pasithea

I commented to a friend the other night that I found his sense of and searching for cultural identity fascinating to me because it is something so alien to me. I don't feel any real connection to people or their traditions and rituals and I've never had much desire to go searching for anything like that.

On the other hand though, it does leave a certain amount of void and difficulty in my world. As a for instance: I've spent a good chunk of the weekend studying the work of Brian Froud and works under his direction. Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal as well as various art books and pictures online.

Go ahead and mock me. I like his work a lot and I wouldn't mind making my own work turn somewhat more in that direction. The brownies and goblins I made from scraps of forest detritus definitely have that feel and a few of my more complex pieces of artwork have gone somewhat in that direction too.

But one thing he makes heavy use of in is work is traditional celtic knot patterns whereas I feel a certain reluctance to do this.

It's fine for him. He was born to it. It's part of his world and his heritage. Probably I could make a similar claim for myself but it wasn't prevalent in my childhood, not part of my world or my culture. If there was anything to my world it was an american folk and some southwestern pattern.

Southwestern on the other hand belongs more squarely to native peoples who I am also not a part of. I sit in a shallow culture that is between worlds, the old and the new. A culture too young and too fixated on other cultures to have developed a strong sense of its own place.

How do I create things that best tell my sense of identity and speak of my world? Am I to be confined to stars, stripes, and the blandishments of hotdogs and hamburgers or should I act like a true american and appropriate whatever cultures I see fit, writing my own interpretations of their meaning and asserting my insignificant knowledge as the dominant authority?

I would love to incorporate more pattern into the details of my work but all cultures feel so foreign to me that any styling I use tends to make me feel intrusive to a people and history that are not mine.

Is my only option to create my own completely unique ornamentation and pattern which steals from a myriad of others or is there some compromise I've missed which feels authentic and respectful of others?