The Art & Writing of Ricardo Acevedo. 50 yrs of dancing with my id. Jazz smoke filled drug ambrosia ala the natural & urban world. We don't live a one dimensional life. We don't live a life of only one active sense. We move through the world of ever varying, visual, sonic and... emotional landscapes that we congeal into our art if we are so blessed (or cursed) with the calling. I have always felt
the calling to the arts. My father was a fine artist, and arts educator. My mother a singer, performer. As I grew up the arts were my solace in the turbulence of my home life. My outlet to trying to understand the greater world, and also as a way to be noticed in the maelstrom of human emotion. I started as an illustrator, won many awards as a child. Dabbled in writing, and photography in my teens. Finally landing on music and stage performance and film in my 20's. My bands Freaks Amor and The Blue Box played regularly all over southern Ca. In the 90's moved into more experimental musics and filmmaking while living in Flagstaff, and Phoenix Az. Finally landing in Austin Tx in 98 where I more embraced my writing, filmmaking, photography and illustrative graphic arts. Then in 2012-2023 returned to music as Lost Cat Magnet. Now I'm circling back to writing and visual art. I had to learn that the arts are a conduit to a greater sense of self, not to be done for acceptance in any scene or the love and respect of others. I grew up in very poor, alcoholic, and times violent world both at home and the city I grew up in. This lead me to often use the arts to feel like I was important, that I was worth something. This lead me into dark ego driven areas via a false sense of being needed. Only after MANY falls, and years of therapy have a reached a place of greater understanding of my place in culture and my community. There's a phrase "if everything is art, then nothing is". Every word, every concept, requires exclusivity to have meaning. If everything is art, then art simply means everything, and we already have a word for everything: it's, everything. Art is an elusive concept. Art is simply not at the finger tips its a deep seated truth of the individual, and if its moved into the realm of "all" it is diminished into homogenized blandness. Art is in the realm of the deeper self. It can be used to help define and exercise ones personal energies but it is not, at its greatest depth, at the same capacity in all humans. We are not all artists. "Some people see life more vividly than others do, and what's exceedingly rare, always and forever. People who can transfer the stunning whole of their experience into an expression that can be shared by others. What's never usual is someone who can capture the relentless kinetic miracle of existence in all its aspects ~ the urban and jagged, the natural and fabricated, the darling and delightful and debauched and destroyed ~ and bring those things to eyes formerly innocent of the glory and glamor, the triumphs and trash, that shine everywhere in this complex life".
~ Wayne Alan Brenner: Lead arts writer for the Austin Chronicle ~
