This is Work - Art

 

                        

Vincent Van Gogh to Theo Van Gogh - Message in a letter

I had the privilege of going to see an immersive art exhibit called Beyond Van Gogh. This exhibit took the life and career of Vincent Van Gogh and brought them to life, to get the experience so you could feel like you were inside the paintings. As a lifetime art appreciator, I enjoyed this experience. It did get me to think more about art and how it has influenced the world of work.

Those of us in the workforce world, and maybe many parents of children looking to make a career of art, are probably thinking how most artists are impoverished, and few ever achieve the level of success necessary to support themselves while still alive. All true when you think of art in the traditional sense, a painter creating and selling a painting, but there is a budding world of art out there that has nothing to do with creating pictures of bowls of fruit and flowers in a field.

The interactive exhibit took art and brought it to the 21^st century with technology. While the paintings featured in the exhibit were created by a man, long since passed, someone had a vision to use technology to take the paintings and animate them in such a way to make you felt like you were watching them being painted and then living inside them. The vision is art, the original paintings are art, and ultimately the combination of technology, vision, and marketing created a new vibrant masterpiece.

Does this mean that we need to abandon all traditional jobs? Absolutely not, what this merely shows is the capacity of art be intertwined into the day-to-day jobs. For example, a skill such as welding can be used in fields like construction and manufacturing. You may make something for function and that something of function may also be a thing of beauty when you think of ornate constructions or statues.

Art may not solely be in museums or reclusive painters; it is the baristas making scenes out of frothy milk on your cappuccino and beautifully plated food at restaurants. Art takes normal hospitality and upgrades the ordinary. I think of hotel room service making folding towels into whimsical animals when doing routine housekeeping in Disney experiences.

In business, where the bottom line is key, art may sell more things, help something or someone make more money. There are graphic artists, marketing companies, and all kinds of people working to make a piece of art something that can draw you to purchase something based on what it is.

All of the above can lead to jobs where people can make money to become self-supporting. From various Craftsmen to Artistic Directors, there are job where art or the influence of art is an integral part of the job. The young child sitting at a table somewhere creating a drawing for the parent’s refrigerator may not be the next Picasso or Van Gogh. The child may use those skills to help communicate a message, create a beautiful and functional object, or perhaps just enrich his life and perspective as he participates in the world around him. #thisiswork

~Karen Cirincione

Email: kcirincione@gmail.com        

Linked In: www.linkedin.com/in/karenjcirincione

Twitter: @kcirincione  

Epilogue:

For those of us in workforce development, we know how our business is a delicate balance of social services, government service, and economics all rolled into one. An experienced workforce professional may not be the next Monet, but he is an artist in his own right carving visions of individual, business, and the changing world to create a masterpiece inside a person or entity. September is Workforce Professional’s month. Let us reminder ourselves how we create art each day.