The Art of Speaking at My First Art Conference
Canterbury Arts Conference 2021
I am so excited to speak at my first art conference. My tiny face made it into the promotional photo of the speakers. It feels like I have found my people. I am anxious and energized to participate and learn from the other speakers. However, attending in Canterbury, England in person would have been better. Covid, once again, makes me choose safety over fun, so I am “Zooming” it. The Canterbury Arts Conference is an annual conference that brings together people who are interested in the arts to share their ideas, knowledge, and experience around a theme. The theme for 2021 is “Art: Building Bridges”. It took me a while to figure out which chapter in my book Warhol, Dr. Seuss and the Making of America would be the best to focus on and tie the “Art Builds Bridge’s” theme around. Would it be the environment, gender issues, war and atomic fear, fame, Civil Rights, imagination, music, or crime and punishment? I settled on Imagination. How far over a bridge had the American culture run from the conservative 1950s to the imaginative 1960s? The fashion, the music, the art, gender issues, the space program…this was my chapter!
Looking around at some of the other topics for inspiration and direction I was amazed at the diversity. Some were above my PhD pay grade. “Art Practices of Neurostyling for Lateral Thinking Development” and “Masquerades and Masquerading in Adaba Community: Agents of Social Change and Control Through Art” to name a few. What is an Adaba Community? I guess I will learn! Other topics were more straightforward forward like “Gardens in Roman Houses: Case Study in Timgad” and “My View from the Bridge: Dementia and the Arts.” My favorite anticipated lecture topic so far, and one my English trained actor daughter, Kodi Jackman, agrees with will be given by Dr. Ildiko Solti “Imagine a Place unlike any other – the Globe Theater as an engine of connections”. When my daughter trained in England, we explored The Globe Theater. The history, the museum of costumes, the history of burning down and rebuilding, the cheap outdoor seats in the rain and more expensive seats with cushions that are covered, men having to play women, the many boats going back and forth to ferry patrons over, and other interesting facts. Her talk will be a highlight of the conference for me.
An academic lifestyle is a lot of alone time writing and little pay. The importance of getting art out there for me is on my list of what to do with my time and life that is important. Speaking at conferences and other academic settings is a vehicle to getting art into the world. I think of myself as an extrovert, but my career is an introverted one. Leaving working in the art world at museums and galleries to working at home writing my books is the same as I feel participating in my first art conference, anxious and energized!