This one tears me up. Should I bother writing about these kinds of things? Climate change is something I think about a lot, and when I read about how the scientific consensus gets stronger and stronger and all the while more and more people are ignoring the science and accepting the denialist propaganda, I get really upset. That makes me want to get on my little soap box and shout about it, and post links to things that I think are relevant and important such as this one: George Monbiot on death and denialism But really, should I be blogging about things like that?
One reason not to bother is that this blog is a public face of my art making business, so I'm not sure that I can allow myself to go off ranting about this that and the other thing all the time. It's not directly related to my art, and I'm not really that interested in making highly politicized art. I want to make art and when politics get mixed in it it's easy to turn it into propaganda.
Another reason is that I would be risking adding extra negativity to my blog that would then be associated with my art. Extra negativity isn't good for my art or my sales.
However, the argument from the other direction is that it's pretty hard to separate the artist's art life from the artist's personal life, so to a certain extent the personal is relevant to the art. People want to know the stories about the art and the artist because it gives the art a context for people to understand it, and there is no meaning without context.
Finally, the last argument is about procrastination: if I'm busy blogging about all the climate change news I'm reading on the internet and linking to all the latest news, I'm not making art, and that's not a good way to pay the bills.
What to do? Maybe I'll just try to keep it to small notes about positive changes, either in my own life, or when I notice a really great example of people using their creativity to make positive changes.
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