It's Too Big

Hat-munching in front of the temple of Isis

The current visual Grand Canyon Association Artist in Residence, Melinda Esparza (who has just been outdoing herself in all manner of things lately), let me tag along for the ride for a couple of days, and I cracked open the old guerrilla painter's pochade full of wonders and soaked an otherwise unassuming page of my watercolor journal.

The Canyon is just too damn big to paint small, and of course someone who rarely touches bristles to paper isn't going to 'capture' it. But drawing and painting makes you look carefully, in a way that staring and shading your eyes for five minutes isn't going to do.

Here's another joy: in school we were restricted in our palette to primaries and neutrals by our instructors and our budgets. But now I have more latitude. I snagged a grab-bag full of winsor and newtons from Ebay, and discovered the joys of saturated tertiaries.

Ravens and doves

A trip to New Mexico resulted in an extended experience: first in Lordsburg, then in Santa Fe, when the two events came to work together.

The text on this piece says:
"New Mexico World"
"I watched an aerial battle today. A small gray-brown mourning dove chased a young raven in circles over the tree-lined street. Around and around again. The raven landed on a power line & the dove lighted about twenty feet away, as though a momentary truce was declared, to catch their respective breaths. Sure enough, the dove arrowed at the raven once more. But this time, the raven couldn't get away with his lazy circles, as the dove cut across his arc, coming up at him from below and behind. Again and again the dove made vicious contact and the raven nearly flipped over trying to get out of her reach. Now, he twisted and turned, dodging between narrow gaps in tree limbs. Finally he landed again on the wire, and the dove took to a tree, watching him to see if he needed another beating. Another raven landed near the first, who was now tending his hurts. They cawed and billed each other. The second raven sidled up to the first, lookinng him up and down. I'm sure the message -- between two juvenile pranksters -- was, 'Dude, you just got your ass kicked by a dove!'

"In Lordsburg stand two endangered mountains, the ore processing plant that is eating them away is in place about a half mile from them. I saw this, and the sky looked vast and dwarfed the mountains and the chemical plant. In the distance thunderclouds were gathering for the afternoon storms, and I realized that, while these mountains will disappear one after the other, to be reprocessed and redistributed into great flat expanses of concrete, the storms have been coming and going for millions of years, wiping out mountains and scattering the ruins of lost civilizations. So, as picturesque as a blue sky is, and as frisson thrilling as it is to watch a storm from a great distance, I realized that nature was going to win this one. Because just when you start feeling like you rule the skies, some dove is going to show up and kick. your. ass."

This is presented with many thanks to Ms. Clarity for letting me tag along in New Mexico. It is always an inspiration to see you inspired. And, many congratulations as well, to Artist Melinda Esparza, artist-in-residence at the Grand Canyon. Your talent and hard work well deserve the honor.

Picasso was a sonofabitch

Picasso famously said "Good artists copy. Great artists steal."* No doubt his intent was either:

1. ironical, or
2. deliberately subversive, or
   
3. referring to the fact that artists don't work in a vacuum, but build on each other's work

Unfortunately, the statement is—like so many things today, when ignorance is considered remedied by a Google search—easily bastardized and misread. I hope against hope that Picasso didn't mean to sanction stealing. He spent a lot of time disputing claims that Braque had a superior claim to cubism, so he could remain the 'inventor of cubism.' Surely, he understood the importance of being first.

In my day job, I work in the intangibles. What bean counters call "Intellectual Properties." [Actually, they just call it "IP." Because the only thing bean counters love as much as money is acronyms that talk about money.] That's right. I'm in Communications. Brands, trademarks, salesmarks, patents, copyrights... broadly speaking, ideas. My stock in trade.

Now, I assume that most of you are [blogging] artists. So, your work shows a broad overlap with my day job, in the great Venn Diagram of Job Descriptions in the Sky. And that means we've got something very important in common: we trade, whether for dollars or readers, in ideas, images, and words.

...To the wise, is sufficient

There have been movements in art that challenge the notion, the sanctity, of ideas as "belonging" to someone. I welcome those challenges. But so far, those challenges have failed, in that people continue to hold the notion that the work they produce belongs to them, until they give it up. Your paintings are yours until you sell them, give them away, or bestow them as an inheritance ... unless you explicitly grant a permission to reproduce it. They are automatically copyrighted, according to US Federal law.**

You actually don't even need a copyright symbol on it. You don't need to file a copy of it with the Library of Congress. These things help, but even without them the law is clear: it's yours.

Get it? Your words and ideas are yours. Your blog posts: yours. Your cool "hooks" to get people reading, and to come back: yours. The thumbnails of your art: yours. The gratuitous pictures of your cat, or snapshots from your painting outing: yours. And nobody else's. Here's the flip side:

If you didn't think of it and make it, it's NOT YOURS.

This is where I get ugly

Basically, there's no way to "borrow" an idea. If you use it, and you don't explain where you got it, that's "theft" of an idea, because there's no way to give it back if you've already given someone else the impression that the idea was yours. Every schoolchild knows this. It's the same as cribbing an answer off the desk next to yours. When you copy someone's idea, even if you change it a bit to look different... it's still copying. Cheating.

The proper word is plagiarism. It can be defined as:

... the stealing and passing off of the words or ideas of another as one’s own or using another person’s production without due credit to its source...

Plagiarism can get your blog removed from the web, can get you fired, can ruin your professional reputation ... simply put: steer clear of it.

But, but, but...

"... I always get the greatest ideas from things I see and read!" Of course you do. Everyone does. This is probably what Picasso meant. What happens if you read or see something great, and that gets you thinking, and you get an idea that builds on it? That's creativity. [It's still polite to acknowledge where you started from.]

But if you want to "use" someone else's thought, give some attribution. On the blogosphere, that's as easy as a mention couched in words such as, "I was reading this great post over on so-and-so's blog, and it got me thinking. They were talking about the great painting instructor they had, and that reminded me of my favorite painting instructor... etc." The linkback is not required, but is expected under etiquette.

It's that easy to be polite, and steer clear of cheating. So, rules to be an artist by:

• Own your stuff.
• Own up to what you don't own.

Dude, why the lather?

Because:

1. I want you to be able to hold on to what is rightfully yours.
2. Melinda had one of her posts plagiarized recently.
   
3. Authenticity matters. Especially among artists.
   

* I've found lots of attributions of this to Picasso, but I can't find a single citation.
**I am not an attorney. Consult one if you have questions.

Keeping promises -- an art journal I owe myself

Moleskine makes a terrific, pocket-sized journal with bristol paper in a japanese accordian fold. Ms. Clarity got me one (Thanks, Melinda!). It makes for an ideal art journal: never intimidating, always a sense of play, expansive when you want it, and portable enough that you can imagine taking it anywhere, pulling it out on a whim, and either drawing what's in front of you, or reflecting on your response to your surroundings.*

This is just the kind of low threshold I need to keep my promise to myself: make more art, post more blogs, no matter how hairy things were. I've even abandoned my habit of 'care' in these drawings, accepting stray lines for what they are: unexpected vectors. I strive for spontaneity and a new way of expressing line and thought. Text is line. Line is line. The page is flat.

I know I'm not the only one who's been staggered recently by the vagaries of life and 'interesting times.' So, I'm not alone. Each of us seeks a way to return to basic principals. To core responsibilities. To reaching out, or plumbing new depths -- whichever it is that brings back our selves, our lives, our heartbeat. Here's to you, and everyone trying to keep the green shoots alive. You know who you are. You have my admiration.

Three journal pages

Are your furnishings plotting something? Sometimes, mine just have a look about them. Shifty, kind of.

... Gumby can squish himself into a ball, and extrude himself through the slit under the door.

Quiet time to read. All we really need is a puffy couch and a ripping good book. Or at least, the book.

