Symphony of Silence– At the West End Gallery
The great Overdog
That heavenly beast
With a star in one eye
Gives a leap in the east.
He dances upright
All the way to the west
And never once drops
On his forefeet to rest.
I’m a poor underdog,
But to-night I will bark
With the great Overdog
That romps through the dark
–Robert Frost, Canis Major (1949)
At last weekend’s West End Gallery Talk, I spoke a bit about the ‘I’ll show you’ factor. It was in reference to my experience showing my work for the first time in a gallery back in 1995. Though I had plenty of people stop and examine the work as well as compliment me on it, it was the people who walked by without a glimpse that affected me the most in that moment.
Their casual disregard felt dismissive, making me feel small and overlooked. I felt that my work was not being seen and the voice contained in it was not being heard. I felt a bit bruised in my feelings but at the same time was stirred and angered by the insult of it. I made a vow in that moment that sometime soon my work would make them stop and look, that my voice would be heard.
I know that this sounds small and petty, that I was taking it too personally. And maybe that’s right. But in that moment, the insult of their disregard felt like an existential challenge to my validity, not only as an artist but as a human being.
I was the overlooked underdog at that moment, but I would show them.
You would think almost three decades later that this I’ll show you factor would no longer have a place and would have faded away.
You’d be wrong.
For as much as I often feel seen and heard, there are many times when I still feel the overlooked underdog, both as an artist and a human. I believe this can be a great motivator, making one push beyond one’s perceived boundaries and limits, requiring them to exert maximum effort. It shoves you roughly out of that comfortable feeling of self-satisfaction in your work and yourself that sometimes becomes too much at home.
Again, it might sound small and petty and maybe not conducive to artistic creation. But I have always felt that artistic creation was a matter of showing other people how the world appears to you, what your voice and mind has to offer.
A way of being, as you know it.
And to do so, you sometimes, as an artist and a human, have to be willing to grab people by their collars and yell out your truth.
Maybe the Underdog’s Bark is much the same as Whitman’s Barbaric Yawp?
I think it might be…
Redtree Times 