Susan Ritter. Art as catalyst for social change. Short bio and diatribe.

Short Bio/Diatribe

I currently live in New York City where the tip of anxiety is always at one's doorstep. I live with my life mate, Sander Antoniades and my two cats, Memphis and Tennessee. I have been working for a very long time on the great divide between what I do and what I want to do, how I contribute to society and what I take with me when I go. Defining *prosperity* and personal development are a constant battle for me, a battle in which I constantly flounder. Some of what you see on my site are the fruits of my pursuits - for personal development, that is. The most difficult issue to keep in check is the search for prosperity - it is very easy to get off track and find myself in violation of personal beliefs and societal obligations. My work is a direct reflection of this and what I talk about and what I feel.

It is hard to understand what to do and how to feel in this current day and age. After all that has happened after Sept. 11, it is hard to figure out what to work on, in terms of issues of neglect. I do believe that there are going to be many things that we lose, many personal freedoms and civil rights in the name of fighting the war on terrorism. It is hard to understand to what degree we should fight what, and to what degree we should let things go, and to what degree we should sign onto what issues. Difficult times. Unfortunately, it will be tomorrow when we figure it out, which will be too late for today. Like all those who meditate, it is the most difficult, yet most rewarding, to live in the moment. I believe that is what we should strive for.

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without plowing up the ground." - Frederick Douglas

The rich get richer, compliments of W.

The chart below outlines how the taxpayers who get no or reduced benefits from Bush's 2001 tax bill are concentrated in the bottom three-fifths of income earners. Sixty-two percent of the three-fifths of all taxpayers who make less than $44,000 a year will get less than the full rebate amounts, with 42 percent of these taxpayers getting nothing at all.

Now that the entire government is under the control of the GOP, one can be assured that these tax breaks,
largely benefiting the rich, will become permanent.

Not for the faint of heart.

"Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are
mostly impostors. . . . We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities,
all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have turned them into petty and ridiculous things."

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. "Conversation avec Picasso," in Cahiers d'Art, vol. 10,
no. 10 (Paris, 1935; tr. in Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Picasso: Fifty Years of His Art, 1946).

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11/12/01