FLUX 2011

      This weekend was the Flux event down in the Castleberry district.  This year I really cued in to the question, who is my audience when I do work? I realized that FLUX brings a different crowd than does the gallery or museum. I have always envisioned my work to be in a gallery. This is not to say that I am against the atmosphere that FLUX and the like events bring to art scene, it is just a different one. But for whatever reason, it clicked for me that this is another option for work to exist...or is it?
     My husband asked me if gallery owners came to events like Flux to look for artists and their work to show in their spaces...and I did not know for sure. Is FLUX strictly for the atmosphere and/ or the experience? Or, is it a place where artists become discovered or known? Is the art there good work? Or is it just the popular culture version of the art scene. (Like music has).
    This question made me remember contemporary art history class and how this was asked several decades ago when the "pop artists" were reinventing the face of art and how it is known.
      But what makes something a work of "art"?  Is it the work itself?
     To be specific, the acrobats at FLUX that were working the silk and other apparatuses.  I enjoyed their performances; they require much skill, precision, practice, and physical fitness. I know this because I am a gymnast. I have been since I was young.
     For a while, I wanted to use this background in gymnastics as subject in my work in painting. But I struggled because I was unclear of a few things. I wanted to use gymnastics as an influence....so I used paint to document my movement, both on my body and with my body. The results were colorful, active paintings.      But I think that gymnastics itself, when being performed in a gymnasium is art. The way the body moves, the energy that is created, the way the body contorts to make beautiful lines and shapes is incredibly moving to me. I love performing in that way. So similar "art" forms of movement also interest me. In this case, the acrobatics act at FLUX.   But these routines are the same ones performed in a circus environment....not an art gallery. So is this circus "act" now considered "art" simply because we took it out of a tent and placed it in the art event outside? Does it maintain credibility to the audience outside of its usual context? Does it gain it?
If I was to bring gymnastics to a gallery, or a SCAD critique, would that count as art? Or can it be esteemed as "art" in it's conditioned setting?
     I am simply going by stream of consciousness here, but these questions are ones I have been thinking on since Friday evening. What is "Art"?  Can "art" have multiple settings?  Who is my audience?