Art Should engage the community

Art should come from the heart of the artist, it should engage your audience, it should connect with your community, it should start a dialog, a debate, it should get people to look at things in a way they have not thought of, or to see what they have looked at but really not seen. Art above all has to connect, to get people feeling and talking. Art has to come deeply from the artist, there has to be that raw emotion and honesty in the work if it is to connect to other people. An Artist paints and sculpts what they know. These are all the reasons I wanted to do a show about Alzheimer's disease. To start a dialog, to connect, to get people to understand what it is like to have the disease, what it is like to care for one with the disease, it is a part of my life, so it is what I know, what I am around, and a part of my life. I can take those thoughts and feelings and transform them into visuals to engage my audience. I speak through pictures or clay..... Art is a look inside the artist, what I am feeling is transferred into the clay while I sculpt. Those feelings have to go someplace. I want to tell you the story, I want you to feel how it is, the frustrations, the humor, the compassion, the heartache...... William Faulkner said it best ~ The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.