Rainy Afternoon

It's rainy, and summer feels long gone, even though it was only yesterday.
At least the return of Fall brings us things like leaves and pumpkins, trick or treat, and turkey.
It also brings us to a winter season that I'm looking forward to this year. This will be my first settled year in Portland, and I'm looking forward to gallery openings. I don't usually get to many of these in the summer months, I'm usually too busy showing my work to get a chance to see what others out there are doing.
We have an active art scene, here in Portland, with lots of talent.
The Portland Art Open is next week, I know artists that are exhibiting there, and I'm really looking forward to meeting them in person. We all know each other from an internet forum.
I guess that's my theme for tonight.
The ways that we connect as human beings and as artists.
The internet has brought me connections that I otherwise would not have, I've met some really great people, and some real asses.
I've gotten shows that I otherwise would not have even known about because of the internet. I feel that it's expanded my horizons, and I don't miss life without it.
And that segues us into the darker side. Life, like art, has an unwritten rule. For every light, there is a dark.
The dark side of the internet, is the freedom that some feel to be vicious. To try to harm as many as possible, enabled by the anonymity of the internet. The many hours that could have gone to art, but went instead into hours of discontent and mountains of bullshit.
My fix? Art.
Plain, pure and simple. Art. I connect with the people I care about, I don't feed the trolls, and when it all gets just too dramatic for words, I shut this thing off.
:)