SUSAN JANE BELTON
Artist Statement
Things I tend to read about, worry about, and then think a lot about are:
endless brutal, senseless wars,
blind prejudices,
nationalist passions,
world hunger,
ecological destruction,
political corruption,
religious fanaticism, intolerance, and hatred
greed,
hypocrisy,
genocide,
famine, flood,
fear,
the tug of powerful and powerless,
the end of civilization,
the end of nature,
but that’s not what this work is about. This work is about what I do while I write letters and think about all these urgent, global concerns and feel frustrated and powerless. I drink coffee. I drink a lot of coffee. It’s a constant in my life. I drink it to think. I drink it to comfort. I drink it to celebrate. I drink it to socialize. I drink it to transition from one thing to another. I drink it to kill time. There are lots of rituals involving coffee. Americans take possession of their coffee, complete with specific brands or brews for different times and places. I wonder if there is any connection between global issues and our private, automatic behaviors, like drinking coffee. Sometimes it helps me to focus on what’s right in front of me, paint it and try to understand what it means.
Why take- out coffee cups? These cups are familiar. They are disposable, they are trash, but cataloged and rendered, they tell a story. They speak of accumulation, time, motion, location, commodity, class, recognition, discovery, even memory. It’s all about paying attention.
endless brutal, senseless wars,
blind prejudices,
nationalist passions,
world hunger,
ecological destruction,
political corruption,
religious fanaticism, intolerance, and hatred
greed,
hypocrisy,
genocide,
famine, flood,
fear,
the tug of powerful and powerless,
the end of civilization,
the end of nature,
but that’s not what this work is about. This work is about what I do while I write letters and think about all these urgent, global concerns and feel frustrated and powerless. I drink coffee. I drink a lot of coffee. It’s a constant in my life. I drink it to think. I drink it to comfort. I drink it to celebrate. I drink it to socialize. I drink it to transition from one thing to another. I drink it to kill time. There are lots of rituals involving coffee. Americans take possession of their coffee, complete with specific brands or brews for different times and places. I wonder if there is any connection between global issues and our private, automatic behaviors, like drinking coffee. Sometimes it helps me to focus on what’s right in front of me, paint it and try to understand what it means.
Why take- out coffee cups? These cups are familiar. They are disposable, they are trash, but cataloged and rendered, they tell a story. They speak of accumulation, time, motion, location, commodity, class, recognition, discovery, even memory. It’s all about paying attention.