re: haystacks

I like to think of this woman as me.

Roy Lichtenstein is staying at the Art Institute of Chicago. I visited him the other week with my mom and brother. He was lovely, offering us a new perspective on what it means to be different. The massive installation chronicled the artist's work from his early days after college (he attended Ohio State University, yay corn colleges!), to his wobbly entrance on the pop art scene (where the question: Is he the worst artist in America? donned the pages of Life Magazine), and then straight on to his popular acceptance into the art world. Specifically as his art related to comic books. Art exploding.

For me, the most notable thing was this: how very many dots.

Those dots got me thinking (some more). I must have seen a million. Maybe a billion. But really, it's amazing. His art was shockingly different compared to everyone else of the time, but he really stuck to his style. Finding a voice. And he wasn't ever sick of it. (Towards the end he tried some Japanese landscapes, though still in his signature pop-art style.) But just like anyone who is a true master of something, he wasn't a jack of all trades. He was a specialist.

After seeing his take on Monet's "Haystacks," it really felt like he was one in a million. One in a world.

Individual. The concept of any one as being a dime-a-dozen is just so wrong. Comedians, writers, teachers, doctors, anyone. Don't call anyone ordinary. The notion that there's a mass group of people who all think, act and live the same upon further inspection just can't be. Sure, there are things that unite us, but it's the things that divide us that make us, well, "us." We're all each a needle in a haystack, or a line amidst dots. Depending on the day we might feel like hay, but we're the needle. We have to be. I know I have to be.