A Writting Exercise

28 August 2008
English class essay

In class Introductory Exercise

Prompt: Who are you as an artist?

The question at hand is who is Xavier Ruffin the artist/designer according to Xavier Ruffin the person. Well that’s is an easy and a hard answer to give because I, Xavier Ruffin the person, do not know who Xavier Ruffin the artist is. I have an idea but not a definition. I know where he comes from; a young black male raised in the eighth poorest city in America, in a home affected by drug addiction. I know when he began to acknowledge his exitance; in an class room of middle school students trying to explain what an orange looks like to a blank canvas using acrylic paint as the translator. Yet I do not know who he is.

I don't know what he is going to produce next but that makes every project and piece a surprise for me. I can see the influence of urban American culture (hip hop, graffiti, pop) mashed up with the geometry and space of Bauhaus architecture in some of the things that he has created. However, I can not say that they are constant or that he even wants them to be. Although there are lots of things that I could describe about him the most important one is that Xavier the artist/designer does not want me, the person, to know him completely.

He knows who I am through and through but I am just another source of inspiration to him, no different from an interesting character you meet on the bus or train. Even though I live with him and work with him almost every day I can not honestly say I know him… And I like it that way.

Once you "know" something there is nothing more to it. What ever it is has now become limited to the facts your knowledge holds it to. Xavier Ruffin the artist/designer does not like limitations so I would never try to confine him out of my own selfish desire for the security of understanding him. I would much rather accept a sense of who he is and allow both Xavier the artist and Xavier the person to grow organically in parallel. Perpetually in wonder of what we could be, separate and together.