Ryan Pierce at Elizabeth Leach

Ryan Pierce, Blue Rooster, 2008

acrylic on canvas over panel

Represented by Elizabeth Leach Gallery*

I graduated in a hail storm with Ryan Pierce a little over six years ago. Both Ryan and I received BFA's in Craft with an emphasis on drawing and painting. Over the course of four years we took many classes together, and I remember thinking then that Ryan Pierce already had what so many of us did not: a direction. His passions and proclivities, while inchoate, were in place.

I tell you all this as means of disclaimer— I respect and admire Ryan Pierce. I have for years; and while that doesn't make me uniquely qualified to review his solo exhibit at Elizabeth Leach Gallery (on display through the end of this month), it does offer me an extra layer of personal presumption about understanding his technical tendencies and allegorical preoccupations. Some art critics write reviews with far less. . .

* * * * *

The first thing that struck me about the work in Written from Exile was that Ryan has pushed himself to become a far more painterly painter. Many of his stylistic tendencies from years ago are still very much in effect: saturated complementary colors (the blues and oranges of Blue Rooster), crisp graphic shapes (the furrowed ground upon which said Blue Rooster stands), and the outlining of select shapes with a tidy line of darker tone (as evidenced in the rocks clutched by the blisteringly orange talons of the aforementioned Blue Rooster)— but they are tempered by a newer acquiescence for allowing the nature of the paint to run a bit wild.

Carefully selected areas of textured under-painting are allowed to contribute to the overall melange of color, and they contrast well with Pierce's very crisp, albeit periodically fussy, draftsmanship. There are rag wiped waves of glaze-infused pigment in Sea Oats (After Cormic McCarthy) and suminagashi-like tree trunks that dominate the landscape in The Fog Collectors (After Ival Lackovic Croata). This acceptance of the process of painting allows the drips and stains of the developing work to contribute to the palimpsest of imagery, and resonate well with Pierce's themes of environmental shift and the marginaliazation of human existence within a world both fecund and wasted.

Ryan Pierce, Havasu, 2009

acrylic on canvas over panel

When considering Pierce's subject matter, it is hard to not be struck by the oddly blasé view of mankind's future that he presents. In Havasu a wrecked motor boat has been consumed by desert and surrounded by equal parts cacti and plastic water bottles. Arizona's aquatic playground has become naught but sand and refuse. Only a fire pit outside of the capsized boat and a sleeping bag (which may or may not be inhabited) grant any evidence of continued human existence. The boat has been draped to provide the sleeper an escape from the sun, but the drape is more a funerary shroud for the former Havasu than it is an expression of human survival.

In fact, most of the references to humanity in the show are references by way of necessity; by which I mean that Pierce wishes to convey to the viewer that some semblance of humanity will survive the impending environmental upheaval, but he does so only to point out that our role will be that of any other creature trying to scratch out survival in an ultimately ambivalent environment. We'll have no divine spark. We'll feel no sense of entitlement. We will not recognize the tools of our own fall.

Ryan Pierce, Umpqua, 2009

acrylic on canvas over panel

Umpqua, which is hung next to Havasu, is even more overtly narrative, depicting a wood paneled trophy room that has been attacked by the very woods it used to victimize. Deer graze off grass growing atop the floor and the trophy heads of boars mounted to the wall leeringly sprout tufts of green. Books slide off hardwood shelving and a snag has fallen through the ceiling to crush the wooden dining table. The deer have accessed this former interior through broken plate glass windows that are now simply reminders of the former separation between inside and out. The narrative is clear— so clear as to be almost patronizing, and therefore, in my mind, the least successful work in the exhibit.

Ryan Pierce, Comet, 2009

acrylic on canvas over panel

If you contrast Umpqua with the magnificently painted, and far less pontific, Comet (which hangs on the opposite wall of the gallery) a sense of how Pierce is also working towards a much more subtle exploration of Nature's intrinsic power can be gleaned. There is no evidence of the human figure in this turquoise lagoon, no sleeping bag amidst the massive blue pumpkins or abnormally green ferns. Comet dangles a smoldering oil drum over cereleun blue water. The drum is lashed to a tree limb that looks as if, at any moment, it will lever forward and extinguish the flame in the lagoon below. The surrounding environment may already look irradiated; it may suffer even more from that final infusion of burning chemical, but ultimately it continues to put forth life. The vines adorn the tree limbs and the ground cover works its way around the remnants of a barbed wire fence. The eradication of man's folly is inevitable. Mother Nature, through dent of her longevity and our extinction, is granted the TKO.

It is not without cause that Pierce's most arresting paintings are the ones that show the least evidence of human activity. The apocryphal presence of the roosters pull far more conceptual weight than the allegorical thicket that makes up Easter Island (pictured on the show card for the exhibit). Easter Island's cautionary tale about capitalism, fascism, religious dogma and environmental control, while beautifully rendered, just feels too similar in its over-loaded presentation to the inane quantities of goods, ideas, and beliefs being critiqued.

Despite the few ups and downs I encountered in Written from Exile, I feel that Ryan Pierce delivers an impressive show. It is for good reason that he is one of the more talked about artists in Portland right now. As was true all those years ago in our painting classes, he is at his most poignant when he's pursuing his themes without resorting to the explicit narrative. In the future, I hope that Pierce treats his paintings as the stenography of environmental possibility, not the moralizing indictment of an irredeemable mankind. That doesn't necessitate that he dilute his direction, only that he question when enough is truly enough.

*Written from Exile will be on display at Elizabeth Leach Gallery through October 31, 2009. All images copyright Ryan Pierce.

Titling Artwork, Pt. 1

It leaks out., 2009

acrylic, tea, toner, and graphite on panel

12" x 24"

Click on image for larger view.

I imagine there are about as many answers to how you title an artwork as there are artists willing to sound off about it. The process for finding a title is often as personal as the process that shaped the artwork, and there is undoubtedly some correlation between how an artist titles and the intangibles of their creative vision.

