Answers to recent questions about art

What role does art play in the community?
To me art is the air and the feelings of the politics of a place in time. What happens in the community manifests itself through the poems, paintings, songs, sculptures, photos and films created by the hands of artists. Community in touch with the Arts can feel the pulse of life within itself. 

What are your non-art influences?
In a word: nature. Nature is what has been running the show for a long time and is what will be here when we’re gone. There is so much to understand, we understand very little about the ground we stand on and the history that has shaped everything we know. Nature is the ultimate creator, and as an artist I strive to match that depth and intensity in my own work.

Art keeps me sane. Most of the time my work is usually a mile marker of what is happening in my life. Form and color from nature are always seeping into my compositions as I think about the state of the planet, and what part humans and human mind states play in the shaping of the world we see. Most of my art represents the unconscious mind and I imagine recreating dreams into physical form. Art means the world to me. It shows me potential of what life can be. It shows me how I feel. It reminds me that I’m alive and constantly growing.

Andy Cook
7-14-2013