cockroach photographs and the relevance of art

I've been working on an essay that is, in part, about cockroaches and this week I've spent a lot of time looking at Catherine Chalmers' book American Cockroach. It's a book of photographs of cockroaches presented in three chapters: Residents (cockroaches in miniature domestic scenes), Imposters (cockroaches on pretty flowers dressed up like other, "cuter" bugs--if Anne Geddes photographed roaches instead of babies, this is how they'd look), and Executions (cockroaches "dying" in very human, vindictive ways--burning at the stake, an electric chair).

**Note: You can see a few of Chalmers' images and hear some of her comments on an old Studio 360: http://www.wnyc.org/studio360/show040304.html. You can also catch one of her short cockroach films at the Arts Festival this weekend.

Chalmers' work is pretty wild--gross, but strangely thought-provoking. I'm not typically a fan of conceptual art, but Chalmers really had me thinking about why we are so disgusted by cockroaches. In had a hard time looking at the first set of photographs because they so well conveyed our fear of cockroach invasion (huge cockroach antennae peeking out from behind a tiny sink, in wait for the unsuspecting human), but the cutesy outdoor scenes made me noticeably calmer. The roaches in disguise, outside of the house seemed like acceptable creatures. It has me thinking about how we interact with the natural world; the hierarchies we make for animals, bugs, plants; and how we determine what is safe and fearful. But Chalmers' work also has me thinking about the relevance of art.

For me, Chalmers' photographs are intriguing and they do help me to reconsider the cockroach, but I can imagine that someone who is living in public housing where cockroaches might be more abundant, where they might be crowded out of their hiding spaces during daylight hours would find Chalmers' work completely irrelevant, even laughable. There is certainly a class issue connected to her work--the woman, after all, makes her living raising and photographing bugs.

These thoughts, along with the current lisa b./ middlebrow discussion about poetry, have me wondering whether we've made art (and I'm using the word in the broadest of senses) too conceptual to be relevant to a wide range of folks. Creation, expression, even design seem like basic human acts, but often art is limited to certain spheres. I'm thinking about Born into Brothels. The kids taking the photographs clearly had a keen sense of how to interpret the world around them, to make something beautiful and communicative from the world around them. But when they showed their work, who did they show it to? Wealthy white westerners (I realize that part of the purpose was fundraising, but I still hoped to see the art having some relevance for the children's adult family members). I've often heard the argument that people can't contemplate the aesthetic if they are too consumed with meeting basic needs, but I'm not sure I buy it.

Last week, working with my writing group of adult learners (who all, in one way or another, are struggling to meet some basic needs) I realized how common the need to express and create is. One woman, in an uncharacteristic fit of anger, wrote a detailed fantasy about stealing a friend's car, driving out of state, and finding respite and a new start at a roadside cafe. As we talked about the story, she told us how much she had wanted to run away when she wrote the piece. She said, "I guess I ran away in my story." Another woman described a significant change in her life and how at the moment she felt like she was half inside a bottle and half outside a bottle. The writing isn't technically proficient, but it is lovely and meaningful. I think sometimes we make art so conceptual, so sophisticated, that we fail to make it relevant for everyone.