Pushing

I've been working hard to push through into my work and get more involved in art in the city.  For last night, I'd signed up for a panel on social issues in artistic practice, and rushed there after work.  I couldn't find it.  The address didn't exist, or was one of those hiding art addresses that you have to know to know. I wish it didn't bother me but it did.  I walked back and forth a little, self-conscious.  [Postscript:  When I got to work this morning, I saw my Post-It with the address on my desk, and I hadn't remembered it correctly.  But it doesn't matter.  It's the same thing.  A part of me doesn't want to go to these events and so I find a way to not go in the end.]

I seem to remain on the periphery despite my conscious pushes to engage.  I'm more comfortable here.  Once again, Anne Truitt's Daybook offered comfort this morning, when she summed up a rich passage wth, "My natural focus is interior."  Her book is a gift to me, particularly with the turbulence in me now.


So I gave up on finding the panel and climbed up to the High Line (first time!), stretched out on a lounging bench, and graded exams.  It was beautiful and felt good, but also, still, separate.  There was no winning with this one.


Earlier this week I went to see Kate Gilmore's Walk the Walk in Bryant Park.  It was 8.30 am and raining, and the women were reluctant to start.  That's understandable, but when they did they looked miserable.  I'm not sure whether Gilmore was good with that (wanting nonperformers as she did), but I wasn't.  I wanted them to be less self-involved in that way, or maybe it was fine and I was just irritated they were late starting and I had little time.  The brilliant golden-yellow of the structure didn't sit right with me.  Blood from a Stone, at the Brooklyn Museum, and Standing Here, at the Whitney Biennial, were more successful for me.

So Of Course

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It was inevitable, I suppose, that I would come across my father's photos May 4, not long after my last post, while relocating some family boxes to a less visible spot in my apartment.  (My family did not create tidy photo albums but rather left piles, shoeboxes, and slide trays of unsorted, mostly unidentified photos, which can be an adventure or an irritant depending on mood.)  The one above is one my father took near Nassau Street in 1958.  The man in front of Nedick's is my Uncle John, one of the uncles who co-owned the bar with my father.

The one below is the interior of a bar and not very good, but I expect it was the one they owned in Harlem.  Why else?

This one shows the RKO Alhambra theater, which was at 2110 Seventh Avenue (now Adam Clayton Powell Blvd.) at 126th Street.  It opened in 1905 and closed in the 1960s.  The sepia tone is unique among the photos I found that day.

This one shows Watkins Quality Products, which has been in business since 1868.  My dad's note says "144 St and 8th Ave S.E. 1958."  An Internet search didn't turn up Jack Sobel the pawnbroker.

I also opened a box of my mother's drawings that I've had since her death in 1986.  It seemed like time.  I only looked briefly as I'd had enough time travel (and cleaning) for one day and it's emotional, but they're piled on my studio table so the only way through is through.

Housekeeping

In October 2007, I lost my live-work space in Queens when the city closed the building.  I knew we were living illegally but thought the studio aspect was legal.  Not so.  Our landlord had us in dangerous circumstances.  So I came home from teaching one evening and had no home.  While some people are nomadic and others don't mind where the furniture is placed, I'm not one of them.  Home is as essential as air.  I was in shock, and the recovery - artistic, emotional, and practical - has been lengthy.


Among the 200 artists who were displaced that night, I was lucky to have a cousin, Judy, with a lovely third floor in her Montclair home.  She hosted me and my two cats for four and a half months.  My third-floor bedroom was one of those magical attic-like rooms:  flowered wallpaper, slanted ceilings, throw rugs, cozy, up in the trees.  I had always slept long and deeply in that room, as did everyone who guested there.  And the bathroom had a clawfoot tub that forced me to sit and soak.  One of my favorite photos of the late, great Riley was of her sitting in the tub and watching the water drip from the faucet.

Judy is a voracious reader.  The first book I pulled out of my bedroom bookcase was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  Since my sights were set on moving to Brooklyn, it was a nice find.  Rereading it in that nostalgic little room reminded me of my mother and father, who were born in Brooklyn in 1931 and 1928, respectively.  My father, who owned a Harlem bar with my uncles in the 1950s, was very good with a camera, and Smith's novel reminded me of his beautiful black-and-white streetscapes.  As it turned out, I did land in Brooklyn, and only learned afterward that I live between each of my parents' high schools.  Both James Madison (mom) and Erasmus Hall (dad) are a mile or so away.  We are birds.


