Day 221 Isms



July 18, 2015

(This is part of a 365 project during my 70th year where I write and illustrate a blog on each day’s gift.)

Baltimore's 2015 Artscape
Scape as a noun is a flower stalk arising from the ground. Scape as a suffix is a view. Artscape is well named. Two days at Artscape and I could not help noticing—and feeling—the power of art and the determination of a sullied city to overcome its history. 

Webster defines art as “something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings.”  Artscape is this and more. This weekend included visual and other traditional arts but it was the music that created the most powerful art as sounds threaded through the crowd to weave a multi-cultural tapestry of energy and joy.  There is art in what the eye sees, the ear hears, the tongue tastes, the skin feels, and the nose smells. But there is also art in what the mind can imagine. I saw one musician who had crafted a wind instrument out of PVC pipe and I saw a hydroponic garden made from PVC pipes.

Art is an experience. Today was a personal decontamination for me—away from 24/7 news, TV baseball, stale inside air and bland suburbia. Art can also be a collective experience. Indeed, as the lead singer of The Scotch Bonnets said, Artscape offers a type of cleansing, a decontamination of bad isms: ageism, racism, sexism. I also two more—antagonism and negativism. 

Not all isms are bad though. Artscape is the quintessential prism of optimism and the potential that humanity shows when we embrace creativity and multiculturalism. 

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” ~Stella Adler

 My gift today is decontamination.

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> Day 222 Jack and the Beanstalk

You can find links to my other posts on this project here:

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