Why writers should not hate artists

I sip coffee from my white ceramic mug at Cafe Roma near campus, waiting for my group members to arrive. I’m uncharacteristically early, and pass the time by eavesdropping on the born-again Christians in passionate conversation at the table next to me.

A couple of minutes later, the two I was waiting for arrive, and we begin on the task at hand. One of my final journalism classes is a course on “Writing for the Arts,” and we’re assigned to interview four different artists in class. The person my group happens to be interviewing has a frustratingly visual website, with a two-sentence bio of the artist and an abundance of photos. We’re word-bound people. We can’t compile our list of hard-hitting questions without some more background information.

“Exploring the intrinsic value of timeless knowledge,” I read aloud off a photo caption. The girl next to me, wearing absurdly large frameless glasses over her small round face, sighs with frustration.

“I hate artists,” she growls. I laugh a little in sympathy; the statement I’d just read is exactly the type of vague language that has been excised from any good journalism student’s lexicon through years of writing classes. But I haven’t been brainwashed to the point of intolerance for those who still find words like these useful. After all, aren’t writers also artists? Shouldn’t we show some solidarity? Sure, our medium is words, sentences and metaphors, but we face the same challenge that artists do of expressing the formless and wordless dimensions of human thought. Not only that, but we are compensated for our work on the same crappy pay scale.

I pose the question to my two peers. The large-glasses girl scoffs. “I’m no artist,” she claims. The guy across the table is on my side, but doesn’t appear to have ever considered the question before. I decide not to pursue the topic and we move on with our work.

Still, the question lingers in the back of my mind, and I begin wondering what gave me the idea that I was an artist in the first place. My roommate, Willa, happens to be a “real” artist, a surprisingly grounded and practical person who consistently amazes me with her productivity. I guess that’s why I’ve put so much consideration into my status as an artist: Our household is so overflowing with paintings, sketches, and shelf upon shelf of ceramic pots that I have to justify my relative invisibility. When visitors come and swoon over our walls, I point at my laptop and closet full of journals indignantly, protesting, “It’s all in there, I’m creative too!”

It so happens that the evening after the group meeting at Roma, Willa invites me to a special lecture put on by the art department on campus. I’ve always been an art appreciator, and I need an excuse not to write an essay for English class, so I go.

The lecture is by an artist visiting from New York, Shinique Smith, who specializes in sculptures featuring cord-bounded bundles of used clothing. As I settle into my seat in the lecture hall full of pink-haired, thrift-store chic artsy types, I realize I’ve never been to an event quite like this before. I’ve interviewed a couple of artists and had many more informal conversations with them, but the people I spoke with were always “translating” their ideas to me, a layperson unversed in the complexities of art. The artist speaking tonight is here simply to explain her work to a group of art students. They speak the same language.

This becomes apparent during the Q&A section at the end of the lecture. People ask Smith why she has worked for so many years with bundled clothing, and she answers simply that she hasn’t explored the extent of the medium yet. One student wants to know what Smith does first when she gets up in the morning, and they chat about that. Meanwhile, the journalist inside me is screaming. What kind of an answer is “haven’t explored the extent of the medium”? Who cares what she does when she gets up in the morning? What are the wider social implications of her work? Does she really think all that bunched up fabric does anyone any good?

I restrain myself with the simple fact that nobody else seems bothered by this, and that the work itself is interesting and beautiful. Without being told, I sense the quiet restraint in the sculpture and the hint of human form beneath it.

On the walk home, I begin to understand why writing about the arts is so difficult: art was never really meant to be put into words, especially not a news format. The challenge to the arts writer is creating an idea of the artist’s meaning by holding up and examining inexpressible concepts related to love, hate and everything in between. In this context, words become like clumsy sticks used to pick up diamonds, and we’re constantly, carefully testing our (not to mention our editor’s) tolerance for vagueness and obscurity. The reader, on the other hand, is looking for quick, descriptive news stories that come to some concrete point. Artists seem to specialize in dangling their point just out of your mental reach.

Before signing up for Writing for the Arts, I wanted to take an investigative reporting course but ended up not being able to make the commute to Portland, where it was to be held. I considered Writing for the Arts an acceptable, if less exciting and challenging, substitute.

So these past four weeks, instead of chasing criminals and sleuthing after lying politicians (and it’s a good time to be in Portland for that type of thing), I’ve been spending my time getting as introverted and broody as my artsy friends. I drink too much coffee and play out mental car chases with the purpose of art being my elusive prey. (Ok, the too much coffee thing is not new.) As I do so, I’m rooting out my own preconceived notions about what constitutes an “important” story.

Conclusion: I may never find success in transforming bundles of clothing into crisp, descriptive and readable news stories, but one thing is for sure: This is a tough class. And writers who think they are not artists may as well quit while they're ahead.