Most professional artists, when pressed, will state that titling is important. Those same artists, when pressed further, may be unclear as to why they believe it to be important. At that point some small warning bells might go off about how galleries need to sell artwork to the public. Titles offer an avenue for the layman's entry into the "intangibles" of an artwork, which may explain why there are many creators who are aggressively disinterested in titling, resorting to the trusty Untitled #____ for the duration of their career— they don't want the title to be a Cliff's Notes addendum to their vision. They want the public to work for a connection. They want more than just consumption from the audience.

I'm not going to be so crass as to suggest that titling only serves to sell artwork. Judging by how obtuse some titles for artworks happen to be I also believe that titling offers the artist an opportunity to season their creation with another level of meaning. The title can be a red herring or it can provide contextual support for the image/object depicted (or experienced, as with installation or performance art). The title might also be a process that brings about closure for the artist. It becomes a finalizing statement that releases the artwork from the hand that birthed it and proclaims to the artist, more than anyone else, that their time with this work is done.

* * * * *

More on titling tomorrow. . .

* * * * *

It leaks out. was derived from a tiny little silver gelatin print of a somber field that my wife gave to me for Christmas. While not evident in the drawing above, the source image had quite a bit of underexposed detail in the field that flanked the small stream. When I began to work on it however, three things caught my attention and led me to disregard a great deal of other detail:

1. The rips in the image that occurred during the transfer process were so pronounced that I felt they had to become an integral part of the image.

2. The soft horizon line of bare winter trees and bramble cut an interesting shape against the sky.

3. The stream's appearance out of the center of the field, with no indication that it began elsewhere, had a sinister quality to it. It was like the field was being bled to do away with an infection. And while that may sound terribly melodramatic, it was the impression that took hold of me when I picked up my assorted graphite pencils.

Approximate L

Approximate L Rehearsal, March 21, 2009

Gallery Homeland, Portland, OR

Photo: Jeffrey T. Baker

Local artist/poet Bethany Ides is currently exhibiting her exploration of all things Lindsay at Worksound Gallery in Southeast Portland. Audio, video, and installation are all employed as a means of exposing the slippery linguistic morass time makes of a name. Artworks by other people named Linsey are temporarily appropriated, bodice-ripping fiction by pseudonymic Linseys are desecrated for the sake of heft and mirth, and there's an opportunity to take part in a six degrees of (Lindsay) separation game with minor icons of the silver screen. Enough contextual density exists within the show to keep the nimble mind well satiated. 

Approximate L Rehearsal, March 21, 2009

Gallery Homeland, Portland, OR

Photo: Jeffrey T. Baker

Brandon the director, and Yours Truly the photographer, provided documentation for the performance component of the Approximate L project. The performance took place prior to the gallery exhibit, so we offered up time and equipment to ensure that it was represented within the context of all the other pieces at Worksound. Some of the resulting photographs are shown here, and quite a few more are on display in the show.

Approximate L Rehearsal, March 21, 2009

Gallery Homeland, Portland, OR

Photo: Jeffrey T. Baker

Documenting a performance (or, to be accurate, the rehearsals for a performance) was an intriguing challenge. Neither Brandon or I were familiar with the structure of the performance until we arrived, and we were given complete license to move about and intrude upon the action. Our approach was to shoot liberally and from as many vantage points as possible, hoping that the laws governing averages would work in our favor as well.

For those interested in seeing the exhibit please contact Bethany via her blog. Worksound is open by appointment only, and Approximate L will only be on display through the end of the month.

Ediger Illuminated

April 21, 2005

The Photo Phazer reduces Ben Ediger's Jar Light to a cord, cap, and radiant burn on the wall. In reality their effect is much more subdued. Here is a cluster of them created for a store here in Stumptown.

Ben Ediger, Jar Lights

sand-blasted recycled glass jars, lacquer, electrical hardware

dimension variable

Photo: Jeffrey T. Baker

Ben was kind enough to send me a prototype when he first conceived of them. It was the second lamp I'd scored from Ben, who also gifted me one of his "log lamps" after an off-handed remark I made regarding a chunk of cedar he'd been storing around the wood shop. To this day Split remains one of my prized possessions. It never fails to whip up real curiosity when folks come over to visit.

Ben Ediger, Split

cedar log, wood bleach, waterborne poly, enamel spray paint, electrical hardware

18" x 10"

Photo: Jeffrey T. Baker

Barney's Soap

February 6, 2005

A few days ago I posted a supposition about the aggressive implications of cleanliness.* 

This image coincides nicely with that theme but I do not tend to equate it with scrubbing hands (although that is the obvious depiction) so much as the color palette of Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle.

For those of you familiar with Barney's films you might think I'm making a comparison born out of extreme arrogance, so let me clarify. I'm not comparing myself to Matthew Barney. I'm sharing with you that this crappy low-res movie of me washing my hands with an unnaturally pink bar of soap was a meditation of the coolness of his color palette. It was not contrived— the pink bar of soap was sitting by the sink and the quality of the florescent lights overhead had been established when I filmed the toothbrushing sequence. So in that way, it is nothing like Matthew Barney, who might be one of the most calculated and meticulous artists alive today. My spontaneous film would have no place in his icy palace of conceptual frosting— it is too earnest in its simplicity.

*Further proof from the forefront of cultural design: Fight Club soap design by Weiden+Kennedy. "Works great on blood stains." Draw your own conclusions.

Death Tones

February 2, 2005

Have you ever tried photocopying your body? It's fascinating to see how the technology, combined with the flattening of your form against a pane of glass, transforms your figure. You realize that your physicality is really just another type of meat, this pulpy mass that's eternally subject to gravity— it's only allowed autonomous form through the mystery of biological complexity and spiritual will.

