Category Archives: Art & Development

Art & Development

voice, perspective, position

This week I had a lively conversation with an actor, designer and musician who are all actively developing their respective disciplines. There seemed to be an unspoken balance that everyone sought between becoming established and experienced and acquiring new skills and ideas.

One person brought up the idea of finding a voice. What does it mean to have a voice in art? In one of my very first art classes in my BFA studies, the instructor had each student say what he or she wanted to learn. I said I wanted to learn how to be honest in my work. Thankfully, the nagging feelings I had as a student—that I was merely emulating styles and techniques—do not plague me much anymore. Not that there aren’t frightening similarities between my works and other artists’, of course, just that it’s rarer now, and I’ve learned how to not be hamstrung by them.

The idea of having a voice made me think about having a perspective, of which a stronger extension, perhaps, would be taking a position with your work. And this brought up the different approaches within our crafts. I asked the actor if an actor is supposed to have a voice, perspective or position? Should an actor just disappear into the role? She explained the creative challenge and collaboration of acting—that a good actor can take crappy lines and turn them into a compelling character. This is much different from my approach as a designer, where I feel like without strong content, graphic design is just surface treatment. Because it’s a communications art, the form ought be in service of the content.

For actors and musicians, whose roles are largely interpretive, how much authorship is possible? We had an interesting dialog about whether the concept of voice is always tied to authenticity or authorship. Can one have a purely formal voice? When is form content? When isn’t it?

The musician shared a current debate in music theory about whether sounds are inherently meaningful or significance is culturally assigned to sounds. He then argued for the autonomy of the work; that a piece of music retains an essential identity outside of our social and cultural associations. To take a position in relation to a piece of music would be to deny the autonomy of the work, or to capitulate to the idea of complicity or relativism.

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Art & Development

R+D NYC

This blog is not meant to be a personal diary, but a major change is coming, and I must explain the circumstances.

I started this blog three years ago, in April 2007, with Four Reasons Why I am Writing a Blog:

I think of this as an exercise in Research + Development as an Artist, Citizen, and Art Community member.

1. To promote professionalism, rigor and generosity–values I hope to reciprocate within the San Francisco Bay Area art community and larger world.

2. To demystify the life of an artist. To share my enthusiasm for contemporary art.

3. To consider ethics and politics–the artist as citizen.

4. To think about what it means to be an artist, and the process of becoming the kind of artist I would respect and admire.

I’ll be sharing experiences, event listings, reviews, quotes, links and reflections. Though this writing will be grounded in my experiences, rather than writing about me, I look forward to thinking about larger issues through a localized investigation.

Since then, when I was on the cusp of finishing my graduate studies, I’ve had many wonderful art experiences. I feel like I’ve got a really strong, solid community here. There is certainly more I could do in the Bay Area, but I feel like I’ve made a respectable effort to look at art, visit new spaces, partner with diverse institutions, push my practice, contribute, and continue developing as a participant in the art community.

For the most part, my optimism was not unfounded. When my high expectations have been dashed, it ultimately strengthened my commitment to professionalism, ethics, and integrity, as well as my gratitude for friends and colleagues with shared principles. Being an artist is challenging, but without the support and generosity of like-minded friends and colleagues, it would be impossible.

Now, I’m on the cusp of a new transition: I’m moving to New York for family reasons. There are, as you can imagine, a rash of mixed emotions—of the Bay Area, sadness and gratitude; of NYC, excitement and anxiety.

The list of things to do, replace, explore, find, or restart in NY is overwhelming, but as it concerns this blog, I can say this:

I’ll continue to post musings, links to points of (art) references, information and resources. I foresee two opportunities for correcting the course of this blog, however.

First, publicizing worthwhile projects in the Bay Area seems like a community service, because there’s far more deserving projects than critical arts coverage here. NY, with its countless shows, spaces and publications, might take a different tack.

Second, I’m only one in a long march of artists who relocate to NY. This presents a conundrum for me—my coming-to-New-York, artist-in-the-big-city story is cliche, yet that doesn’t change the fact that my experience in the near future is going to be one of discovery. I’ll continue to strive to be accessible, relevant, and honest about my observations.

That said, I’m looking forward to connecting with like-minded artists, curators, writers and thinkers with strong commitments to rigor, excellence, community and ethics.

I’m excited to nurture my ties to the Bay Area: friendships, writing projects, art projects and other collaborations. I’m open to suggestions. Send me a note!

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Art & Development, Community

Artist-curated shows and alumni notes

Summer is supposed to be the low season for art, but this is San Francisco and we don’t summer in the Hamptons; the fog rolls in just the same. A few galleries have mixed up their programming with artist-curated shows.

“They Knew What They Wanted”
Katy Grannan, Shannon Ebner, Jordan Kantor and Robert Bechtle curates selections from Altman-Siegal, Fraenkel, Berggruen and Ratio 3. Go see this show for insights into four interesting artist-curators, pictures and objects you wouldn’t normally get to see, and some really great works, including a communal ballpoint pen drawing initiated by Arte Povera artist Alighero e Boetti at Ratio 3.

