Yesterday, 26th of August, Frau Kolb returned to Kate Gilbert's (soon to be vacated) K-Town spot. This time, Frau was one among others, there for Gilbert's "exploration of value," People Are More Important Than Things. This event was proof that an authentic artist can make ART out of the mundane. Thereby, performing a kind of alchemy of material where what is usually trivial and without meaning is transformed into vital, viable, intense, a deep trove of treasure.
Yesterday, Frau sat on a pillow on the floor among Gilbert's folding, expanding, contracting collection of people and objects and watched the magic. We have all heard that artists are "special." Yet… what does that mean? Well, in Gilbert's case it means that she can invite friends and press into her space and open the portale of possibility. Remember, Dr. Who? There was a space, a machine, like a closet through which he traveled through time and into different dimensions. That was what it was like at the "Auction," of good in which one talented woman invited us to consider VALUE.
What do we VALUE?
How do we decide what something is worth to us?
"Is IT worth IT?" We ask ourselves this question frequently. We ask in stores. We ask when facing the day and deciding if it is time to get out of bed. We ask ourselves and others, all the time, what is worth striving for. What do we DESIRE enough? Was it something, an object we saw on TV? Was it a dildo or butt plug we spied at some sex shop? Was it a book of soft-porn from the eighties, "Women in Love," featuring drugged out zombies? Was it a NEW car? Toothpaste? Tide?
What do we VALUE?
I claim to value ART, creativity, and comradery… Well, I witness the fragile, formative, shifting, and intangilbe truth that all of the above are gifts which we can only hope to harness and that we must payfor with LOVE, attention, and focus.
©Frau Kolb 2012