A classmate in college made a book from images of his body. He methodically placed a piece of himself on his small color copier at home to gain a life-size self portrait. The images were startlingly repugnant in the way that the skin grew more and more pale as it came fully into contact with the pane of glass. Body hair was squished and angled unnaturally. The natural pinks and peaches of flesh had bled away into cold aquatic tones, and the form of the body seemed flattened by an oppressive black behind it. The whole project reeked of death.*

When I filmed myself brushing my teeth under florescent light I wasn't thinking about self portraiture, but I was thinking about the action of snarling; of jutting out the teeth and glaring forward, as you do when brushing (or, as I do when brushing). Strange how this act also forces a foaming at the mouth, and it made me wonder if a correlation could be drawn between hygiene and aggression. It may seem like a bit of a stretch, but much of the language we apply to cleaning ourselves and our environments employs the lexicon of warfare. Even the Almighty once chose to wash away the scourge of humanity. Perhaps it is implicit in new beginnings that they are born out of violent endings.

*For the definitive exploration of this sort of subject matter I refer you to the work of Jenny Saville who was picked up as one of Saatchi's Young British Artists in the early 1990's. She continues to produce a mesmerizing body of painted work that manages to both rob, and simultaneously endow, the human form with life.

Chilled Out

January 11, 2005

At some point the world's longest kitchen remodel yielded a shiny new fridge. The fridge signaled the end of an era back in 2005. No more outdoor meals from the hot plate. No more yellowjackets in the stew. Plastic cutlery was bid adieu.

Many a member of the household was thrilled with all that the new refrigerator promised on the culinary front. Being a simpleton, I just appreciated the play of pretty patterns across the stainless steel surface. 

A few days before the Christmas tree came down I spied the reflection of its lights in the door of this high-tech ice box and immediately activated the Photo Phazer. 

This was one of my favorite one-minute movies in 2005. It was simply me moving the camera back and forth along a short horizontal path so that different bands of colored reflection grew and shrank, appeared and disappeared, in an illusionary journey atop the metal door.

* * * * * 

Soon after that I would watch the mesmerizing work of Jeremy Blake in Punch Drunk Love. It seemed I wasn't entirely alone in my aesthetic preoccupations. Or, out of deference for his preeminent superstardom, I should say that Jeremy Blake wasn't alone in his. 

The Whispers of Michelle Ross

Small Wild Things gets its due this month with not one, but two, venues featuring this collaborative project orchestrated by Michelle Ross. If you're a fan of Tantric paintings, Walter Benjamin, or adults co-opting the games of children then I invite you to take some time and visit these exhibitions.

Homage (November 3 - December 7, 2008)

The Art Gym @ Marylhurst University, BP John Administration Building

17600 Pacific Highway, Marylhurst, OR 97036-0261

Tuesday - Sunday, Noon - 4pm

Preview Reception: Sunday, November 2, 3 - 5pm

Gallery Talk: Tuesday, November 18, Noon

* * * * * 

Small Wild Things (November 6 - November 29, 2008)

Nine Gallery

1231 NW Hoyt Street, Portland, OR 97209-3021

Tuesday - Saturday, Noon - 5pm

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 6, 6 - 9pm

While I have much to say about this project (having seen it in its entirety earlier this summer) I will put off any further commentary (for now) and simply encourage you to come and experience it for yourself.

It's Official

I've finally been granted some blogging credibility— www.breakingmurphyslaw.com, a site devoted to staving off disaster when giving presentations, referred to my recent post about Andrea Zittel's lecture at PSU as "snarky." Truly one of the most highly coveted monikers in the blogosphere, I have written so many posts in the past hoping to attain the distinction of snarky that I'd completely given up on it ever happening. Now all I have to do is put up a post about my pet and/or child and I'll have a chance at being called "insipid," which is another distinction I long for. With a new cat in the house it can't be long before I will be a blogger with a capital "B."

All of the hits that have resulted from the link on breakingmurphyslaw (to date, five, which is a veritable landslide of visits on my blog) bring to light another way that I have failed in my duties as a blogger. I rarely link to other sites, comment about other sites, or in any way indicate that I'm at all connected to internet culture apart from using it as a way to subject my ideas and experiences to those poor few who fall upon my page. 

If, up till now, you believed that I log-on to the internet only to type messages on Blogger you would be only half right— I also neurotically check my account balances and the most recent lotto numbers. And every few days I look at the following sites. Most of them have a fairly narrow focus (which displays a single-mindedness that I have difficulty understanding, but certainly can appreciate), while one is more akin to my blog, in the sense that it eschews a single subject and operates more as a personality dissemination platform. So without further ado:

Fruit Slinger— Two teens work on a newspaper (this is not a lead-up to a joke): one teen goes on to attend a prestigious university and obtain a degree in journalism. The other teen goes on to become me. 

Prestigious degree in hand my friend becomes first a copy editor, then a freelance writer, then a freelance traveler who writes, and finally the author of the best written blog I've come across. Now, it's almost entirely devoted to fruit, and his experiences selling fruit to a motley assortment of locals at a farmers market, but it is so exceedingly witty that this seemingly narrow focus is not limiting in any way. Dan could write a blog about peeling paint and it would still be the first blog I visit. 

Photoshop Disasters— Everything that can go wrong when good software is put in the hands of aesthetically incompetent people. The flubs are often jaw-droppingly bad and the accompanying text is appropriately, um, snarky. If you're new to using Photoshop then I strongly encourage you to learn from what others have not.

Drawn— A blog managed by a number of people who troll the internet looking for exceptional bits of illustration, animation, drawings, and typography. While the focus here is much more on the commercial end of the spectrum than the conceptual end, the artists and designers who are featured tend to be very talented and I always find something that I end up bookmarking or smiling about. If you need a way to gauge the pulse of contemporary illustration/design, Drawn is your best bet.

Stuff White People Like— I'm white.

Bunny With an Artblog— Hilary Pfeifer has made a living as a professional artist for years. If that fact alone doesn't inspire awe then you are clearly not an artist trying to make a living with your art. 

Envy isn't the only reason I visit her blog however; take a look at her "Some of the Things I've Blogged About" sidebar on the right side of her page. It turns out that Hilary is also a polymath with relevant things to share about both the Pacific Northwest art scene as well as the larger art world. There are quite a few artist blogs out there, but most of them are simply postings of recent work or upcoming publication and show announcements. I appreciate that Hilary offers more of herself than simple self promotion.

