What was your most important/formative experience of art/culture?

Some of mine:

The Picture of Dorian Grey I read just as I was going to university, staying with my mum's friend in Amsterdam and it was a massive wake up call about what was going to come. It made me very determined to get out there and see the world and do things with no regrets.

Anything I have made or been involved in has changed me.

Reading Henry and June by Anais Nin made me convinced that any type of love was better than nothing and I took a chance on a guy with a pretty serious heroin addiction because I loved him and I thought it was better to just feel something even if it would be followed by pain, and I am still with him now and he has been clean for a year.

The Rocky Horror show was what awakened me sexually (hilarious).

Mahler's second symphony has been a constant reminder you make up your own sense of unity.

Must be many more.... over to everyone else.

OK, this is going to sound a little weird.

Way back in the sixties (I'm an old fart) I joined a religious order in the
Catholic Church. The experience of Gregorian chant was for me what
meditation seems to be for a lot of people. It gave me a profound sense
of peace and beauty. To hear the "Exultet" sung by someone who knows
what he's about at midnight in a darkened church is amazing.

My life took a different turn along the way, but I still recall such things
with great affection.

When is was seven years old, my grandfather--who had taught me to read in the summer before my fourth birthday--gave me The Outline of History to read, and would answer questions i had. Of course, at that age, much of it was way beyond my comprehension, but it gave me a solid narrative foundation for my subsequent reading.

The other influence was my brother. Although he did not pursue a career as an adult, he was a truly virtuoso performer on horn, cornet and trumpet. As a horn player (often called a French horn), he took the first prize in every competition he entered, from the age of ten. He took the first prize in every state competition he entered for eight years, in both horn and trumpet. By the time i was ten, i knew all of Mozart's horn concerti and Haydn's horn concerti and his famous trumpet concerto. Although i later became interested in popular music (as did my brother, although his attitude was sardonic), and was among those who were bowled over by the Beatles and the so-called British invasion, what people call classical music has been my first musical love all of my life.

Seeing Country Joe McDonald in 1970 when he toured England was pretty good.

I should also add that my aunt was very much into Cuban big band music. Tito Puente and Desi Arnaz were playing in the house all the time. I was listening to some Ricky Martin songs a while back, and realized that i loved it because of the brass which always backs up Latin music.

Reggae.

When I went to Senior school aged 11, I was sat next to a boy (Frank, or Francis if his mum was calling him) who had not long arrived from Jamaica. He had an amazing accent, and was/is one of the funniest and most positive people I have ever met.
We became firm friends, and it was on my first visit to his house that I encountered reggae music.
His Dad was a massive bear of a man who had a deep, booming laugh and was a brilliant cook. Mum was a nurse who always seemed to be in uniform and either just going to work or coming home.

Their small house had a massive stereo system in the kitchen/dining room. There was nearly always this laid back reggae music playing, by people like Desmond Dekker or Pluto Shervington, bass turned right up and Dad cool dancing whilst something was roasting or frying.

I still adore traditional reggae, and am still lucky enough to count Frank as a good mate.

Reggae, in particular Pluto Shervington, always perks me up if I'm ever feeling down. Alas, most people have never heard of him.

Seating down and looking at light bulbs for hours changes me every day in amazing ways.

Mmm, I've a slight recall of hearing (dancing to? probably not) Tito Puente live once, but that's very faint and long ago and may not be true. Something there in my memory though and it's not just the radio playing.

For me it was probably seeing that old black and white movie with Henry Fonda and a buncha other good actors is it. It was about a jury deliberating over the fate of a defendant. I don't recall the title, exactly, but it was something like "Twelve Pissed Off Pervs."

It gave me hope that maybe, just once, I too would be acquitted, ya know?

when I ws 12 and 13, I was on n art scholrship t a mueum progrm for rt mqjors in college. I was singled out by a noted diaramicist named Earl Poole , who did stuff for Philly , Reading, and Lncaster museums. I was given an opportunity to work and soak up the discipline of commercial art and how it envisioned natural and archeological scenes. I was taken up in a narural science world and ws involved in the meetings between the art crew and the museum curators. The discipline involved just blew me away and I was a "born again" nature geek.

I've talked about it before, my first real boyfriend, short time love (because I was catholic, even though mid leave taking). Good thing it didn't work out, as he married the right woman, a fellow mountainer, which was so not me..

I already knew art enough to have had one single hour a week class in first year college, looking at slides, no art in school before that; already liked posters in Campbell's book store; already had been to the LA County Museum, though not exactly enthralled. Well, when I met him, my interest in the arts soared. He took me to the same museum and I learned a lot, including seeing what I would have then called odd art (the Keinholz car). He introduced me to the Mexican mural painters' work. He wrote poems to me in class. He could do that, being first in that huge chem class. He took me to concerts, Coltrane coming to mind first. I didn't really like it, too loud (what a doofus I was), but that started me liking jazz.

Then there was my girlfriend group, half of them latinas, and we used to go to Mexico together. I got interested generally in latin jazz from wherever (Cuba, Brazil) basically through them. Merengue in Mexico.

I got interested in theater (and occasionally bored by it) from my husband. I still read reviews off and on.

So, much of this is not from my childhood. That I think of as traveling with my parents back and forth in the US, getting to live in NYC one year (the ships! the ships! the world's biggest dimestore! the dolls at Macy's! learning how to ride a bicycle!), and generally, how to look around and notice stuff.

How could I forget? Sister Mary Rita was the nun who taught us geography in elementary school; what stuck in my mind was Rome and Rio..

I turned seven, before I was given the opportunity to read. This key to the library has to top every subsequent thing.

Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven was something I considered the greatest piece of art in my teenage years. I learned it by heart in several languages.

But for something that saved me when I was "at my lowest ebb" it has to be 2pac's "Me Against the World". When I was living on the streets I had a backpack, a gun, a cd discman and Pac CDs to my name. Was a pretty bleak time and several of the other kids in the same situation were suicidal (had to get rid of the gun for that) and it was hard for us to try to keep our spirits up.

The outro of that song was Tupac saying:

"I know it seem hard sometimes but
Remember one thing
Through every dark night, there's a bright day after that
So no matter how hard it get, stick your chest out
Keep your head up and handle it"

Seems simple enough but the words came at one of my darkest hours and galvanized me to deal with the worsening situation.

"Me against the world, Nothing to lose, it's just me against the world, baby" played in my head on repeat whenever I thought things were getting particularly bad and it gave teenage me just enough bravado to face what I had to deal with.

good stuff

The time when I saw Slash try to crowd surf and everybody stepped back and he belly flopped 10 ft onto the floor. That's when I knew Gunz and Roses were headed to a future of small venues.

I've had a few changes attached to musical experiences

Anner Bylsma

Sax Summit

several programs curated by Alison Mackay for Tafelmusik and Toronto Consort

musicality workshops with Dr. George Sawa



(it's disturbing how many of these include memories of tears)

I might have been six or seven when my father taught me the differences between Romanesque art and Gothic style.
And since that time, I'm interested in why something happened, or was changed.

I just looked up my favorite art teacher. He died two years at about 89.
I usually saw him looking less intently serious than in this photo, but I like the photo. It's a keeper..

http://samamato.com/



http://www.askart.com/artist/Sam_Amato/101133/Sam_Amato.aspx