The meaning of the life art work reflection 2022 end

This is a writing I did to be spoken in a video…

This video is a follow up video to the video that I made titled A Story of Life Art 2022.  In that video I tracked the rise of life art as a practice in the Western art historical narrative.  In this video I want to tell about my own practice and how it emerges in my life.  If you want to get a better sense of how life art has emerged or developed I encourage you to watch that other video that is available online through my YouTube channel and also on The Life Art Institute which is a free online educational resource that I host. 

It brings me so much joy to describe my practice as an artist.  I describe myself as a life artist, but you could also say artist.  Basically, with life art it is about the deeds in actual everyday real life lived that become the art.  So, with that being the case I have so much to share about my own practice.  Granted it is true that with life art everything is art and everyone an artist and art in their own right.  However, I want to focus in on some of the aspects that seem to illuminate possibilities with this notion.  In no particular order for the sake of being organic, I want to first tell about my library work.  I have worked now at a public library since just after starting to live my life as art about four years ago.  There is more to the story of how I created my life as art and created a practice for living life as art which I will describe as I go on.  But to jump to the library, I started as a Shelver and am now a Public Service Assistant (PSA) II Floater where I float among the branches and main library at the circulation desks.  I am just now at the time of this recording entering into my final classes for my graduate degree for a masters in library and information science.  The biggest thing in the context of this video is to really relate this idea and actual lived practice in real-time reality that my library journey has been art and even Art with a capital “A”.  I have been an artist all of my life and long story short at some point I had a massive breakdown in my life becoming dysfunctional and having to start my life over from scratch.  It was at this time that I transferred from a victim minset to a victor mindset and had to find a way to really wake up to the fact that everything I was doing was already art.  This is the key.  I have not seen this talked about anywhere else yet though it might have been.  The point in my life was realizing and actually putting into practice how what we term the creative muse can be channeled not only into paintings and sculptures but into our very selves, into us as beings and used as fuel for personhood.  This was everything to me.  It ignited a spirt of service itself that began to see how I could truly change myself like Gandhi spoke of and in turn have a positive meaningful lasting impact on what I had come to understand as the art world and even beyond that in the world at large.  Living your life as art, which I describe with the term life art is I feel a completely new arena for artistic practice even though it is ancient and timeless it is also timely and having its first moment of many in our collective conscious now I feel.  Every time I put a book away or help a patron at the library, assist them with faxing something or printing something or bringing donations of books into the library I am practicing my art, my life art.  I have done very little formal documentation in images like a typical artist would do with their work.  I did not want to create any type of manufactured feeling in myself along the way and wanted to give myself to life practice.  A few photos have emerged organically and I would like to use those as support for sharing this living of art and communicating its efficacy with the public.  A lot of the documentation during this time has been through a blog that I have kept which has been sort of like a captain’s log.  This specific expression of life art through library work allows me to help share the values I believe in in the world through my artistic practice of being a library worker. 

I also practice life art through things like trying new grocery stores and then trying new items in the grocery store.  Cooking things from scratch and playing with my palette in new and exciting ways.  Starting to buy flowers for myself and really delighting in the beauty that they offer me in an everyday way.  Organizing things around the house and in my car has also been a part of the sculpting of my life.  Studying to become a librarian is an aspect of it as well.  Incorporating a daily practice of meditation and creative visualization is a part of how I keep motivated with my life art and set intentions for the practice of it.  Also all of the ways in which I share talks that I do on the topic about spirituality and art and science like on Insight Timer, YouTube, my podcast, the social network I host that I mentioned which is called The Life Art Institute. Instagram, Medium and a blog on my website among others are instantiations of a deeply generative relationship that I have with the work and are ways that I share and document my findings.  This is all sort of documentation of the process but also an unfolding and illuminating experience for both myself and those interested in the topic who can tune in along the way.  Also, a practice of reading constantly either with physical books or audio books cannot be understated.  It has been truly transformation to become a daily reader in my life and has added to the expression of my life and the quality of my life and is what helped me I believe to get drawn to the work that I am now doing as art which is library work making more money than I have ever made in my life and enjoying the process immensely on the whole having fulfilling work and loving the opportunity to be a helping hand for folks. 

In my free time I write sometimes to other artworld people.  I try to explain this phenomenon of life art to people that I meet and continue to put a lot of stuff online for people to view.  In some sense life art is still growing as a recognized movement in the art world of my times but I am confident that it will breakthrough the surface of being and be incorporated into a global movement for happier, healthier more fulfilling lives for all.  I am whole heartedly learning my way through realizing my dream of having a positive meaningful lasting impact on the art world in some way that is unique to me and as original as is possible for myself while also transcending the art world and offering a gift to the world at large which as it has turned out is my lived experience, including documentation of life art, the writings I have done on the topic which include things like the blog which I got inspired to keep going with while reading the letters of Vincent Van Gogh.  I am just a person like any other who dreamed of being a super big great artist in the most innocent ways, a big figure in the art life that would arise in the historical canon and be incorporated into the ages of art through historical documentation and also just the collective imagination in positive and respected and dignified ways because of the honest and earnest study and practice of an art minded finding of the world.  I hope to achieve this dream.  I mean I really feel like I have already done this to a large extent even though there has been no recognition of my work in the collective consciousness very much.  I say these things so that others who feel called to do something big in life are not disuaded by self doubt that comes to one in the form of a thought that says something like “but who do you think you are, others will say wow what an egotistical person who thinks they can make history or that that is even a good reason to work on art” but honestly this is my dream and it is a good hearted innocent one.  You should not feel bad about dreaming an honest sincere good hearted dream like an innocent little being with a big heart and a wish to be a great artist.  Truly we are all already great artists and great art.  That’s the truth.  I hope to arise in the world through the art world and also the world at large as an expression of this. Thank you for listening. 

Love, Jon