Art Matters: Am I Dreaming or Are We Already A Community?

“I have read or been told that in a book of etiquette of the 17th century the very first rule forbids you to tell your dreams to other people, since they cannot possibly be of interest to them.” Isak Dinesen. On the other hand, me and my cat have spiked the misbehavior charts, or maybe not, according to recent dreaming:
Dream # 1: My cat, Sheba, is romping in the dining room, when I notice that she is not using her kitty litter box. In fact, an odd arrangement of placemats on the floor seems an invitation to relieve herself right there! Buckets of kitty pee start to flow, and, magically, I notice there is no spillover in spite of copious amounts draining from her tiny body. A large absorbent sponge in hand, I beckon the mythical Sisyphus, (the poor chap doomed to roll a heavy downward destined stone uphill as punishment in Hades) to reveal his secrets of handling frustration. No way, I thought, it’s hopeless. Besides, where is the misdeed that drove me to this huge payback?
No sooner had these disturbances penetrated my desperate goal to regain cleanliness, when Sheba, with one corner of the “placemat blanket” in her mouth, drags the whole mess diagonally across the room and out the back door, without spilling a drop. Cleaning up after herself seemed totally logical in my dream, but during the day, my dream memories of Sheba, having a responsibly cautious and sensitive approach towards human communal living, sent me into fits of laughter. This ridiculous situation, however, became the mother lode for ideas about the supportive sort of context needed to shape a community and the power of each of us as partners in a collective civic imagination. “The start of an article about having good manners, not spilling and leaving your mess for the next generation, etc” I thought. Then, the following night happened.
Dream # 2: I had modeled an assortment of animals in clay, and in trying to place them next to one another, in a visually appealing way, in my dream they would shift or self-correct into a more fruitful communal arrangement than I, or any one person could possibly imagine. It didn’t matter when I coaxed them back into my idea of “beauty”. They insisted on creating their separate realities by re aligning themselves. In the dream I reluctantly accepted this turn of fate for my little animal sculptures, but, in waking reality, it seemed prophetic. Good manners, or how things ought to look, is relative. Truth can be a matter of the heart. It’s probably exclusively selfish interests and mathematics that steer us worlds apart. In any case, it is a gift when we finally listen to each other.

My dream tapestry looks something like this: A colorful assortment of interests, dreams, rivalries and ancestral influences. This composition of differences and distinctions, spawning a new reality and new value factors for Ellenville, is a visually compelling promise of future revitalization inside our community. Art is pivotal to this promise because artists embrace the differences, invite community dialogue and help shape the imagination of it’s people or audience. Tractability is not often inscribed in the artist’s character bank, but, then again, creative thinking and acute observations is a way of life. Much like Sheba.


This is what I think:
Ellenville is a spectrum community. It’s history can be a great mobilizer. It has young, old and in between, rich, poor and in between, ethnically , religiously and spiritually diverse. We are so lucky. But, for the quick fix, how do we avoid signing on to the facades of progress fueled by the secrets and greed of a few? How do we get our lives and our livelihoods to mean something, equally, to us all by planting the seeds of a fertile future for our kids to nurture? Dreams are beacons, not realities. The work of an artist is a powerful reality and typically presses for interesting questions that provoke and awaken potential rather than marginalize. Artist communities are nurturing sources of growth for transformation. I am an image maker, and, to my way of dreamy thinking, Sheba’s instincts were flawless –(except for the forgetting about her kitty litter part)

Judy Sigunick is a Cragsmoor based artist.
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