It’s my experience that artist communities are almost always camps because they appropriate space that nobody else wants (at the time), but by virtue of a creative progressive view of neighborhoods they create a demand from others that ultimately marginalizes them, so they are forever transient.
James Lynch, founder of Fforest Camp.
The quote above was one I found on a site called http://beaverbrook.com/.
I guess that the true artist never really gets a chance to stop moving…whether he’s a gypsy who builds up and then moves on…or, like Andrew Wyeth or any of the other artists connected to a specific location for most of their lives, moving internally….always metamorphing into something new…the new butterfly moving through the world incognito.
Artists are frequently poor. Artists are often brave. The combination is a strong one for leading them to take a chance on locations that others have written off as unappealing. Green by default, they take something that’s cast off and turn it into something that is newly attractive…the plain girl with the new-found confidence, the fresh planted garden, a sense of happy peace and growth.
This is a light to the less creative moths circling through their own unsatisfying lives. Money and mobility lets them pick and choose where they want to live….and why wouldn’t they want the “girl” who just found her place in the world? The physical connection to the life lets them claim the life as their own…lets them be a part of something that maybe, except for having some money in their wallet, they don’t deserve. The old complaint of “you should have seen this place 30 years ago” is a never-ending story.
You (the creative soul) can’t keep a good thing secret forever…it’s not in your nature to hide your light under a bushel basket…so what to do? Do you build underground? Put up blackout curtains? No…you shine even brighter in the daylight…luminously life affirming and inviting.
Maybe that’s the only true progress….the ability to see beauty beyond what is…and to act to bring it to life. The artist makes a life of turning swords into plowshares…bringing up beauty from the ashes. I guess that as long as there are people who tear down that there will be a place in the world for the creative soul….and that there also will always be people of vision who can see something good after it’s been made good again…and want to claim it as their own birthright.