Stephanie Lee Jackson may just be a mind reader. I say this because I was thinking -- musing, really -- that it would really good to hold a salon of some kind. Salon here being a snooty term meaning "bunch of people sitting around bullshitting." The fact is, since my roommates moved out -- a woefully short time ago, considering the overlap with marriage and children -- I haven't had nearly enough sitting around bullshitting in my life. So I was thinking it'd be a good idea to get some people together, some of the people I've met in the New York art field, to eat some food and talk about whatever came up.
No sooner than I had mused this -- lamenting, too, that my good friend the executive chef has a restaurant in Philadelphia, which is too far to scam free food for a party -- than Stephanie decided to invite people over to her place for dinner. And she even called it a salon. You can hear the proper French pronunciation, can't you? SALawwwh. Great!
Thus it was I rescinded my visitation policy on New York's lesser boroughs (which was strictly "only under pain of death") and drove the treacherous few miles from my place to Stephanie's in its thoroughly ungentrified section of Brooklyn. The party I found there was small but perfectly suited to the apartment; one more guest and someone might have had to balance on the windowsill. Or anyway I might have had to give up the comfy chair I fell into after climbing the stairs.
I ended up spending much more time than I expected getting to know Dan, who goes by Danonymous when he comments on blogs; Oriane Stender, who coincidentally has a piece at Schroeder Romero at the moment; Hiroko, Stephanie's downstairs neighbor; and Stephanie herself. Dan was the real surprise: His online persona is somewhat fractured and off-kilter, a bit peculiar; but in real life he's so articulate, well-spoken, and thoughtful that you can set aside the fact that he spends a lot of his time climbing ladders to put up his anonymous sculptural works on ignored or abandoned buildings. I wish I could find his work online -- I want to show it to you. As it was, we could only see a little of what he's given Stephanie, and it's absolutely charming, with overtones of Alexander Calder. At one point he had Stephanie fetch him some paper and scissors so he could demonstrate how he discovered the detritus from cutting out faces could be made into more faces, and as a result I now own a Dan original, pictured here.
Dan really was entertaining. For one thing -- well, I've met a fair number of artists in my time. And most artists are just regular people, even successful artists, like Inka Essenhigh or Mark Kostabi. They're just people who talk to you very normally. But there are some artists who talk to you as if you're deficient in some way, as if they are ARTISTS and you're just some average person. Which annoys me, because, while I've been reluctant to claim I'm an artist, one thing I certainly am not is average. Who is? But most artists, as I said, are just people, capable of carrying on regular conversations. Dan, however, is that rare artist: Dan is an artist who talked to me as if I was an artist. He really made me feel like what I'm doing is worthwhile.
I also had some time, sitting in the comfy chair, to admire Stephanie's work. If you visit her page of paintings, you have an idea of what it's like walking up the stairs into her apartment, since she's storing her paintings by hanging them on all the walls in the vicinity. It's standard for me to note that you can't judge a painting by a reproduction, but it's especially true of Stephanie's paintings. Online they look okay, kind of not bad, a little sticky and thick. But in person, they do cast a spell. The colors are much more vibrant and alive and what looks heavy and gluey is actually lighter and more like icing on a cake. "Blue City" was hanging right across from me until I switched seats and it really drew me in; it felt Christian, somehow, even though I know it wasn't intended as such and I'm not usually fond of Christianity. It feels like the promise of Christianity, just warm and good and electric.
Between Dan's talking and cutting of paper, and Stephanie's paintings, and the general enthusiasm of Hiroko, I woke up early today feeling like I needed to get some art done. I found some paint I'd mixed up yesterday was still wet enough to work and I found a use for it.