*I did not accept monetary or other remuneration for this unsolicited endorsement. On the other hand, no one offered.

A last look

Catalina State Park, 2010.Watercolor on paper, approx 5"x7"

This view is of the north side of the Santa Catalina Mountains, which Tucsonans refer to as the "backside of the Catalinas." Catalina Park is about 40 minutes North of Tucson. With the [risible] budget shortage in the statehouse, the park is on the short list to close until revenues "recover". So, look now, while you can.

Our legislators have lowered taxes nearly every year for more than a decade -- despite having the lowest budget of many states, and an education expenditure which vies with Arkansas for the bottom of 50 states. When you're on the I-10 crossing from Arizona to New Mexico, you can hear the clunking, roaring, chattering pavement ruts go nearly silent as you cross the border into New Mexico, a state that knows how to take care of infrastructure.

It irks me that they would put something as fundamental to the common welfare (and to my inspiration as an artist) at risk, as a nature park. Let's make a resolution for the New Year that we take care of what's been given to us.

Art and democracy

Turtle Mountain, New Mexico

Cocktails, anyone?

I'm mixing my two headiest liquors tonight, art and politics. Above, you'll see an uncharacteristic painting for this blog: an oil painting when Ms. Moments of Clarity swapped paint boxes with me in New Mexico. She painted a watercolor, I took up a palette knife and oils. We exchanged points of view, or at least media.

While reading my birthday copy of Art in America, I came across a review of Nader Vossoughian's Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis. It's my first exposure to economist and philosopher Otto Neurath, and I was immediately drawn to his belief that the great masses of non-technical people could still make informed decisions about complex and technical subjects if they were informed in a clear and readily understood format of illustrated data. He experimented with graphic designer Gerd Arnz in creating iconic representations of economic, demographic and geographic data. These works are worthy of a museum show all by themselves.

In this experimentation, I've found a kindred spirit: my marks and sigil series is all about the complex communications embedded in our human landscapes, often in the form of icons and semiotics.

Political theory

Here's the bit of political theory, a la Arty Fice. You see, when I was but a sprat, my family was temporarily in England, and I witnessed the parliamentary elections. I saw the commercials of both parties, and their debates and speeches. It was my first consciousness of political events, and I was quite taken up in the excitement of it. And, although I certainly was too young to grasp the difference between their stands, (and consequently to understand the difference between policy and "promises"), I was quite persuaded that Labor had all the answers, and that another round of Conservative policies was sure to bring the country crashing down around their ears.

Imagine my shock when the Conservatives were re-elected.

I pondered where I had gone wrong -- or rather, where the Brits had gone wrong. Mind you, I had no idea how bemused grown-ups would have been at my 12-year old effrontery. I wondered how it was that the majority of voters could have made the wrong choice. And I arrived at a simple conclusion: that voters in England had already made up their minds about the election beforehand, and weren't persuaded by the speeches and ads to change their minds. They weren't a "blank slate" as I had been.

From this, I realized my most important political truth: elections are not very important, in the overall scheme of things. I know, I can hear the shocked intakes of breath from my fellow Americans — at least those of you not so jaded as to be merely tsking and shaking your heads sadly (you guys are wrong, it's not that I think that voting isn't important, or that elections don't change things); only, hear me out, because I haven't gotten to the nugget yet.

The important thing, I learned, wasn't the election, it was the conversation beforehand. You see, before an election, there's a period of flux, where people can learn from each other, and hopefully gain support for their good ideas. In debate, conversation and education about the issues, minds get made up. Sides are chosen. Then comes the voting, and its just a matter of "taking a snapshot" of how many people are on which side at that time. In an ideal world — where everyone thinks alike — then there would be a consensus, and elections would be unanimous. Voting is just about ending the debate, and getting to a decision, rather than never getting a decision.

Back to the art

So, here's the thing: it's a cliche to say that the electorate needs to be educated—the truth is, the electorate needs information. If we are going to have decent decisions, then we need to have the required information to weigh the choices. And this is where Neurath is a hero. His belief was that required information—complexities—could be conveyed in ways that nearly anyone can understand.

Back off, Formalists

Yeah, it's true, I think that art is more than its formal qualities. I think that art has content. It bears content whether it's intended, explicit, or a deliberate attempt is made to make it non-referential or not: because art is a made thing (one definition I think we can all agree on). And made things have purpose, because we're beings with motivations. No one expends the calories or uses the resources or commits the time to making any kind of art without the expectation that the art fulfills some purpose. And no one can look at a made thing and not, on some level, try to work out what its meaning or purpose is—in communications, we call this "reading the text." We can't help trying to read the text of an object in front of us. [I'll have a more complete answer for you Clement Greenberg devotees, at another time...]

Crass illustration?

So Neurath uses rows of silhouettes of iconic people to represent thousands in populations, or the outline of an industrial building to represent factory jobs available in a country—and disposes of technical terms like "demographics" and "capital utilization" with a picture rendering the terms unnecessary. His vision and the work that comes of it are relentlessly modernist, but not for the causes that Greenberg sought, not for self reference, but for public reference. He believed in the innate intelligence and rationality of people—which is, at the very least, endearingly pollyannaish, Joe the Plumber to the contrary notwithstanding. It is a noble thing, to believe that art can grease the gears of democracy, strengthen bonds, and enable the betterment of lives.

My experiment

Neurath employed vision and empathy in his experimentation and philosophy. He tried to put himself in the shoes of an ordinary person, without the tools of his economic education. In the spirit of walking a mile in another's shoes, my palette-knife painting at the beginning of this post is a tribute to the same mechanism: I tried to see things as Melinda does, however briefly, picking up her tools, using her color tubes.

When we stand before art, we get a glimpse into someone else's mind, someone's vision is shared, and it expands our own horizons. It is an ineffable human undertaking, at both ends of the transaction. Respect yourself, your art, and your audience and share a little 'life' with someone.

Altered Border States

Altered Border States, 2009. 16"x5.25" watercolor

You may recognize the hill on the right from Ms. Moments of Clarity's post. She's very prolific, so it was a long time ago that she put it up.

This continues my series on marks and signs found in my environment. In this case, an ominous [literal] sign—courtesy of the Parks Department— completely transformed my sense of the landscape in front of me that day. The innocent landscape was instantly a place of unease. And yet, the sign was also intrinsically ridiculous.

In preparing for the painting, I was stitching images in Photoshop, and realized that each layer I added obscured something below in the previous. So, my obscured images might include armies of "illegals," and you would never know. Just as I couldn't know, as I stood there painting plein air, if there was a band of drug smugglers camped on the back side of that hill in front of me. And I realized that the stitched image had become a metaphor for my experience of the altered landscape: it became disjointed, a landscape reframed as something else, something alien.

It is a part of this series that I reproduce something in the landscape that is already a man-made mark. These marks are art in its most basic form: artifice, for the purpose of expressing communication. So, the series is about making a mark about an encounter with another mark. But, the medium (pretty traditional watercolor) is used to signify the traditions of fine art and the art industry: my expressions of other's signs, images and scribbles found in passing through the world, becomes—not without irony—art "for the gallery."

Part III, Conclusion: Maurice on integrity, success and turning the tables on me

In case you missed them, Part 1 of this is here. Part 2 is here.
I can't express often enough my gratitude to Maurice Sevigny for taking time out of his art-making day to talk to me for these articles. The conversation continues to fascinate and enlighten me as I review it and reconsider it.

Integrity versus market demand

Edgar: [Some of us struggle with being artists for our own sake. My wife doesn't want to make art for a 'market', and she's not sure she wants to sell it in any case.] But I come from a marketing background, so to me, art is about persuasion. ... I don’t care how it gets reproduced, or whether it sells or not, but whether I connect with an audience in a certain way.