Another book I pulled from Judy's bookshelf was Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping.  The cover is beautiful and the title certainly was relevant, but the first few sentences didn't catch me at the time so I put it away.  When I pulled it out again, it was exquisite.  Every sentence.  And the relief the novel brought me, perhaps especially as an artist, was like exhaling.  Robinson's narrator, Ruthie, so delicately and lyrically observes and accepts people and events:   her mother, place, home, family history, abandonment, loss, love, the quirks of personality.  Ruthie's outsider status and absence of judgment make her an elegant observer-philosopher.



As I read, I used napkins to bookmark passages that were too rich to let go of, also knowing I'd read the book again under different circumstances.  My second reading, finished last week, prompted this post, because the novel was as moving, comforting, and illuminating the second time.

The Statement and the Wall

As content as I am to have written a statement that doesn't sound inflated or stupid, I've since realized it doesn't apply to all my work.  While that might sound like a big so what?, the realization disturbed me, as if it marks a problem with consistency or focus.  What it actually marks is a difference between my three- and two-dimensional work.  That difference, I now see, is between work that responds to the external world and work that is of my inner world.  The collages relate to my private narrative and sensibility while the sculpture is my social and political voice.  When my work lets go of the wall, it enters the world literally and metaphorically.  When it uses the wall as a support or an element, it stays home.  That form and content can so nicely align themselves without any conscious effort from me is part of the joy and miracle of being an artist.  My work knows more than I do, and it will tell me in its time if I bring myself to the process of making it with honesty and rigor, get out of the way, and have faith.

At the same time, I trust there's substantial overlap.  Writing a statement for the 2D work should bring it out, but just to take a stab at it now, I'd say that the sculpture is a public appeal that references the emotional content of the collages.  I'll leave it at that, but return to it soon.

The new Web site may be closer to completion than I thought.  I also reviewed my contribution to the upcoming issue of Ekleksographia this morning, so it's in the final stages of revision before release.  That's more incentive to get the Web site done.  Happily, I don't need it.  I'm finding myself energized and determined.  This sentence from Anne Truitt's exquisite, inspiring Daybook: Journey of an Artist ran through me like a current yesterday:  "It occurred to me that I could use the energy I had been putting into endurance to change my life."

As Promised: Accessibility

Had I revisited this question closer to my March 20 post, it would've been forced.  In the interim, I've realized that the question is moot:  my work is my work, and it's going to be this accessible no matter whether it's in a gallery or on the Web or anywhere else.  The point is to get the work out there and establish myself (not least in my own mind) as an active artist in the broadest sense - not just in the studio, but in the world of art and commerce.

So if the question is not accessibility, what is it?  It's relevance.  In a way it's the same answer - my work is my work, and those who experience it will decide whether it's relevant or not - but my urge for it to be relevant is another matter.  My doubt runs, How can a little scrap of wire or cloth or an uncurling ball of Cling Wrap be relevant?

This morning I wrote a new statement.  I started fresh rather than recycle earlier statements and wrote directly, as a person in the world rather than as an artist trying to ... whatever.  The words came easily (considering the torment this task usually involves), and they actually explain why my sculpture and video are important to me in plain terms.  By just saying it, I'm laying a path for a broader audience to find the work relevant (or not).

And I now see that this is accessibility - to offer information that demystifies my work rather than withhold it or write for an insider audience (probably the same thing).  I've resisted this.  Why?  It reminds me of graduate school, when I was so unwilling to reveal myself.  Why?  Because of the exposure, and the risk of that - of being judged, of being labeled, of being dismissed.  Evidently, I'm ready.  The new statement will launch with the new Web site.  My progress on it has been good.  To receive an announcement of the relaunch, please join my mailing list.

Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present

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.

I understand that the catalog for this exhibit is excellent, with an essay by Arthur Danto (who I enjoyed immensely in a conversation with Robert Storr at the 92nd Street Y some time ago) though haven't looked at it yet:  Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present.

Just a Moment

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.

NYFA Workshop: Selling Art on Line

I signed up for this NYFA workshop without giving myself the luxury of defensiveness about selling work on line. I've been thinking about making a for-sale gallery of drawings and collages on my Web site, but need to find a way that matches the spirit of the site (and its owner). What I learned at this (great) workshop is that it's social media sites and larger marketplaces that can deliver visibility and traffic, and so I need to venture out into the bigger virtual world.

