A Memoir

The balance between Art and Politics.

The preceding six words is an attempt to capture my persona thus far. Truthfully, I feel it only scratches the surface. Within each word lies several facets, each one equally as important as the others. Some areas are clear, some are hazy. Some are known to me while others remain a mystery. The balance between Art and Politics; what the reader, the artist, the participant is given. Ernest Hemmingway's Iceberg Theory comes to mind. While I find Hemmingway's novels quite dull his ideas have become widely applicable in my life.
So what does this "iceberg" say about my politics, my art, me? Well, literally it states some sort of balance between the phenomena Art and Politics. What kind of art, what kind of politics? Music, dance, theater, writing could all be suitable actions towards the definition of Art. However, considering the fact that I am enrolled in the Tyler School of Art suggests something along the Fine Arts rather than the Performance Arts or Literature. Within the Fine Arts are several more disciplines but just to be frank my focus is in drawing and painting.
The same question could be said about politics. Just the utter of the word creates an image incorrect to my personal involvement in the area. Most people think of politics as involvement within our representative system. While some of the work I have done and hope to enter may involve coexisting within the political confines of our city, state, and country, the majority of my work will hopefully be based on the ground working on and/or solving the problems ignored or created by our current establishment.
Racism, sexism, economic injustice, war, poverty, gentrification, etc. These are all problems that are growing exponentially not only domestically, but globally. Can we really expect our Washington D.C. based government to intimately help a displaced family in Texas? Even with help from the state, how effective are our programs, especially in the long term?
So whose going to solve these problems and how? Cesar Chavez, Dorothy Day, Rosa Parks? Well, these people are dead so I highly doubt they can physically help us. However, we can learn from them, follow in their footsteps, and strive for the justice they just they once sought. Coincidentally, Cesar Chavez was the inspirational figure that developed my interest in community organizing. There it is. My politics: organizing. While the previous two paragraphs may have been excessive to the reader, I believe it was a necessary commodity in laying down the foundation for my memoir.
Speaking of memoir, what does all of this have to do with my memoir? Well, here it is, the big point. I want to use my drawing and painting as an academic, cultural and educational tool to empower communities at the grassroots level. If only we could have had 16 more words.