What Happened to All the Artists?

I don’t know about you, but my Instagram feed has become inundated with cute animals, compression socks, random beauty products (I don’t really wear makeup), natural disaster footage, and ads for things I may or may not need. I guess somewhere in my subconscious, those things appeal to me?

Don’t Get me Wrong but I love Cute Cats!

However, I am an artist, and almost all the accounts I follow are other artists, friends, food (my other passion), and small businesses I want to support. Frustratingly, until I took action (I’ll explain what I mean by this later), very few of them were making it through all the visual noise. I realised that I had become a victim of the dreaded algorithm. If I am not seeing my chosen content, neither are other people. Instead, we are watching cute, mindless videos from creators and influencers, and it is mind-numbing.

So what happened to all the artists? Where did they go? One of my favourite artists, Lisa Congdon, who became the artist she is today by connecting with a broader audience through social media spaces such as Instagram, commented on her own relationship with the platform. She mentioned how it does not define her, but it has become harder. She talked about her disdain for making reels and content that is inauthentic to her, and that fewer people are interacting with her posts. So if an artist like Lisa, who has been with IG from early on, built her business, and has been, in my opinion, pretty loyal to it, is struggling, what does that say for the rest of us creatives who want and need a space to show our art?

We are not just using it to get views, likes, shares, and grow our followers. It is about exchanging ideas, sharing our strengths and weaknesses, all in hopes of creating connections that allow us to be seen by others that could lead to potential sales and homes for our style of art.

I have been listening to the podcast Creative Pep Talk by Andy J. Pizza, and a recurring theme in several of his episodes is this idea: "You arT what you eat." It is the idea that the art you make is informed by the art you visually consume. For me, Instagram used to be that place where I went to see what other creatives were making and to be inspired. But when there is so much visual noise, and some (a lot) of it is garbage, the people who want to make genuine, heartfelt content get drowned out, and I just don’t see them anymore. So again I ask: Where are all the artists? Did they abandon ship? More food for thought: Will the art I make be a reflection of snarky memes and disaster videos?

So what do you do about it? I want to see and be introduced to new artists. I want to find work that inspires me, touches me, and visually excites me. I want people like Lisa Congdon to have a voice and platform—I want one too! I don’t know how long this will work, but I have been conducting an experiment based on the idea “You arT what you eat” from Andy J. Pizza. Every time I open IG, I use a set of parameters to navigate the space:

1. Like only artist pages.

2. Scroll through the multiple images of other creatives.

3. Read their descriptions.

4. Comment sincerely when I have something of substance to say.

The first time I did this intentionally, there were very few posts that I liked and only one I commented on. The second time, there were more! Now, when I open it up, I am seeing more artists than ads, fewer random content creators, and my targeted suggested accounts are other artists. I have had to slightly amend my parameters to favour the likes of people whom I already follow, as I want to see what they are up to. After all, I followed them for a reason. I only like and follow those whose work resonates with me because when I comment, I want to have something more to say than “Love it.”

What would happen if more people did this? Elected to see the content of their choosing? My challenge to you is to try it and see if you have similar results.

*Andy J. Pizza has more to say on the latest Social Media trends- if you want more affirmative actions listen to his episode 430 How to Break Fee From Serving Social Media in 3 Steps.

The Why?

Truth be told I struggled emotionally during and subsequently completing my MFA. I partly did it to myself as the program was intense and it asks a lot of you. You are continually exploring, and excavating who you are and what you want to say and why you want to say it. Sometimes by looking so deeply inward you reveal truths that are hard. I started asking myself what makes me, Me. You are more than the sum of your parts. You are all your lived experiences, good and bad. For me I dug deep into the bad- (see what I mean by I partly did it to myself?). If you visit my posts through out this website you can see what I mean by the bad. I am a woman, a mother and artist. I love intensely, feel things passionately. But, I also have childhood trauma, experienced an array of physical assault, family illnesses and death. When the emotions get hard I tend to retreat and pull away. With all of that work that I did, thats exactly what happened. The weight wasn’t lifted when the program went away it got heavier, because I am now this accomplished artist with this degree, who can spout names and themes and various opinions on Feminism. I felt like people expected me to be this new version of me but I felt/feel like a fraud.

