The Art of Sport

The thrum of the beat starts and most folks know exactly what’s coming next. The bass and guitar strum one after another, building momentum. The energy is pumping up. Maybe even “rising up” inside you. Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger collapses time. Maybe all songs do? When I hear it I am transported into Rocky’s training montage and simultaneously back into the 17-year-old me trying to pump myself up for another swimming or running race. At this stage in the pandemic Vaimo and I have been deep in a Rocky marathon. I don’t know why, maybe it’s because HBO has the full collection to stream and I wanted to revisit the films. Prior to 2021Vaimo had not seen a single one, and to be honest, I did not know how she would take to any of it.  I read the films so much differently today than in the viewings of my VHS box set of my teenage years. Is Rocky stalking Adrian? The patriotism of the late 70s and 80s has such a distinct flavor, a familiar yet distant contour of the US national project. The treatment of race and class could shape an entire dissertation about Sylvester’s Stallone’s world, it probably has! And yet I find a level of earnestness that makes the films interesting character studies. Intimate male friendships make for a surprising shape of masculinity in a series one might argue is so attuned to masculine strength. Like hello bromance, Apollo and Rocky anyone?! That line between enemy and love is so thin sometimes. The kindness and accountability of the coach/athlete relationships. Where coaches stand-ins for father figures, where care can be unabashed for two men training together. I hope I’m not spoiling any of this for you. In my defense the films have been out for decades. We’ve made it through Rocky IV in our marathon which is its own time capsule - the USSR was still an empire, which was fun for Vaimo because while she hadn't seen Rocky she has visited the USSR. The plane that Rocky flies in on as he prepares to take on Drago looked pretty similar to Vaimo’s memory of how she landed in Russia. Back when Eye of the Tiger came on for Rocky’s training montage in the third installment under the tutelage of Apollo, Vaimo said, “that was my school’s song because we were the Tigers!” She remembers singing the words at pep rallies even though at the time, she had no idea that this song was made for a film because she wasn’t able to engage with popular culture in those days. She also didn’t play organized team sports because that too was prohibited in the faith in which she grew up. She really didn’t know about the eye of the tiger.

For those of us who did sports competitively, we know it though. In Rocky III Apollo tells him that there’s no way he could face Clubber because he doesn’t have the hunger anymore. It’s just not there. He’s lost it. Rocky’s spent too much time in the spotlight, the bright lights of making money through appearances instead of having to rely on conditioning to earn a win. Is Rocky washed up? Is he a sell-out? Given his meteoric rise out of poverty through his chance of luck in being chosen to fight Apollo can we blame him? In a world structured around the promise of hard work guaranteeing wealth and accolades, Rocky’s success is the stand-in for the American Dream. If you can dream it, you can be it. Of course, if you’re in the right place at the right time. If you work “hard enough.” Hollywood loves a hero. Perhaps what becomes most subversive about Rocky’s case is that instead of simply staying on top he wants to be on the top because he earned it, not because he was simply the gilded figurehead of champion. It’s subversive because he doesn’t want to coast. He wants to legitimately be the best, not pretend to be and reap those rewards. Ultimately, he doesn’t want to lose his fire, his drive, his hunger. Is he driven to be the best he can be because it’s his calling, is it who he is? A zebra can’t change its stripes I’ve been told, I’d imagine the same goes for a tiger. Who knew making art and boxing had so much in common?

Sylvester Stallone’s rise to stardom parallel’s Rocky’s filmic representation. So many artists work at their craft (condition their bodies and their skills to hone prowess) only to never get that big break. We show up, we practice. Art school education is built on copying others’ work, and exercise after exercise of the same thing in various ways to hone one’s skills. So many still life paintings, so little time. Even if you’re self-taught, the only way to improve is to keep showing up. Sure you can birth something magical, maybe luck will allow you to channel something that communicates something you didn’t know you had in you, but if you can’t do it again? Phew… that’s a scary place to be. Like fine tuned athletes, artists study others’ work and our own to track what’s working or where we can adjust. We watch the tapes. We experiment, like remember when Rocky in the second film has to change from his traditional southpaw fighting method because he has to protect his head? Like Rocky, artists will adjust to their environments and contexts to keep making the work no matter the challenge. If they’re called to create. Besides our Western Art History education, where’s our Apollo? Is it in the call for entries? The submissions/invitations for grants, awards, and access to gallery representation? Are art historians and curators Adrian and Mick? The supporters, the patrons, the fellowship grantors that give way to museum acquisitions and big spender private collectors? Rocky is about an athlete, but it’s also a work of art.

