more sentimental problems

So I was talking to this guy who was telling me that he was pushed very hard in an artistically conceptual direction at school. His work showed it, but I liked his work very well. I had an idea: When we force our minds to grow in new directions and encompass new ideas we gain broader tastes. But as a result we also have more limited or specialized tastes. So maybe we could try to bend our minds around very so called traditional things, and discover deeper things then we saw the first time around. Maybe you can still write a good love song with 3 chords- perhaps its not about the chords. Maybe western art isn't impossible to find engaging- maybe 'western' isn't the point. In fact, maybe a study in "sentimentality" is needed. Perhaps the feeling based (as opposed to idea or concept based) arts can be explored in a more psychological way, and be found more valid. I think its a bad idea to associate "feeling" with "easy". Sure we all feel stuff, but we all can also teach our minds to do gymnastics- its just as easy. So maybe Fredrick Remington isn't pure nostalgia. Why is that so hard to consider, when a performance artist shooting himself in the arm isn't? We keep trying to see though the fluff, but isn't the point of trying to see through something to see something through it? You can only tear down so many things and you find the same thing: something that can be debunked on the same grounds that we debunk Thomas Kinkade. Sentimentality. Now I don't like T Kinkade. But maybe I should learn to respect him on HIS terms- I've bent over backwards for everyone else. There is still such a thing as bad art; but it should have less to do with genre and more to do with intent.

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

W.B. Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossoms in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

These are what we call the Grand Tetons. I live on the other side in the summer. Jackson was some guy who had a cabin out there, in a flat surrounded by more mts. Thats called Jacksons Hole.

sentimental problems

"A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional or (as they would say) 'sentimental' values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process. They claim to be cutting away the parasitic growth of emotion, religious sanction, and inherited taboos, in order that 'real' or 'basic' values may emerge... In the end we see that all value will be sentimental; and you must confess (on pain of abandoning every value) that all sentiment is not merely subjective."

CS Lewis

grad school and C Jimison

I just got accepted to grad school at BYU provo. That is very nice and I must be blessed. BYU Idaho has been great for mainly one reason: I have had the privilege of studying under Carla Jimison who has helped me artistically more than any professor I've ever had. She has a very discerning eye and knows more about art than anyone I've ever met. She also has helped us professionally- to sell work through shows and teach workshops. No offense to everybody else, but Carla Jimison is the best professor here; a giant in this little department, and when I'm finished with school I'll regard her as my only mentor.