A similar work by Alighero e Boetti, Mettere al mondo il mondo 1972 -73 penna biro blu su carta intelata 2 elementi, cm 159 X 164 cad. Source: Archivo Alighero Boetti.

If you aren’t familiar with Boetti’s work, have a look at the virtual tour at Archivo Alighero Boetti.

Over at Patricia Sweetow Gallery, abstract painter Kim Anno curates a group show called “Everyday Mystics.” I wish I could have made out the images in Ricardo Rivera‘s projections on and alongside reflective objects like helmets and metal cups. The idea was neat. I overheard the owner mentioning something about the work being about communicating with outer space, so I figured it’s just as well I couldn’t tell what was going on, since I’m not the intended audience. The MP3 player embedded in the center of a spinning turntable is crafty and chuckle-worthy.

Ali Naschke-Messing‘s thread installations shined with glitter and glowed with fluorescence. Two large floor-to-ceiling works that exploited incidental marks and holes in the existing architecture. A series of wall-based works, which incorporated some sort of putty or plaster, were striking in their simplicity and efficacy. The works are formal investigations of site and form and volume; they’re also catalysts for subtle perceptual experiences. From a distance (and in photographs), the works are almost imperceptible; I almost didn’t see one until it was right in front of me. In person—and particularly with PSG’s abundant afternoon light—the density of thread creates vibrancy. They are more materially substantial than Fred Sandback‘s string intallations, but not by much.

Suné Woods contributes some moving black and white photographs whose imagery is memorably unstable.

Woods is a recent MFAs from CCA (class of 2010). Naschke-Messing was my classmate (class of 2007); I’m proud to have studied alongside so many bright, hardworking, curious, supportive and respectful artists. They change directions, start new projects, stay connected, and keep showing. This summer, shows around town by my classmates include:

Lindsey White: Equivalent Exposures install at Baer Ridgway Exhibitions, Source: http://www.baerridgway.com/

Through July 17
Lindsey White: “Equivalent Exposures”
Quietly humorous and deceptively simple photographs, videos and sculpture
Baer Ridgeway, SOMA, SF

Through July 25
Robin Johnston : “meditations on space and time” (two-person show with Chelsea Pegram, Mills MFA candidate)
Data-driven weavings and drawings
Swarm Gallery, Oakland

Just closed July 10
Amanda Curreri: “Occupy The Empty”
Installation, text, video, participation
Ping Pong Gallery, Dogpatch, SF

Opens July 16
Erik Scollon: “The Urge”
Queer porcelain fetish-based installation
Ping Pong Gallery, Dogpatch, SF

And internationally, new media artist David Gurman is a 2010 TEDGlobal Fellow, participating in the technology and ideas conference in Oxford, UK.

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Art & Development

17 things you need to know when you are a 17-year-old student who wants to become an artist, with a reminder for ways teachers can help! – Open Studio

The Getty Museum and Mark Bradford have invited contemporary artists to develop lesson plans for K-12 students. The results, Open Studio, are on the Getty’s Blog.

Even if you’re not a teacher, Daniel Joseph Martinez lays out 17 things you need to know when you are a 17-year-old student who wants to become an artist, with a reminder for ways teachers can help! – Open Studio.

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Art & Development

As Is transcript, Great Balloon Giveaway photos posted!

as is audience and panel

In case you were wondering:

What’s the role of pleasure in art?
How do you gauge sincerity?
Can Pop art transcend radical negative consumerist critique?

You might like to have a gander at the transcript of As Is: Pop & Complicity, the closing dialogue of my solo show, Irrational Exuberance (Asst. Colors) at Sight School, featuring Glen Helfand, Patricia Maloney, and Ginger Wolfe-Suarez.

Some highlights:

The show is like an experiment; it’s a sincere embrace of different things that are supposed to make you happy. She’s taken a lot of objects that supposedly exude a lot of optimism to see what sort of effect they may have. I don’t think the sentiment in the objects is sincere, but the sentiment in her embrace of that possibility is. (Victoria Gannon)

The term that comes to mind in regards to Christine’s work is ‘added value.’ For example, learning what the Banner photographs are made of makes them more exciting to me. They’re cheesy gift bags that have been transformed. Even though they’re working in the language that the materials are intended to be about—the notion of the gift—they become something ghostly. There’s an added layer of what the artist can bring to the materials. (Glen Helfand)

—

Also, I’ve just posted some beautiful photographs of The Great Balloon Giveaway shot by Paul Kuroda. Here are some sneak peeks:

The site-specific public project and social sculpture took place at the Camron-Stanford House on Lake Merritt in Oakland a few weekends ago. It was part of a series of projects sited in historic Oakland architecture called Here and Now. A closing reception for Here and Now is scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday, June 26, 8-10pm at Mills Hall, which is also the last chance to see Elaine Buckholtz’ light installation! Prior to that, catch Floor Vahn’s audio installation at Pardee Home Museum.

Full details available at Mills Art Museum or Invisible Venue.

