Renegade Craft Fair
This Saturday Dylan and I went to McCarren Park for the Renegade Craft Fair. Snap, it's huge! Tents cover the entire circumference of the park, with almost 200 vendors from all over the country and Canada. There was everything from art prints to teeshirts to stuffed animals to homemade journals, calenders and posters, jewelry, clothing, wallets, etc. etc. You know, crafts. But super cool crafts. There were a lot of really great styles that were pretty inspiring.
It was really refreshing to see what people our age are making all over the country, and totally made me want to make stuff. If they can do it, I can, right?
Maybe it's just me, but it's seemed lately that there has been a lack of inspiration amongst many of my friends as far was working on their art, or whatever it is they make. I've certainly felt that for myself. I don't know what it is, exactly, maybe it's just too nice to be indoors. But I know I've been feeling more and more guilty every day that I don't work on my animations. I can barely even get myself to finish my freelance. I wonder where all the inspiration is. Sometimes I even feel there's a certain lack of inspirational stuff out there right now, the art world isn't offering me much. That's sort of a vast generality, and I kind of don't really mean it, but, yeah, I kind of do, too. (see Whitney Bi-crap-ennial). But at least personally, I find art seems sort of out of reach because of constent imagery I'm seeing on the computer, at work, in my artsy neighborhood. Art is everywhere, Everywhere I Look. It's not a bad thing, it's great, but what I find discouraging is that my brain is overloaded with images, styles, and techniques. I start to lose what it is I'm trying to do, what I want to convey, how I want it to look, when eveyone else's stuff won't leave my mind. I'm having an art overload.
Which is why it was such a breath of fresh air to see art at a more grassroots level, just cool looking stuff that artists have sat at home churning out. It felt manageable. It felt natural. It put art back in reach for me.
Has anyone else been feeling the same way?