Sunday, August 28, 2005

art syllabus

Every semester I do the same thing. I tweak my old syllabus the day before class starts. I run to the all-night Kinko's to duplicate it. And then I blast into class at 8 am to create the new semester.

But I HATE my syllabus.

It lays out all the forms of punishment that my students will endure if they don't live up to the rules or parameters of the course. "Being in class without materials counts as an absence." "Projects will be turned in on time... OR ELSE." I HATE THREATENING MY STUDENTS.

If only I could hand out a syllabus that looks like this:

------------
ART
------------

THE COLLEGE'S OBJECTIVES
• To teach you to use whichever art medium it has hired me to teach you, meeting minimum measureable objectives.
• To have you [warm body that you are] stay in the class and not drop, so that the State of California will continue to give $ to the college.
• To have you NOT SUE THE COLLEGE. (pretty please?)

PALEY'S ACTUAL OBJECTIVES
• To build you up and set you on course to being a creative force in the world.
• To teach you to identify and use the visual field as a tool of persuasion and manipulation. You won't be fooled again.
• To lay the groundwork for you to cause the visionary, problematic, and impossible IN REALITY, not "in your head."
• To give you wild amounts of power (access to creativity, one of the most destabilizing social forces in history).
• To reach deeply into you and yank out that which is uniquely yours, your individual expression, as a gift to the world.
• To teach you to do this for yourself, ongoingly, for the rest of your life, if you choose.
• To transform our society by building our team.

STRUCTURE
Wake up. Stay awake. You snooze, you lose.
You are in training. I am your coach.
Train full out, no matter what.
Do what the coach says. I once where you are now.
I have something I am committed to giving you, and I am doing it the best way I know how.

I don't care if you like it. I don't care if you don't.
I care that you
HEAR/SEE it,
STRUGGLE with it,
GET it, and
MASTER it.

YOU WILL LEARN

You are not your work.
You are not your opinions.
You are mostly what comes out of your mouth, and it is time to get to work on that. In fact, most of your precious opinions will embarrass you later.
Description and observation that leads to evaluation is useful.
Judgment in and of itself is a pathetic, ridiculous, useless waste of time.
For example:

"I like this car"
—opinion. value judgment. baseless useless bullshit
—bound to embarrass you later

"I believe we should only buy American cars"
—danger! danger! BELIEVE????
—not observed or measureable. I am getting a headache.
—the word "should" is a dead giveaway.

"This is how the car works"
—useful and can lead to extraordinary insight, control, and growth
—the mechanics of the visual field can be described, and then assessed

YOU WILL PRACTICE

Speaking. Learning.
Taking risks. Succeeding. Failing.
Being disciplined.
Doing things that are uncomfortable and impossible.
Playing in the visual field, alone and with others.
Tweaking and manipulating the visual field to create more powerfully.
Being intentional.
Giving and receiving critical feedback [again, not opinions or belief].
Being human.


YOU WILL NOT LEARN

To be "the best."
[Time, media, luck, genetics, commitment, curiosity, and never giving up—these help establish greatness.]

How to "make it."
[You might learn things that help you become someone who could "make it," though.]

To make "perfect" art.
[Since when is any human creation or institution "perfect"?]

Friday, August 26, 2005

The Desire for Hermitage

Catriela Cohen gave a concert last week—an end-of-the-summer vocal recital, hosted (and accompanied on the piano) by Giovanna Imbesi, at Giovanna's amazing TuttoMedia Studio. This was Catriela's last hurrah before starting college next month at Northwestern.

Catriela Cohen made me cry.

Under the practiced, loving, and critical eye of her vocal coach (the also-amazing Kyra Humphrey), surrounded by friends, family, and many strangers, Cat poured out the exquisite. She was a fragile bird. She was a playful vixen. She was a wounded wife. [She was a concerned student.] She was me. She was everyone.

And just how can a joyful, fresh-faced seventeen-year-old step into being the wounded wife?

Then Cat sang a song about wanting to be shut tight and safe in a little cell, alone [from Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs]. Which completely did me in. It wasn't just her craftsmanship, although that helped. I relate to those words. I am those words.

My safe little studio.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

process and empathy | Scott Kelman

A few days ago I promised words about Scott Kelman's piece, Tao Soup. But first, a bit about Scott.

Scott Kelman used to be one of the premier creators of theatrical performance art here in downtown LA. His pieces at the Wallenboyd Theater, Boyd Street Theater, and so on, were legendary, along with the troupe of regulars who worked with him.

Well, when his organization Pipeline folded, Scott picked up and moved to Portland, Oregon, where he has kept on keeping on. Scott continues to spawn, mold, coax, and direct brilliant, tough new work --using improvisational techniques that he calls kelmanworks-- with the Drunken Monkeys of Brooklyn Bay. The Electric Lodge in Venice brought Scott and the troupe back down to the LA area to perform Tao Soup.

So why am I so powerfully moved by Scott's work?

A complete lack of cynicism.
Total integrity inside its process
Commitment to theater that makes a difference
Profundity mixed with goofiness
Generosity, grace
No limits— all can happen

What a privilege to have seen so many of Scott's earlier pieces in the '80s, at the Wallenboyd. That magical space of theater, improvisation, guts and play is now warehousing cheap imported plastic toys from China. And Los Angeles, once the home of extraordinary creative foment [equity-waiver theater EVERYWHERE] seems to suck the life out of its artists.

