Hobbling across the deck of the Blue House, I reviewed the staff meeting. I thought I'd handled myself well when Hayward hit me up for the changing look of the campus--going the way of wild. "That's an administration decision," I had said. "Ten acres is more ground then one man can keep."
"Don't bring men into this," Hayward had said, "it's more ground than you can keep."
I panned the staff; the set of jaws seated around the square of tables. Yes, hard jaws made for a good audience.
The first to loosen a jaw was the Dean. "I know you two have a strained working relationship, but a staff meeting is not the place for this."
"Hey," I had said, "Hayward and I have a great working relationship. He pisses me off and, to vent, I go out and get more work done than if he hadn't pissed me off."
I panned the staff; jaws had loosened all around. Yes, laughs made for even a better audience.
Oh, had I been a hit at that staff meeting; providing laughs for everyone who still had a laugh left in them. And, hobbling down the deck steps of the Blue House, I let loose a laugh at that dark stiff, Hayward, who hadn't a laugh left in him.
Down the steps, of course, I recalled another laugh in the staff meeting. Yes, something I had said later had gotten a laugh as well--a laugh at my expense. No, I didn't go to staff meetings to speak--issues rarely involved the grounds. I went to staff meetings to get off my feet, laugh at the humans hard at their power plays. OK, so I'd stuck my foot in my mouth. I was an old soul, I could handle it.
Hobbling along the gravel path to Fibers, I felt a buzzing on the back of my head. This meant one of three things. 1. Some human was looking at me. 2. Some god was laughing at me. 3. Some agent of Mother Nature had something wondrous to show me.
I stopped, turned around to see which it was.
"Anton."
I dropped a leg, turned around. "Ezra, hi."
Ezra pulled up. "I wish I had had my camera."
"Why?"
"You, standing on one leg, staring off into the blue. You looked like a heron."
I raised a leg, tipped a grimace towards my hovering workboot. "Bruised heel. Dangerous business, you know, hacking back Mother Nature."
"You think that's dangerous. I've been in Photo for the last hour, trying to kick-start the brains of a 19 year old." Ezra put a gun-finger to his head. "I wish all I had was a bruised heel."
"Say, Ezra, why is Admin called the Blue House when it ain't even blue?"
"It used to be blue. Then Hayward came on board, thought it untoward that his office was housed in a house that had the blues. So he had it painted."
"Great, so now he's housed in a house the color of dirty underwear."
"It's called taupe."
"It may be taupe, but Hayward might-a picked a cleaner shade of taupe."
"Nope, that's about as clean as taupe gets. But don't fret," Ezra said, looking up at the sky coming through the firs. "No one calls it the Taupe House. It's still the Blue House to us common folk."
Ezra headed up the steps of the Blue House, and I got back to hobbling my way to Fibers.
The pain in my foot reminded me of the foot I had stuck in my mouth in the staff meeting. In the staff meeting, Amber, our Public Relations Director, had offered up some of the catch-phrases the Marketing Committee was considering for an add campaign. She probably wished she hadn't. We staffers were all creators of sorts ourselves, and if there's one thing creators of sorts took to, it was critiquing.
But critiquing was only the half of it. An add campaign has, at its root, the mission of an institution. And when you work at a place called the Art and Craft College of the West, inevitability, the question arises: What exactly are we? Are we art, or are we craft?
Unschooled in the art and craft debate, I kept my mouth shut. Though, as a writer, I did take an interest in the tension in the room. Things got heated when a pro-art staffer advised against pushing the craft button. "Craft is tools making tools. Where's the glory in that?"
"Ya, well," chimed in an advocate for craft, "art is gray matter glorifying gray matter. Where's the sense in that?"
"No, no," said the staff person who had recently work-shopped mediation, "what ACCW is about, is the collaboration of hand and head; crafting things so fine the creations rival art. We could call it Fine Craft."
"Fine Craft?" mocked the staffer who wanted to work for Wieden and Kennedy. "And what's that the equivalent of: Not-So-Fine-Art?"
Back and forth they went; what craft is, what art wasn't, what craft could be, what art shouldn't be. Then the staffer who had been worked over by born-agains declared, "What craft should be is man using the tools God gave him to create something so full of truth it shames the falseness art has become."
No one said anything.
I looked around. C'mon staffers; what craft should be has been declared. What art should be needs to be declared now.
No one said anything.
Though I didn't know art from craft, I did know creativity inside out, and figuring creativity had to be the corner stone of art and craft as well, I burst forth my philosophy of creativity: "What art should be is God using a human as a tool to manifest spirit."
I'd said it in all seriousness, but I could see--in my colleagues' cracking faces--they thought I was a joke.
"No, no," I said, waving myself off, "I only used 'God' for the sake of communication. I should have used 'Great Spirit.' Ya, that's what I always call God now."
Well, that really got the staffers in stitches.
Phenomenal, yes, a guy opens his mouth once, he's labeled a Christian. He opens his mouth twice, he's labeled a Pagan. The fact that I was neither demanded I open my mouth a third time. But I kept my mouth shut. No, given the all-out laughter, I didn't want any fellow staffers choking to death by labeling myself a Primitive.
So I looked to he who wasn't laughing at me. He who I never looked to because, unlike me, he had too much straw up the ass to laugh at anything. He was shaking his no-no head at me. Then again, he shook his no-no head at everything. So I looked to she who wasn't laughing at me. Oh, blessed day, the born-again was nodding at me. Which was more insulting than the secular roars, more insulting than the no-no-ings of he who had the straw up the ass. For if there was one thing--down here on the nether earth plan--I thought was a joke, it was religion.
One thing ACCW was about, was community, and in that spirit, the staff sobered up, saw fit to reach out, pull the lost into found. "I'm sorry, Anton, but it has been decided, some time ago, that God is dead where both art and craft are concerned."
"Ya, died last century."
"Ya, something called science killed him."
"Darwin, if you need a proof, ha, ha."
"Nietzche, if you need a declaration, ha, ha."
"Munch, if you need a henchman, ho, ho."
"Munch?" I wanted to say, he, he. "If you want a real henchman check out Munch's literary friend, Strindberg." But I kept my mouth shut. No, if there was another thing I hated down here on this nether earth plane, it was those cultural know-it-alls.
But then something phenomenal happened. The God I'd thrown out in an attempt to deepen the debate, had brought an immediate cease-fire to the art/craft war. The staff, united in the act of throwing pagan boy and his born-again girl to the lions, put their secular noses to the grindstone and came up with a marketing campaign of their own:
MAKE ART?
Hell, anyone can MAKE ART
CRAFT ART?
Now that requires an education
Get it at ACCW
****
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