For Introverts: Exhibition Openings are a Love Hate Relationship...Maybe a Remnant of Covid?

What Covid-19 taught me about myself and my art.

This week I survived a public event: an opening reception for the Indiana Waterways exhibition at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. I was one of five artists on this project and the museum provided the artists an opportunity for a public reception. Food, booze, a meet and greet, even more. The Covid-19 shutdown changed my personal perceptions of artistic gatherings, as well as receptions such as this.

We introverts must find a safe space and still be able to interact with others, even if we are more comfortable in the safety of our self-made sanctuaries.

I say “survived” because years ago my personal expectations differed greatly from now. I no longer enjoy going out in public. I have known I was an introvert since adolescents. But staying at home, using zoom calls and phone conferencing, email— during covid— that changed how I prefer to work just as it did for many. But during covid, I heard a majority of people say they missed interacting with others. Covid-19 exposed a truth about myself that otherwise would not have happened. Until the shutdown in 2020-21, I always felt that I was already in touch with my inner most self. After all, we artists are supposed to be the soothsayers of our time and like poets, be in touch with the present as well as the future. But instead, I discovered how much happier I am if I do not have to interact with people. This revelation surprised me, but it also preplexed my inner most understanding of who I had been the past 5 decades

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Don’t get me wrong. Don’t confuse introversion to hermitage. I don’t mind going to the grocery, a bar and grill to have a beer or an occasional outing to dine. But those decisions to go out into public are on my terms….when I want to go. When I decide it is okay to be among others. An artist reception at a museum is a command performance, mostly with strangers. Often wealthy donors of the museum. The idea that many artists are nassisist isn’t new, and it applies to me too. Therefore, the desire to do what I want to do on my time schedule and on my terms isn’t unexpected. But what surprised me maybe was the amount of the expectations or pull of these social norms had on me. If you would have asked before 2020, if I felt I could push against norms, public exceptions, and tradition— I would have said definitely. It was only after Covid shutdowns forced us all inside did I realize how much my daily routine was driven by my upbringing and the expectations to appear in public and other societal norms. Covid scraped bare the fatty layer of compliance just under the hide of my social skin. The museum meet and greet reception became a jackhammer pounding away at the barrier covid let me construct to insulate myself.

This meet and greet was ALL of what I discovered I needed to avoid because I could not control the circumstances of how many people might gather around. The reception was this past Thursday, part of the Second Thursday’s that the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana gets people to come downtown and explore music, business and the arts. My social anxiety began Tuesday this week. I began thinking about having to dress appropriately — as an artist I am always in pigment stained clothes, sweaters with holes, and thread bare pants— usually with holes at the corners of where my wallet, albeit always empty of cash, wears the pocket corners into holes. The whiskers under my neck and beard are always a couple days old. My goretex ankle-high boots worn, and comfortable— sometimes caked with mud from trekking into the ditches and steams when I go out to paint plein air— either needed cleaned or jettisoned. There’s a freedom that I find in the artist’s work-ware. Receptions at museums require an acquiescence of my own artist-life illusion. Albiet necessary, at least now I recognize its presences in my life after Covid. Conformity to social norms are not necessarily as much a part of me as I had thought before Covid.

In total contrast, I have an artist friend, Jeff, who was once an actor. He prefers to travel from town to town, state by state and intentionally meet people as he paints local pubs, theaters and landmarks in the communities he passes through. Sleeping in what we all dubbed, “VanGo” a 250 Ford van, he is an iterate artist most of the year. He’s the kind of character who can talk to a dead man and get a response. Jeff is an absolute opposite of me. I’m certain his extrovert personality helps his sales in comparison to us introverts. While I have always been an introvert, I also have always admired the artists who can “chat up” and tell an interesting story that captures the attention of all.

I have tried and tried to be the outgoing personality, but eventually after a time, I retreat back into my tortoise shell and the energy to pretend to be outgoing dissipates and I am outside a situation looking back in — always wishing I had that gift of gab I see the extroverts chatting up the crowd.

Over the years, I have trained myself to comfortably interact with 2-5 people in a circle of conversation. Still, this is limiting. If a 6th person enters the cirlce, I shut down and withdraw. The museum reception was crowed, enough so that people had to file past the art as one would at a buffet line passing trays of stereo fired dishes. There were only a few occasions where one could stand back and look at an entire wall. Still, the number of people I interacted with was manageable and that “sixth” person wandering into the circle I was talking, never occurred. I am glad I went. Like my father, he never wanted to leave the farm but after getting away, he admitted a level of genuine satisfaction.

As artists, we need to meet people, no matter how difficult it is. While I enjoy online sales more, these few openings have enough rewards that I will continue to force myself out of my comfort zone. In the end, the museum gallery that also represents me year round, sold maybe 8 pieces of work in the promotion week and that night at least 3 works. I suspect that many also signed up to be notified when the 100 works in the exhibition will be available at auction in 2024. Like my dad, the reception yield a level of satisfaction outweighing my reticence.