november2006

Uneasy relationship, November 25 2006

I’ve read and heard it said that one should always take a bad review in stride and that is makes you look insecure to critique the critic. But from the start of my art career (about 1980), I had an uneasy relationship with art critics, whether they wrote about my work or not.

And 99.9% of the time, not. Maybe me they would write about. If I try to find the writing about my work alone, it is miniscule. Even when I received a two page color spread in the San Francisco Chronicle’s California Living magazine, the writing was mostly biographic (even though I was all of 28).

It was only after looking back at it all and then searching out how other women’s art was written about, that I saw how this was a matter of course and that there are often different standards for different people. Some are never even compared to the canon, as if we cannot be contextualized, and when we are, it is like with like. I used to think that my work wasn’t good enough because the focus was on me instead, but now I see that I am not unusual there.

When I heard that I did not ‘forward the story of art’, I realized how much pressure must have been on me to change art history. Men can make art similar to what already exists and it is celebrated. It is a good thing that you can place the names Stephen Hayes and George Inness in the same sentence. But it was a bad thing to put Eva Lake and Bridgit Riley in the same sentence.

The first show I put together in a regular gallery setting was The Secret Side at the Northwest Artists Workshop in 1980 (named after the Nico song), a sort of New Wave/Punk-driven event. (though either term isn't quite right). The critic for the Willamette Week came to the doorway, scanned, did an about-face and never saw that show during its run (I know – my spies kept an eye out).

He wrote us off as ‘Neo-Dadaists and art students’ in his listings, which was kind of funny because most of us didn’t have typical art schooling at all. Anyway, it was an unsubstantiated dig. And I began my uneasy relationship with the press.

By the end of the year, things had changed. A bunch of Portlanders found out that those weirdoes were a part of something larger, something significant - and they stayed in the news, contributing weird art and music, which would be influential for decades to come. Gee, Portland had Punk too. And when the Willamette Week did its “Ten Best Things in Portland in 1980” article (yes, there were only ten then), The Secret Side was one of them. A show their art critic had never bothered to see.

It became apparent to me then that the critic did not recognize what he was seeing and since he did not know about it, he wrote it off. He was more concerned with seeming 'right' and since he was too lazy to find out what was really going on, he ignored it.

Copwatch, November 21 2006

While watching Law and Order, if the officers say: “Come out, we won’t shoot you” – my husband will then reply to the TV: “You know they’re not in Portland.”

Yes, it’s that bad. It seems that about once a month the police kill someone around here. The last I noticed was when a man was holed up in a motel not far from where we live. The police approached and he said: “Well just kill me.” This comment seemed a reference to Jim Jim’s death and other over-the-top- reactions by the police in recent years. Anyway, sure enough, they drew fire and killed him.

The other bit of news to really unnerve me are the officers who pulled over women drivers, made them strip, fondled them and worse, telling them that they would go to jail if they did not comply. Even when these guys got caught, they kept their jobs, still out on the street. It was only after repeated pressure from the press that these assholes stepped down from their jobs – not because they were fired.

As I am a new driver, the whole thing makes me uneasy. If you walk around the city, you are not so much a target (though obviously not for many like Jim). But being in a car almost licensed the police to invade you in ways they could not otherwise, or at least so easily, because you can be isolated with them. Entire strategies formulate in my brain on how I might cope.

There is an organization which can help and at least makes me feel I am not alone in my paranoia: Copwatch. Like the police don’t have a right to search at all, for starters.

Passion, November 19 2006

There are a lot of people who make the art world happen: curators, critics, dealers, museum staff, writers, collectors, etc. But I keep going back to artists when it comes to Artstar Radio, where I started. And they have spoiled me.

The only real difference between me and Julie Bernard’s Art Focus on KBOO is that she covers all of those who make it happen. She’s just as interested in the director of a museum as she is the artist.

Not me. Like Mark Kostabi once said: there’s nothing like a point of view. I like a stand, right or wrong, but a stand. It’s the artist who so consistently provides this.

In the best interviews - and it happens all of the time – the artist does come to some kind of a ‘conclusion’ right on the air. This is what interests them, this is what their work is about, this is what they believe. It’s a passion. And since it probably is not for everyone, it’s also a risk.

But they don’t have the same kind of constituency that a curator or dealer might. Those who actually put together shows might look to stay a course, to reach out and appeal as best they can. I see nothing wrong with this, but sometimes it makes for a steadying of passion, as opposed to an uproar of it.

