The blogs have already had a field day with Kevin McCormick’s tragic and luridly fascinating death (“To think I’ve been walking three blocks for coffee…”), and the papers practically shit their pants about it: the horror! Across the street from the Children’s Museum!!
So what if it’s across the street and five blocks down from the Children’s Museum. As far as most people are concerned it’s just a case of freaky, brilliant artists doing scary, dangerous, fucked-up things. Joel Brown at HubArts.com was quick to point out that it’ll only be a matter of time before we see it all on Law & Order: SVU.
McCormick was talented, and now he is dead and reduced to something people will probably use to shore up already narrow-minded views about gays, artists, MIT grads, or Bostonians in general.
It feels a lot like the only art news is bad news. The rest – what people are making and performing and showing – just isn’t interesting enough. Coverage exists, and however flawed it is you can’t blame the dailies or the weeklies: no one’s banging down the door to read about art. Are we so out of touch that the only way an artist can affect a neighborhood is by building the Northeast’s largest meth lab?
Maybe, but it’s silly to think that everyone should be interested in art. Why should they be or do anything? I’m not interested in certified public accounting and no one’s on my ass. It’s enough if those who want to know can find what they need. If the rest of the world wants to see us as a bunch of drug addicts and sex fiends, they’re going to do it. Every artist I know will still work.
Links:
Hub Arts
Boston.com
Kevin McCormick's work
Collision Collective
All images are courtesy of Boston.com and Google Image Search.
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- Kevin McCormick from Windows Collision One presented by the Collision Collective.
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- Dismantling the Drug Lab