Some of us practice every day and we are still never going to find ourselves in the championship ring. As a tween I had these grandiose visions that I was going to be an olympian. Do all kids who compete have such lofty dreams? Reflecting on this ill-informed part of me, I have compassion for my younger self. I was grappling with that tension of figuring out just because you can do something, does that mean you should? So much of life is navigating what others see as your skills and calling you into better relationship with your own true hungers. As a kid, I was a fish at the Coronado Club, I lived at the bottom of the swimming pool. At 8, Lisa, the head coach of the Gators told me I should join the swim team. She lobbied my mom to let me join, and after spending a summer in Hawaii I was allowed to join the team the following year. I wanted it because Lisa wanted it, I gave up dance to swim. Because I could swim, did it mean I should be on the team? Practices were at some wild hour, 7am for the youngins? 6am for the older kids? We had a large team and so we practiced in shifts. My mom who drove me to all those summer practices was not, is not, a morning person. What a sacrifice for this craving of mine, to grow my dolphin's tail, for the dreams of my coaches, that she made for me. The only day of the week she got out of that duty was on Sundays because we had meets on Saturdays mornings. My coaches saw something in me, and I didn’t want to let them down. When Coach Barney at the Academy tapped me and four other eighth graders to practice with the state champion Varsity team that shit makes you feel like you are someone special. You’ve been called up! Your Apollo moment, your chance! More morning practices, more two-a-days, more chlorine, but I was chosen. For sure I was on a trajectory to the Olympics next! That hunger for something so completely out of my reach was how I would get myself out of my warm bed in the dark and off to practice. Even though my times were no where near olympic qualifiers, while very improbable I would be swimming in the olympics I never lost hold of the possibility of it. Is this complete madness? A product of this US-American socialization? Part of my unique experience, or is it universal for those grown to compete? I do know, that refusing to give up is both my gift and my curse. I never qualified for State or even Sundance Championship races on my own, always the first or second alternate, never the bride. Though I was co-captain of the team my Senior year when we won State. When we won we felt like gods. Like we could do anything after that win. How dangerous to be mediocre among champions. But the thrill of it. To be so young and have access to such powerful feelings, to be part of a dynasty of other winners. To be so close to actual winners. I will always have that, despite never gaining medals.

Before I started making art I hadn’t felt that hunger for such a long time. That craving to be better than I had ever been before in my execution, in my dedication, in my obsession. If we believe in the sport of art analogy I think we have an obligation to recognize how when a system is created to replicate individual winners that it also requires individual losers. On the other hand, I loved individual sports like swimming, track and cross-country because even though there were individual winners there was also the collective win that came from the strategy of placing certain athletes in certain races for the cultivation of team points. Whatever your sport, your art, how many times can you get knocked down and still get up, keep fighting? Those rejected from the calls, grants, awards, acquisitions, those working through failed compositions, we keep fighting because there is a hunger. A creative pull that feels like if you don’t feed it then you may as well not even live. Don’t bother showing up to the ring, to the pool, to the track, to the studio, to the stage, to the easel if you don’t need to feed it. And while you’re at it, it probably wouldn’t hurt to push yourself a little more, beyond the limits of where you feel discomfort. Reach toward the improbable, but possible. And if you need a reminder of what that hunger feels like, might I suggest one of the training montages from Rocky. After that, apply for that thing that may be a bit out of your league. You never know, there might be an Apollo reviewing those applications and you might just catch that lucky break. Just don’t forget your team. You didn’t do it alone.