And we [struggle] with this idea, “what is ‘acknowledgement’?” We’ve used the word acknowledgement, and in some cases that’s the sale of a painting. And in our culture, that’s almost the ultimate compliment, that someone parted with their hard-earned money – or their daddy’s hard-earned money. They are buying something of yours because they had to [possess] it. But that isn’t art’s traditional role, in [broad] human civilization, generally art wasn’t sold. Maybe it was bartered, but it was usually done for the group or for the individual.

And now we have this ambivalence. We say, “Well, I’m going to express myself, and I don’t want to compromise my self in that expression. I want people to accept what I do, and if they accept my raw expression, they are accepting me. But if I compromise, they are accepting some propped up version, some artificial version of me."

Maurice: Well, now you’re speaking of integrity, an artist’s integrity. Integrity is about being true to yourself. So, if you don’t know yourself, you can’t be true to yourself. But your wife’s truth to herself is about unadulterated non-commercialism. [It goes like this:] "if I get discovered and someone spends a million dollars on one of my installations, or whatever I’m making, fine, I’ll take the money, but that’s not what it’s all about." On the other hand, knowing what your values are, knowing what your goals are as an artist, and trying to be true to them, you know, there are different kinds of artists. There are ‘professional’ artists, which means you get paid for what you do.

E: That would be the IRS’s definition.

M: That would be part of it. On the other hand if you are a ‘commercial’ artist, usually that means you are working for someone else’s goals, and using your skills and talents to do something for them. And that’s a designer or an illustrator. They’re setting the parameters. Someone always sets parameters. When you go to school, the teacher sets the parameters...People who can’t survive as an artist are those who have difficulty self-actualizing their own parameters. If I can’t give myself a problem, I’m stuck. I’m going to go look around for something outside of me and get unstuck. So this is writer’s block or artists [block]. One of the ways in which you keep yourself in a flow, is to continue to evolve your imagery, and your technique, and your strength as an individual artist.

If you’re just making art for art’s sake, are you a hobbyist? Because your intention is not to be professional. Your integrity is to be true to yourself, and that usually means trying to be inventive, while wanting no external influence. You’re trying to divorce yourself from the market place because your integrity is pure, or your unadulterated imagery is all you, and no one is influencing it… Try to put those in a portfolio and bring it to a gallery, and the gallery is not interested. “Go back and do some red ones these are green.” Or, “The colors people are buying in the southwest are A, B, and C.” And so…

E: Have you heard those answers?

M: Of course!

E: Oh, my God!

M: Yeah. “Can you make this in blue?” -- So, you answer “No, I already made it [red],” or “Sure, I can make anything in any color.” So, ‘blue’ is the challenge.

...I have a friend, Barbara Rogers, who primarily works in earth tones, it’s her ‘Bible.’ And I tend to use a lot of purples and pinks and magentas. My wife’s always saying, “Easy on the pink.” I like pink. So, I think you grow up with a certain palette, that has something to do with the things you think look good, are comfortable with. They are the colors you live with, like when you decide what colors to paint your living room. Some people like excitement, some like calm. Some people want go home to a sanctuary and be peaceful, some want to go home and be excited.

All those things influence who you become. And the more you know about them, the more you can control them in your work, otherwise they’re all pulling at your attention at a subconscious level, and they may not be harmoniously integrated.

E: Does the Market compromise integrity?

M: It’s a variable. I don’t know that it compromises it. If you want to work in a marketplace, and you don’t know it, you aren’t going to succeed.

E: If you’re unaware of your desire to work in a marketplace, is that what you mean?

M: That’s what I mean. Enter it carefully. Gather the facts. Most artists try not to (garbled – confront?) them. They don’t want to. Somehow… Most artists over time, when they’ve “Sold out” – sold, selling, that you’re “selling your soul” in some sense when people buy your stuff, is on a continuum: [For example,] The artist who doesn’t have to sell their stuff makes a painting. Some critic writes about them, and suddenly after they die, somebody buys up all their stuff that they didn’t sell while they were alive, so it’s “pure.” So there’s a purity element. I’m not sure that’s so. I’ve not met many artists that were successful that didn’t like their success, or the money that came with their success.

E: Right.

M: But they would tell you that their success was related to their absolute integrity to self and their absolute discovery of a voice that is unique from everybody else’s in the world. So it’s more about trying to discover what your voice -- your talent is, you know? If you look at kids in art school, so many of them want to emulate people that they like… the way they’re different, the way they make things, whatever. Copy this one a little bit, copy this one a little bit, and they look through ArtNews and they flip through magazines and they pull out pictures and [make scrap books of what they like]. They scout faculty and try to find out which faculty work like [the artists] they like. And then they are gonna study with that faculty. Maybe they can learn something.

Who you are -- and how we challenge it

So, in every sense, every artist creates a fragile reality of who they are, and what images they can make. And somebody goes in, or a student goes in, or another artist comes in their studio, and they try to breach that reality. And they’ll say, “Okay, this guy’s too commercial, this guy uses too much color, and this guy works too small.” And that’s fine, what they’re really doing is evaluating what their purposes are and how they might want to work, when they do work of their own. So you step into someone else’s reality for a short time, and you borrow from that the attributes or variables that interest you and you forget the things that didn’t attract you at the moment.

And that’s sort of how we grow an eclectic of all the artists that enter our lives. That doesn’t mean we pick up and copy all the artists that enter our lives, we leave some of the things behind and don’t do things of other artists we’ve met. That’s what feeds visual knowing, is seeing visual things.

Most artists like to go around to other artists studios, or flip through books or go to museums, or whatever. Why do we do that? To keep embellishing our visual repertoire, things we know about paint, things we know about color, things we know about distortion. Things that tax us, in terms of, everybody’s got a frame of reference, and they keep wanting to push that. So you’re always pushing the edge of what you accept as art. You know, the art I made twenty years ago is nothing like the art I’m making today.

E: [Okay.]

M: And maybe the art I made twenty years ago is better than the art I’m making today. There’s an assumption that you grow and art gets better. It isn’t necessarily true.

Artistic success—a personal view

E: I’m going to ask you about success, but I don’t want you to try to define it for everybody, because the question’s too big, but… what does it look like?

M: What does success look like?

E: What does success in art look like, to you?

M: Oooh. … I would guess, not being in the unemployment line?... I think success is a continuum. Ultimate success, is that what you’re asking me?

E: I don’t think so, because I think you see art as a process, and your life as a process, too. There isn’t necessarily an end point.

M: Well, I think that success is a continuum that has something to do with connoisseurship. Those people who know success, anoint you with that success, whether that’s a well-known critic, or a gallery owner, or if it’s in a museum. So, it’s back to the notion of audience, and people recognizing that you have something that rewards taking time to write about, or to look at, or to sell, or any of those things. Success is about your ability to capture the attention of someone else with what you do. And that varies significantly between people. Am I a successful artist? No. Am I an artist? Yes. Could I be a successful artist? Possibly.

E: But for you, does that really hinge on giving away the power to validate your work to someone else? Saying, “If I don’t get a blessing from you, then I’m not successful”?

M: No, because my success is defined differently personally. My success is about experience and knowledge of art, because basically, I’m an art administrator. So part of my success is the ability to do, to make, to live with artists, in a community of artists, to talk about art in a way that takes advantage of self-knowledge and connoisseurship in the field. So, I know a lot about artists and art people, and obviously I’ve been successful as someone who’s moved up the ranks in terms of the occupation I have, which is an art educator. So, to teach about art, you have to learn to talk about something that’s a visual phenomenon, right?

E: Yes.

M: So, to talk about a visual phenomenon, it’s difficult finding words which is not a visual phenomenon – language -- to talk about something different. Part of the skills, success, one has as an art teacher is the ability to have people understand what you’re talking about in terms of certain attributes of works of art. So, my success as an arts administrator is contingent upon my ability to make and do and move materials around and know what I’m talking about. That’s how I’m measuring success now, and it’s not relevant to me to measure my success as an artist, that’s not been my goal.

