Welcome and Gallery Crawl Review

Hello,
My name is Sam Perry and earlier today I began to delve into an independent study on the artist manifesto. This study has been something stewing within me, nebulus. I am giving it some plasma through the tangled world wide web we weave and I have to provide this disclaimer: I am not exactly an advocate of blogs as effective dissemination of truth. I fondly refer to this vast network as the blogosfear not because it is yet another one of my clever puns but because I truly believe that people blog out of a fear of being no one. After all, if you're not on The Google, you don't exist.
At any rate, no artist can exist in a vacuum and the hard drive of my computer is shotty, so putting my laundry out to dry on a blogger account seems like a smart move.
I would like for this first post to really showcase what I am all about, and that is a continued creation of my art but at the same time a continuous discovery and critique of other artists' work. I was provided an opportunity to do so earlier tonight at The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's Gallery Crawl in the Cultural District. I am an avid patron of the city's gallery crawls, but was presented a whole new experience through the every changing art community.

Artist Adam Welch's exhibit at 709 Penn Gallery, "A Few Objects-On a Theme of Contradiction" was the first stop for my group and it was also a look into the tone of the whole Crawl. The works ranged from sculpture to mixed media and painting, however, the sculpture at the entrance of the gallery totally overshadowed any of the beauty or truth that I could have found within "A Few Objects." This sculpture, entitled "F*cking Archetypes" was an almost literal take on the phrase. The sculpture moves, slamming against the blue back drop which evokes a blue print. However, upon further examination, one can see that the object slamming the back drop and invoking the metallic rattle is in fact a purple dildo.

I honestly cannot recall the rest of Welche's work throughout the room because every thirty or so seconds, the banging and slamming would produce the same sound that was now tied to an image so distracting and vulgar.

This raised a debate among friends as we continued to other galleries: How could that be art? I think the answer is very simple, it was created with the intention of being art and conveying a meaning, and many people may see beauty in it. But how can it be appreciated? I certainly would not call it good art, but other viewers may. What I can respect is that Welch was after a concept and took time to showcase the concept of contradiction. Unfortunately, that meaning was lost to me. I don't want to create art that spoonfeeds meaning to the masses, but I don't want to create something that is so ambiguous that it can be taken by the viewer and given meaning far from my intended truth.

All in all, the Crawl gave me contradiction and some poorly conceptualized spaces, however, the whole event was largely redeemed by Do You Understand?, Urban Tree Forge, the Space Gallery, and Shaw Galleries.

After taking in new ideas and artists' works, I am refreshed and ready to create SamSamLand, a gallery installation/performance art/film/fashion creation that I am about to eat, live, sleep, smoke, drink, eat, and hopefully not choke.