Deb O'Connor on Cosmic Shifts and Susan Bell's Bison
Yesterday, at the National Western Stock Show in Denver, I watched artist Susan Bell paint two bison bulls. The sun was shining and the bulls seemed content to settle into the sawdust bedding and pose for her. She'd been painting animals for 3 days, sitting on a small stool, dipping her brush into the rich colors of her oil palate. The scene was in stark contrast to gallery owners in Haiti who had survived the earthquake and were trying desperately to salvage their country's art, pulling prized pieces from the debris, compiling lists of the artists and writers who had not survived. When tragedy strikes, like the Haitian earthquake, it's easy to think that the novel we’ve been writing for two years, or the sculpture we've been chipping away at for months, are frivolous endeavors. Shouldn’t we be doing something worthwhile ? we ask ourselves. What is the point, after all, of art in light of such horrendous suffering? ...