E: Okay.

M: But when I make the transition someday, it might be. And then maybe I’ll work harder at the marketing, showing my work to galleries, you know, working bigger, finding out what I need to do. I don’t know. But that’s yet to come.

E: I’ve gone over time, are we okay?

M: Sure.

Are "artists" and "community" mutually exclusive?

E: I have one more question, and it’s [tied to] what we’ve talked about: the relationship we have with other artists, and the fact that we as artists go around and push our threshold of understanding. In many cases that’s why I go on the open studio tours: what can I learn about what I know about art by looking at how somebody else is doing it, and why they’re doing it, what they’re getting out of it. But I heard an interview of Francisco Franklin, a local artist, on Arizona Illustrated and he talked about spending time in France and Iceland, hanging out with artists, and he really wanted to be part of the artists’ group. And he said, “Eventually I realized that art was a solitary activity.” And he now he practices art in his studio, and apparently he doesn’t relate very much with other people.

Are we stuck with that? Is that a reality? Is there an art community? Can artists support each other, or is it too competitive, too trade secret oriented?

M: I don’t think so. If you look at the history of art, you look at Picasso, you look at Van Gogh, the people that tried to isolate themselves, they didn’t do it very well, they still had to write letters back to one another. Gauguin went to Tahiti, but he still came back to France to be with artists.

I mean, I think that, when we talked about audiences before, the ultimate audience is another artist, who understands many of the dimensions of making art and working with materials. So, when you have a dialog with another artist, you are talking about “How did you do this? How do you work with PhotoShop?” So, the amateur comes to the studio and asks me questions about process, where the artist comes and asks me concept questions: “What were you thinking about when you made this image?”… “Is this meaningful to you? Is it speaking anything beyond what you can do as a designer?” So, some artists will attack your intention or your conceptual value of a work of art (there’s a difference), and most artists need that, to some extent. And if they don’t need it from another artist, they may need it from another connoisseur, which could be a gallery person, it could be a museum curator, (it could be someone who’s a scientist that just happens to spend a lot of time looking at art and reading about it.) So it’s only as good as the level – if you’re a beginner, you don’t have much sophistication to talk with somebody with a lot of it either. It’s always trying to find someone with a little more sophistication than you, who gives you feedback, that allows you to keep growing, and pushing us up.

E: That may be why I’m blogging.

Interviewer becomes the subject

M: Because, why else would you be spending all that time, when you could be making art? I mean, are you justifying your blog? Are you justifying you’re a wannabe artist? … Why are you an artist, why do you think you are an artist?

E: Um, unfair question!

M: Why? An interview is an exchange.

E: I discovered I’m just very, very intensely interested in what people do to communicate. That is: relate ideas, present themselves, share themselves, gain acceptance, and it’s why I think I was comfortable going into advertising. I actually got into art from a political point of view.

M: Were you a design major?

E: No. No, I originally went to school thinking I was going to be a theatre technician. Then I changed degrees and wound up in studio art.

M: A lot of people do. I mean, they want to make a living, but they really want to be an artist. They learn to paint scenery and stuff, and wonder, will I make a living doing this? So, they go back to wanting to be an artist. That is kind of interesting.

E: I recently had trip to New Mexico, a couple weeks driving around New Mexico with our son. Took our sketchbooks and did some watercolors, and I realized in doing that – I’d not set pen to paper or anything for years – how much that nourished my soul. And I realized, “You know what, if I stop it, I’ll die.” And now I’m stuck with that feeling. Having rediscovered that part of myself, I can’t say “no” to it anymore.

M: What if I said to you, that you are more inclined to be an art critic? You’re building skills, you’re a smart man, you like to write. It seems to me that part of the realm that you may be exploring is your ability to deal with art criticism, and esthetics, and art as social commentary, art as psychological commentary… So the things that interest you, under the guise that you’re going to inform your art are really in some ways your training as an art connoisseur, that will allow you to know artists, to know artists feelings, may allow you someday to write a book, or write a blog or some new vehicle, electronic publishing. Essentially, I say look at what you’re doing: you’re toying with the idea of finding knowledge about changing fields of art, and the complexity of the artist’s perspective. And it gives you pleasure.

E: If you were to say that, I’d acknowledge, yeah, it gives me pleasure to write about it, talk about it, learn about it, but I would also argue that that’s a personality trait that I have that I would apply to anything is interesting to me.

M: Fair enough.

E: My brain is built for abstraction, and I’m very good at taking big ideas and tearing them apart and reexamining them, so, yeah, I can write about art, I can talk about art, I’m a very verbal person. But…

M: Hmm. Does that prevent you from being a visual person?

E: It may. I may ultimately find that it does.

M: Now, when you're teaching art, all day long, talking about it, it’s difficult to go home and make it. Part of it is you’re giving your best ideas to your students, and you’re exhausted. So, there’s a certain part of art that needs incubation.

E: That’s right.

M: You know, you need time to reflect on what you’re doing. The biggest mistake most people make is that they keep drawing. And they don’t pause. You know drawing is 90% looking, [10%] moving pencils around or whatever. And most beginners are 90% drawing and erasing, and making mistakes – so, it’s observation, it’s critical thinking, it’s esthetic thinking and creative thinking… and if you don’t allow time for the thinking, then you miss something. That’s why this process works nicely for me, and how I can manage it just doing it a few days, “You’ve got an awful lot of work… are you not working full time at the University? I mean, where did you get all these paintings?” Part of it is because, I have a lot of space between the Saturday and Sunday that I do work, to think about what I’m going to do.

And I intend to, like finish a piece, and I’ve got eighteen pieces going at the same time… “This one’s – Oh, I’m going to work on this one today. That one didn’t talk to me.” It’s going to stay there another two, three weeks, or a year, before I get back to something.

E: That’s an excellent skill to have, it’s one I’m trying to nurture in my wife. She’s got one project, and stays on it until it’s through.

M: I know, and what if it’s a bust? That’s so hard. That’s the thing I learned about computers. If you don’t know, you can decide if it’s going to be in the red tones or the blue tones by sliding a scale, instead of “Unh, let me make it red,” [paint it red] and then “I don’t like it, start all over,” five hours later.
E: I did that for my wife one time. She was working on it, and said, “I don’t know where to go with it.” I took a picture, put it in PhotoShop, made a couple layers, zip, zip zip: “Look, this is how you can change it, change the saturation, change a color, see what you like?…print you out copy” And she was saying “That was about two days worth of work in thirty minutes.”

M: Yeah, just about.

E: Yes… I may find out I’ve got two careers in art.

M: Actually you may discover this was an alternate way of getting an education. Because you didn’t go through art school.

E: Right.

M: I mean, you’re older, more mature, you want to sidestep four years in the classroom… which is fine! If you're coming from the perspective of understanding performance in theater, and scene painting and flat making, and you’ve got skills that would apply to visual arts or decorative arts as well. Maybe that’s what you’re doing too. Who knows? It doesn’t matter. I’m just saying, “Who are you, what are you?” What are you? You are someone that’s seriously engaged in learning about art and yourself as a knowledgeable person of art, and a potentially knowledgeable artist, right? And you’re meeting interesting people, your time is well-spent, and you’re content.

E: You know, one reason for wanting this [interview with you], was in response to somebody who was selling work to get validation, and what rejection feels like, whether it’s rejection from the gallery or rejection from the customer. And I realized, coming out of commercial art, that I’ve got a very different perspective on what that relationship with the customer is, that client, that audience. For me, I’d do a design, that was a knock out. I’d take it to my client and say, “Isn’t this the most creative thing you’ve ever seen?” they’d go, “It’s not at all what I asked for, it doesn’t fit my needs. Change it.” And I knew it was good work, but I also knew I wasn’t going to make a sale.

