I didn't know much about art at all when I stared but learned as I went along about art materials, processes and techniques. I had to know something because people were always asking questions about the products we sold. It was a challenging experience.

Much of our social life and many of our friends have come from the local arts community. I spent five years on the board of directors of the local media arts organization Squeaky Wheel in the 1990’s. I was originally involved in the group because of my training and computer skills that I was using for the public library internet programs. I taught workshops for online databases and website creation for the arts community. There was also a social life based on all the people we knew from the art store. We were always getting invited to art shows, parties and events from people that were customers at the store. It was a significant vector in our social life.

Becky went to UB for her masters degree in art. She taught studio art and art history in several colleges throughout the area. Later she worked as an administrator in the Fine Art Department at UB and also taught classes there every semester. That UB connection opened up lots of opportunities for art related social activities.

We travel a lot and wherever we go we make time to get to art museums and galleries.  Seeing these art resources is also very important for Becky as an art educator and working professional artist for tax purposes as write offs. Earlier in the late 1970’s when we still lived in Philadelphia we would go to New York City regularly to visit art galleries and museums during the day and then go to music clubs at night. Fun times.

During my years at the Temple University School of Communication and Theater (1974-1978) I took some art history courses. I’ve never done this before but I’m putting together a blog project that will create a list of all the artwork that I’ve come to love and appreciate or that has influenced me in some way. I will do blog posts about this art just like I do ones now about albums, books, films, beers, etc. These will mostly be artwork I’ve seen somewhere in a museum or gallery. I’ve seen a lot of art over the years and I’ve approached it much differently than Becky the artist has. They will not be in any order other than what I have come across at the time and they are not ranked in any way. This will be fun.

I should add that in my early Catholic grade school days we would have a “picture study” class every Friday. I remember all those paintings displayed in our little book. They were mostly classics and I was always excited to come across one of them later on in a museum.

I already know the first art work I will write about is something I admired very early in my experience looking at art with Becky. Stuart Davis is the artist.