I have work coming out in the next issue of Ekleksographia and am starting to rework my Web site. Joining new sites where people can find my work (myartspace seems to fit) and me (Facebook, though I'm not done resisting that) is the next move in the marketing arena.

I'm showing five photos in Ekleksographia, plus a video on the cover. It's all home-based work, not the property lines photos I thought I'd include (as of my last post). The property lines don't work with the video cover, so they'll go to the Play section of my Web site.

It's all gratifying. Taking the photos is quick and casual; the work of cropping, editing, and distilling them on the Mac is where tension and particularity come into the process. It might be the most conceptual work I've done, and yet the most literal.

My artwork is active, finally, and got that way when I wasn't looking or trying too hard. Good.

This Artist's Way

I've been opening Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way at random spots and reading, thinking I'll land where I need to be. The book is so art school and the writing is, for me, sometimes over the top, but it's dismissed at my own peril. Cameron's guidance is helping me see the mental mindgames I sometimes play for what they are, and getting to work.


I've been invited by poet Rich Murphy to include work in the next issue of Ekleksographia, which he's guest curating. The cover will be one of my videos, and I've been working on the content for my page. Rich wanted to include more videos, as did I, but I found the variables in how they'd look and play from one screen to the next too numerous for comfort. Also, the Ekleksographia page design is geared to writers and illustrators and, while I like it, it's too visually active for my videos.


Rich's concept is experimental work - whether in the larger scheme of art or the more intimate scale of the artist's practice - that shows a "distrust of grammar" in favor of an "ordinary language poetics" (via Wittgenstein, though that's beyond my knowledge). Probably all of my work fits that description, but it's digital work that's most experimental for me and so I'm moving toward presenting photographs in addition to the video cover.

The images I'm working with include conceptual projects (photos of property boundaries in my neighborhood), formal works, and family photos. While none are very good per se (except my father's black-and-white images of me at age three, in the living room in my first roller skates), they are interesting and keep resonating for me, so perhaps they'll resonate with others. The target launch date is next month, at least for now, so I have a little time.

It's nice to write here again. It's been a long time.

Acknowledgment

While my previous words are entirely and deeply accurate, and not just lately but every day, I didn't acknowledge (in true form) that in the midst of my immersion in Glenwood and lemons I did prepare a grant application for the New York Foundation of the Arts with nine videos that I'm quite happy with. And I'm eager to continue working, with video and other mediums, and appreciative of the deep need that keeps me working in some form (even when it feels like I'm not) no matter what.

Solace

Immersed as I am in the care of Glenwood the miracle kitten, I'm finding that solace - creative and personal - comes in the teensiest of gestures and observations. That entirely matches my work; I want to capture the pure, visceral joy of placing a lemon in a purple bowl on my countertop; the act and the visual result are utterly satisfying. The spirit of Alison Knowles's Make a Salad keeps occurring to me; the urge to exalt the most mundane of creative activities into Everything is persistent. Those little acts - and their accumulation - are all we have.

Mind-less

I've been pretty mind-less since June 8, when Riley's heart condition was diagnosed. From the awfulness of her last month to my sadness since her death, to the external focus of my day job, and now to the drama of little Glenwood, my emotional state has been so reactive to outside events that what's going on inside me is remote. I'm so distracted I don't even know where I am. (I tried a new subway route to work today and ended up back in Brooklyn before realizing I got on the right train in the wrong direction.) And when I do have the opportunity to sit with myself, I've been furthering the disconnect rather than risk being with myself. Not good.

I've continued to make work, but it's like talking out of the side of my mouth. That's not a comment on what I've made, but about my experience making it. It's like when someone asks what I do and I describe my jobs then say, Oh, and I'm an artist. I treat myself like an afterthought or, worse, habitually deaden myself in the very act of trying to enliven myself (ironically).

Stuck?

A friend visited some months ago and, hearing my anguish at finding a way to work in this new-ish life, said, "It's all here," referencing the place I inhabit as home and studio. Her observation was good, as it's slowly allowed me to see the potential in the minute but precise actions that ground me, that keep me from stalling out or sinking, that are a making-order-of that sets the foundation. Metaphorically, the dishes have to be washed before I work in the studio, but that brings the dish-washing and the studio into a shared space of activity.

I'm contributing to an on-line journal that'll be published in early 2010, my first invitation to show video. Wonderful timing.

The Little Videos on my Web site are like moving photos. The new photos in the Play area suggest movement as much as the videos suggest stillness. And they're not photos of anything that persists; the image on the computer is their sole existence.