So there you have it. I've linked to something other than my previous posts. I'd like to think that this signals not just my growing maturity as a blogger, but as a person. Enjoy!

If I Turn This Off Now We Will Go Into Darkness

Image courtesy simonfilm at morgueFile

Andrea Zittel rocks. 

I think that will serve as commentary aplenty for her lecture last night at PSU's Shattuck Hall.

There are undoubtedly finer writers with more nimble minds who can provide a comprehensive, heavily syllabled, dissertation on the work she presented over the course of the evening. I have opted to put my energies towards a low-brow rant instead.

I've been attending artist lectures since the days when humming slide projectors glowed hot in the back of darkened halls. With a couple exceptions, I can safely say that very few of the lectures in those days suffered from one tenth of the technical difficulties that plague modern presentations. Fancy laptops and digital displays may be the norm for every new speaking venue today, but you can tell that as a society we take for granted our mastery of these new technologies. Plug-and-play (which, by the way, was a concept that couldn't be realized until 1996, roughly ten years after computers entered the middle class home) continues to be about as easy as changing your oil— which is to say that anyone can do it, but few can do it without some unforeseen difficulty. 

So after some fresh-faced Portlander bumbled through what might be the most painful introductory speech I've ever encountered: rife as it was with "ums," random shout-outs for local artists, feeble fundraising plugs, and frequent confusion about which canned biographical tidbit he was meant to be reading, Andrea Zittel took over the podium. The audience visibly relaxed, and the fear that we might all have just been represented to a preeminent contemporary artist as West Coast bumpkins dimmed in time with the overhead lights.

Then the real trouble began. Ms. Zittel immediately realized that the image ratio of her slides was wrong. Such an observation is expected of a visual artist, although I doubt many of us in the packed lecture hall would have noticed. She started fussing with the settings and the screen went blue. Then it went black. 

The narrative ground to a halt as Zittel attempted to work through the technical difficulties and then, in slight frustration, she picked the narrative back up without any projection. Instead she hoisted her computer up and turned the screen toward the room. The artist lecture with 200 odd audience members became an inane library story-hour wherein only the ten closest people to Zittel were able to see the images on her laptop monitor. Despite her gently swinging the monitor in an arc to show the image to the entire crowd, it was impossible to make out any detail on a 15" screen when seated 12 rows back in a lecture hall. Was there no one who could resolve this aspect ratio debacle? 

Enter PSU IT guy (well, enter his speaking role anyway, as he'd been poking about at the podium for a few minutes at this point). Oh higher educated IT guy, explain to us simple art enthusiasts why things have gone so wrong: "Well, the old projector had this button you could push that fixed this problem and this new projector doesn't have the same buttons."* 

Phew! A wave of relief flooded over the room as the root of the difficulty was so brilliantly exposed. Granted, none of us grasped how to resolve this fundamental problem of button absence, but we felt better knowing that the foibles of our technologies could be quickly assessed and diagnosed.

Eventually things got back on track and Ms. Zittel was able to turn her attention to the task at hand— outlining a decade of artistic inquiry into an aesthetic of manicured simplicity. Those of us concerned with Portland appearing like a quaint artistic backwater slowly forgot the pathetic gaffs of the first half hour as we sat back and admired the prodigious output of a woman who might be better described as a fierce individualist rather than an artist. Had Zittel come of age in a time prior to Duchamp, she would have just been considered a kooky community eccentric rather than a purveyor of contemporary domestic aesthetics. 

In America today, where individuality is no longer a construct of idealism, but a marketing tool for moving cheap commodity, I suppose the only place a character as unique as Zittel might be appreciated is in the ivory tower of the art world. I was in the midst of considering this idea when Zittel came to a close and, with the slightest trace of hesitation in her voice, proclaimed with a slight nod towards her computer, "If I turn this off now we will go into darkness." 

I don't think she was afraid of the dark, she was simply afraid that we wouldn't be able to find the lights. And that might be the best metaphor to come out of her presentation. Obviously, she would be fine— 

We were the ones who needed some help.

*OK, this isn't a quote verbatim, but it is certainly close enough to be considered the gist.

The Week

GERALD FIGAL ON FLICKR

I ran across this image the other night on Flickr. It was part of a collection of pictures taken in the Edo-Tokyo museum by Gerald Figal and his images served as a catalyst for me to consider my own fascination with the conceptual implications of the miniature in contemporary art. More to come on this topic at a later date.

THE WORKS OF CLAUDIA ANGELMAIER IN APERTURE MAGAZINE

The lastest issue of Aperture features an article about the reproductive artworks of German photographer Claudia Angelmaier. Her meticulously composed collections of open books turned to the same reproduction of a famous art work succeed on a number of levels: they comment on the fallibility of mechanical reproduction, critique the experience of educating through second-hand experience, continue the post-modern preoccupation with originality born of mimicry, and manage to reference the sparse spirituality of Modernist abstraction. While the addition of the replicated artworks contributes a greater conceptual depth to her work, the photographic compositions that feature only obsessive compositions of white space and colored lines are no less beautiful for their minimalism.

THE FIRST UNVEILING OF SMALL WILD THINGS (SWT)

Last year's artistic collaboration was laid out in its entirety for me this week on the floor of the new Disjecta exhibition space. This sparked an intriguing dialogue about: the longevity of hierarchical relationships, color aversion, classifying artistic "style," breaking and obeying imperatives, the totalitarian grid, and the spiritual implications of reproduction. 

BIG SPACESHIP PROFILE ON LYNDA.COM

With two gaping holes left in my skull from the extraction of pesky wisdom teeth my energy level hit negative numbers and I sought interludes of distraction from the pain at lynda.com. This website is an absolutely fantastic software tutorial site that, for a monthly fee, walks you step-by-step through the intricacies of most major software programs available today. It has been indispensable to me as a graphic design student. Until yesterday, I had limited my viewing to movies related to programs that were stumping me, and not bothered to delve into the interviews and exposes of well regarded companies/individuals. 