My thesis work, if you are only now just discovering it, explores the domestic roles performed by women, including myself, focusing on ideas of maintenance, acts of care, and grief. I dove into themes of redundancy and interruption, creating works that reflect these concepts. To create these pieces, I set parameters that limited my tools to those found in the domestic realm, working within a physically constrained space dictated by my domestic duties. As a result, my work often appeared hurried, interrupted, or minimalistic. Those limitations led me to develop strategies that enable me to be creative and find the extraordinary in the everyday.

My motivation behind this work was to share my stories and give a voice to my experiences in the hopes of inspiring other women (or caregivers of any kind) and giving them a "Me too" moment, a sense of relatability. I had many conversations on how others related to my experiences, such as looking after young children and trying to maintain autonomy, or struggling to carve out time for their own interests.

However, when I began sharing my work with the broader artistic community, I was met with silence, which triggered self-doubt. Self-doubt can be paralyzing, and it led me back to the fundamental questions of who I am and what drives me. This prompted me to revisit the WHY behind my work and why it is important for me to explore the themes that I do. So I got out the shovel again and starting looking for the WHY. The short answer is the connection.

For the past two months I have been taking an immersion course into surface pattern design from Bonnie Christine. I love textiles, sewing and making things. I am so very passionate about creating, I did an MFA- that is a huge freaking big deal. If you go through my images, especially some of the earlier works leading up to my final thesis project you will see some similarities emerge- there is almost always a needle to thread to textile component. My thesis was about the problems of being a wife, mother, care-giver etc. and the struggles of maintaining oneself and identity within the role of domesticity. But what if, still exploring those themes I offer a solution? My WHY is still to connect, and to relate, to hear you, to see you, and to feel you. That is exactly why I want to share beauty and empower women through textiles and other design. I truly hope that we can connect, share stories, grow and learn from one another. I will show up with authenticity, humour, and maybe a martini.

Over the next while, I will be revamping my website and sharing some of my explorations into the world of Design through the lens of pattern and illustration. My hope is to successfully merge the concepts behind my thesis endeavors with this new direction.

Can I fix you?

It has been a hot minute since I picked up a needle and thread. I have been frustratingly uninspired. Not for the lack of experimentation with new materials, and exploration of different themes but because everything I try has felt disingenuous. The following is a work in progress and it’s working titles are Can I Fix You? or Armpit to the Soul.

Gold gouache painted fabric under black ‘t’shirt tears.

This is not a functional repair, though I suppose my husband could wear the shirt and it would serve its purpose as an item to cover oneself. The repair is once again a metaphor.
Themes:

• Repair

• “Fixing”

• Care

• Body

• Functionality

More on this later. In the process of the making, themes become clearer to me and I am better able to articulate.

Observations: The shirt layer is very fragile and as each stitch pierces the fabric it weakens the fibres . The white residue is probably a combination of both sweat and deodorant that have left traces of the body, it is where the fabric is weakest. Finally I am getting gold paint everywhere, it is becoming embedded in all parts of the fabric.

What Now? + What Can I Do?

As my Graduate studies intensified most of my work was done in my home and most commonly on my kitchen floor as it reflected my thesis research about domestic labour, identity, and practice of art making. Can one be a wife, mother and artist? I never really answered that in my thesis and it is a subject that I am still exploring, especially now, because; What now?

If I can no longer use the excuse I am student, ie. not paying tuition, for my eccentric tendencies such as using a household broom or toilet brush to paint. Then who am I as an artist? Do I go back to being mother, and wife first and fit in art making when I can? Or do I continue researching and exploring how one can embrace the these dualities? I know what I want to do, but saying it out loud, even the act of putting it into words on a blog that few will read brings to the surface anxiety, fear, guilt and selfishness.

I worked so hard to get this degree, to go back to how it was before, will break my heart.

What Can I DO?

• Keep making art.

• Keep learning.

• Keep practicing.

• Fail upwards.

• Start using my voice and saying what I need.

Megan Carroll Shut Your Mouth 2020,
Embroidery Thread, Collage, on Paper
8.5” x 11”