This giant/mountain is on fire:

We will be looking for some of you to post your art to this blog. Looking through the window:

For an entire semester, we budding writers are handed over to a working professional already in the business, usually an editor within a publishing house or something of equal caliber. We work through a manuscript together, from conception to inception to (ofttimes) rejection, just like a REAL writer would. It’s a tempting taste of false success: we have a real-life editor looking over our real-life manuscripts, guiding us by the proverbial hand through the actual process of writing an honest to goodness book!

Of course, once the mentorship is over, there is no guarantee that your hard work with this editor will pay off. After all, she was paid by the school (who was actually paid by you) to hold your hand throughout the entire process. No loyalties exist beyond the end of the semester and once that last bit of revision is turned in and that grade is posted, the mentorship is over. You go back to being a graduate student with a half-finished manuscript liberally marked in the unforgiving red pen of your fake editor. When graduation and the real world comes a-rearing their frightening heads, you do with that old prose what you will…revise it and submit and prepare for Twilight-y fame and Harry-Potter-esque fortune, or you go work in a bookstore and start a blog. Or do a little of both and just hope for the best.

Thus is the mentorship. Heck, the entire grad-school experience, really.

With this floating recently in my mind, I’ve starting speculating on how all artists experience a sort of this thing, whether it be organized by a school or not. As much as we may not readily admit it, we seek out mentors for guidance. Maybe not just that…we seek out inspiration in general. No truly great idea comes from no where and, as the cryptic sign on my third grade teacher’s wall once said: “The best ideas come from the work, not from the head.” Art classified as “creation” is somewhat of a misnomer. I think that “creation” implies something out of nothing and this, dear people, is ridiculously impossible. At least for anything GOOD.

Although I’m a religiously minded person, I don’t believe that God came out of nowhere and made the world out of nothing. Not nothing at all, no. If He, in all His wisdom, wanted us to emulate His example in word and deed, He wouldn’t dare give us such a lofty, impossible goal; what a cruel god, indeed. Instead, we do as He probably did: we create out of experience, we create out of inspiration, we create out of existing materials be they tangible or not. We hold out our hands willy-nilly to the whirling world, grasping for a mentor, a moment or memory that will sustain us or, better yet, launch us into a new level of understanding that will assist us in our creation. I don’t like the phrase “Intelligent Design” and I don’t think it applies to our own attempt at art (is everything we do designed or even intelligent? Well, maybe for God…but not for me.) Instead, maybe it’s an act of Divine Reorganization. Providential Production? Historically Inspired Restructuring. I don’t know. Maybe just re-creation would do me for now.

I write stories, not because I feel this need to create a new world, but to show others how I see the existing one.

“The basis of all artistic genius lies in the power of conceiving humanity in a new and striking way, of putting a happy world of its own creation in place of the meaner world of our common days.” — Walter Pater

As Arx Poetica is entering a more defined “beta” phase, we’re looking for a few people to help write and edit blog posts. There are still a few bigger items to finish on the site, but it is complete enough to start up a few interesting activities, such as blogging about and following cool art trends, including some of your own art as showpieces, and signing up and enjoying good company.

We’ll also need a social media specialist or two — someone savvy enough with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. to connect with different artist communities and help spread the word.

Arx Poetica is much more than just an art site — it’s a full fledged social network — for real! You can sign up now and start connecting with others who have signed up. Encourage your friends to join! We want this to be about you, the art, and staying connected with a community doing things a cut above a tired, old world.

The site is fledgling, it’s true, and there’s much to be done, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been active/busy. Toward a digital renaissance, where the Internet is the Gutenberg press of out time, Arx Poetica hopes to utilize and improve upon cutting-edge web technologies. We’re placing our faith in open source distributive protocols and platforms, and may have a few other tricks up our sleeves. Further, Arx Poetica plans to roll out a social networking art feed as a centerpiece to our site, a ubiquitous “virtual museum” wall for artists to collaborate and share.

So what will you bring to the table? What are your creative enterprises? What talents can you share? What beautiful things do you appreciate? Moreover, what can you contribute in terms of actual site development?

“All children are artists.” — Picasso

By raising the bar for artists, Arx Poetica can help along a movement all ready well underway online.

Now is definitely an exciting time for artists.

Let’s make it happen!

Robert Hall,
Founder/Director