Art is a hard thing to define. Always a highly subjective term, what we as modern society deem to be art has decidedly changed over the centuries. And even on a lesser scale, what one person believes to be art, another will find repulsive.
Many people find many different things beautiful. I for instance am enthralled with the macabre and find the spirituality and mythology surrounding death to be VERY appealing. More commonly than not, my beliefs on the matter are met with some opposition. It is the same for the various mediums and forms in which art may be expressed. While many people love photography or painting, others relish in the asthetics of stretched ear-lobes and scarification.
I myself am a piercing afficionado and tattoo connosieur. Many others find my own favored forms of art disdainful, and herein lies my quandry.
My love for the "body modification" art and associated lifestyles began at an early age. The idea of a piece of artwork being permanently engraved on your skin makes some people cringe, while I am not only intrigued, but delighted as well. How better to express one's self than on the most obvious canvas? How better to display the artwork you adore and to bare your soul, as many artforms attemp to do, than to emblazon it upon your living flesh, to stay with you until you are nothing but ash and bone?
Throughout my life I have encountered opposition from those of differing beliefs. My catholic mother-in-law, for instance, loathes the idea of tattoos, as in her eyes they are a defilement of God's holy temple... your body. I respect her opinion, and her for having it. But it is not mine. In school I was harrassed for having parents with tattoos and piercings, particularly in junior-high, when I attended a church-funded private-school. I heard such bollocks as "It says in the bible..." and "The mark of the beast is upon them". Such nonsense was of course never proved, and I myself have researched many years, and found only vague references to "making marks upon your flesh"... And none of those passages ever condemned the act. Religion is for each individual as subjective as Art is, but at least in the "protestant" christian faiths, there is a groundless fight going on. No judgement takes place within the Bible's texts. It is in the churches and in the homes that teach these faiths, where the lie is bred.
Regardless of my own religious, spiritual or artistic beliefs, I am sure we have all experienced bias and predudice in our lives. Usually over something beyond our realm of control, such as the color of our skin or the social class to which we were born. So each of us knows in a way how the other has felt, at a time when they themselves were judged wrongfully or shut out because of who they were. In my own life, coming from extremely young parents, lower middle class, living in a mobile-home for a time... all of these factors were beyond my control. Yet I suffered for them. That suffering made me much stronger, and much more open-minded about other people. It is for this reason perhaps, that I am completely baffled when other people are less accepting of those who differ from them. I myself am friends with a multitude of people from widely seperated social groups, many different religions, and several walks of life. From upper-class successful Doctors to homeless vagabonds. From devout muslims to athiests. From the clean-cut and posh, to the pierced/tattood artists. It is completely beyond me that so many of these people are at a silent war with eachother!
As varied as the arts themselves are the people within the art community. Well-to-do fashion designers will rarely share a room with tattood "Hell's Angels" bikers for instance. And even within the tattoo world, there are too many "cliques" to count. Each artist is different, and each art-collector just as much so. It might surprise you to find how many people with tattoos are lawyers, doctors, bankers or CEOs. I guarantee it's more than you'd think. I once had the pleasure of meeting a nun while I was a puppeteer who had a few small tattoos. But that is a story for another time.
Why are we the tattood so shunned, particularly amongst religious types?Ignorance. Ill-education. Misunderstanding.
It is human nature that we shun that which we do not understand. We are survivalists, merely trying to protect ourselves from the unknown dangers that lurk just out of reach. Too soon, we judge a person by their appearance or their career. I've a very close friend who is a high-school science teacher, but is nothing like the stereotype that binds him. He is not stuffy and humorless. In fact, he is one of the funniest and most laid back people I know!
I know that people judge me for my pinkish hair, my dark choice of clothing and my many facial piercings. I know that many of them will think of me as an overemotional or bitter person, with an unstable and temporary lifestyle unbefitting a mother, and may even assume that I am into mutilization or am suicidal. (I've been approached before, can you tell? lol) Usually I just use oportunities like these to educate others and maybe even make an unlikely friend. But my efforts to educate the world are stalled at the moment. How does one cope with the predudice and beratement when it comes from someone close, like a family member?
I realize that many of the other men and women in my age category, who have deviated from the strict rule of their parents and gotten tattoos did so because it was rebelious, or they have fought tooth and nail for years before ther families learned to accept it. I was more fortunate and had parents within the SAME generation as myself. Parents who were tattood and pierced long before I. I never had the challenge, nor the pleasure, of having to hide a tattoo or pierced navel from my parents. In fact, my parents were more than happy to come with me when I was old enough to join the freakish ranks.
Now I am faced with the truly new situation of dealing with someone on very close terms, who abhores the body modifications I have, and is zealously against my attaining more of them. It is very strange to me still to be around those who are less open-minded and accepting than my own parents have been. Our conversations do on occasion become quite heated and I am unsure how to maintain at least the illusion of my own respect for her and her beliefs and feelings on the matter, while not feeling attacked, condemned, guilty and ultimately more and more hostile.
I am the person I want to be. I make the decisions I do for reasons of my own, and no longer live at the will and whim of others. Yet I am at a loss. While maintaining the peace is never my main concern, it has become more of a necessity of late, as my dear rival is living in my home for the next month. A whole month of fighting and rudeness and bitter dispute will leave me in ruin. Her disrespectful stabs and guilt-inspiring lectures tire me.
To me art is many things. I find beauty in some aspect of everything I experience. The gracefulness of a woman's step, the sound of a crowd stepping hard against the concrete of a sidewalk... all things have an aspect of art and beauty to them. Even our arguments can at times become rather engaging and poetic, while spewing our rhetoric, the pace becomes a dance. But soo much dancing makes me dizzy, and exhausts me... One cannot be tired all of the time and expect some good to come of it.
