Is this Art or not?

In 1980 I had a one-man show at the Greenville County Museum of Art in South Carolina. Despite its hinterlands location, the museum has a very good collection, and I was honored to be showing there. At the opening of my show I was asked by the curator if I would consider a commission to do the artwork for the poster of a show coming up at the museum called Animals in the Arts.

Is this Art or not?animals in the arts 1980 stephen springer davis smaller Is this Art or not?


I created a piece called Evolution using hand-carved rubber stamps, printing with drawing inks. It was all very exciting – this was an art museum after all. When it was printed the museum sent me ten posters, but strangely I would have to buy any extras beyond that at the full museum store price. I bought ten more, all I could afford, so that I could give them away as Christmas presents. My mother suggested that I send one to my grandfather, and it was awkward, because he didn’t know what he was supposed to think about the poster. So he went to a gallery in his town of Boca Raton, Florida to ask one question: Is This Art?

You can understand that I was relieved and pleased that the answer, according to my grandfather, from the gallery owner was an enthusiastic yes, this is Art.  Whew! That was a close one.

After the show ended I got a huge tube in the mail from South Carolina. A teacher had taken her fifth grade class to see my show, and the kids were so inspired, she told me, that they wanted to do a their own interpretation of my original artwork. She had the class draw animals on dishwashing sponges and use scissors to cut out animal shapes. She laid out a piece of brown paper about 4′ by 10′ and had the kids print their animals in the shape of a crocodile with poster paint.

I was so touched that I sent the teacher my framed Evolution. I hope that this piece is still on a wall at the school.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 6:02 am and is filed under About my artwork, Musings on my earlier work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses so far


Nina
May 29th, 2009
10:56 am

It’s a pity anyone would feel the need to consult someone else if a work of art was “art”. If he had just used his own pair of eyes and let himself experience the piece, it would have been obvious.


Charlotte
June 21st, 2009
4:43 pm

That story about the kids doing their own interpretations of your piece is just about the sweetest thing ever… who needs stinkin’ adults to understand your art, when little kids’ open minds do such a better job of it?

I want one of those posters, consarnit!


Steve
June 22nd, 2009
6:52 am

They’re collector’s items now, and are probably worth upwards of $20!

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