M: Frame it and sell it.

E: And I realized, ultimately, in that relationship, my responsibility was meeting the client’s needs, not my own.

M: Unless you are your own client. Unless you can afford to be. Unless you’re a trust baby and you can afford to sit in your studio all day.

E: But the thing that I also learned was that, just because the client rejected it, doesn’t make it invalid work. It doesn’t make it bad work.

M: Well in one case the function was more esthetic, and in the other, the function is more commercial and the intention of the client is to exaggerate one thing over another, and you didn’t do that for him.

E: But even though the work is commercial, they become art critics. Clients become art critics.

M: Nah, they’re clients.

E: They ask, “Why did you choose ‘blue’, why is this bar here?” And what I learned, what made me articulate about it, is that I learned to defend my art. I’d say, that’s there because it does this, and there’s a purpose for it, and concept behind it. If you don’t like it, we’ll work on that, but you can’t argue that it’s just random.

M: Many clients want artists to tell them the value of the work. Because they don’t really know art. They may know coffee, but they don’t know art.

E: And it helps them feel good about it.

M: So, they’re ready for an argument. A lot of designers – interior designers, landscape architects—all these people have to go and sell a point of view. “If you buy my services, you buy my expertise, so trust me on this one.” Or you didn’t really do your homework before you did your art, on what the client wanted. Or the client doesn’t really know what they want, til they see it.

E: Right.

M: They might say, “ I know what I like, but I don’t know it until I see it.”

E: That’s an interesting point – I just read in How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist, Caroll Michels was saying all of these accoutrements that we’re supposed to deliver with our portfolio -- an artist bio, a statement, a brochure -- are ways of comforting a potential buyer that they are making a good choice in choosing your work, that you’re validating their acceptance of your work, and saying “Look, I really am somebody, you’re not just crazy for liking my work.” And that’s no different than I run into with marketing.

M: Artists who are successful commercially, often don’t do that for themselves. So, if you want to be successful commercially, you need to have an artist’s marketer. You need to have an agent. I have an agent who goes out and says how wonderful my work is. If I do that, I’m some kind of egotistical, self-centered arrogant person nobody wants to be with. But if she goes, she can convince people that this is really good work, and very popular, and if you don’t buy it, I’ve got ten people who will. So a lot of that has to do with, who is skilled at something. Most artists are not skilled at marketing, or promoting or selling their own work. The art field has millions of people out there in different roles.

E: yeah, and we need that range—look at our audience.

M: We’re past making the goat on the cave wall. There is public art, though. You talked about it earlier, and there’s a lot of public art for the whole community, including museums. Looking back to the old days, it’s like, “I have to own this. I’m obsessed with ownership of things.” So that’s collecting. And collectors are different than buyers, because collectors are focused on a certain kind of thing. They’re obsessed with having the biggest and the best example of something. There is a kind of fanatic collector of Mayan art at the museum, and he found a billionaire, and he can afford to buy the best of everything, and he did, amassing a collection that nobody else has. It was pretty important to him.

E: I had a discussion with an archeologist one time, and his view on collectors was… something to take note of.

M: I bet.

E: And he made an extremely good point, that, once you take this pot out of its context, it has lost much of its meaning. Now it’s just an object, and everything that you say about it being beautiful or ancient, and therefore rare and unique and wonderful is really lost… you’re just adding stuff to it.

M: But that’s an archeologist. And for him, it’s about context and history.

E: But it’s true. When we collect Roman art we’re assigning to it different meaning than the Romans ever had, and we’re looking at it differently too. They had polychrome statues, they painted them. And all the statues we have left over from them are just plain marble.

M: Right.

E: The paint’s worn off, and we say “Look how beautiful it is.” And, it’s not what they saw.

M: No. But it’s a different time too.

E: Right.

M: When Duchamp put a urinal in a museum.

E: Yeah, now everyone wants a urinal.

M: People saw it and – yearn for a urinal. (laughter) I mean, the context changes: the meaning changes. So, the function is changed – the esthetic function versus, “This is a pot.” But if [it was only] a pot, in that culture, why is it so unique? Why did a person have to put marks on that pot that elevated it? So, the role of the artist over time has been, he who can embellish something ordinary in a way that other people stop and pause and contemplate. The history of art is full of them, examples of artisans that did something – extraordinary – with techniques that were pretty primitive at the time.

Part II: My conversation with Maurice: marketing and audience

Continuing the conversation with Dr. Maurice Sevigny, from where I left off:

Marketing and art

Edgar: Okay, you touched on marketing, so let’s talk about that.

Maurice: Sure.

E: You said, that because you had supplemental income, you feel less constrained than somebody that feels strictly dependent on the market… [Dependence on the market] creates a conflict…

M: Sure.

E: … that I guess many of us are dealing with. Some of us are quite comfortable with the idea of making art which is strictly for the pleasure of some audience. So, there’s a question of the relationship between the artist and the audience.
Let me give you some background on myself: I have a [perspective] in that area. I started out in theatre, the performing arts, and there, the feedback from the audience is instantaneous, immediate. Recently, I submitted for a show for the Dinnerware, and I went to the opening and kind of went (frowning), “There’s no applause here!”

M: Yeah… (laughter)

E: So, I have a very different perspective on it than most visual artists would. But there is a relationship, intentional or not, between an artist and an audience. And I, personally, would dispute anyone who says, “I only make art for myself.” I think they’re just hiding something [from themselves].

M: Well, everybody’s got an ego. And you either stroke it yourself – and you know what that’s called (ahem)… “denying.”
…
Picasso is a good example of someone who continually reinvented him self. Because you can get stuck in a rut of fame or a market that’s accessible, and you can only go so far. And we all know artists like that.

E: Yeah.

M: But the luxury I have currently is that I can afford to make lots of mistakes, because time’s not money to me, so I don’t ever just think, “What’s going to sell?” And that’s good, especially the last six months– ‘cause nothing’s selling. (laughter) On the other hand, I think I am more aware of the commercial market as well, because of the rent on the studio. ‘Cause I was like, “Well, let’s at least break even. Instead of being an expensive hobby.” Especially with all the technology—which is expensive—... rent, and all your stuff. So, for a while I was saying, “Okay, everybody’s working big, and everybody’s working abstract for the most part. I’m going to work small and be affordable. And I’m going to work with techniques that allow me to work fast, and because I can be efficient, I don’t have to put two, three thousand dollars on each of my paintings to compensate for my time. So, finding a niche market is helpful but that’s not (unintelligible) ,’cause you know, sometimes I think about market forces, sometimes I don’t.

Artist and audience

You make images, and you get feedback from audiences, because we have open houses.

People come through and say, “Oh, what colors! You’re a colorist.”

“Yeah? What was your first clue?”

And what does that mean? [That] Most people are afraid of color, especially exaggerated color, because it’s one of the variables that starts to make things less recognizable to some people. So when you abstract, what you’re doing is taking shape or line or color or texture in a new way, sensing it in a new way.
...

I work with a couple things, one, I work with technology as underpainting and two I don’t limit myself to one medium. It always looks a bit different to the average person, but their attention to my work is sometimes captured a little longer than somebody else’s.

Some people come through your place pretty quick. Some want to look at each painting. And the way in which people go around, some are ‘flies’ and some are ‘ants’ and they march around in circles. Some people come up and look at something and study one thing and leave. So, it’s kind of fun to watch audience, and how they take in information.

And then their questions. (unintelligible) You’ve got wannabe artists, who wanna know how you do it. They want to come in and steal some secrets. You got people who collect—

E: …Maybe they want to come in and learn.

M: Maybe they do!

E: [I say,] In self-defense.

