Author: Chef Sharon Davies-Tight

© 2019 by Chef Sharon Davies-Tight, artist, author, animal-free chef, activist. IT'S free to read, and share with proper credit, not to own or share as your own. MAKE YOUR DAY - DON'T WAIT FOR SOMEBODY ELSE TO DO IT!
Posted in HEY

THE eBAY BLOCK

Posted on by Chef Sharon Davies-Tight

THE eBAY BLOCK

You can sell a human baby on eBAY for $2,000.00. You can sell a grilled cheese sandwich on eBAY with a char mark that somebody says looks like Jesus (like anyone would know what Jesus looked like) for $25,000.00. Yet eBay put a ceiling price of $5,000.00 on any Paintings By God I wanted to sell on eBay, saying I had to sell a lot of small items first–to gain the trust of the eBay ‘buy and sell’ community and work my way up to higher priced items, which would take about a year or more. That’s why I don’t sell my work on eBay.

eBay is a community of buy and sell addicts, who devalue items so they can keep buying and selling. It’s like a gambling addiction for the masses, the populace, the people with not much money, who nevertheless like the excitement of the gamble, the trade, the risk. It’s for people who can’t afford to trade on Wall Street.

eBay told me that I not only had to sell a lot of small items, but I also had to buy a lot of other people’s small items to gain their trust. “We want to get to know you first, so we know you’re not a fraud”, she said. I told her my whole life history, the history of my art, my hopes, my dreams, goals, obstacles… I felt like I was interviewing for a job that she didn’t want me to get. I told her I didn’t have a lot of small items to sell and I didn’t want to buy a lot of other people’s small items.

All the possessions I have I need and use, and I don’t have room for anybody else’s small stuff in my apartment. I wanted only to sell my art. But the rules were the rules–a $5,000.00 cap per painting. But then it became only one painting. I said in a very nice way that eBay was devaluing my art by pricing it for me – when they hadn’t even seen it. And what makes them experts on art in the first place?

She said that’s how the ‘buy and sell’ community works.

At many points throughout the conversation I thought I was talking to the CIA and military intelligence combined. She kept repeating the same policy over and over again.

No matter what I said, her response was always the same. It was like she’s was the government, always pushing me, ‘where’s the next attack going to be? When’s the next attack? Give us a date. Who? Give us an exact address and location.

I call that the eBay BLOCK. 

~Sharon Lee Davies-Tight

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Posted in HEY

THE STORY IS THE ART

Posted on by Chef Sharon Davies-Tight

It’s not so much the art, as it is the story. A story that my God told through my soul at my urging – absent me determining in advance or along the process the outcome. Many stories among one, that had no beginning, middle nor end. Stories that continue to evolve even when the paint no longer moves.

At some point the entity and/or the organism becomes the art, no longer needing an external medium to express it.

~ Sharon Lee Davies-Tight

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Posted in HEY

TO: Art Aficionados

Posted on by Chef Sharon Davies-Tight

TO: ART AFICIONADOS

Prior to painting a picture I don’t say, ‘I think I’ll paint a watercolor, or acrylic or oil painting today’. I’m not that kind of artist. What’s a water-color? Everybody wants to know the medium. Why? Without the picture the medium is meaningless.

When I paint, I paint a picture, not a watercolor, acrylic or oil.  Art aficionados miss the point of true art by shifting the focus from the picture to the materials.

When a true artist creates, the materials become irrelevant to the creation. One doesn’t need a particular medium; one only needs the desire and the talent to create. One will find the materials to create what needs to be expressed, regardless of the type or quality of what’s used to make that happen.

~ Sharon Lee Davies-Tight

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Posted in HEY

AN INTRODUCTION

Posted on by Chef Sharon Davies-Tight

AN INTRODUCTION

In my early years, whether reading for enjoyment or for school, and I read a lot, I rarely read the introduction to a book or anything about the author. Neither did I like to see previews to a movie. I had no interest in the overview of the entire work, a summary or the titles to the chapters. I didn’t care about the historical context or what the author was thinking when he/she wrote the piece. I simply wanted to read the work, or see the movie.

Maybe I was too impatient, maybe I liked the element of surprise, maybe I wanted to judge for myself without somebody else telling me what to look for or how to interpret the work. Maybe all of the above and more. Even now when I see movie stars doing an interview on television before a movie comes out it ruins the movie for me. Once I see a movie or a T.V. show, knowing about the personal life of the star ruins the image of the character they portrayed.

Similarly, when I view a work of art, I have no interest in what period in the artist’s life they created it, what they were suffering or celebrating, or the process they went through to develop it. I want every work of art to reach me on a level of familiarity, to surprise me within that realm of familiarity, or to simply awe me, absent the familiarity, by the splendor of the image or the brilliance of the work, even if I don’t understand it. When I look at a rainbow in the sky I don’t need nor want to know the history of the sun and the rain and what created the rainbow in order to thoroughly enjoy it.

Most of us don’t know how electricity really works, or how computers do what they do, but we’re all awed by the result, even though we don’t understand the process.

Even in museums–historical, art, science or otherwise–rarely do I read the plaque that accompanies the display. I am enthralled, or not, by the work. It impacts me, or it doesn’t. Impact is the key. Blow me away by the ugliness, the perversity of the art, or blow me away by the subtlety of the art, or find a place where I settle into the art.

Years ago, for our weekly entertainment, my husband and I would stay up to the early morning hours with our three dogs, a bottle of wine, after a few beers, and a book of poetry. He read, we listened. One poem always got read more than once on each occasion: Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloomed”. We didn’t need to understand all of it or really anything about it, for it to reach both of us on a deep level of emotional knowing, longing and healing. The title alone does that. Years later when the news said that he was gay and writing about his gay lover who died, it ruined it for me. Not that he was gay, but that now my personal interpretation was not valid.

I didn’t have to know that Van Gogh cut his ear off, or now, maybe he didn’t, according to current news reports, in order to enjoy his paintings. Now every time I see one of his paintings, that’s the image I see.

Introductions are a form of advertising. If you don’t like the advertisement, you won’t read the book. If you don’t like the preview to the movie, you won’t see the movie. If you don’t know anything about the artist, you won’t view the art. Now, who’s being impatient? As far as having to know every little detail of the creator’s life in order to enjoy the work, I say the creator wants you to interpret the work through the prism of your life, not theirs–at least this artist, writer, chef does.

The only benefit you’ll get by reading anything I write twice, or by looking at anything I create more than once is that you’ll see more detail.

The names of people, groups, nations found in WAKING UP THE PLANET, A CALM LONG RANT and VIVID VIEWS were used, not to offend, but to point out flaws in order to help everyone else. They were real examples, instead of hypotheticals. Substitute any name, any group, any nation for the one used and what applies to one applies to all.

~ Sharon Lee Davies-Tight

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