Big Spaceship has been a company reverently referred to since my first day in PNCA's graphic design certificate program. The major player in the field of new media, or interactive media, or integrated design, or whatever moniker of the moment that connotes a mixture of web, film, graphic design, and information design. There's no doubting that they are very, very, good at what they do and, while it's light on specifics, the lynda.com expose of Big Spaceship does give a general sense of the culture and structure of the company.

Sadly, without a subscription you can only watch the three introductory videos, which are heavy on the fluff, but you can follow links to some of Big Spaceship's more notable projects and see what all the fuss is about.

Art vs. Hobby

Comments are a pretty rare thing on this blog. I have a few hypotheses as to why this might be: readers are afraid I'll chastise them and launch a tirade about the Internet diluting the collective intelligence of mankind if they type something utterly inane like "LUV it!" (I might), nobody 'luvs ' anything I write (quite possible), or perhaps nobody reads this blog (the most likely theory). So when a comment does appear it is a puzzling moment for me. I ask myself, "Why would someone take time out of their precious life to sit down and type their thoughts on to a computer with the sole intention of tossing this information out into the electronic ether?"  Then I have a 'one hand-clapping' sort of moment.

A good friend of mine posed a series of exceedingly thoughtful questions in his comment to my post about the real world struggles of exposing a piece of artwork to a greater public. I've included an excerpt from his comment below:

While I'm not trying to be facetious, as I read this post I couldn't help but think that if you had replaced 'art' with music or sports or fishing or gardening that you would simply be describing a hobby. Yet most people don't associate hobbies with being activities that "stamp meaning onto their mortality." I'm wondering what, for you, separates making art from being a hobby and being an activity that instills meaning in one's life. Where do you draw the distinction between the two? Or, even if you're willing to call art a hobby, do you think the significance it brings to the artist's existence is less if not recognized publicly? How is the meaning stamped exactly?

These questions have scratched away at my waking hours for the past few days and caused me to seriously consider the origins of some personal beliefs regarding art and the making of art. I must confess that upon seeing the sanctimonious station of art hypothetically dropped to the corporeal realm of hobby I grew a bit offended. Countless people have joined me, and will continue to join me, in significant monetary debt to attain a college degree that certifies them as a professional artist. I don't see anyone seeking out a BA program in model railroading. Nor can I conceive of anyone accruing as much financial burden in order to push for a monumental scale to their macrame projects (and, if someone did, they would be labeled an artist anyway). But such a visceral response falls prey to a cultural value system that erroneously correlates monetary worth with spiritual/societal/personal merit. It is this cultural value system that has isolated art from the general public in the first place and contributed to the ivory tower that I'm so quick to initially defend. However, if the importance of art was based solely on capitalist dogma then I would feel little compulsion to classify myself as an artist, so I can't rely on my degree to create the dividing line between art and hobby.

Perhaps it is easier for me to dissect the idea of a hobby then it is to directly quantify the essence of art. I have fewer assumptions about hobbies and hobbyists than I do about art and artists. A hobby is something that a person pursues in their leisure time because it brings them some joy, satisfaction, or proves distracting. Many hobbyists regularly engage in their past time of choice after the other obligations of life (employment, family, social service, etc.) have been met. Like artists, hobbyists tend to enjoy relating with other people who share their particular interest, and more often than not, the hobby itself requires a special set of tools and/or skills. So on the surface, there are many similarities between artists and hobbyists.

* * * * *

It is the way that an artist perceives the "other obligations of life" mentioned above that begins to separate him/her from the hobbyist. For the artist nothing trumps the compulsion to create. The making of art usually precedes some, if not all, the other obligations of life. For example, creating art is the only employment an artist ever feels at peace with because it is the thing that holds the majority of their attention. An artist might have a perfectly well paying, socially respectable, job with good benefits, but if that job isn't the making of art then it will always be viewed as a barrier to making artwork. For the artist, 'art work' transcends our narrow cultural definition of work (i.e. the simple exchange of time for money): it is imbued with a spiritual fulfillment that a simple paycheck will never be able to provide.

Many people go to college to become nurses, firefighters, social workers, teachers, engineers, etc. because they have a deep commitment and passion for their particular industry. These people are allowed to work in the field that inspires them and receive a straight-forward paycheck because society happens to value their work. Undoubtedly, some of them will have hobbies as well, but they aren't looking to overthrow the source of their paycheck with their hobby because the hobby isn't what fulfills them spiritually; that's the role of their job. 

I think most artists would be over-the-moon if society would afford them the opportunity to pursue their passion with a bi-weekly paycheck, but this has never been, and I suspect never will be, the case. Instead, truly committed artists are forced to scrimp and show; always on the lookout for handouts from the public or donors, while trying to market themselves to galleries that promise a periodic sale. This is an exhausting way to survive at the poverty level, and it comes as little surprise that some of our best contemporary artists entered the art world with a healthy trust fund to feed them as they created— they became influential and culturally important because of, not despite the fact, that they had the luxury of time to develop as artists.

While I've fixated a bit on employment here the desire to devote oneself to art doesn't just affect perceptions of monetary labor, it can also impact decisions made about family and social service. Certainly there are many artists who manage to have families as well as make art, but there are reasons that Michelangelo referred to his artworks as his children, and this directly correlates to his prodigious creative output. Many of the artists I know do have meaningful relationships but I bet that most of them would also refer to their creative practice as a sort of relationship: one that will span the entire course of their life.

As for social service, well, herein lies the greatest difference between the artist and the hobbyist. In the 2oth century, with the rise in academic opportunity across the class divide in first world countries, a new sort of perception about art began to take root. At the outset of the 1900's the artist was no longer a valuable provider of a requested commodity: photography had taken over the role of physically fixing time and place in tangible form and the painter/printmaker/draftsman was left with a skill set in need of new meaning. The artistic world fended off redundancy by responding to, and exploring, new perceptions of time, space, and emotion (specifically within the Cubist, Futurist, and Dadaist movements). Larger than life personalities like Picasso and Duchamp came forward to champion an expressive depiction of reality that cameras couldn't manage and almost overnight art became the purported world of cultural visionaries. Instead of being a product of culture, like nearly all art prior to the 20th century, artists became instrumental in producing culture, and this message got disseminated through colleges until it became part of public perception. So today, whether or not contemporary culture has any interest in what artists are doing (which, I must be honest, is highly debatable), the artist continues to operate under the assumption that the proper role of the creative individual is to work towards shaping culture— hence the perpetual push to show artwork to the greater public. The hobbyist has no such social imperative to share their hobby or have their hobby challenge the status quo.