M: A lot of them do want to learn. And most of them want to get inspired, because you get a rush. You see something and think “I won’t buy that, but I think I could do something like that.” And run back to the studio and try it out. So, when you think [about] markets: When are you going to be an art teacher? When are you going to be an artist? When are you going to hold back information? When are you going to give away trade secrets?

The dialog that results from [the thought of] “audience” is very interesting, because it’s not one audience. There are as many different audiences as there are people. There are different degrees of sophistication. Your questions are different than the average beginner, looking for a couple of paintings for their lavender bedroom.

[Edgar's note: I'll be posting the final portion of our conversation, in which Dr. Sevigny discusses artistic integrity, in a few days.]

Finding words... a conversation with Maurice

Update: Part two of this conversation is now posted here.
Dr. Maurice Sevigny is both a local artist and the Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Arizona... in other words, someone who has made a lifetime of the study of art theory, the practice of art—and the teaching of it. He has a studio in downtown Tucson, which I visited last year during an open studio tour. The studio is jam-packed with framed work and works in progress on easels and pinned to partitions, in a crowded circle around a countertop island from which he surveys his creations, plucking them from the wall to rework as the muse strikes him.

The work he's doing is (essentially) representational, but distinctive in its embrace of digital technology to provide underpainting and abstraction for his images, which he overpaints with mixed media.

I thought it was exceptionally nervy of me to ask him for an interview, out of the blue, but he is generous, and his answers are very stimulating. Well versed in the conversation of art, Dr. Sevigny is articulate, educated and experienced. Of him, I got to ask all my questions: the ones my art teachers forgot to talk about. With gratitude, here's one expert's point of view.

Why we do it

Edgar: Why do we do art?

Maurice: Why do we do art? ...We do art because we have to. It’s a form of communication for some people, a form of expression for others, it’s a form of catharsis, and therapy for some. There are as many reasons for doing art as there are people. For me it’s a balance, and I’m doing it as something of a therapy in my life. At the same time, I’ve always done it, and it’s a way of being, and art is a way of knowing. So, my work is representational to a degree but abstract because I take what I know and I invent in it something that didn’t exist before. So, to me, bringing something to fruition that was not in existence before is… a trip.

E: You said art is communication and expression. What would be the difference?

M: Well, when it’s communication, it’s the artist doing it, when it’s expression, it’s the reader [that’s looking at it] interpreting it. Often, those things don’t come together. What someone interprets is different from [what] somebody expressed or intended to express, but it doesn’t really matter, because art is a two way street.

A segue to audience

If you don’t have an audience, do you even have art? Maybe: Because, if you step away from the painting, suddenly you become the audience; the real fact is, that art is a dialog, a sense of communication, usually a dialog between the artist and the object, and the object gives permission to continue or stop. Or the object becomes, you know, the game. You’re looking upon it, and you may be comparing it to what’s real (or not real), and then you may be saying, “How can I change that?” or there may be parts that you want to change. So, there’s this little bit of creativity and creation involved in the art concept.

...

And I always find it amazing when people come to my studio and want to know how long it took for me to make a particular piece, because they are sizing up the price. They’re asking, “How long did this take you?” My answer is always, “Sixty-five years,” because I couldn’t have done it last year… it’s a process, and you are the sum of who you are, at that moment.

E: That’s an excellent answer. I like that. Now, we make art, I think in many cases, as an expression of our response to what is around us ...

M:… or inside us.

E: … or inside us, yeah. And I know that there are lots of art movements where people are trying to get to that very directly.

M: Trying to be spontaneous, trying to let things emerge… I’m not sure that’s possible.

E: I’m not sure it’s possible either, because we have a context, and we can’t avoid it.

M: Everything is contextual.

E: But art, I think, is seen by western culture as being “creativity,” and there’s this idea… some of the non-objective artists are trying to pull something from nothing – and [it’s a struggle to make that] work. But what you said a moment ago is, that art was a “way of knowing.” And I find, as many artists do, I find out about what I feel about what is going on “out there.” And there’s some sharing obviously, because we’re making marks, instead of keeping it up here, inside our skulls. It’s a complex process, not simply one thing or the other, and it’s not strictly creativity. Much of it is reproduction, much of it is reaction.

M: Well you’re talking about art as function. When the function changes… if the function is religious, it brings back images of spirituality.

E: Right.

M: If your work is commercial, your job is to sell something or create some kind of metaphor for something else. If it’s illustrative, you’re trying to tell a story, that may be more communication. If it’s for its own sake, then it may be abstract, or it may be much more about the surface qualities and less about the emotional qualities or psychological impact. So, you’ve got intention, and you’ve got function, and you’ve got materials and you’ve got different subjects. If you’re going to be a naturalist, then you’re going to render something, if you want to be an artist, then you want to render it in a way that no one else is rendering it, because that makes it to be a signature or a brand. It’s important because, as in business, if yours looks like everybody else’s, then it has less value if you’re going to the market.

On function

E: What is it to you? What is the function of art for you?

M: You know, it changes. Right now… I think in some sense, the way in which I get back to art --because I haven’t made art for 25 years-- was in preparation for embracing a new self, because I may be retiring in the near future. So, before one can retire, when their identity has been all wrapped up in some kind of work or job, you need to have a new identity to embrace, to say goodbye to that [old] identity. But for me, it’s a kind of catharsis or evolution into something that I’ve postponed being for a long time, in order to make a living. Now, it’s going to be a way to supplement a living, so in some sense, somewhere between a commercial world and free expression.

Essentially, for me, because I have another income, I’m not constrained to commercial art. I can keep experimenting and developing new things. And the art I’m working on currently is kind of taking advantage of new tools that are electronic and digital to design and experiment and be more efficient. So I’ve got that luxury of time to play with technology and traditional media combined in ways that other people weren’t doing before.

So, to me it’s still invention. And also a chance to embrace the introvert side of me… getting away from my public life. Going into the studio, having alone time. Telling something it’s going to be ‘red’. And it becomes red without arguing why it has to be red. So, it’s an opportunity for pleasure, opportunity for stress reduction, opportunity for a lot of those things. And opportunity to get to know this other side, [that I’ve put aside] for twenty-five years.

[Edgar's note: I'll have more from this conversation posted soon. Dr. Sevigny's image, from his website, is used with his permission.]

Soup 'n Art

I've had this discussion with Melinda: "What's the important thing about the work we're doing right now, that it gets seen, or that it sells?" We have an agreement, pro tem, that we'd concentrate on getting it seen, and worry about selling later.

That's not to say that even showing work isn't freighted with emotional landmines. But Dinnerware was terrific to put together this show, taking all comers, throwing a kind of potluck, with several artists bringing big crocks of their best soups, and asking a small donation for ladles full of lovely hot home cooking.

I kind of thought the accordian was a fine bit of bistro atmosphere, too. I'm afraid I didn't get the gentleman's name, but he knew his way around the classic German folk songs. (And it was very kind of Melinda to take some photos to help me record the event.)

All together, music+food+original art on walls (and floor), from dozens of artists, gave the evening a welcoming, festive air. And made for an interesting and varied opening reception. The theme: to mark the passing of the last administration, and the entry of the new with art that dealt with the times.

It took me a bit of nerve to even submit my work for a show. I'm not sure I'm ready for an audience, so I was nervous to begin with. And, given the theme, the nature of the call to the artists, and the no-jury entry -- well, it goes without saying that the work is going to be highly granular in texture. Or maybe the metaphor is "all over the map." It's a big subject, and everyone's got a hobby horse to ride. The point is, Dinnerware provides a rare venue: a chance to display without value judgements intervening between the artist and the audience. This is important. It is not just freedom to be whoever you want to be... it's unconditional acceptance.

There were entries in ceramic sculpture, digital video, and large stenciled cloths on the floor. Paintings, drawings, prints, photos and collages. The content -- and let's face it, this was a highly charged theme -- ranged from lamentations to jubilant, from snarky to histrionic.

