Looking Past the End of the Beginning

I write this with a slight heavy heart, the reasons of which many will not understand and consider to be too "personal" to include in an Art Blog.

To make it brief, I've had some family issues I had to deal with. That, plus dealing with the local bureaucracy and the increased blood pressure one inevitably suffers after that excruciating ordeal that the government never recognizes is the root cause of terrorism.

Think about that for a second - stalled application for 14 months, 9 trips to an agency that refuses to believe your nationality even with a valid passport, and roadblocks after roadblocks with mind-numbing stupidity. Oh, that police dude that shot 8 passengers dead last August? He had a case bogged down in the courts for almost 2 years. Is shooting people wrong? Heck yeah. Ever consider the root cause?

That's how terrorists are made.

Now, if I had stage 5 cancer, a morphine-drip, and a ton of ammonium nitrate that can fit into my trunk, why not do a Kevorkian and plow thru the building like Tim Mcvay? Hmmmm....

The original intent of this story wasn't about the above. That was just venting. The story here is looking past April 30th, after the first Xavier Alumni Art show. What's next? Where do we go from here? It is time to look past the end of the beginning.

Well, there's plenty. XAG, if everyone recalls, is just the start. The spark, so to speak. There's the mural, of which some fervent artists are already talking up, and the Centre for the Arts in the school aptly named after a man whose name, the last we checked, was not in any of the schools buildings, rooms, fields, etc.

Looking past all the acrylics, the marble finish on the sculptures, the displays, the ribbon cutting, and the 30 days of showing the stuff XAG is made of, much work needs to be done, and the impetus on that is squarely on the shoulders of the XAG brain trust itself. The Artworks will speak for themselves, and XAG now needs a direction to head into, now that momentum has been built from the exhibit.

If the Guild intends to remain relevant and be on the forefront of meaningful change in Xavier's Art scene, it cannot treat this coming exhibit as a mere 'flash in the pan'. It needs way more than that. There will be more meetings, more suggestions, and a more coherent staff that will be lean and mean, with someone who will take the bull by the horns and run with it.

A XAG messiah is in the offing.