I've been thinking the past few days about choices. I'm thinking about how everything in life is a trade-off of some flavor or another. I could spout an endless supply of examples, but I'll spare you the inner workings of my mind for now; I'll just touch on a few.
To start with, my art suddenly presents me with an interesting dilemma. Most everyone who knows me knows how I've been trying to add some environmental friendliness and social justice to my family's lifestyle. I've been very careful of what is made of petroleum & reducing our consumption of it. Then, suddenly, I found my muse (whose been on a yearlong furlough) out in my garden. As I followed her back inside to my studio (I always feel somewhat an imposter saying that), I took a good look around, and an idea struck me like lead. An artist's arsenal of tools & potions contains quite a lot of petroleum and/or chemical solvents. I have brushes with artificial (read: petroleum-based) bristles, foam brushes with plastic handles, acrylic paints, oil pastels, watercolors (with plasticizers), acrylic mediums, plastic palettes... and the list marches on. Does this mean I must sacrifice my art at the altar of petroleum reduction?
I've also been following the blog of No Impact Man, a guy (in NYC) who is trying to live for one year reducing his (and his wife & toddler's) consumption to zero net impact on the earth. He has lots of support and admiration (including mine), but he's taking a heaping helping of criticism to go along with it (including mine). He wants no impact that is directly linked to him, so why can his maid still use a car and a vacuum but he feels it necessary to shun the subway? There are a million questions just like those that can (and have or will) be asked of this project. It's interesting to me to see his justifications for certain choices.
It's all a trade-off, you see. Paper or plastic? Local or organic? Personal health or environmental good? Environmentally friendly or socially just? Do I give my business to a company that unnecessarily tests on animals but that harbors an environment of racial or sexual discrimination? Do I get my gas from an oil company that has paid money to people who have killed local dissenters in a startling and exceptionally suspicious chain of events, or do I go to one that has created more environmental disasters (and refused to answer for them) than I can count on both hands?
At the end of the day, every decision we make is a choice between it and at least one alternative, whether it's a conscious decision or not. I'm just hoping that by the time I reach the end of days, my scales will be tipped a little more toward the side of, "I made the world a better place even if I used petroleum products in my artwork."
