art as rebellion
Walking along a busy sidewalk in Denver two months ago, I heard a pigeon get hit by a car. My head was down when I heard the thunk. I looked up to see the car toss the pigeon aside like a bone. The pigeon stood up and limped away, its wing newly angular, sharp like the line of a jaw.
I followed it for a while, wanting to protect it, thinking I could steer it away from any future bashings, simultaneously realizing that I know very little about pain.
I thought about captioning this drawing, “heart of a dove,” but that caption feels cheesy and besides, did you know doves and pigeons are essentially the same thing? Seriously, look it up. The difference comes down to how we perceive them.
I’m one of those people who struggles to mesh together art and capitalism. So lately I’ve been thinking about how engaging in the act of making, simply for the sake of creating something that didn’t exist before, and then sharing that with others with no expectation for anything in return, is inherently anti-capitalist.
It’s a work in progress, always…. But in this moment, art is about rebellion, for me.