Damn, now I doubly wish I'd been there! Personally I never find danonymous' comments off-kilter; I never regret reading what he has to say. And thanks for the descriptions of Stephanie's paintings irt; I know better than to trust a reproduction.Cheers! Maybe this West-Coaster will catch y'all another time.JD
Hi Chris,It was nice meeting you. Actually I have 4 pieces in the show at Schroeder Romero. I hope you get a chance to see it. Thanks for the ride home!Oriane
Hey Chris, just felt a little shiver go through my upper body for a prolonged two or three minutes. Why? Well, first of all and of lesser importance (in my mind) is your absolutely wonderful verbal documentation of a wonderful evening....a case hwere words are used as poetry to create another view...uh...painting with words? well done. BUt even more so (and what registers for me) is an excitement in your writing and your tone that is very much like the Chris I met.And....your excitement about getting to work.That really gets me excited. I went to another of your blogs, and while I respect the sense of being stopped and stuck (not necessarily true but that is what it sounded like to me)I walked away feeling...well...stopped and stumped.....horrible. I much prefer the connected to himself Chris. It offers back inspiration to keep going.And of course, I have to reluctantly say that if you could write about slumping and get me to slump as well, it certainly speaks of your ability in words.Looking forward to next time. Let me know if you go gallery hopping soon. I hate that stuff but think I would enjoy it looking through yours and Stephanie's reflections.
Dan, I'm hoping I'm one of those artists who is also a writer. I'll also accept -- but only if I have to -- that I might be a writer who is a mediocre artist. On my bad days, I feel fairly sure I'm slightly less than mediocre at both writing and painting. Right now I feel pretty good, though, so I'll thank you for the compliment on my writing and say, yes, of course, I'm a fantastic art critic in addition to being a superlative painter.I'll definitely let you know next time I'm going on a gallery run.Oriane: I'll give anyone a ride anywhere. It's the passengers in my cars that should worry, what with my brilliant track record. Hey, I'm a writer and an artist, I can't be good at everything.Jackadandy: I'm going to go ahead and disregard everything you and I just wrote about judging art by JPEG and say that I really like your paintings. Drawings. Whatever they are. (Ed Winkleman says "If it's on paper, it's a drawing," so I guess he'd say they're drawings.)I particularly like The Blue-Ball'd Butch -- it's beautiful and would be a lot more subtle if not for the title, which sort of gives it away.
Chris , I looked at some of your work on your site. My first comment is that it is tantamount to death to consider yourself a mediocre artist. It is allowable however, to do mediocre work on the way to fine work....assuming that is your goal. The expectation of being "amazing" from the git-go is limited to McDonald Sandwiches. Humans, from infancy take things one and two steps at a time. I liked your e-bay drawings from a personal perspective that multiple works....are a gold mine for personal training. Your skills are good.So the real question that rises up (wholly my perspective and you may choose to fool around with it or reject it outright)is ...where does my mind want to take me with all this? That is the question that allows the skill to manifest the art at higher and higher levels and is solely between you and you.I think that is a quest worthy of one's lifetime.Have fun. And thanks again for your blog. That's how I get my art education and I like your class room.
