At the base of a couple of tiny trees: underbrush

Nope, not feeling the burn at all of missing out on all those opening receptions and parties—invitations to which arrive in my Inbox by the hour.

Ginkgo, tree of wisdom (X-small)

Instead, I am snapping photos to prove to you my utter state of equilibrium, to which the (above) canopy of light and shade, cast by a ginkgo tree not much wider than my chest, can attest.
Ooops. how’d that tree-with-wanderlust get in here??

Oh, well, it’s no use.

The above “sempervirens” species may have a sense of constant purpose (these plants are, like, well over 100 years old!), but I, alas, don’t. I often waver. Being only 47 years of age young, I actually believe, from time to time, that my small neck of the woods might not hold EveryThingAmazing there is to see.

But wait, what’s this?

up closer…remember, it’s intimate scale we’re after here:
and then, farther back. Nope, not a sculpture at all. I must have been dreaming of some grand Pallazo.
It’s ‘just’ the remains of a tree; it’s modest age estimate: 800 years old.

That pre-dates Venice’s golden age, and I’m guessing it will still be here after the Vernissage.

Guess I’ll visit later in the summer, when the canals are more…ripe.
Until then, hello: Bushwick!

a shrine to the only un-gentrified corner left in DUMBO?

Nice.
Perfect for place where it was sited. Dark. Not a place you’d want to linger; indeed, something I passed, feeling lost, but ‘on my way.’
(the BlackBerry camera just doesn’t do it justice.)

Listen, I need to confess. I am just hating art in galleries right now. What feels vibrant to me? The serendipitous “see”: the art I don’t expect to find, and find, anyway. It feels right. Creativity seems irrepressible, when I encounter it On My Way.

I saw this on the way to a studio visit with the lovely and talented Gregory Montreuil in the East Village a month or so ago. Poster/poetry:

The Word on the Street. That’s what I’m after.

from Pickersgill Reef's photostream, flickr

But first, some Buddhist Economics, courtesy of E.F. Schumacher, whose book, Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered, was excerpted by one my favorite reads, Chapel Hill, NC’s magazine “The Sun,” which says:

German-born E.F. Schumacher was a British economist best known for his critique of unfettered capitalism in the West. An early hero of the environmental movement, Schumacher urged the development of local, self-reliant economies and more restrained, conservative use of nonrenewable resources.  Buddhism, which he encountered while working as an economic advisor in Burma, played a central role in the evolution of his vision.

They go on to quote his book, above, at length. Here is a tiny bit:

While the materialist is mainly interested in goods, the Buddhist is mainly interested in liberation. But Buddhism is the “middle way” and therefore in no way antagonistic to physical well-being. It is not wealth that stands in the way of liberation but the attachment to wealth; not the enjoyment of pleasurable things but the craving for them. The keynote of Buddhist economics, therefore, is simplicity and nonviolence. From an economist’s point of view, the marvel of the Buddhist way of life is the utter rationality of its pattern—amazingly small means leading to extraordinarily satisfactory results.

For the modern economist this is very difficult to understand. he is used to measuring the “standard of living” by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is “better off” than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. Thus, if the purpose of clothing is a certain amount of temperature comfort and an attractive appearance, the task is to attain this purpose with the smallest possible effort—that is, with the smallest annual destruction of cloth and with the help of designs that involve the smallest possible input of toil. The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity.

Emphasis mine.

The young Hebrew David hoists the head of the Philistine Goliath by Gustave Doré (1832-1883) off Wikipedia

Or does it still lurk among us? Sorry not to have posted for so long on the topic. After a slew of studio visits, I’m happy to say that we’re getting there, making progress. However, I also must report that there are huge, huge misconceptions harbored by artists on the topic of this itty-bitty, often-no-more-than-350-word foe. First off, artists need to know that words aren’t their foe at all—but their friend (if they wield their pen-swords right). And secondly, they need to do a little less naval gazing and a little more…READing.

That’s right: I’m meeting artists who just aren’t reading enough; books (good books), poetry, theory, criticism. And what’s more, they’re not reading critically. They think that because Joe Blow Critic wrote something that “sounds” like good writing, that he must know what he’s talking about when it comes to the actual art. Not so. If you read with a pen in your hand, and really asked yourself if one thought logically followed another in said critique, that you’d find some logical gaps.

Assignment: Read all the art publications you usually read in a week—and then some—with a pen in your hand at all times. Make notes in the margins. Go see the shows that the writer is talking about, if you can.

Ask yourself: Can I (with some hard work) do better?

They say the tongue is mightier than the sword.

Believe it.

I owe this insight to Jean Shin, a marvelous sculptor (who’s got a nice profile in this month’s Sculpture Magazine, btw.) Why not just stick to the basic interview questions journalists use when trying to talk about your work?

WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, HOW?

Ask them of the artwork; you can even interview it as if it were the subject, and see what you get. (“What are you made of?”; “Where were you made?”….) I’m guessing that the results Shin got with her classes at Pratt and elsewhere are pretty similar to the results I get with my artist-interview-style of approach.