In one room there hung a 9 foot tall American flag, done entirely in black velvet -- even the red, white and blue bits. A Mac showed image collages morphing behind phrases taken from speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcolm X, while voiceovers from historic gatherings muttered along behind.

One artist took the front page of the New York Times, which featured an array of 9 photos from Bush's final news conference, showing his alternately combative, smirky, and defensive expressions. On each photo, a little "Hitler" mustache had been added. Some images challenged the viewer to accept a pair of nude white guys, or lampooned the "border fence", wherein America looked like the metropolis in the second Babe movie.

Yes, the show was cathartic. Yes, some was hilarious, some was haunting, some cliche-ridden. Some work was pointed, some blunt. Much was petty, some obscure to the point of opacity. Me, I liked the turkey soup, the whole-grain shepherd's loaf of bread, and the peppery corn chowder. Because, sometimes, a hot meal is as good as a come-to-Jesus altar call.

Validating the Best Thing You've Ever Done

This post steps outside of my expertise, and so I'm inviting response from those more experienced than me at showing and selling art.

A bit of background: Melinda posted about this, in an indirect way, which got me thinking. And Silvina Day is struggling with her authentic vision which got me thinking some more. I was reading How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist the other night, and had to read and re-read a short passage on "validation" of one's work, because it struck me so. Then, I was visiting Martha Marshall's blog, and read her excellent posts "It's Your Art, not your Soul" and the earlier "Fear of Rejection." The comments there are important to read too, filled with real experience, and wisdom.

I'll reproduce my own contribution to those comments:

Can a non-fine-artist chime in on this one? I’m forced by my field to have a different perspective. As a graphic designer, I create work to fit a client’s parameters. If it’s rejected, it’s basically because I didn’t meet the client’s
needs. Sometimes this happens, when I just know that the work I made is excellent in every way — design, concept, execution (it’s a work of art, man!)… but if I put a Ronald McDonald in front of an exec from Walt Disney, he’s not gonna buy it, no matter how good an idea it is: it doesn’t fit him. That doesn’t make the work less than great — because the client isn’t the determinant of the objective success of the work. But then, neither are my peers.

I’ve seen Martha [Marshall] and Bob Cornelus refer to Art & Fear, which I don’t have, but a quote appears in “How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist”:

"…courting approval, even that of peers, puts a dangerous amount of power in the hands of the audience. Worse yet, the audience is seldom in a position to grant (or withhold) approval on the one issue that really counts—namely, whether or not you’re making progress in your work."–Bayles & Orland, Art & Fear 1993, p.47

...but I had more to say on the topic than I had the nerve to post on someone else's blog:

Unlike my design work, when I create "art that nobody asked for," I put it out for people (anyone) to take it or leave it. If they leave it, I know that that piece didn't meet the viewer's needs -- for that person, at that time. We respond to art at a very visceral, pre-conscious level, choosing to love work that fills a hole in our psyche -- much like we choose mates. We meet hundreds, maybe thousands of potential mates, but are attracted to only one or two at a gut, "this person completes me," level. Showing work is like speed dating between the art and the viewer: it clicks or not, but it has a lot more to do with the psychology of the viewer than whether or not the art is "valid."

The circumstances remind me of something profound that I heard; There was a movie made about this nun -- Susan Sarandon plays the nun, who works with prisoners on death row. In a documentary I saw, the (real) nun was asked why she worked with these killers. She said [paraphrasing] "People are more ... than the worst thing they've done in their lives."

Art is like that: "a discrete act, in a finite space and time." It isn't your whole life, it isn't all of you, no matter how much you pour into it, there's more of you left over that isn't in the artwork. So, rejection of a piece, or a body of work, or your whole career, isn't rejection of you. It can't be. You are always more than the best thing you've ever done in your life.

Validation of your work must spring from your own feeling of rightness and authenticity about your work. In design, I've had to defend my work, and validate it for others — "Why did you choose blue? What's this line for?" This has taught me to be conscious of my choices, and to be articulate about what is and isn't there. But, it's also made me sure that my work was what it was for one very good reason: because that's how I did it. And no one can take that away.

Don't let anyone take your work away from you by making you doubt it.

Retablo: Leave Nothing To Chance

7"x12" Watercolor on paper

The second in my marks and signs series.

This scene struck me on a number of levels — the St. Francis statue seemingly guarding the Obama sign, the little collection of rocks, as though each was somehow signifying something (or as an offering) at his feet. The horseshoe. Perhaps the Obama sign is a prayer, or perhaps it's a shield, too. And, despite all these wards and sigils — marks and collected objects designed to have an intangible influence on the tangible — the door is gated with iron bars.

Overall, the tableau is stultifyingly prosaic and ill-composed. But there was so much faith being put out there on display, that I thought it should be painted with a kind of heroic energy. It moves me, that we humans are driven to redirect, reshape or reform their world with each scribble and arrangement of things, sometimes even without rational consideration or consciousness of our desires.

Arizona - land of potholes

Near Madera Canyon, December 5, 2008, watercolor 8.25"x5.125" (21x13cm)

I picked up a 'how to' watercolor book a while back. It illustrated all these techniques that my instructors pretty much forbade me from using, like glazing, because (in the hands of an inexperienced student) they muddied colors.

And in the book, they'd do this thing, like putting down a coat of paynes gray before putting in some other color, to dull the color and make it look like atmospheric perspective, or shading. My teachers would have been appalled -- for one thing, Payne's Gray was strictly prohibited. (For another, we were supposed to pre-mix and put down the color and value as it is intended, not use layers, which was considered to be somehow polluting the purity of the original stroke).

But, I tell myself, I'm a big boy now. I can make my own rules. No longer a penniless student, I now own a tube of Payne's Gray -- I can use it if I want. There's more: I also now own one of my mentor's paintings... and he glazed. Man, did he glaze.

In this book, there was one particular exercise of distant hills with a castle on it, which I attempted. [My results were ... not unlike a painting by Bob Ross's least apt pupil.] I did the work to understand the concept. But, I didn't care for the result. In particular, I disliked the look of those "distant hills" with their two blurry layers, one of paynes gray and one of blue.

Yet, when you're out in the field, and there's this thing you want to do, and all you've ever seen for it is the one thing you don't like. So, you try to do something different, but no matter how you try, it comes out just like the thing you don't like. It's like when you're going down the road, and you see this pothole you want to miss, but if you keep looking at the pothole instead of the clear spot next to it, it's a fair bet you will steer your tires straight into that hole. And wince.

Urban Dysphonium: Juke's Box

A new project. I've been seeing these marks -- graffitti -- around me, and I'm inspired. This set of utility boxes have been a constant target for tagging. Tagging strikes me as a futile, nearly hopeless attempt to mark territory. In our area, tagging is soon erased, making a pristine new surface for the next writer's scribble, each in rotation.

For artists, perhaps grappling for exposure in galleries or museums, taggers may seem like anti-establishment outsiders, looking for their own shot at a moment of notoriety.

All we mark-makers change our environment, and our environment changes us.

6.75"x12" -- on canson watercolor block.

Someone talk me down*

I was reading through a few chapters of the "Writing About Art" book I recommended below, when I started to get my knickers all in a bunch, (i.e., a tizzy, a conniption) because something's been bothering me for a while now, and it's hard to broach, like telling a coworker they have bad breath. That takes trust, and shouldn't be undertaken by someone without a lot of compassion -- and if you'll bear with me, I'll try to show that I have compassion. And it will only look as if I'm a hypocrite, but that is merely an illusion, (sweeping abracadabra hand gestures inserted here) because I have an excuse for myself...

