Experiences: Art & Community Advocacy in Dupont

So I'm walking through Dupont Circle w/ Sam and this guy has a digital camera on a tripod set up opposite from this easel, and has a cardboard sign underneath the canvas simply saying "Please Paint".

We had just grabbed some food from Firehook and decided to sit outside and eat in the circle when we came across this...work in progress.

Let me add a little context...I'm currently working on my M.A. in Arts Management, from American University. And even though my focus is in the performing arts, particularly dance, I can rarely observe art now without looking at it through this additional lens, a metaphor I've come to incorporate into my own vernacular courtesy of various teachers in the program over the past couple of years.

So I'm watching this guy and his easel and his cardboard sign, and observing the people coming up. At first, Sam and I actually where wondering who the artist was, which should have been a sign how neat this art/social experiment was.

It didn't click until I heard some of the people annotate their contributions with comments about how they have little to no artistic skill whatsoever. It reminded me of comments friends and acquaintances of mine make when they're out on the dance floor with me and almost seem to disregard their own ability to groove in my presence, simply because I do it for "a living".

What was great was while they were disvaluing their own creative abilities, they were simultaneously indulging in and cultivating it.

While eating our Firehook fare, we hadn't really been in view of the canvas. As we got up to leave the circle and continue on with our day, we got a good view, and Sam got some pictures, of it.

Now I realize I'm probably over-analyzing it, but not only had this work been cultivating the creativity of pedestrians who happened to pass through the circle, but the piece in and of itself was a bit of a historical document at the same time, capturing the contributions of people who might not have ever met, and possibly never will, except by way of their amateur contributions, painting on this canvas an artist set up, a painting he might not have ever touched himself.

What a great way to cultivate creativity in people who constantly see art exported to "professionals" on and exploited by reality shows. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the way So You Think You Can Dance and America's Best Dance Crew advocate for dance to audiences that might not ever experience it, but at the same time they contribute to the artist-audience divide which negates the artistic potential everyone has to express themselves.

And in a world where the years between generations is getting shorter, and people are defining themselves more and more by communities of choice rather than of fate, what a neat anomaly that just makes you think about it all, how we relate to each other and the intersection of the individual and the group, for a moment.