ravenous

The hardest part about being an artist for me is keeping a hold of my original passion for any project that I am working on and seeing it though to the end. It isn't that I loose interest in projects its more that artistic vision sometimes clashes with material reality. The result is most often this feeling of banging my head against a wall.

What makes an artist an artist is that they see the world in a different way or they can communicate the way we all see the world in a way that makes sense. Both has within them a beauty and a curse. If you see the world differently then you end up spending a lot of time explaining or defending your art. If you show what we all are thinking then this can give rise to anger and ridicule because people don't like to feel exposed.

I have faced all of this over the years, yet here I am ready to take on yet another crazy project that has the potential to be amazing or disastrous. The question that most people ask is why I would even want to do such a thing as walk across the country. When I answer them my passions rise and the artist takes over. By the end of it they are on my side cheering me on. It is this ravenous artistic passion that attracts people to the artist and his crazy ideas. It is this same passion that will carry an artist through to the end of a project even if it seems doomed, impossible or ineffective.

I look at artists as being holy men and holy men as the interpreters of art. Both see and feel things that not everyone takes the time to. Both get swept away with inspiration that seems fanatical and perhaps even insane to some. Both would gladly live without rather than give up what they feel gives them life. Both feel like the world must one day understand or perish in there own ignorance. Both the holy man and the artist give us hope, show us god, reveal our own divinity and unmask for us our vulnerable humanness. We tremble before both wondering how they could possibly live the way they do, for the reasons they do. Yet, in our time of need when we are groping in the dark trying to understand the universe around us we turn to them.

All of these ideas are behind the Photo-Monk Project, for in this life of mine, I have walked on both paths. That of an artist and a spiritual seeker. I have faced every trial imaginable and yet still want to walk across the country. I want to walk alone as a monk, documenting the journey as an artist. I can not think of a more insane and beautiful gesture to celebrate my love for life and all other sentient beings.

I do realize like many artists and holy men, I stand a good chance of going completely insane on this journey. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. It seems to me that many of our problems exist within the mind so leaving it from time to time can be very helpful.

Regardless, everyday it gets more and more clear that I am actually going to do this. I am going to walk across the country, or at least start, on a photographic pilgrimage. My own artistic experiment in human kindness. That both excites me and overwhelms me. It fills me with that very passion that I've been talking about. It doesn't even matter if anyone else cares or gets it. I care, I get it, I care about you and your story. I get your struggle.

I'll see ya on the road !!!

Caleb Storms

The Photo-Monk

photo-monk.com