Hibbleton Independent and DASH

HIBBLETON INDEPENDENT

A Letter from the Editor…

Dear friends,
I’m not gonna even try to sugarcoat this.  It’s been a tough year.

With the economy in the pits and people struggling to pay their bills (myself included), owning an art gallery is not a lucrative business.  Here’s what you can expect (financially) should you decide to open an art gallery: total fucking failure.  You should expect not to be paid for your work, but rather to pay, out of your own small pocket, a lot of money just to keep your doors open.

But here’s something else you can expect (and this a little harder to quantify): an abiding sense that the work you are doing actually matters, that it means something, that you are contributing something intangibly beautiful to the world, and to your community, something that has nothing whatsoever to do with money, and everything to do with those good old-fashioned virtues of beauty, truth, freedom, and love.

We’ve all got our day jobs.  Some of us like them.  Most of us don’t.  I’ve got mine and it sure as shit isn’t Hibbleton Gallery or Hibbleton Independent.  I’m an English teacher, and it’s okay.  It’s a living, except when the California State Budget determines that it’s not.

But the work I do for Hibbleton Gallery, and for this little magazine you hold in your hands, is purely pro bono.  Gratis.  It is my gift to you.  And it’s all about love.   Not the sappy, cliché type love of Valentine’s Day cards and Nicholas Sparks novels.  I will quote my favorite contemporary writer on the type of love I’m talking about: “It’s the sort of love you see in the eyes of really old people who’ve been happily married for an incredibly long time, or in religious people who are so religious they’ve devoted their lives to religious stuff: it’s the sort of love whose measure is what it has cost, what one’s given up for it.” (David Foster Wallace, “Tennis Player Michael Joyce’s Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness”)

For most Americans, success depends largely on the amount of money you make.  I would humbly propose a different set of criteria for success: success is measured in the relationships and friendships you make, in the people you inspire, in the gifts you give that actually cost you something, in the beauty you create, in the persistence with which you follow your dreams, in the community you help to build.

By these criteria, Hibbleton Gallery has had a banner year.

So why is art important?  What I like about art, true art, is that it answers to no one–not bosses or parents or religious figures or girlfriends or boyfriends or husbands or wives or teachers or administrators or council members or board members or executives.  No one.  Art is a badass.  It is the pure, honest cry of a single person.  And thus, it is true.  It is Woody Guthrie saying, “No thank you sir” to record executives who wanted him to play less provocative songs.  It is Jean-Michel Basquiat alone with a spray can in a New York subway.  It is my friend Steve Elkins pouring all his resources and time into making a documentary about experimental musicians around the world, a project that consumed most of his 20s.  It is my friend Brianna who makes handmade zines that she gives away for free.  Art is not about making money or being famous or cool.  It’s none of that bullshit.  It is honest, sincere expression.  The folks featured in this little magazine carry the flame of art forward, and I am privileged to know them.  They are true badasses.  And by “badasses” I mean “really terrific people.”  To quote an ancient badass, “Go thou and do likewise.”

Love,
Jesse La Tour
Editor, Hibbleton Independent