TITLE: What Makes an Artist? AUTHOR: Tavia DATE: 7/18/2008 12:40:00 AM ----- BODY:
I've been listening to a wonderful conversation between Dick Gordon and the photographer David Plowden on American Public Media's program The Story. I'm passionate about photography, especially the kind of photographs that share the vision that Plowden embraces - photos of grain silos, bridges, locomotives. The artistry of industry, of labor, of determination, ingenuity, force. This, from Plowden's website, captures the nature of his work: "David Plowden’s work is sometimes compared to that of the great WPA photographers— Walker Evans, Bernice Abbott, Russell Lee, Dorothea Lange—but he’s been in the field decades longer than any of them were. What he has done is nothing less than capture a nation passing through fifty years of changes as monumentous as those unleased by the industrial revolution a century earlier." — from the Richard Snow's Foreward to Vanishing Point, a collection of Plowden's photographs Dick Gordon asks Plowden about his process in capturing an image. It is fascinating to listen to Plowden describe setting up the camera, framing the picture, interacting with time and space and geography and light and air. Plowden is so clearly at home as a photographer, skilled and precise. And yet he's not in control of the elements he's fixing on film. He's waiting, poised and ready to push the button at the perfect moment of convergence. I love hearing Dick's response and the ensuing exhange with Plowden. Cue your iPod to minute 34:59 and listen. "Say it. You're an artist." "Well, I'm an aritst, maybe. All right. You, you said it." "Cause you wouldn't. You're too shy." "I, I...well, it's such a...to me it's such a remarkable thing to be an artist, but I guess, I, you said it, okay, okay, I'll go with you on that. Because I'm another person, and because I care, and because I am SO careful." I think Plowden's definition of what makes an artist is wonderful. Because he cares, and he is careful. Is there any more simple and elegant definition of art and artistry? ************** Stephen and I put together our company description this afternoon for our producer listing in the Audiofile Magazine Reference Guide. We engaged in much argument and hysterical laughter, made as many thoughtful choices as there were words and ideas, and very much enjoyed the painstaking, passionate, and playful work of defining who we are and what we do. McGil Audio is Stephen McLaughlin and Tavia Gilbert. We elicit the best in each other, that your project may reach its creative potential. We represent East and West Coast origins; British and American sensibilities; experience and idealism; improvisation and preparation. Our literate, exacting choices are infused with passion and humor.

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