Artists – rejoice in the Digital Age! If you’re young, you probably take it all for granted, but way back when I was a wee little artist just out of college, being an artist was much more difficult. Getting a shot of your artwork was more labor intensive than I like to remember, and I had a pretty nice 35mm camera. You had to set up your tripod and you couldn’t just shoot to your heart’s content and then edit – film was costly, and exposure and lighting was a crap shoot. There was no view screen on the camera to look at your shot. And you didn’t have PhotoShop to edit with. You’d just send it off to some random developing lab and pray you got a good shot. You really almost needed to hire a professional, but then, you could never afford that. All juried exhibitions required 8 x 10 glossies, which were expensive, and usually didn’t really represent your work all that accurately. Then they had to be mailed – which was an additional cost, and you rarely got them back even if you could afford return postage.
In addition to that there was the seclusion. You spent the whole day in the studio without any word from the outside world, aside from the usually disruptive phone call. Art was isolating. I got so lonely I went into theatre.
There was no Facebook. It’s great how artists banter back and forth today, and how art lovers and patrons are able to follow an artist’s evolution in real time. Some might argue that so much information has desensitized us, but I think the visual arts, above all the arts, have benefited most from this era of immediacy. You can share new work instantly, and get instant feedback.
Way back when, I remember a plumber leaving a note on my easel in an old apartment because the owner let him in to fix my sink while I was gone… the note read… “I LOVE your watercolor!”. That meant a lot to me! Alone in the studio, there was no one to share with. Today is a better day for art.
