Art City Austin Inspiration

Before you read any further, please know that I am operating remotely in Austin, Texas and my computer (as well as any processing abilities) remain in Salt Lake City, Utah.  That being said, I have access to a computer at the moment and cannot wait to spill the contents of my over-flowing brain onto this blog.  I wanted to draw your attention to the first sentence so that I could expose my inability to share my photos and videos of the subjects I am about to describe.

Art City Austin.

How fortunate that I arrive in Austin, Texas during an art festival!  Creative energies everywhere.  Inspiration leaping from canvas to metal sculpture... enlivened persons wandering from booth to booth, gently caressed by the warm Austin breeze.  Yes.  This is how the world should involve art.  Whole hearted-ly and with reckless abandon.

Inspired by the surrounding area and infused with a newly awakened inspiration to connect with a place I had previously know so little about- I spontaneously launched a "Get to know the People of Austin" project.  As you roll your eyes and wonder what debauchery I have gotten myself into THIS time... let me explain.  A society is a sum of it's parts, those parts, by default are the people that inhabit that specific geographic region.  Demographic and cultural tendencies not withstanding, I wanted to capture moments of the people that inhabited this area that seems so vibrant.  I wanted to connect with them for a moment, to form a bond, to maybe even create a future relationship or some greater far reaching effect that is not even realized yet....

What amazed me, more so than my own eagerness to photograph seemingly random people, was their own eagerness to be photographed.  It was their own willingness to open themselves up to a complete stranger with a big camera from Utah (you know, that state that has those crazy liquor laws) that inspired me to continue to harass (speak with) people and take their photo.

This idea became even more interesting as I walked into the art festival.  All of a sudden, every 10 feet there was a new face, another inspired being, a fellow artist.  Although it would have been slightly unrealistic to photograph each and every artist, it was incredible to cross paths briefly, explain the project, exchange business cards, snap a photo and wander on.

Why would I want to take random photos of artists and put them on my website??

Simply put: to connect.   To connect our inspiration, to connect our ideas, our websites, our social media outlets, our insecurities, our strengths, our weaknesses, our art.  I hope to share websites and potentially cross-link our respective visions.  I'm sure some of the artists will look at my website (yes, I handed my biz card to everyone I shot) and think... pshaw, this girl isn't my style of photography.  I decided that was ok.  As nerve-racking as it can be to deliberately send other artists to your website, the potential to assist in the creation of an artistic network made it worth the knowledge that my photography could very easily be judged by the same people I was so eager to capture in one shutter click.

So there it is.

Art is greater than the individual.  With that in mind, the more individuals that interact the greater the chance of an increased societal impact of said art.  That's just my personal opinion anyway.

Oh yea, and I will actually put all those pictures up when I get back to Salt Lake City, since I'm not going to want to out in the snow anyway....