Faythe Levine: Move Forward

 In Image, Music & Text Roland Barthes challenges the role of the author and the impact they have in the understanding of their work. Barthes states, "To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing"; "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author" (147-8). This ideology is one that Faythe Levine stands for and what one can argue is a driving force in her work. 

One of my favorite things about Levine's talk was hearing her share the role accessibility and community plays in her process. Often times artists don't talk about what it means to be an independent artist and having to maintain multiple hustles while working on ones craft full time. Hearing Levine talk about her journey made me recognize for myself why I don't see myself as an artist. Levine has spent what feels like a lifetime, my lifetime, working on her craft of delivering a message of community to an audience. During these times, she constantly called on artist like her never forgetting what it means to be a community, which is something I want to be able to do and do right as a part of my own process. 

                               (Holiday Gift Tags, 2013)

   
Levine's work is one that lives on across time. Her work does not exist in isolation, as she continues to return to pieces she created even in her younger days, pieces that continue to create meaning in their own way. Levine is an author who is also a reader of their own text/work, granting them the ability to continue to re-define and create new meanings from her work.