"Your words are too strong, they hurt people."
My response then and now.....
"Before my words hurt anyone else, first they hurt me."
If art does not provoke, it is not art, it is craft. Craft floats on the surface of our lives, even enriches our lives, but art, the real stuff, penetrates that surface and goes deeply into caverns we never knew existed, leaving a bloodless wound from which we never fully heal.
And what I want most to convey is that art, real art, is so close to us every day that we trip on it, and as we look back over our shoulders, we think it was just a crack in the sidewalk, and may we forgive ourselves for that, because we are here to make art out of every crumb of life.
And now in this series, I begin a journey into caverns dark and mysterious, caverns within me, within you.
Gloria Valentic
December 30, 2004