Sunday, May 1

Nope

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Y'know? Sometimes craft is all that happens. Look at this image. The guy's a manager for a traveling carnival. Normally artists seem to look among carney workers for grim metaphors about the meaning of life. They try to reveal the workers as lost souls, teetering on the edge of societal doom. In fact I've discovered them to be ordinary folk who sort of like it that they are entertaining people for a living. They particularly seem to enjoy the way kids glow as they squeal in the rides and clamor for the food.

BUT ... that's not how we're supposed to do it, right? We're supposed to find Diana Arbus monsters... freaks... Nope, couldn't do it... All I found were people like my cousins and neighbors who worked - hard - for a living at jobs that they were happy about. Darn... So much for profound insight into the dark corners of our cultural brain stems huh?

Thought I'd share this overworked failure of an image. Darn! Grit and despair are so fashionably artsy and all I could find were jovial people. So without a grim dankness to it, well I guess this is pretty much un-save-able, no matter how much craft I slather onto it, huh? I'll take this down in a week or so.

1 comment:

Marti Jeffers said...

HI Ted -- I love your view of the carnival folks. It is very child-like (not childish) -- full of smiles and wonder. And, this image is great. It makes me smile and remember my childhood view of carnivals.

Thanks for the memories!

Marti