Sharon Butler in town as part of NCAP's Insight? Outta Site! forum

Sharon Butler is in town this week as part of the Nashville Cultural Arts Project's (NCAP) spring 2012 Insight? Outta Site! forum. The talk was fantastic and I would have tweeted it but my rapt attention was on the dialogue. Sharon talked about her own experience with regard to how community affects the work (residencies, blogging, teaching); the significance and meaning of scale in her own work and others; the importance of writing as an alternative conceptual practice; self-motivation; the studio; the gallery system(s); DIY and taking responsibility for your career; and what I believe to be a core concept, at least with regard to my own work- how adapting one's practice (I'm on the fence about using the word, practice nowadays, but it flows grammatically) to situations in flux, not only enriches one's art and life, but also shapes the content and form of the work. There was also an amorphous thread on commodification which is always funny to me because seriously, just because a paintings hangs on a wall and fits in box, does not mean that it's some sort of direct to DVD cash cow. Ah, youth. The house was packed and the discussion lively.

The talk was held at Zeitgeist Gallery with a potluck beforehand. My birthday was yesterday and while I might appear mature, I still regard cake and icing as the reason for the season, so yes, after a full day of class, I stopped at the store, picked up eggs and a cake mix, and whipped up a chocolate cake with kickass Nutella icing. I blasted the a/c in the car and the cake cooled on the floorboard on the drive over. Iced it on site. After the discussion several of us went to a local tapas bar. Made it back to the compound before midnight, and told the dog I do it all for him. I can see the potential headrush supermoms might get from balancing a full life. My usual MO is more along the lines of: "I mixed some yellow ochre today." (That's a you-had-to-be-there reference to the more mundane aspect of blogging a painter's life with reference to Sharon talking about opening up the content of Two Coats to what it includes today.)

Through NCAP, Sharon's doing studio visits today and tomorrow with artists in the community.

And now some more link love:
I'm still relatively new to the scene here which keeps me in a beginner's mind mode, but I'm starting to run into artists I know including Adrienne Outlaw who organized the talk, Dane Carder, a painter and photographer who runs Three-Squared and who tipped me off to some sort of underground coffee dealer in the hood, (new ideas about Studio Coffee Break percolating as I write), Lain York, and the staff of Zeitgeist who are possibly eating leftover chocolate cake for breakfast and Beth Foley who I met through Kit Reuther, who I met through an old friend when I first arrived. I also met several artists at the talk, including Sharon Louden who's been a visiting artist at Vanderbilt this semester, and I ran into a few people who had Chicago and LA ties. I love the art world. It was a great evening, topped only by the fact that I've got 4 shows happening between now and June. Fifty-one is the New iPad.