Asking them of Shin’s piece in Sculpture, which uses re-purposed trophies as its main raw material, would certainly yield some rich results.

"Everyday Monuments," 2009. Detail of installation. Image: Seong Kwon, courtesy the artist.

photo by Erik Sanner @ #hashtagclass, 3/17/10

As this week of free advice on artist’s statements comes to a close, here’s Two Things I’ve Learned: 1) Don’t give your work away for free (artists, writers, this means You); even if it’s for a nominal fee, your work must get valued. 2) Try not to treat your attempts at writing-to gain-clarity-and-objectivity as a chore, and, when objectivity comes from others, don’t treat it as harsh criticism—but rather as a gift. If it’s given to you by someone you feel safe with, insights are gold.

How can you start writing? This, from “Writing Without Teachers” by Peter Elbow (a book I love to quote):

Most people’s relationship to the process of writing is one of helplessness. First, they can’t write satisfactorily or even at all. Worse yet, their efforts to improve don’t seem to help. It always seems that the amount of effort and energy put into a piece of writing has no relation to the results…

The commonsense, conventional understanding of writing is as follows. Writing is a two-step process. First you figure out your meaning, then you put it into language….first try to figure out what you want to say; don’t start writing till you do; make a plan; use an outline; begin writing only afterward. Central to this model is the idea of keeping control, keeping things in hand…

Elbow doesn’t like clean. Elbow likes messy in his teaching process, and so do I.

I contend that virtually all of us carry this model of the writing process around in our heads and that it sabotages our efforts to write…this idea of writing is backwards. That’s why it causes so much trouble. Instead of a two-step transaction of meaning-into-language, think of writing as….”

So, what do you think he says?

I just read my own advice, above, (about not giving away your talents for free) and realize I can’t just give away all this writing advice to you until you pick up a pen and try. Unless people take an active, not a passive stance, then my advice is all just lecturing, and talk talk talk (you know, the stuff in Grad School?). Talk is cheap. And Writing is hard work. I’m just saying that writing doesn’t have to feel useless and beyond you and not fun.

PostScript, another conclusion I’ve come to, after this week: The written word is ultimately more powerful than art when it comes to affecting a fellow human being, social change, and fostering new things. Thanks for putting up with my rants. I hope they helped just a little, or at least got you started writing.

(Thanks to Erik for his documentation—as always! Check out his new blog of archived projects.)

and his subjects are often people—or prevailing notions of—Power. Hence, I shouldn’t have been surprised last night when he suddenly called me out as conducting the most in-your-face, authoritarian, put-people-on-the-spot-to-give-a-right-answer #hashtagclass session that he’s seen yet. [Sorry, I have to paraphrase on the above; I was writing on my computer (artist's statements, remember?!) while he was talking, and couldn't focus and listen at the same time.] Funny. I was So Trying Not To Be an Authority Figure that I came off exactly like one. But that’s cool. Bill practices what he preaches in his work; and, well, so do I.
Watch this humorous video of “Powhida” from C-Monster. Then read this article from the New York Times: that’s right, Tufts University is now accepting YouTube videos in application for college. Indeed, Powhida makes his artist’s statement many times over.

The old adage, “by my students, I am taught,” never felt so real. Time for me to teach video editing; word editing is so Old School. That said, I tried to prevail. I wrote a live statement for Jen Dalton (the other organizer of #hashtagclasss) and took way too long to do it. But I didn’t do too bad a job, considering I was working while the aforementioned artist’s statement/pedagogy/meta-discussion was taking place. (The one I couldn’t really hear.) Dalton’s past work was new to me. We looked at it in some Online images, and I asked her a few questions. ONe thing I learned (in addition to the fact that she’s an incredibly private person, and in addition to the fact that the overall arc of her artistic work is pretty darned interesting), is that, since she was a kid, she’s been obsessed with “bean counting,” and, more recently, with how statistics, raw data, survey results, and the like get depicted in visual terms (pie charts, bar graphs, diagrams). I couldn’t help thinking of that Tufts video paradigm shift once again—and wonder if she hasn’t anticipated something that’s now in the air. The NYTimes reports that one video has gotten the most views. What’s it of? A young lady, named Amelia Downs, who does interpretive dances of math concepts. Jen, take a look:

I’ll leave you the applicant’s written statement, which accompanies the video. My professional opinion on edits?: I wouldn’t change a thing.

Hello Tufts Admission person!

This movie shows me performing my math dances! The dances shown are:

Volume of a solid of revolution (y-axis)
Line graph
Scatter plot
Box and whisker plot
Pie graph
Bar Graph
Sin and Cos graph
Cot graph (THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE CSC)

I hope you enjoyed them!

Thanks to my best friend, Tim, who filmed it!

Next up, Jen and Bill, if we ever do this again (and I wouldn’t mind; I would be so much better at it a second time): I pull out the appropriate tags/metadata from every artist’s statement I write. it’s yet another skill artists are gonna need. #thetruth.

