Location: Chattanooga, Tennessee
I received this submission from reader Karen. This is the base of a sculpture in town.
Read through it — it makes hardly any sense. The grammar is shoddy, as well.
Most of all, I would really like to see a comma after work in the fifth line of the description, and I’d like him to decide whether or not to use a comma before and in a list of items. (The AP and I prefer not to use it; many people disagree.) He also needs to clarify his ideas — I’m so confused as to what he’s trying to say.
Sam, I’m sure your sculpture is beautiful, so don’t quit your day job. Stick to art.
Thanks, Karen.
Here’s what stuck out the most to me:
“I am inspired by the conflict between an ideal state of mind and and an imperfect reality.”
How do you make a mistake like that?
“I am inspired by the conflict between an ideal state of mind and and an imperfect reality.”
Man, that sentence is so screwed up, I quoted it wrong:
“I am inspired by the conflict between an ideal state of and and an imperfect reality.”
I think it should look like this: “…an ideal state of ‘and’, and…”. But, I could be wrong.
Obviously, this guy has (had? This looks like a tombstone!) a career in marketing.
The repetition of “and” was the first thing that leapt out at me, pokerwolf. I think your first (mis-)reading was possibly close to the artist’s intention, as I suspect the first “and” is a typographical error, and “mind” would seem to make sense in the context.
A fact about art school: the only thing you really learn is how to write convoluted bollocks like this. Unfortunately, a large proportion of art students are dyslexic, so the writing of the bollocks ends up as more of a challenge than producing the work.
Top marks for filling a paragraph whilst remaining as ambiguous as possible!