And I like the uproar. I like hearing that raison d’etre, that drive, clarity and risk. Luckily plenty of artists come my way to provide it:

Cynthia Mosser on November 20th

Paul Arensmeyer on November 27th

Sean Healy on December 4th

Baby Smith (from Los Angeles) on December 11th

Lou Cabeen (from Seattle) on December 18th

Ready for winter, November 16 2006

When I first came home from the hospital, I passed by three works almost finished. My urge was to shut them off, literally, like turning off a light. Because like a light they beckoned yet there was nothing I could do. As time passed, I felt more disconnected from the work. A flood came and went, even invaded bits of the studio, which made a strange sort of sense. Nothing outrageous, but enough to make the distance easier and like a part of a general blur.

Occasionally I would look at the pieces like I was not the one who made them. They were soaked in jewel tones in the darkness and ready for winter.

As I am shaky in hand, I was not ready to put on any final coats and thought it best to start something new. I had no idea what that would be as I went down into the basement yesterday. But the box of paint, as I sorted through, held so much possibility. It’s like I saw it through different eyes. Like a flood, the colors pelted interior views, things I had never seen, in one instant.

About half of the Richter Scale has already been painted (20 pieces now finished). This second half will be a lot more fun to paint, because I am grateful that it comes at all. Enough things are hard right now, but painting will not be one of them.

The Digital Image, November 14 2006

Recently mattmc made an observation in PORT that a lot of our art can be dis-serviced when it is shared online. This is a sore spot with me that has only grown with time. A sore spot especially because digital is about the only way I will look at images anymore - yet.

The more my art is shared in the digital format, the more doubts I have about the whole process of looking and absorbing an image in this way. This is because way too often the viewer seems to forget that they are not looking at the real thing, but at a complete abbreviation. Yet it is this abbreviation that stays in their head and can even dominate once they have even been exposed to the real thing, right in front of them.

Funny, they know that the Venus by Botticelli does not really look like that, if they see it in digital format. And if you’ve ever seen more than one repro of The Last Supper, you know that no two are alike: one more orange, one almost green, some very detailed, some downright foggy, all depending on the negative and so many other variables.

I know several artists who have not exactly jumped the gun to have a website for exactly this reason. Their work looks nothing like the digital image and so they refrain from being reduced to that, even as others have launched their work online and sold from that activity.

Almost every single time I pull out a digital repro of my work, the first assumption is that I make my work in the computer. Then they seem unbelieving when I tell them that no, I painted it. It’s like the very existence of digital art has negated the possibility of making something geometric by hand. Or the fact that it is reproduced in such a manner means that it must be made that way.

So this long conversation happens nearly every time I share the digital image. The thing which empowered the art and made it travel to distant lands is also its undoing, its reduction to non-paint, to non-belief, to long explanations. By the time I get to philosophy, the reason this piece exists at all in the world, a certain amount of attention has been pissed away. We’ve spent way too long on process, something which for me is part of everything, but no raison d’etre.

November 11 2006: my mate's bonsai in autumn

Orange volunteer, November 3 2006

Maybe a bird planted this Trident Maple. Or maybe it volunteered on its own, claiming a succulent garden as a good place to start. Now it has taken on the colors of autumn, tiny as it is.

Speaking of curators, November 2 2006

I haven’t had all that many on the radio because right from the start, I wanted to hear the artist’s side of things. Curators and critics often have the power to make statements on the work, so I wanted to hand some of that to the artist.

And I’ve learned an immense amount about the world through them – not just about art, but all the life experiences that go into it. Still, last week when I had Namita Gupta Wiggers and Manya Shapiro, two of the three curators for New Embroidery: It’s Not Your Grandma’s Doily, I found it really refreshing to get the back-story on a show, and in a way that the artist does not generally provide.

Actually, Manya is an artist and one to have participated in Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party, so I felt honored to have her there and to hear her link that experience and what is known as second-wave feminism to the new artists of today.

While many people, both male and female, might call themselves a feminist, it was a clear distinction for some artists to draw a line and say: “- but what I make is not a ‘feminist’ art.” This made complete sense to me. My own paintings are not about being a woman. That feels like a trap. I remember one fellow telling me a few years back that it must be really dull to always make art that must lead back to biology. And yeah, I think he’s right.

Anyway, Namita, Manya and I were not all serious throughout the hour – we laughed a lot. I love it when it can get beyond the formal and be loose. Here is a direct link to the broadcast.

More recent entries: October 2006