Riley, November 1, 1999-July 10, 2009

Her strangely squared-off and graceful paws. The little flash of white fur at the end of her tail. Her stripes, like pajamas. The orange in her. Her tough little shoulders. Her bow legs. Her with-me-like-a-puppy-ness. Her night-time wails, carrying her little dog-doll around by the neck.

How she ran to sit between the curtain and liner while I showered. How dripping water mesmerized her. How she'd abandon breakfast and beat me to my meditation spot knowing she'd get a good rub. How she'd roll onto her back on the keyboard when she was starved for attention.

She stands in for me in my profile image, and I can't bear to change it. Rest in peace, Riley.

Michael Ashkin at The Sculpture Center

Untitled (where each new sunrise promises only the continuation of yesterday).

Untitled (where the wind carries from afar all but that for which one has yearned).

Untitled (where transcendence appears as a drone sent from afar by men with thick torsos).

Untitled (where too much significance is attached to the debris of a single airplane).

Untitled (where angry men search through the wreckage of a plane for the pieces of a pilot).

Untitled (where one is hunted in direct proportion to one's remoteness).

Untitled (where the value of life contracts as the value of territory expands).

Untitled (where one still walks tall, but feels with each step the onset of a stagger).

Untitled (where one scans the horizon with eyes that can no longer focus in the distance).

Untitled (where one waves one's stick toward the idea of an object).

Untitled (where one only sees one's object when its presence blocks all view of the horizon).

Untitled (where one tires of the same sentence expressed in its endless variations).

Untitled (where one exhausts oneself with the same idea said a thousand different ways).

Untitled (where one aims words at the sky only to immediately kick through their debris).

Untitled (where the horizon feels like walls that are slowly collapsing toward one).

Untitled (where the daily repetition of one's motions defeats even the idea of escape).

Untitled (where one believes in a silence that one cannot help but articulate).

Untitled (where one lives for the poetry for which there is no longer a vocabulary).

Untitled (where one tries to imagine the last words ever said).

Untitled (where truth reveals itself in its seeming disfigurement).

Untitled (where hiding places are many, escape only one).

2009

Recycled corrugated cardboard

76' x 6.5' x 3"

Sorting

All is cliche; I'm bored, frustrated, and disappointed - three streams of anger! No wonder all I want to do is sleep, and most of what I do when awake is berate myself.

This midlife crisis (the overarching cliche) has started its sixth year. If I have to live this thing that us aware types can be arrogant enough to think we'll sidestep, can it at least wrap up?  Can I at least bounce back to tolerable levels of dissatisfaction, despair, and self-criticism?

The studio is demoralizing.  No idea or experiment - no thought - has more than fleeting possibility. Yes, this is the "normal" cycle of the studio:  periods that feel excruciatingly nonproductive that are often periods of gestation that end with an outpouring of new work and gratitude, and leave behind a film of amnesia.

Still, this feels like a double hit - probably because of a seeping awareness that I have less time and fewer chances or choices to improve things.  It sounds morbid, particularly to friends in their 20s and 30s, and it sounded morbid to me then.  Now it's real.  My father and mother died at about my age, so the possibility that life can end well before we're done with it is not abstract.

I've been sorting through family stuff - photos, letters, childhood drawings and essays, report cards, baby clothes, passports, newspaper clippings, receipts, worthless stock certificates, recipes.  It's impossible to let go of even scraps of paper with cryptic notes when they're a way to meet my parents.  The timing is no accident, of course.  I can construe that poetically, or more ominously.  I always knew my 50s would be complicated.  I read an interview with an Irish novelist whose father died at the novelist's (middle) age, and he said he felt a kind of recognition.

Should I be making practical changes?  Or is this internal state only loosely related to my day-to-day?  Much of my frustration is wanting to do something to kickstart myself - as if one right action would unlock me - when possibly the only thing to do is not do and wait, actively.

Change Default

My default thinking is about my jobs:  constructing a final exam for my art class in my head, making a mental note to talk with my boss about staffing.  While I'm fortunate to have jobs I largely enjoy, I need to be in my work when I'm not in the studio ... to have the studio be my default.  Getting traction feels nearly impossible.  I have to start up again every damn weekend.  I'm rarely building, and the pressure of time works against random experiments and having more than one thing going on, which is how I work best.

What to do?  I'm not writing just to bemoan or observe, but to strategize.

