The struggle I'm having with how to develop a Web presence and sell work without giving up something that's important to me parallels the struggle I'm having with the work itself. Hmmm. How do I say this?
In my day job, I work with underprepared college students from diverse backgrounds, most underserved in some way. Some are on welfare, some live in shelters, some have done time, some are ill, some have a lot of kids and no partner. I adore them. I love working with them, love what my team gives so generously to them and all that we get back in results and gratitude.
My history, education, and character emerged from - and still largely exist in - a parallel universe. The audience for my artwork has been others in the club plus people not in the club but who live lives that would have them come upon the work at all and have the character and capacity to experience it in some way.
The students I meet who are inclined toward creative work don't know about the Museum of Modern Art, the Met, or the galleries in Chelsea. Coming from the Bronx, most don't know where Chelsea is, yet the college is just blocks away.
I've been struggling to reconcile these situations for months. I recently put together a proposal with two artists, Yoon Cho and Priscilla Stadler, and, in naming the show, was able to articulate this for the first time. We were coming up with these insider names (along the lines of the presence of absence) and I couldn't do it. I didn't want to separate myself so fully from the people I spend my days with. Priscilla works at LaGuardia Community College and knew exactly what I was saying. I needed a title anyone could understand. We went with her suggestion: Just a Moment.
To bring it back downtown: Pushing myself into the virtual community means giving up some of the elitism that I've needed to be taken seriously as an artist. Part of my need is to avoid being lumped in with Sunday painters, craftspeople, flakes, and the hipsters who call themselves artists but really just have a knack for looking like what they think one looks like. I'm equally cautious about being associated with the postmodern anything goes and the postpostmodern surge of youth worship, egomaniacal celebrity artists, and spectacle.
That my work would never put me in either category is a logic that doesn't matter; this is emotional. I've needed a certain kind of separateness for me. If I were to show up on Etsy and Facebook and even, God forbid, start tweeting, what have I conceded to? Why do I see it as conceding anything? If it's so important for me to name the show Just a Moment, what's the leap to making my work accessible? Now there's a word! I'll think on it and save it for my next post.
I took some students to see Abramovic at MoMA Sunday; it was my second visit. I'll return. I'm not ready to put words to it yet, but one of my students, Codi, sat with Abramovic in the Atrium and described it in class this morning as "transcendent." I won't dilute the intensity of Codi's description by paraphrasing it, but here she is during (above) and after (below).
The photos are courtesy of Nina Meledandri, an artist who stood on line with Codi and is blogging about her repeated visits to the performance.
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