* * * * *

But what do I mean by art "stamping meaning onto [an artist's] mortality"? The answer to this question would undoubtedly vary by artist, but for me it has nothing to do with public vindication or financial success— I seek those things out of obligation to that perceived societal expectation mentioned above. Rather, making artwork focuses my complete attention, in fact my whole being, on a single moment or perception. As a thunderstorm is raging outside at this very moment it seems fitting that I use the image at the top of this post as an example.

Long after my father and I stood on his tiny balcony in Boise, ID and watched the sunset turn the bare branches of a quivering copse of trees a fiery orange against the roiling black of a summer storm, I sat in my studio and relived that moment hour after hour. As I worked on this drawn recreation of that experience my thoughts wandered all the tangents that erupted from that one instant. I found myself pondering the effects of time and distance on parents and children. I considered the Biblical story of a burning bush. I contemplated the effects of contrasting extreme lights and darks and then I teased that metaphor out farther. I remembered other storms that had rolled through my life and I anticipated storms to come. In short, I completely altered any future complacence I might have experienced towards storms, sunsets, groves of trees, visits to Boise, and prophetic visions. In developing this drawing I had developed myself and made my own experience of reality deeper and more magical. 

As the sky bangs and cries outside right now some part of me is still out on a little deck considering the majesty of nature with my father. My life has been stamped with this impression, and it is only one moment of thousands that I will ink in my lifetime. 

Borrello Black

I love the work of Brian Borrello. My first years of art school I struggled with the seeming inferiority of charcoal, my preferred art medium. Charcoal had none of the cache of oil, the "nowness" of acrylic, or the elitist credibility of mixed media. In fact, it was looked upon as a colorless tool for helping artist newbies learn the fundamentals of shading and contour line work. Relegated to a perfunctory role in the design of a larger artwork, charcoal never took center stage. I made many excuses for its use in my pieces those first years until I came across Brian Borrello. With one look at his stark motor oil and charcoal botanicals I knew that, from that point on, I had an irrefutable argument for charcoal.

Borrello, like many a Pacific Northwest artist, creates unashamedly beautiful work inspired by the forms of regional flora. As Portland likes to tout itself as a mighty progressive city, it comes as no surprise that Borrello uses the presentation of his iconography to critique the pollution of our natural resources. His drawings are stark silhouettes of leaves, twigs, roots, vines, and the like. They are shaped with a velvety black derived from a combination of india ink and charcoal. It is a living black, for it rolls and broils with tiny plumes and clouds that suggest a depth beyond the surface of the paper. It is a black that captures the imagination, and I've often thought about it when letting my mind wander at the studio. Perhaps the closest equivalent in nature might be the charred remains of a recently burned forest. That is Brian Borrello's black.

Many of Borrello's botanical forms are centered upon a stark white substrate— this comforts the eye with a composition everyone equates with stability, comfort, and religious importance. But that comfort can be short lived when one considers the brownish halo that surrounds the dark forms. This unnatural brown serves as an irregular median strip between the clean white of the canvas/paper surface and the black vacuum of the imagery. The brown is derived from motor oil and as it surrounds the drawn form a peculiar effect occurs. Suddenly, your eye perceives the image as a burned impression; as if the paper had been branded or the natural item had grown so hot it had scorched its way through the substrate and left a charred opening into a vast inky space. Simultaneously beautiful and unsettling, an entire show of such imagery tends to remind me of the reliquary room at the El Santuario de Chimayo in New Mexico. While Borrello's chapel is far more austere and aesthetically micro-managed there is, in my mind, a similar sentiment: hand-made representations of the affliction are put up on the walls with the hope of a miracle. 

Since he occupies such a venerable place on my personal path to becoming an artist it was hard for me to admit that there was something amiss at his most recent show. Ars Brevis, Vita Longa at Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery was just as lovely an exhibit as Borrello has always put on, and I suppose that was the problem. This show seemed not at all dissimilar from the first Borrello exhibit I saw over seven years ago. If anything, the current work had a more diminutive scale by comparison. The imagery was indecipherable from pieces done nearly a decade ago and the only obvious evidence of Borrello branching out existed in the unsettling use of an eerie yellow-green as the background color for a few paintings. I left the show disappointed with the work for not providing the same sort of elation it had in the past. What had seemed important in terms of medium and message then seemed safe and predictable now. The motor oil had lost its burn and the forms had become simply decorative silhouettes instead of openings to the void. To be fair though, perhaps what bothered me the most had little to do with Borrello's work, for it hadn't changed over the years— what bothered me was that I had.

* An amateur interviewer is saved by Borrello's expressiveness and enthusiasm. This video is worth watching if you've never seen any of Borrello's work before, but isn't recommended for people who find morning talk show-like questions to be the scourge of journalism.

Venetian Spectre

If there’s an introductory course to Photoshop you better believe that there are going to be at least a few watered-down Dave McKean homages to emerge during the semester. It can’t be helped.

When asked to create a Photoshop collage this week for homework I found myself floundering. After all, I’m an accidental photographer and a scavenger of images; I don’t create them from scratch! Not since art school have I been required to generate something from nothing! Then, to my horror, I realized: I am in art school again.

Because the possibilities within Photoshop are limitless I decided to set some parameters. Firstly, I would only use imagery from my recent trip to Italy and secondly I’d create something “in the style of” the aforementioned Dave McKean. This seemed fitting considering that for many who came of age in the 90s McKean’s covers for Sandman where the first indication of the imaging power promised by Photoshop.