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Meta-Practice, Research

Cultivating inefficiencies

As S. Barich pointed out to me, Jerry Saltz recently wrote:

“Like most people in the art world, I’m basically making this up as I go. The art world is about trying to invent new definitions of skill.” (Jerry Saltz, “Work of Art Season Premiere: Judge Jerry Saltz Recaps,” NYMag.com, June 10, 2010)

One of my skills, if I could call it that, is procurement. Even after all these years, I’m surprised at how much time and energy I spend sourcing materials.

Since I respond to the materials that I work with, I often can’t start a project until I have them in hand. Yet identifying and getting the right materials can take weeks. Beyond brushes, paint, paper, frames and the usual, Dick Blick and Aaron Bros aren’t much help. Besides, I’m too self-conscious a consumer; I know their target audiences are Sunday painters and scrapbook keepers. One must get creative.

As an artist, I’m constantly negotiating how to materialize my ideas. The frustrating thing is reaching limits persistently and pervasively — a recipe for pessimism, according to Martin E. P. Seligman in Learned Optimism.

For example, recently I envisioned producing a multiple: a circular, printed on newsprint in full color, of about 100 copies, at the size of a standard advertising insert, roughly 11×12 inches folded or 22×12 flat. This, it turns out, is not feasible. I’ve become a customer service nightmare, making ridiculous requests.

Digital printers don’t want to run newsprint (which is lightweight, only 16-18#s) in their machines; the lowest weight they’ll accept for double-sided full color jobs is 60-70#. Further, they’ll resist anything but standard sizes: 11×17, 13×19, 12.25×18.25. These sizes are efficiencies that work across multiple industries — paper mills, presses, reprographics — but not me, not now. What I need to use, like what I need to produce, are inefficiencies in the system.

Circulars are typically printed on offset web presses, the massive kind that fill warehouses. These presses take too long to set up to produce my piddly quantity. I could do it if I had to make like 5,000 copies, or had about $5k to spend.

Newspaper Club in the UK produces bespoke short-run newspapers. Too bad they don’t ship internationally. An article on Time reveals that Newspaper Club prints on large newspapers’ presses during their inactive times. I contacted some small, local papers to see if they’d bang out an odd job for me, and they courteously but firmly denied my request.

When I produced Sorted, a gilt badge, I contacted many vendors, who would only take on jobs with minimums of 200-250 pcs, way out of my budget. I finally found a vendor that specializes in badges for schools (such as “hall monitor”) that would make smaller quantities of custom badges at reasonable prices. So I took the same tack and looked up school newspaper printers. (I remember buying indie newspapers at Epicenter about home schooling; which couldn’t have had a large circulation.) But times sure have changed. It turns out the young whippersnappers today produce online school newspapers. Of course!

So maybe I have to do this myself. I could make a relief, intaglio or screen print. But that would mean four color separations and a week to produce the edition. The result would be Fine Art. Bummer. I’m just not interested in making a crispy-clean print to mat and frame for this project. I want to make a circular — a big, glossy, tacky, cheap, off-gassing circular. Viewers would handle it with bare hands. Gasp!

Now I’m thinking about freedom and familiarity, and how once again, even the most mundane materials are irrevocably tied with a feeling of constriction. That what I can imagine must be shoved through the machinations of capitalism and global manufacture, and it risks being extruded in unrecognizable form.

To make objects is to direct form-making. I don’t think twice about 8.5×11 inch Letter-sized sheets most days, but today, it seems oppressively inescapable.

The process of de-materialization is ongoing. I’m thinking more about making less. Returning to examples like Chu Yun and Jeremy Deller.

To be optimistic is to take a selective perspective. I’m refusing to let these vendors’ limitations become my own. This project will materialize with the right materials, or not at all. Time to get creative.

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Art & Development

Irrational Exuberance (Asst. Colors) Closing

Irrational Exuberance (Asst. Colors) closed today with a closing reception and an open dialogue featuring guests curator and critic Glen Helfand and artist, writer and theorist Ginger Wolfe-Suarez. Writer and curator Patricia Maloney moderated a lively discussion on topics such as optimism and pessimism, pleasure in art, the search for happiness, beauty, Kant, viewers’ experiences, discount stores, metaphorical/literal readings vs phenomenological readings, readings vs experiences, and critical versus psychological readings of the work in the show. Work by artists such as Haim Steinbach, Allan McCollum, Cary Leibowitz, Amanda Ross-Ho and Stephanie Syjuco also came up. Numerous artists, critics and curators were in attendance.

I was honored to help convene such thoughtful guests and attendees. Hearing their responses, reservations and speculations about my work was especially humbling.

As Is: Pop & Complicity

Dialog at the closing reception to Irrational Exuberance, Asst. Colors at Sight School, Oakland, CA

Featured guests (L-R): artist, writer and theorist Ginger Wolfe-Suarez, curator and critic Glen Helfand, and writer and curator Patricia Maloney.

Vicki Gannon poses a question, as Amanda Curreri, Frank Ebert, Matthew Rana and others look on.

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