A Psalm for the Living Artist – on Faina Lerman @ Hyperallergic

Let’s conjecture that the world of fine art is best geared to recognize and promote those artists who approach artmaking as a career. Careerism among artists enables MFA programs, blue-chip galleries, auction houses, annual and biennial art fair circuits, and other institutions that inextricably make artistic means meet capitalist ends. There are other kinds of artists, however, and Faina Lerman is one of them. If others are “career” artists, Lerman is a “living” artist — not in the basic sense of being alive, but in the sense that her artistic means are inextricable from her life, rather than motivated by the desire to make a living.

Maybe the story begins in 2004. That’s when Lerman, identifying primarily as a painter, graduated from her undergrad program at College for Creative Studies — not only the sole undergrad art school in Detroit but in all of Michigan. In 2005, she married the largely self-taught sculptor-engineer Graem Whyte, and in 2007, they bought a big, mixed-use building at the northern border of Hamtramck, a city-within-the-city of Detroit.

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