I've been thinking of taking my own photos for the collages for awhile.  My cell phone camera is too limited for anything more serious than Flickr.  I have a good, though bulky, studio camera.  And my sculpture?  There's no motivation to make it in the studio space I have without a site to install it.  The videos on my Web site are the form it's taking.  I want to keep that going.

I need to commit to (1) carrying the camera anyway; (2) finding the discipline and reserves to work one or two nights during the week; and (3) calming the hell down about being 52 and still struggling with identity and fearing the struggle won't be productive and I'll be writing the same blog five years from now.

OK then.

Of Postcards and Birds

I wait all week for time in my studio, and this weekend is a good stretch.  As it's turning out, a good stretch to be discomforted at not knowing what to do, at seeing every move as forced and superficial, at fearing there won't be any potency and it'll be Monday again.  The collages feel stale (again).  I signed up for a postcard show to nudge myself into working bigger.  Yet a 4 x 6" field offers no entry point, whether untouched paper or a piece of architectural drawing.  It's anonymous, like there's too much space for a small gesture to have an impact, yet a larger one is false and vacuous.  It's like going to a big new city and having no idea what to do, or even what there is to do.

I've considered an accumulation of small gestures and feel ready to move back to work; I'm just without a vocabulary - though birds now come to mind, given last week's events.  And my adoration of the Brooklyn parrots that live near me.

Tiny Catharsis

Perhaps it was inevitable I'd be tested. Walking on W. 55th St. a week ago with a friend, a baby bird had fallen onto the sidewalk. Its wing was wrong and its beak was hurt, but it was a chipper little thing. We kept it from scooting into traffic by using our feet as barriers; it cuddled against them. I made a circle around it with my scarf, and it settled down. I started to cry. There was no one to help and my friend had to go, so we gently lifted it into a bag and the bird and I rode the Q train home. I watched it and wept into the bag, knowing it wasn't going to live and that the quality of its remaining time was up to me.

My car was the safest place for the night, quiet and away from my cats. I settled it in its scarf-bed, brought water, and dragged myself home. It felt awful to wish for a death, and to know anything was so alone. But I was relieved when, the next morning, I found the bird had died during the night. Sobbing, I packed it up, drove to Prospect Park, and made a little resting place in the reeds.

This feels like a miniature adjustment to my history and sense of self. Taking on this helpless little life regardless of the emotional and practical challenge felt like a turning-to. I didn't stop crying (not for days), but I stopped looking for someone to save either of us or feeling like it was more than I could take. And since then I've felt a little stronger, a little more able to manage a strike to the core. The panic that I'll witness something too awful for words will probably always haunt me, but maybe I found a little more faith that I can exceed myself.

What's the Question?

I've spent hours in the studio struggling with the collages. Nothing makes any sense, though the cutting-out-of-things with my Exacto is soothing and satisfying. (The tip, however, breaks in 3.2 seconds. My self-healing pad heals itself, but at the blade's expense. How's that for a human metaphor?) The collages come in series and have persistently exhausted themselves and resurfaced, the same but different. The architectural/domestic subject matter continues, as does the implied but absent figure; the emphasis shifts (interior/exterior, decor/space, empty/waiting).

The nature of each transition becomes visible in retrospect, with just a vague awareness during the shift. I don't look for definition but watch the question re-form. And in that, the process clarifies and another series comes. The less cerebral my activity the more convincing the outcome. The work must be transitioning now, as my frustration has the quality of a forced silence, a distance from myself that is the being-lost before a new question can form.

The gesture of collage is to make sense of disparate pieces; the decisions within that speak to the particular experience of fragmentation. Mine has included trying to reconcile my interior life with the performance I give in the world to survive (not just monetarily, but as another part of my character) ... my enjoyment of solitariness with the absence of family ... my experience of the physical and aesthetic space of New York City with my love of open landscape, of sailing, of gardening.

I've wondered whether the collages might be trying to get at the tiny surprises of city life that thrill me (an architectural detail, a kindness from a stranger, a glimpse of green or a flower). But the tension there is easy, superficial. The real counterpoint is my pervasive dread of witnessing the uncared-for (horses pulling carriages up Eighth Avenue, the dirty white cat drinking out of a puddle in the gutter of a busy street, parents crushing children with their words). I can't dwell there; it's too annihilating for me to function.

These words signal a defense, and another layer of dread. They may or may not point to where these collages head, but reveal the rawest place I know in myself: horror for those who are betrayed by the only people they have to protect them. What could leave a living being more alone, vulnerable, and trapped in pain?