Furthermore, I’ve been slowly building up a repository of sketches for larger drawings inspired by the artworks and heritage of Italy. Venice left the deepest impression. It exuded an odd allure coupled with a mysterious foreboding. This underlying sense of dread was cemented by a startling nightmare I had during one night of our stay. While the image above isn’t a part of these initial sketches it does manage to capture some of the same unsettling qualities. Here is my footman for that opulent epicenter of decay. He seems a fitting guide for the quiet narrow streets and crooked, shuttered, homes.

Wake

My wife and I braved some foul weather in downtown Seattle last week to take a quick walk through the Seattle Art Museum’s (SAM) new Olympic Sculpture Park. Many of the usual line-up were there: Calder, Oldenburg, Smith, and Serra. Calder providing the evocative color punch that the gloomy skies and grey city skyline so dramatically demands. This same color coated all of the chairs that rested along the descending paths of the park and I was thrilled to see that the chairs were free of any constraints— they could be moved about at will to accommodate any sort of gathering. No ungodly park benches designed to discourage transients from sleeping (McMakin’s Bench may be an exception; the jury is still out). No utter lack of seating to encourage consumers to spend money rather than sit and chat.

I can only assume that Oldenburg’s presence was requested because you can’t have an expensive sculpture park without an Oldenburg. The object Claes chose to enlarge was a most obscure and nearly forgotten curiosity from my childhood: the typewriter eraser. I recognized it immediately and it tickled me to think of such an antiquated bit of practicality being memorialized in a city known for its close connection with a certain software giant.

Who also made an appearance. Naturally.

Tony Smith’s pieces were the macho geometric forms one would expect but a nod of appreciation is in order for the insight that situated these polished black crystals amidst a grove of young aspens. The trees will grow to create a startling seasonal contrast with Smith’s forms and it is this relationship that is worthy of praise.

The most surprising work was Serra’s Wake which follows the conventions of much of Serra’s work: large curving walls of steel situated carefully to create dichotomies of enclosed and open space. They rose up like the hulls of the container ships that plow through the Puget Sound; rusted and stoic in their push forward across a gravel sea. From a distance you witness them listing ever so slightly in the wind and up close you stare up to where their profiles meet the sky and you feel a momentary bought of disorientation as the scudding clouds interact with the curve of the steel to create a rolling sensation. Having never experienced a work by Serra in person it was rewarding to realize just how effective such minimalism can be and, furthermore, that it can be employed to completely different effect in different locals. For Seattle these forms are ships. For New York such forms were barriers.

And while I’ve devoted plenty of text to a few of the most notorious sculptors* represented by SAM’s park I want to end with an image of the sculpture that I personally felt the greatest affinity towards: Roxy Paine’s Split. Stark, steely, and subtle— much like the Sound itself.

*I’ve chosen not to even address the works by Louise Bourgeois, Louise Nevelson, or Ellsworth Kelly; all of whom are equally well known as the gentlemen discussed above. Bourgeois’ Father and Son would require a few stiff drinks and an entire post of its own which, I’m sorry to say, would be giving it more attention than it deserves.

Richard Deacon at PAM

Internationally lauded sculptor Richard Deacon spoke at the Portland Art Museum last night and watching the admittedly brilliant artist struggle through his lecture (given at the behest of the museum, who just purchased a major work by Deacon) seemed to pain all but the overly-perfumed elderly art patrons who sat behind me and gasped at the genius of every image to appear on the screen.

Deacon was clearly an uncomfortable speaker; primarily reserving his eye contact and explanatory gestures for the laptop before him rather than his audience. Evidence of his thought process was primarily gleaned from the chronological narrative that slowly played out on screen.

His formative years (early 1980’s) were given a considerable amount of time as he attempted to express how simple construction materials like galvanized steel, linoleum, and wood eventually were brought together in an open exploration process that resulted in a sculptural architecture of constructive technique. The resulting pieces were both inviting and exclusionary depending on the viewer’s vantage point. At one point Deacon also tried to express how the exposed hardware and joinery created “a sort of anxiety” among the viewer who were being made privy to the structural underpinnings of the artistic work. This is still a common theme among artists of many disciplines as they continue to react to the public perception that artists are material alchemists; capable of skills that the viewer will never understand or possess.

These early years, where much of Deacon’s artistic thinking was freshest if not always aesthetically appealing (forays into flimsy narrative yielded pieces such as If the Shoe Fits which lack all the refined grace that his process-oriented works demonstrate) slowly gave way to a mixed bag of large scale exhibitions which seemed more about meeting the demands of a rising market for work than refining thematic ideas planted at the outset of his career.

Nevertheless, a topological exploration of form took root in the 90’s as Deacon grew fatigued with rectilinear construction. As the geometry of his sculptures began to embrace complex curves and three dimensional twists of materials like wood and plastic an awe inspiring aesthetic of contorted form took hold. What Could Make Me Feel This Way seems to slip and wrap around itself: from one angle seeming almost intestinal despite being fabricated almost entirely out of bent wood slats. In this case the narrative is more open-ended, and thereby more successful— the title following the form rather than vice versa.

Throughout Deacon’s presentation I found myself alternately awed and dismayed at works he chose to display. His decisions for the Venice Biennale in 2007 seemed remarkably incisive, while gallery works of monolithic monochrome ceramic work seemed a bungled reaction to visual memes in globalized consumer culture. As an artist I am somewhat aware that I may not be able to differentiate which of my works are more successful, but I also grant that the failures help inform and spur on the greater successes. Such is obviously the case with Deacon, and perhaps my surprise was that I couldn’t be certain if he actually viewed the weaker work as successful or just maquettes for the breakthroughs that have earned him his standing in the art world.

Illustrious Company

The Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC) Community Report arrived in the mailbox last week. Flipping through the booklet I ran across my own name, which wasn’t terribly unexpected considering my sale of Interlude to the City of Portland last year, but I was stunned to see who else was on the rather short list with me— Brian Borrello and Storm Tharp! I’ve greatly admired the work of both these artists from the outset of my art studies in Portland. While they are both representational painters they operate at different realms of the conceptual spectrum: Borrello hovers around the decorative simplicity of the botanical specimen while Tharp shovels about in the emotional morass of psychological portraiture. I won’t presume to locate myself in relation to either of them: I’m simply honored.

