Weird Couple Scare Children at Local Pool

14 Jul, 2013

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ROCKFORD, IL  – As I drive through the hip art community, here along the River District in sunny Rockford, I often catch a glimpse of that famous bumper sticker proclaiming “Art Saves Lives”!  Can it really? I ponder.  Why yes of course it can stupid!

The music in my car stereo attests to this truth as Lil Wayne”s “Akward” is blasting. The colorful graffiti mural I pass really spruces up the otherwise war-like condition of the parking lot I pull into. I stop and slip into a gallery on this drizzly, looming afternoon. Dry and quiet now, my surroundings include; an abstract watercolor, a tribal mask and near the window, a positive and witty t-shirt that says “Hello spelled out like the Jello logo. My world has become a more beautiful place and this is just the perspective from my eyes!

Whether you’re an artist or someone who takes art from artists and uses it for your own advances available to the art community, you are making the world a more beautiful place … and saving lives. How? According to a recent Washington State University article entitled “Why Do We Need Art”, we see that art has been a part of human culture, expression and survival for all of human existence. My mom always said “You create a bowl out of mud but you don’t leave it ordinary, you make it special by engraving a pattern or figures on it or you smash it into a million pieces.. A poet takes ordinary words and phrases and makes them special. An artist places an activity or an artifact in a realm different from the everyday.”

Are you an artist? My guess is that there are times when you feel you must create to live, not because you need to sell something or to create an income (a nice benefit from living in a world that rips off artists and underpays and understands the need for free art) but because to create is to live and to live is to create!

riposte |riˈpōst|
noun
1 a quick clever reply to an insult or criticism.
2 Fencing a quick return thrust following a parry.

– Jay Vannigan