Presented for your consideration

Consider a couple of artworks: Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles D'Avignon, and any given "odalisque" (I'll pick Ingres.) Both great art. Both classics, in the sense that they changed the way art was done. Each a painting of female nudes, the former a tribute to brothel workers, the latter an aesthetic rationalization for invading other countries and ogling their women. Now, let me not put too fine a point on my examples: these are parlor pornography, celebrating masculinity and representing women as objects to be used, possessed, possibly -- if charity is given -- to be rescued. But nothing so much as bedmates, accessible and either willing, or vulnerable to domination. These are painted by men, for a male audience. Although I'm not qualified to speak for them, I'll vouchsafe few women would be disposed to depict these subjects in either of these ways.

Am I condemning these works? No. I'm criticising them, because I need to make a point, and these examples provide an obvious demonstration: art is (arguably) made for an audience. One task of art criticism is to ask, "Who was this art made for? Who will relate deeply/be moved by/find beauty in this work?" These examples demonstrate that even great art is aimed at a minor segment of the potential audience, not the whole populace.

So, what's your point?

I went to a Sustainability Fair this weekend, where people were presenting alternative energy and local growing techniques. Last week, I was watching Frontline's documentary, "Heat." In it, an Indian woman -- either an engineer or economist, I think -- is saying that Asia is having the US/European way of doing things shoved down their throats, but if Asians were to live like Americans, there would be no more resources left, not enough energy, not enough food... disaster.

Dude, you're harshing my buzz, and you still have no point.

Take your everyday paintings of confections... Hershey's Kisses? Seriously? What group does that appeal to -- aside from Hershey's executives (because now that the last plant in America is shutting down, it sure as hell doesn't appeal to Hershey's factory workers)? No, it appeals to people that can't afford classic art, but want to have some "real" art to hang on the wall. It's not too "modern," it's not too "old fashioned." It pats them on the head for being not too rich and not too poor. It fits just where it should: in the vanilla zone.

The point is this: look at us, and by "us" I mean us artists. We make culture. When we change, culture must follow. Our work either reinforces the status quo, or challenges it. What's got me upset is -- for lack of any new terminology -- middle class art. Is the work we are doing simply stroking the egos of our audience, feeding their complacent self images, like Ingres painting an ostensible seraglio slave so that his audience could feel justified in colonizing those barbaric parts of the world (while having a flight of sexual fancy)? Should our audience feel self satisfied, or should they really ought to be getting off their butts and going out to change the world? I mean, "Artists! Pull your heads out of your asses!"

No, I don't mean message art

... Unless you're into that. The plein air paintings I do in my town today are different from the ones I did 20 years ago in college. Back then, the air was so clear, the blues so dark, you'd swear you could catch glimpses of the stars in broad daylight, if you looked carefully. Today, the skies are paler -- a washed-out blue, almost white. When I paint a sky today, I'm recording a change for posterity. I'm documenting for my (someday) grand kids, "I saw the sky lose its color, a change that occured in the space of a generation. It wasn't like this a few decades ago." I find myself wanting to 'cheat,' make them bluer, more saturated than what is in front of me. It is sentimentalism, and a sense of loss. Sometimes, I give in to nostalgia, but I'm just lying to myself.

There's a scenic vista not far from me, rolling foothills and low mountains, that may soon be the site of a new open pit mine. If I paint that 'scape today, I am preserving my impression for a posterity that will no longer be able to share it. They will see an entirely different vista from that roadside overlook.

So, let me turn the question around. When you paint, what's your point?


*Credit for this title must be given to one of my favorite political commentators, Rachel Maddow, who has been one of my favorites since the days of the lizzbians (and if you recognize that reference, you know what I mean.)

Okay, don't look at it, feel it

Canson Montval Marine paper block. Cover says: 9" x 21.125". Ruler says: 9" x 19". Maybe that's why it was on sale. But it is a beauty of a super-wide panarama sheet.

Yeah, the painting is pretty bad, but a few things worked: First, I was able to use my "penance sheet" (see below) to choose colors deliberately, instead of accidentally. And it saved me from a couple of bad choices I'd have previously made. So, "thanks," to all of you that encouraged me in doing my homework.

Second, I was able to paint "big" (for me -- things being relative). It was liberating to use big brushes and my whole arm to make strokes. I didn't have much time to prep or paint this one -- it was a fast sketch. But, oh, the joy to be able to move through the medium! Can't wait to try another (hopefully with more time to work on it).

But time has been short -- thus the dearth of posts, or comments elsewhere. To any of you that have borne with, and come back after my long absence, you have my gratitude. We happy few.

One last thing-- a book to recommend, for all of us looking for the language to describe what it is we do: "A Short Guide to Writing About Art" by Sylvan Barnet. It's small, easy to read, and no doubt inexpensive in a used copy of the many editions extant.

How art made me

I've subtitled this blog "Art musings and self-abusings," and my self-abuse is amply demonstrated by my various stabs at making art. So in the interests of living up to the name, let me post once without the art, as an "art musing."

As a person whose job is communications, I've long pondered questions like, "How is it that art came to be what it is?", "Why do I feel compelled to make art, even when it hurts?", "What is it about art that moves people so deeply (and some people don't seem moved at all)?" and "Is art important?"

At a personal level, I've answered all of these, but I know my answers don't apply to most people -- since most people don't go out of their way to make or view (capital "A") Art, they must feel differently about it than I. Nevertheless, despite the ambivalence that art is given in America, I see the world is full of art, and images, and objects that have clearly been designed with aesthetic considerations. As a marketer, I know that imagery is deeply affecting to the psyche -- at a deep, lizard-brain/subconscious level, marketers are able to manipulate feelings about products by using the right imagery.

One reason is the power of metaphor -- abstract thinking -- which is related to framing or how we view the world. Other reasons are being shown to me as brand new concepts in a series I've rented from my local video store, "How Art Made the World." My mind is being blown with each new episode.

Inhale... exhale. Painting is breath.

This cliff face in Bandolier National Monument (New Mexico) still fascinates me. Not only is it imposing to sit at its foot, even though it's probably only 70 feet tall, but it is pocked with the small pits and recesses of the massive amounts of homes that were built against it, perhaps 800 years ago, by a stone age society. The place still echoes with the sounds of Indian children playing and mothers grinding corn in metates. Drawings fill the cliff walls, and man's hand is clear in every curve of the sandstone. Deer feed on the grass just tens of feet from the tourist trail.

This particular image, however, draws me like a magnet because the little cloud curled so far above the cliff line is a mirror of the rocks below, like the outline of South America that appears in the west coast of Africa. Just color me romantic.

Mostly, I'm just happy to get an image down on paper. If I can't do a painting, well, nothing is really going right.

Globe Arizona Painting

So, I cribbed a page from David Lobenberg, and tried a long and narrow format. Yes, it's imitative, yes, it's unoriginal, but I was inspired by his post of watercolor sketches he did in this remarkably long sketchbook, and by this cool (long thin) painting on Moments of Clarity.

I don't have the actual long format sketchook that David used, so I drew a thin rectangle on my little moleskine watercolor book, and used little, tiny brushes. This thing's about three inches (7.5cm) wide and seven or eight inches (23cm) tall.

Since I'm a noob at all this, I've not tried anything larger than the moleskine yet, but I'm beginning to get frustrated at the size of the page. Yes, they are very convenient for: a quick sketch; schlepping your gear around the countryside; and curtailing those feelings of excessive grandeur that might arise from having a great big sheet of paper to despoil (if said feelings aren't pre-empted by anxiety about despoiling a great big sheet of paper... but let's give oneself the benefit of the doubt, and assume one can approach the prospect with confidence.)

Joking aside, I was also led to the composition by the landscape in front of me: clustering clouds, springing up in the humid afternoon air over the mines in the distance. I wanted to do a panorama, but my locale (and time of day) didn't lend itself to anything dramatic. The colors were beginning to wash out and the sun was approaching noon, which made the shadows on the mountains flat. The most interesting thing to me was the sky, so I figured I'd feature that.