THE SHORT OF IT

In the fall of 2022, I visited the Heavy Manners Library in Los Angeles for the first time. The Library and its staff were very hospitable and welcoming to our class. Afterwards, each of us created an image or poster series as a gift to the Library for its hospitality.

In my final semesters at school before graduation, I had long been thinking about what the ‘duty’ of an artist is. Less to answer this question, which I can only ever answer for myself since it is an entirely subjective and individual process to wrestle with one’s own purpose, I was less interested in providing my own answer and more wanting to just ask the question.

The two risograph posters I created were part of a much larger series where elements such as words and images of hearts and brains were mixed in different orientations to obscure the initial meaning of the image.

THE LONG OF IT

If I think about what my own answer might be to being asked, “what is your responsibility as an artist?”, I would probably answer that it seems to me about highlighting how strange, scary, and beautiful life is. Everything else stems from this central spinal column of a worldview: a concern for human rights, empathy and compassion for all people from all walks of life (especially the marginalized, downtrodden, and nonconformist among us), a love for a our planet and fear surrounding its future, and a sincere hope that mankind can move forward and learn from its mistakes.

I hope that, because I hope I can move forward and learn from my own mistakes. I think its my awareness of my own failures, fallibilities, and weaknesses that illustrates to me that although other people may be different from me in terms of their experiences, or their circumstances, that all of us share some common threads that mark as all as being ‘in the same boat’. We all grow up, all have layered and sometimes difficult relationships with our family, friends, loved ones, all want belonging and connection, all feel afraid of what we don’t understand and can’t control, and all face an end to our lives that begs us to ask whether anything we do makes any lasting difference, leaves any lasting mark.

As artists, we have a level of influence that is different from something like a plumber or a mechanic. Those are necessary jobs and our world would fall apart without plumbers or mechanics. They are NECESSARY. Are artists necessary? Does anyone NEED art? My answer is, yes, of course.

It’s my belief that art is inherently political, even if a creator claims it isn’t or is not interested in making any kind of political statement. Why is this? An artist, be they a cook or a director or a violinist or a storyboard artist or graphic novelist or character designer for Dreamworks, cannot escape the sociocultural and economic environment they make art in. Let’s say I am a background matte painter for an animated film, something that perhaps seems as apolitical as it can be. This matter painter cannot escape the parameters of capitalism, history, economics, and culture that influences everything about the ideas they draw on to create, and the environment, time period, and reality they create in.

I think what I mean to say is, artists have a degree of power, even if they may not realize it or consciously think about it. It’s because we are involved in creating how other people see the world through our images, stories, movies, comics, typography. All of these things have a psychological bent that seeks to evoke a specific thing inside someone else. That’s power. And as Uncle Ben says to Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility.

If we are creators and influencers of a sort, we must be aware of the effect we can have on others. When making The Little Mermaid in 1989, Disney’s character designers drew on the look of a drag queen named Divine to design the antagonist Ursula. I think this was hardly a conscious or intentional idea to connect the enemy of the story with LGBTQ identities. But there is a long history of ‘queer-coding’ antagonists, villains, and evil characters, just as there is a long tradition of coding villainous characters with traits associated with any number of other minorities and marginalized groups. Antisemitism and anti-Islamic attitudes are some of the prevailing attitudes that come to my mind.

Of course a queer person, of any other kind of person, could be awful or villainous in some way. The danger lies in the unconscious and un-self-aware way these ideas and worldviews are peddled out to the masses, particularly to kids and other people formulating their ideas about the world and the kinds of people in it. It’s on us as artists to be conscious of the ideas we have, our biases and preconceptions, and how they will inevitably color our work.