Reflections from ART SPOT Calgary
Aima Talat, Contributor
The importance of art lies in noticing. This noticing can be done on the train, in your house, in your bed—in your mind, if you’d like.
Maybe this noticing can be done with the back of a leaf, in the veins that stretch into streams on its back. It is noticing that led me to the Friday night of Oct. 17, with tickets to a free VIP event for an under $200 art gallery in downtown.
The event is called ART SPOT, and it supports local and emerging artists in the community, offering a platform to those without one.
It was reading week, and I was bored and needed something to focus on. I was there with my sister, and the event started at 9 p.m. sharp.
It was warm. That’s what I would like to tell you. Here I was, looking at the gallery, decorated with images, decorated with the act of noticing.
Each piece was that act of noticing. Noting the way lines moved, the way shades of blue formed a shadow on the nose of a girl in a portrait. When touched, the caked layers of acrylic paint under her eyes would feel as if it would crack if you dug your fingertips deep into the canvas.
I noticed then, the way the colours filled the depth of the rooms, and when faced with the height of the gallery wall, I was held in admiration.
It’s difficult to write about noticing. Perhaps because most of the effort is expended on the actual process of completing it. The night at ART SPOT gave me the time to process art, which is a process of noticing things in continuum.
In an era when being actively attentive is becoming harder, and pages of art and creation can be generated through online prompts, it is in the act of noticing that we can find significance.
Whether gallery exhibitions, streetlight corners, bus stations, or the backs of leaves, each moment and detail holds the weight of that mystified beauty of attention. Each stroke adds to another, and each line forms the connection to the next.
And every time we notice, we connect to ourselves, and soon, the observer becomes the holder of the experience.