Small Wild Things

Copying other artworks is part of any trained artist’s education. I’m not sure if the primary objective of mimicry is to sharpen your own handling of traditional art materials or to instill a crushing respect for all the greats who’ll forever outshine you on the pages of history. I suppose it hardly matters; either way you first feel humbled. . . and then grow defensive. How would Raphael fare copying a Rothko? Imagine Frank Stella tackling a Chris Ofili? No one is exempt from a dose of failure when so many parameters lie outside your own level of training and comfort.

This past week I copied fifteen artworks by one of my former instructors. Or, I should say, I copied fifteen copies of her paintings done by another former student who, in all fairness, was copying fifteen copies done by another artist. In truth, I don’t know how many degrees of separation exist between myself and the original fifteen paintings. I’m just one connection in a collaboration that can most easily be explained as a visual game of Telephone.

I expected this project to feel much the same as the three agonizing weeks I spent trying to recreate Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park color palette. There would be tears, certainly, and a mounting sense of disgust with myself followed by the aforementioned defensive rationalizations for my inability. But from the outset I felt far different than I had expected. These were, after all, my peers, not some patriarchal group of historically vindicated uberartists. A presumptive understanding of my former instructor’s visual tendencies made me suspicious of certain technique and material choices that existed on the fifteen copies before me. The question that confronted me wasn’t along the lines of, “Can I achieve an accurate copy?” so much as “Should I be accurate to what lies before me or what I believe to have been true in the original?”

Being a tad yellow-bellied and prone to obeying all mandates I did as the project rules instructed and recreated what was before me. Upon finishing I compared my replicas with the set I’d received.

They were remarkably different.

Not in size, shape, or placement mind you; those things were spot on. It was the technique and material choices that seemed. . . off, somehow. It was humbling

The Itinerant Poetry Librarian

The Itinerant Poetry Librarian will avail herself of our couch for one more week before leaving to share her collection of “lost and forgotten” poetry with the citizenry of Seattle. Thus far the Poetry Library has been featured at the Independent Printing Resource Center (IPRC), Reading Frenzy, The New American Art Union, The Free Skool, In Other Words and outside the gates of Portland’s aptly named Portland Art Center.

A thorough explanation of the Poetry Library would require tremendous time and edits for accuracy by the punctilious pen of the librarian herself. Therefore, I will provide only a flavor of the benefits of membership.

The Poetry Library is a temporary installation of a varied, and rotating, collection of obscure poetic publications from around the world. During an installation all are welcome to join the library provided they are willing to abide by the Library’s Bye-Bye Laws while members of the library. Here is Bye-Bye Law 13, by way of example:

“No person shall behave in a disorderly, discordant or overly debauched manner in the library or use violent, abusive, or obscene language therein unless expressly invited and incited to do so by the Library Authority. The Library Authority takes no responsibility for matters and manners occurring from the above.”

Patrons are given a library card with which to check out materials and a free haiku upon joining. The Itinerant Poetry Librarian manages the checking in and out of materials and makes suggestions about readings patrons might enjoy. Upon the closing of the library all materials must be returned to the librarian. The library card, haiku, and a copy of the Bye-Bye Laws (if requested by the new member) are retained by the patron.

The Itinerant Poetry Librarian manages a thorough chronicle of her project which is open all hours.

Nadir

He looks frequently to the periphery of the room- in the upper corners where the ceiling and walls form a vertex. I wonder what he sees there. Long pauses between thoughts are when his eyes most frequently dart upward, as if he’s waiting for the next words to be given to him. I see children look in this way sometimes. They stare at the corners in markets or at empty park benches. It makes you wonder who might be there to return their look.

This elderly gentleman has an abundance of energy, smiles frequently, and is unafraid to offer his opinions. He sits with us in a sixth grade classroom abandoned to the leisure of summer and lectures on teaching astronomy. He’s taught for decades and his enthusiasm for astronomy is contagious.

Here is what children (and you) should know about the heavens.* The point directly above your head is known as the zenith and if you draw a line from the zenith through the top of your head- down to the center of the Earth- you’ll find the nadir point. If you think of the horizon as a flat plane extending from your feet then you can draw a sphere above your head with the top-most point of the dome being the zenith. This is your own unique dome of heaven. Since two people can’t occupy the same space at the same time** each person has their own entirely unique celestial dome with an individualized perception of the stars overhead. When you reflect on this you realize what a wondrous observation it happens to be. Your perception of the stars mirrors the unique nature of your individuality. You see the heavens like no other at each moment of your life.

This idea immediately reminds me of a time when the stars aligned for me. I was in the library of my junior college doing some research for an analysis of Whitman when I became fed up with the dry blocks of endless academic text and decided to spend ten minutes looking at some art books. I randomly grabbed a hefty tome about a German artist named Anselm Kiefer and the imagery left me dumbstruck. Charred landscapes, decayed photographs of staged maritime battles, massive expressionist prints-- it was the least safe art I’d ever seen. This one book on Kiefer compelled me to enroll in a drawing class. This one drawing class led me to abandon english studies all together.

Kiefer remains a great inspiration and there is one watercolor in particular that I think about often. It’s a subtle one and I would urge you to find a good reproduction. It translates into English as something like “Everyone Stands Under His Own Dome of Heaven” and it is literally an illustration of a solitary figure in a vast field under his own dome of sky. The ambiguity arises with the figure itself. Dressed in what appears to be a dull military green he raises his right hand in Nazi salute. I won’t presume to know Kiefer’s intentions, but I can state this: good and evil may strive for dominance on the earthly horizon, but the stars consistently remind us about the origins of voices in corners.

*These aren’t the only things that middle school students should know about the heavens it is apparently just a fine way to begin the exploration.

**Put aside theoretical physics for the time being.