Inspiration

On the Patrick John Mills Gallery blog, there is a discussion about what is art. When I read it this afternoon, I was inspired to write my sense of what art is but I had a meeting and it is only now, six hours later, that I am able to give some thought to this question.

This Quirky B. that I call, AXED, was made last summer, more than a year after I started defacing computer keyboards. Some of the impetus behind it was I was experimenting to see how difficult it would be to cut a keyboard in half and also, how to balance an axe on its blade and how to mount both items, more or less permanently.

Of course, the idea of making such a board preceded all of the above.

Somewhere, probably a few hundred times, I've written or intoned, "I was a writer, now I'm an artist." And I was, a writer, that is, for decades, and I used a keyboard since I was a child, transfixed by the mechanics of the Underwood, Remingtons and other typewriters that every office sported when I was growing up.

I went through Journalism school using an ancient Underwood I bought for $25 at a pawn shop and never used a computer for any other post-secondary schooling although key-punching was a course that was offered at a community college I attended. The personal computer had not been invented.

Whereas writing is something that everyone does now that we are all glued to our computers or personal communication devices, art is something I'd rather be doing using a keyboard even if it means destroying the keyboard to give it new life.