Let a Hundred Artists Bloom

Contemporary artist Shea Hembrey explores patterns from nature and myth. A childhood love of nature, and especially birdlife, informs his vision. http://www.sheahembrey.com/

In this TED Talk, Hembrey spins a yarn about how he found his way to art as a kid growing up in rural Arkansas. Looking to see what is going on in the contemporary art scene, he travels to Europe to attend the major art exhibitions, and comes away feeling dissatisfied. He takes some time for himself to define what it is that he seeks. He settles on his personal criteria for his art: well-crafted, well-thought out, yet accessible art — art that can be explained and understood by his grandmother in 5 minutes or less. He wants to make art with the 3 H's in mind: Head, Heart and Hands.

He gets an idea and begins to outline the criteria to curate his own personal biennial. In the course of doing so, he ends up deciding that he will create all of the art himself. Hembrey takes on the task of inventing the personas of 100 different artists from countries all over the world and begins to make the work that springs from the head, hearts and hands of these fictitious artists.

Hembrey's inaugural biennial, SEEK, is a good example of a contemporary artist who exercises his imagination to adopt a incredible range of artistic styles, using a wide range of media. Without passing judgement on the art itself, can we take a moment to compare Hembrey's efforts in relation to that of a protean Picasso. (Yes, I know that the comparison is rather unfair, but humor me!)

Shea's D-I-Y approach certainly opened opportunities for himself to explore the potential of his creative self, and the task that he set for himself certainly could be "stolen" as a fun art assignment that frees students to explore the range of their own self-expression. I believe that there's a great lesson for us in here too, as a committee looking to craft artistic opportunity for others. We can use this project prototype to help us think about what we hope our students will discover about themselves through their engagement with Picasso.

If we take a look at approach and goals that each artist has set for themselves, can we define the differences in a way that will be useful to us?