What I’m Reading

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang

I was on the slow burn path with this book almost a third of the way in and uncharacteristically on my way to giving up on the book. I was reading one chapter a night before bed, and it was difficult to keep track of the characters and the timeline of this epically connected family tale. And then, the library emailed me that the book was overdue and they wanted it back, and I thought, well it’s now or never to get into this so I gave it one more try and then I finally got it. This is an unconventional novel, the telling of a family story like I have never before witnessed. The reader is thrust into this storied world where family lore link to cultural folktales and those narratives are used as a world builder and a way to make sense of this fantastic place. Where the family, Taiwanese-American immigrants tracing their experiences across three generations, extol the drudgery of the reality of the 21st century immigrant experience in the US alongside holes in the ground, missing human body parts, and animal appendages. I don’t want to give anything away of this magical world, but the movement of these stories converge to become the device for poetry to light the pages. The form of the novel brings its own pleasures. I felt like the book was a puzzle I couldn’t quite grasp, but I wanted to know it. Ultimately, I was so grateful I didn’t give up on it, as it gave me new eyes to see this world around us, a different way to think about traumas, family lineages, and these fragile bodies in which we roam this planet.

What I’m Watching

Black Art: In the Absence of Light this documentary (streaming on HBO) provides a history of the relationship between institutional art world spaces and African American arts with a particular focus on artists who are currently living and working. Noting major moments like the late David Driskell’s 1976 exhibition that explored “Two Centuries of Black American Art” through contemporary controversies and challenges. A good gender balance, and ultimately a celebration of celebrity in ways that honor the collector and the artists who “make it” while also curating a particular tale that the producers make in who they choose and who they don’t choose to highlight. Exploring divergent trajectories becomes a particularly difficult task for a ninety minute film, a point really well argued in Seph Rodney’s review of the film. It also blurred this very thin line of separation between the artist and their work. Sometimes instead of separating the art from the artist, the viewer veers dangerously into the territory of being sucked into the ways hyphenated artists exist to uphold white supremacy. When identity, aesthetics, and race is mapped onto work by artists of color regardless of the content of the work or to the detriment of recognizing its broader readings, it upholds what Barbara Fields theorizes as “racecraft.” Anyways, the film gives lots to think about as institutional spaces continue to think about how to reckon with how they’ve upheld white supremacy in their collections.

Artist Offerings

• Check out this good news about the restoration of the Pilsen Neighborhood murals which adorn the 18th St. L stop in Chicago
• Grateful to my friend Kayla who sent this event my way and I’m going to try to tune in to some of the sessions happening next week Arts + Environmental Justice Symposium
• Shout out to my bestie, Nathan Tylutki, who dropped the pilot episode (next one dropping Saturday!) of his newest show Gemin8 subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss any of the content!
• As someone obsessed with exploring tensions between inside and outside in my work I am in love with the "juxtaposition and uneasy contradiction" of Adriana Varejão's work. 

Creative Ritual 

In the last two weeks since I sent my last dispatch, I’ve made some progress on my storytelling project that is barreling toward the end of its grant cycle, I prepped 24 small strips of canvas for some painting studies I’m working on, I blocked in a painting I’m hopeful might be the first of a series of several mixed-media pieces, and I started making significant progress on a small painting commission. I also took my Kitchen Saints to Henning, MN where they were photographed by a professional! (see above pic!) Three of them are also officially purchased and heading to private collections which makes my heart super happy! I finally cut the linoleum block that I drew out for my Ko-Fi supporters and printed it. It was a fun project that helped me break in my table-top press in my studio. My goal is to release an exclusive print quarterly that will go out to my supporters. Most importantly of all I did, is that I visited the eye doctor and I booked and underwent a massage. Taking care of this vessel is the number one job I have that I sometimes really neglect. If art is sport however, then we know tending to this body is necessary for future brilliance. Being fully vaccinated has made a significant impact on my mental health, along with this warmer Minnesota spring. If you need a sign to book some body work, take this one. Three days after the massage my body felt better than it had in the last 18 months.

Questions to Ponder

What are you hungry for?
How have you been training to improve your skills?
What risks are you willing to take for your vision of success?
Who is your team? How do they help you stay committed to your training and the fights you agree to for your artistic practice?

Thanks for journeying with me. I hope, as always, that you take what you need and leave the rest for someone else, or for another time. 

-KCF

PS: Yes, this newsletter is a day early, Vaimo and I are taking a break from screens and our all day, every day work lifestyle for a long weekend retreat. Trying to build in some purposeful rest into the schedule, we'll see how it goes! Want to support my artistic practice? Contribute at any level and get my exclusive print as a thank you, they are heading out next week! Or, help me grow this community and share this newsletter with a friend who you think would enjoy my musings.