Many people find many different things beautiful. I for instance am enthralled with the macabre and find the spirituality and mythology surrounding death to be VERY appealing. More commonly than not, my beliefs on the matter are met with some opposition. It is the same for the various mediums and forms in which art may be expressed. While many people love photography or painting, others relish in the asthetics of stretched ear-lobes and scarification.
I myself am a piercing afficionado and tattoo connosieur. Many others find my own favored forms of art disdainful, and herein lies my quandry.
My love for the "body modification" art and associated lifestyles began at an early age. The idea of a piece of artwork being permanently engraved on your skin makes some people cringe, while I am not only intrigued, but delighted as well. How better to express one's self than on the most obvious canvas? How better to display the artwork you adore and to bare your soul, as many artforms attemp to do, than to emblazon it upon your living flesh, to stay with you until you are nothing but ash and bone?
Throughout my life I have encountered opposition from those of differing beliefs. My catholic mother-in-law, for instance, loathes the idea of tattoos, as in her eyes they are a defilement of God's holy temple... your body. I respect her opinion, and her for having it. But it is not mine. In school I was harrassed for having parents with tattoos and piercings, particularly in junior-high, when I attended a church-funded private-school. I heard such bollocks as "It says in the bible..." and "The mark of the beast is upon them". Such nonsense was of course never proved, and I myself have researched many years, and found only vague references to "making marks upon your flesh"... And none of those passages ever condemned the act. Religion is for each individual as subjective as Art is, but at least in the "protestant" christian faiths, there is a groundless fight going on. No judgement takes place within the Bible's texts. It is in the churches and in the homes that teach these faiths, where the lie is bred.
Regardless of my own religious, spiritual or artistic beliefs, I am sure we have all experienced bias and predudice in our lives. Usually over something beyond our realm of control, such as the color of our skin or the social class to which we were born. So each of us knows in a way how the other has felt, at a time when they themselves were judged wrongfully or shut out because of who they were. In my own life, coming from extremely young parents, lower middle class, living in a mobile-home for a time... all of these factors were beyond my control. Yet I suffered for them. That suffering made me much stronger, and much more open-minded about other people. It is for this reason perhaps, that I am completely baffled when other people are less accepting of those who differ from them. I myself am friends with a multitude of people from widely seperated social groups, many different religions, and several walks of life. From upper-class successful Doctors to homeless vagabonds. From devout muslims to athiests. From the clean-cut and posh, to the pierced/tattood artists. It is completely beyond me that so many of these people are at a silent war with eachother!
As varied as the arts themselves are the people within the art community. Well-to-do fashion designers will rarely share a room with tattood "Hell's Angels" bikers for instance. And even within the tattoo world, there are too many "cliques" to count. Each artist is different, and each art-collector just as much so. It might surprise you to find how many people with tattoos are lawyers, doctors, bankers or CEOs. I guarantee it's more than you'd think. I once had the pleasure of meeting a nun while I was a puppeteer who had a few small tattoos. But that is a story for another time.
Why are we the tattood so shunned, particularly amongst religious types?Ignorance. Ill-education. Misunderstanding.
It is human nature that we shun that which we do not understand. We are survivalists, merely trying to protect ourselves from the unknown dangers that lurk just out of reach. Too soon, we judge a person by their appearance or their career. I've a very close friend who is a high-school science teacher, but is nothing like the stereotype that binds him. He is not stuffy and humorless. In fact, he is one of the funniest and most laid back people I know!
I know that people judge me for my pinkish hair, my dark choice of clothing and my many facial piercings. I know that many of them will think of me as an overemotional or bitter person, with an unstable and temporary lifestyle unbefitting a mother, and may even assume that I am into mutilization or am suicidal. (I've been approached before, can you tell? lol) Usually I just use oportunities like these to educate others and maybe even make an unlikely friend. But my efforts to educate the world are stalled at the moment. How does one cope with the predudice and beratement when it comes from someone close, like a family member?
I realize that many of the other men and women in my age category, who have deviated from the strict rule of their parents and gotten tattoos did so because it was rebelious, or they have fought tooth and nail for years before ther families learned to accept it. I was more fortunate and had parents within the SAME generation as myself. Parents who were tattood and pierced long before I. I never had the challenge, nor the pleasure, of having to hide a tattoo or pierced navel from my parents. In fact, my parents were more than happy to come with me when I was old enough to join the freakish ranks.
Now I am faced with the truly new situation of dealing with someone on very close terms, who abhores the body modifications I have, and is zealously against my attaining more of them. It is very strange to me still to be around those who are less open-minded and accepting than my own parents have been. Our conversations do on occasion become quite heated and I am unsure how to maintain at least the illusion of my own respect for her and her beliefs and feelings on the matter, while not feeling attacked, condemned, guilty and ultimately more and more hostile.
I am the person I want to be. I make the decisions I do for reasons of my own, and no longer live at the will and whim of others. Yet I am at a loss. While maintaining the peace is never my main concern, it has become more of a necessity of late, as my dear rival is living in my home for the next month. A whole month of fighting and rudeness and bitter dispute will leave me in ruin. Her disrespectful stabs and guilt-inspiring lectures tire me.
To me art is many things. I find beauty in some aspect of everything I experience. The gracefulness of a woman's step, the sound of a crowd stepping hard against the concrete of a sidewalk... all things have an aspect of art and beauty to them. Even our arguments can at times become rather engaging and poetic, while spewing our rhetoric, the pace becomes a dance. But soo much dancing makes me dizzy, and exhausts me... One cannot be tired all of the time and expect some good to come of it.