Bearing Witness

First in December of 2013, and then in late March of 2014, I took one of the strangest assignments of my career as an artist. Initially employed by a local television station, I served as a sketch artist for the Jordan Graham trial at Missoula's Federal Courthouse.

This assignment fully employed my powers of observation in a very unusual and intense setting. To some extent the physical conditions (distance, obstacles, limited time) prevented me from taking down, or taking in precisely what I hoped to. Working furiously during those hours in court, it was also difficult to process all that I was witnessing. And yet because of this effort, I am more acutely aware of how much drawing -a way of looking- is enmeshed with listening, sensing in more comprehensive ways. And the lingering question is, how receptive is it healthy to be in such a situation? 

Art (my art, your art, The Arts) is such a marvelous way to experience and expand empathy. I never what to deny or discourage that ennobling power. But I still wonder just how far one can open in the presence of all this heartache, to do the job and do it well. Perhaps that need to close off, if only temporarily to all that is unfolding, reveals that this work simply isn't art, merely reportage?