(Powhida closeup image from his [2006?] show at Schroeder Romero Gallery courtesy of Barry Hoggard’s photostream on Flickr; Powhida video first ripped from C-Monster.)

I don’t remember getting any really cogent response. The show, after all, was done under SVA’s umbrella, and under the tutelage of a teacher leading a class—no matter how boundary breaking it might seem to be. I looked at their blog recently; though it’s inspired others (as it did, me), I don’t see a new currency (beyond giving away your services) has caught on. No, the paradigm hasn’t shifted. That said, I tried to shift it last year—in vain.

Sarah Schmerler teaching writing for photographers at Pierogi gallery, 2009

Last year, about this time, I asked dealer Joe Amrhein for a favor: I wanted to teach writing in a commercial, not an academic setting—a place that would have more meaning, and raise the stakes, so to speak, for artists. He and Susan were nice enough to consent, and gave me their gallery late one night. It went OK, sure, but looking back: I made a lot of mistakes: of narrowing my attendees too specifically  (there was a Nadja Bournonville show in the adjoining room—I thought it’d make good fodder for photographers, specifically, to write and think about); of charging money for my services (I should have anticipated the free new currency of the moment); of not using my time well. Three hours later, and I still didn’t get through all the material I needed to get though, in order to empower photographers to write. Sheesh. Can you forgive me? I was alone. No Twitter, no #hashtagclass blog discussions, no other people (Ed?!) believing in my quest to keep it real. To keep the market intact, but bring EDUCATION to the MARKETPLACE.
Ed, Dan, my old professor Alan (who’s got a photo gallery in Chelsea), and anyone who’ll listen: I think that The Market System needs to invest, and give back, and otherwise cede a small portion of its geography, time, and resources to education. (Sort of like the 1% for art program makes developers fund public art?) The Academy (see my previous post) is helpless in this; they’re a business, like any other, at this point, serving you, the dealer, with fresh meat for consumption. Down with this collector-centric, Art Fair System; down with The Buyer is Always Right. Up with learning.
We need A New Pedagogy.
The “currency” can stay the same; artists need it to live. As do we all.
You know what Lucy van Pelt says to Charlie Brown in that Christmas special as they’re walking through the snow: Nobody ever gives me what I really want for Christmas… (says Lucy)
What is it you really want? (asks Charlie Brown)
Real estate.

Women getting drawing instruction at Pratt, ca. 18-something

Since then, I’ve gotten past the rage (mostly) and have come to a place of pity for grad schools in general because: 1) My painting teachers probably weren’t any better than I was at writing; hence they conveyed to me their own word-angst; 2) [conspiracy theory time] Art School, the Business, is about perpetuation of the Academy first and foremost, and puts the individual voice of its pupils, at best, second; 3) Writing a good artist’s statement, at least at first, is like trying to scratch an itch in the middle of your back where you just can’t reach; it’s like trying to see the back of your head without a mirror. You need an honest helper to edit and coach you towards finding your voice.
This requires time and patience, and mentoring isn’t what school is always about; nowadays, art school is about producing viable (read: sellable) artists right away. If you can’t make a mistake, and don’t feel comfortable enough to lose yourself (in order to find your own voice), you’re doomed to write a lousy, arch, forced artist’s statement.
(photo, courtesy of brooklynpubliclibrary.org)
That said, there are steps you can take. Once again, I’ll reprint my list of “good and bad” points in writing an artist’s statement. It’s what I normally would hand out on week 5 of a semester-long class on the subject.

Actually, this list is lot to throw at you right away, and goes against my aforementioned theory that writing with artists should, ideally, be taken in good time. But the Society we live in is pretty ADD; and, as I mentioned just now, it looks like you’re on your own. Full disclosure: I’d gladly instruct you in this in a grad school setting. Thing is, I can’t figure out how: The New School, where I used to teach a (totally successful!) Artist’s Writing Workshop for about 9 years, canned it, without warning. Is my conspiracy theory close? Do I still have resentment/anger issues? Right on both counts.
*Deep breath* I’ll do my best to help on Wednesday. And, later next week, I’ll have a whole lot of time by today’s standards: I participate in a day-long talk at City University, to MFA candidates. (Closed, except to those enrolled.) So, maybe things ain’t so bleak. We can do this!

I am not sure if I am allowed to share the text; I ought to get his permission first. But one part reads:
“Despite his efforts to give in to his own cynicism, Strahm ignores himself and continues to make art. Hence, his success is built on failure….” I explain to Kurt that I thoroughly expect to fail on Wednesday to write a really really decent statement in 15 minutes; I also explain that the ways in which I fail may be very empowering and instructive, both for myself (I’m pretty burnt out from this Recession) and for artists.

He’s not buying it. He thinks artists are all out for blood sport, and want to watch me crash and burn. So be it.
P.S. I only gave him, like, 5 minutes, tops. Ha HA!
Read Kurt’s amazing blog, www.restlus.com, and tell me if I’m not right about him!