Last month I started logging my days through sketches in lieu of my typical sporadically written journal entries. I would say that I’m no Picasso but perhaps Picasso’s style might best describe the disjointed chaos of my drawings—I digress.
Putting pen to paper has often been a necessary catharsis in the uncertainty of life as long as I can remember. Whether I was penning fictional stories of the horror variety or chronicling my middle school malaise, I found a world of imagination between blank pages. Nowadays, my journal steadily fills with half–baked haikus, philosophical ponderings, and observational sketches.
My sketches of pigeons flocking to the San Francisco Ferry Building on a balmy Saturday morning or the haiku that accompanies it will never see the light of day, or so I hope. But isn’t that one of the wonders of making something—the process itself?
Undoubtedly, I love external praise and admiration as much as the next person, but even more I love the internal praise I bestow upon myself after I finish a drawing or a particularly satisfying piece of writing. Creation for oneself is perhaps one of the most intimate acts we can perform in a world that so quickly commodifies the production and consumption of art.
The standards by which we measure the value of art are often characterized by the end product. A consumer or observer’s opinion ultimately informs the price tag we pay for the books we read, the art we hang in our homes, and the music we listen to. What makes any one song or story more fiscally valuable than the next? Perhaps the most priceless commodity is the indescribable feeling you get when your pen dashes across a page or your bow dances across your violin.
This month Street explores the archetype of “the artist”, asking: Why do we create and what does it mean to consume the art of others? From our Spring Fling Concert retrospective photo essay to interviews with our favorite new musicians and subtle, nuanced performances on the silver screen, Street chronicles these stories in this April’s issue: Artistry in Bloom.
In the process of putting this issue together I've philosophized that to be an artist is so much more than the final product you make. The stories we write, the paintings we make, and the songs we sing, are a culmination of our experiences and influences. Either a window into an imagined world or a mirror of their own life—the art we make is forever marked with our fingerprints. For Street, our endless nights spent in the Pink Palace at 4015 Walnut St. culminate in this beautiful, glossy magazine in your hands that reflects every artist and writer who calls this publication home and is the window into our mind's eye.
SSSF,
Natalia