Dan sez:...it is tantamount to death to consider yourself a mediocre artist.I don't consider myself a mediocre artist. I only imagine it's possible, and then only during my bad days. Most of the time I think of myself as being myself, whatever that is.Your skills are good.Thanks.where does my mind want to take me with all this?That's a formulation of the question I've been asking myself for some time now. When I showed my work to a gallerist, they asked me at the very beginning of our talk, "So it seems you work with sensuality and sexuality. Would you say that's true of all your work?" And I said it was, but I held back a little, because I don't think it's all of my work. There are things I do which have nothing to do with sex, although I do seem to orbit around nude humans artistically speaking.My positive answer to the gallerist's question has left me trying even more than usual to work out how I feel about where I'm going. Do I want to concentrate on sexuality and sexual expression? What else do I want to explore? Is there something across all the various things I'm interested in which connects it all, or am I just going to have separate branches?At bottom, my problem is easily summed up: I prefer representational, figurative art. I'm a big fan of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Italian Renaissance painters. Their subjects were almost always Judeo-Christian or classical Greek and Roman stories. I have no interest in those because a) they've been done to death and b) I don't feel a lot of resonance with them, as a 20th-21st Century American.So, given that my favorite style of painting is representational and figurative, but I don't want to paint stories from the Bible or Greek myths, what the hell do I paint?My compromise position has been simply not to think about it: My paintings come from near-instantaneous ideas with very little conscious planning, thought, or consideration.For example, the idea for Blues One Two Three came about when I was sitting in the office of the music professor at my college. He had a small sculpture of a chimp sitting on a stack of books, looking at a human skull he's holding in one paw. The Professor had stuck a conductor's baton in the crook of the ape's elbow. The Professor was a big fan of jazz, and somehow the idea of the musical primate and the Professor and jazz came together, and I saw a chimp holding a saxophone. The title, meanwhile, came from the top of a page of notes I took a couple of years earlier when, during a lecture on probability, our teacher talked about choosing numbered, colored balls from a bag and getting "blues one, two, three."So the painting was really just an intuitive flash, and for me it was a matter of getting it down as closely as I could to what I could see in my head. In other words, I illustrated my own unwritten mental story.And that's the trouble: My paintings often edge too far over, if you ask me, into illustration. What's the difference between illustration and art? Well, I've discussed that online more than once. I still don't have a coherent answer for it, any more than I can clearly categorize my work as one or the other.But that's been the result of my compromise, which is to paint only whatever comes to me as a roughly complete vision. And I sometimes think I should, or could, or might, try thinking a little bit more, and paying more attention, and being a little more conscious of what I'm doing. And that might make me a better artist.Or would it?Do not for an instant assume I need or expect an actual answer to these questions. I don't. I'm just thinking about them while I paint and draw. And writing about them when the mood strikes.
YUp. I understand. And of course all the answers have to come from you anyway. That's one of things I like about doing art....about "performing" the act of art.....there are never enough answers and they are only good for a short while usually. It just feels like a bunch of exploration.That's why I would love to live for 300 years if not more.
"I'm going to go ahead and disregard everything you and I just wrote about judging art by JPEG and say that I really like your paintings..." Merci! It's good to hear, cuz I admit I totally cringe when I see my work on-line. Especially because the surface is half the show, with these pastels. I'm careful to extend the benefit of the doubt to others' paintings on-line, as well. "I particularly like The Blue-Ball'd Butch -- it's beautiful and would be a lot more subtle if not for the title, which sort of gives it away."*laughs* Uh, yeah, more subtle, definitely... It's good to get that feedback from someone who I presume is not from the lesbian community (ahem). I'm dealing with subject matter that is intensely obscure to most art-viewers, and negotiating the question of context is very up for me right now. I'm wondering what/how you would have seen the work without the verbal cue. By the way, the painting was inspired by, okay, a moment in real life (lol), but the title came at the same moment, when my girlfriend improvised new lyrics to "Sweet Betsy from Pike." "That's one of things I like about doing art....about "performing" the act of art.....there are never enough answers and they are only good for a short while usually." You always get it right, danonymous. It IS "performance", and for me it's always been about the questions, not the answers. My whole life. And Chris, now I'm going to look at your paintings, keeping in mind what you've said here.
Jackadandy sez:It's good to get that feedback from someone who I presume is not from the lesbian community (ahem).I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body, does that count?I'm wondering what/how you would have seen the work without the verbal cue.I did look at it before I saw the title, briefly, and my impression was that it was clearly, obviously sexual, so you got that much across. It immediately called to mind a vulva and thighs. Knowing the title doesn't change that much, it only makes me think it's more obviously not (for example) a flame and some rocks, which is a possibility, I guess. Since I have no idea how a lesbian gets blue balls -- I'm not sure I've even experienced the male version -- I don't have much more than that.If I think about it, I can imagine it's got to do with dressing as a man and needing something in your pants to complete the look. But I don't know. It's been a long time since I made out with that lesbian in high school.