Tales of Grizzled Warriors
by Michael Fallon
posted on Dec. 14, 2008 - 10:36pm at
http://www.secretsofthecity.com/magazine/blogs/thousandth-word/2008/12/tales-of-grizzled-warriors#comments

This piece is posted on Minneapolis's Secret's of the City online magazine. Michael Fallon is an artist, arts writer, and arts administrator based in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

It isn't one of my favorite pieces of writing from him but I do think it is very timely topic and was glad to come across it.

"Ensuring continuity—both for individual artists and among the arts community—is what concerns me the most when I think about how the art community treats its aging artists, forgetting them at the twilight of their career. I can only imagine what it might feel like to work creatively for an adult lifetime, to survive while holding down multiple jobs, perhaps a mortgage, and all the attendant worries involved with being a modern American—only to meet up with a immoveable brick wall just when you finally have time to take on all the creative projects (during retirement) that you someday wanted to get to. Is it possible that any of the golden-curled young artists emerging now, so stuck in their own internal battles to make it big on the scene, have any ability at all to learn the lessons from the grizzled artists who came before them? Is it possible they even care?"