Description
To create art is to have courage. If art is a window to the soul, then artists take a great risk every time they pick up their pencil, throw clay on the wheel, or brush a white canvas with that first stroke. Because to be fully known is to be vulnerable—both to love and rejection.
Yet somehow, despite this risk of hurt, you can’t find a time when humans haven’t created art. This suggests that for centuries and millennia, people have found that the risk inherent in creating art is worth taking. Because maybe, just maybe, baring your soul to the world is the only way to become who you are meant to be, the only way to become radically vulnerable and authentic and brave.
The only way to become radically human.
Flipping through the pages of Reveal, I see a collection of writers and artists who dared to share a glimmer of their soul with the world, and I couldn’t be more proud of them. I know expressing one’s most closely held self isn’t easy; it’s a tenacious affair, an affair that sometimes involves dragging ideas onto the page kicking and screaming.
This year, we received the highest volume of submissions yet, which means each piece you see here was chosen with care. Thank you to everyone bold enough to share your work with us!
Art molded by human hands and dreamed of by human minds is more important now than ever. May you all find the courage to create your art—and the daring to become who you are meant to be.
Take flight!
Claire Sakelson
Reveal Editor-In-Chief, Blackbird & Company
For many centuries, during a period we call the Dark Ages, art in Europe was dominated by a simple style. Poses were thoughtful, clear—some might even call them flat.
But as time moved forward, people began to desire a new style. In creating this “new” style, artists did not simply work in their studios until something appeared; they looked backwards to much older times and studied what those artists did. All of our knowledge is built on ideas that came before us, and the best way to encourage our own unique ideas is to see how other people came up with theirs.
Here at Blackbird & Company, our art classes focus on copying works by some of the great masters throughout history. From the sketchbooks of Da Vinci and Van Gogh to the ink prints of Hokusai, we learn the process of art by studying their processes.
Observation is one of the most important skills a student can have in any class. The act of studying a work of art brings observation to the forefront: for as we sharpen our pencils, we also sharpen our eyes.
Taylor Bredberg
Reveal Art editor, Blackbird & Company
