November 17, 2023

Inspiration and career advice

Every once in a while I find a new-to-me artist via social media who knocks my socks off. Today’s artist is June Harwood:

https://www.juneharwoodtrust.com/art

She was born in New York in 1933. She was privileged enough to get a bachelors degree in art before moving to California where she earned a Masters in art. I wonder how many women were in her class??!! She went on to hobnob with the art elite and teach art to high schoolers. She was in a show called California Hard-Edge Painting that was held in 1962, which positively influenced her art career. Apparently she followed the trend among white artists of the time in collecting African masks to be used as inspiration. Bummer. Even though it’s unlikely she had any knowledge of how the masks were obtained, she was still appropriating the aesthetic of stolen culture and the trail of colonial violence the masks inhabit. I hate it when I get excited about someone and then discover they were doing this. I wonder what the masks think of her work? Take a look at her artwork and let me know what you think.

Speaking of inspiration, I just found out about Andrew Simonet, who has an interesting perspective on how to BE as an artist. I generally try to avoid taking advice from straight white guys (it’s just been too easy for them). But, sometimes the advice is good and I just roll with it. Here’s a video of a talk he gave on being an artist:

Comments are welcome!

-Morgain