Independent Weekly

Lori Waxman's "60 wrd/min art critic" reviews at Durham Arts Council

May 19, 2010

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ROBERT SOULLESS

Lori Waxman

Some people keep written journals, others compose blogs. Some write chatty emails or letters. All of these are ways of recording observations and experiences encountered daily. Robert Soulless, not his real name but all the more revelatory for having been chosen, like many visual artists maintains multiple sketchbooks. And sketchbooks, I am suggesting here, function not unlike diaries in that they stand as the subjective account of life, of events and moments and thoughts that a person wishes to remember or remark upon. So, what does Robert Soulless's life look like to him? If we take his jazzy colored marker style as an indicator, it looks a lot like the 1970s. Soulless seems to go to a lot of community meetings, music shows, bars and, especially, courtrooms, and he draws everywhere he goes. But though the sketchbooks in question are current ones, the people who appear in these places seem decidedly of an earlier era, as if Soulless were seeing them with decade-tinted glasses. Another of his sketchbooks holds completely different work, natty and precise watercolor studies of insects, complete with notes explaining how their anatomical structure functions in situations of sex or prey. Perhaps this is the diary in which Soulless metaphorizes about life, rather than recording it more directly. Perhaps not. It's not really polite to read other people's diaries anyway.

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Leaving my thoughts on Lori Waxman's performance adds one more level of abstraction to an already high-level of abstracted meaning. The relationship between artist - art critic - community excavated from within the bounds of the performance simultaneously denies and celebrates individuality and specificity.

As an artist who was reviewed from among her peers, the process has left me more aware of my role as a "Durham artist", an "abstract artist", a "representational artist", a "female artist", a "painter". I can't help but compare and contrast my review with others and further categorize myself and my art. Lori's performance has helped me describe my specific link in the various classified chains of artists spreading before and after me, within and outside of my local community.

For me, this experience has built personal identity and expanded understanding and relevancy, revealing prejudice within myself concerning how I think about myself as an individual who make things and my role as artist within my environmental scope.