Scott, we love you. We miss you. We need you.
THANK YOU for never ever ever giving up or selling out.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

reveal

I make art.
I look at art.
I love art. Contemporary art. Contemporary fine art.
But everyone asks me....

What is art, really?

Art is a creation, made by a person or people, for other people, that communicates and reveals something about the human condition NOW.

Creating something that communicates something about the human condition "back then"--- well, that's not contemporary fine art. It might be nostalgia. Kitsch. Craft. Commercial art or design. (And hey, nothing wrong with craft and kitsch...... there is some ROCKIN' kitsch out there! And I love to teach design!)

But I am sorry; there is a distinction.
It is NOT necessarily art.

The act of making art is the act of revealing humanity to itself.

Friday, August 19, 2005

process and inquiry | Tim Hawkinson

Wide open.
No tricks.
Completely exposed.

Thursday (August 18) was a day to be blown away by the work of two talented men---visual artist Tim Hawkinson, and theater artist Scott Kelman. As I made my way from my studio (downtown), to pick up some art, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to Electric Lodge in Venice, I saw the day build in terms of shimmering brilliance and inspiration. Picking up my work was the least inspiring event of the day.

First Tim Hawkinson.
I was lucky to have seen an installation of Tim Hawkinson's at Mass MOCA in 2000 called Uberorgan, a massive, goofy, jury-rigged reed organ. Inflating and deflating enormous "lungs" filled the cavernous industrial space-turned-gallery. Machinery and mechanics were exposed. [For a look-see, check out this abbreviated description, making sure to scroll down near the bottom of the page.]

At LACMA some of Hawkinson's "greatest hits" were on the walls, although there was not nearly enough space to reprise Uberorgan. Too bad. The "musical" (percussion) piece at the entry, while playful and entertaining, didn't seem to carry out the inquiry I saw in Hawkinson's process. Here is what I think he is up to:

INQUIRY
What am I? --or-- What is that?
How do I function? --or-- How does that function?
How do I see and describe myself? --or--
How do I recreate, imply, and/or explore that (and its implications)?

EXPLORATION
Consider a thing, a form of perception, a mechanical thing, an aspect of the body, etc.
Then create a system and/or a machine to recreate, expose, manipulate and/or explore that thing.

OUTCOME
An artwork.

EXPOSURE
The intelligence, play, obsessiveness, rigor, and complete absence of finish-fetish were amazing. The work was junky. Rough. It set its agenda and followed through. It was not about beauty. It was, oddly, about a form of truth. Nothing unnecessary was added. Everything was stripped down to its essence. Mechanics and motors were visible. Extension cords were part of the installation (and some really good artworks were made of extension cords).

MASTERFUL work.
just a couple of examples----

"Clocks." You would probably walk right by a hairbrush, a manilla envelope, or a Coke can. Each of these was insanely engineered to be a clock. Two tiny hairs on the hairbrush told the time. The two sides of a metal clasp on the envelope also moved around and told the time. The Coke can's pop top. And so on.

"Shorts." Much of Hawkinson's work requires electricity. All the extension cords were exposed and out in the open, moving through the entire show. An orange extension cord crocheted into a pair of shorts? (!!!)

"Signature." A machine cobbled together painstakingly writes Tim Hawkinson's signature and then cuts the paper. A huge heap of these slips of paper with signatures mounds next to the piece. This piece in itself is worth the price of admission.

Tired now
I'll get to Scott tomorrow.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

ghost in the machine

ALL YOUR FONTS ARE BELONG TO US

I start teaching very soon. And the computer labs where I teach have had quite a few changes recently. So I went in today to create a set of preferences for the software I teach: Adobe Illustrator CS2, Corel Painter 9, and (formerly DiamondSoft) FontReserve.

Extensis has bought FontReserve.
Attention Extensis:
HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In our Windows lab (not in our Mac lab, mind you), every time I try to turn on and use a classic Type 1 Postscript font, I constantly have ATM -219 errors. Since the fonts cannot be turned on in FontReserve, they aren't on in Adobe Illustrator or anyplace else.

However, the WEIRDEST THING happened.......
After creating but not being able to turn on the new font folder, I launched Painter.

All those Postscript fonts were........
on.

They were not on in Illustrator.
They were not on in Microsoft Word.
But they were on in Painter.

Odd.

So I exited out of Painter and FontReserve and relauched them. The fonts still worked in Painter, although FontReserve had LOST MY FOLDER, mind you. [Also odd.] This is after quitting, rebooting, etc., etc.! And, of course, as expected, the fonts were not on in Illustrator.

So I shut down the computer and rebooted. And
All those Postscript fonts were.....
ON
in Painter.

Little men. Gremlins. Tiny little vermin. WHO KNOWS what is inhabiting those damn computers!

All I can say is
I LOVE teaching painting and drawing. My pencils and brushes never crash. l never need to defragment my tube of Cadmium Yellow Light. If the electricity goes down, we can draw outside. I never have to worry about compatibility issues between last year's and this year's pads of paper. And a power surge never causes me to "lose" my entire portfolio.

Monday, August 15, 2005

Journal? Landmark?

Rarely have I kept a journal, and I am new at keeping a weblog. Now, looking back, I wish I had started this long ago. There is something about capturing thoughts and moments with language that is different from taking photographs and making paintings. Naturally, words in a journal would be just my emotions, thoughts, and interpretations, whatever they are worth. But at least the journal would be my "memory keeper," so that I could look back and recall what I really thought about a show, or an event, or an experience at the time, rather than through my faulty recall.

[My memory gets hazier by the month.]

Some of my art instructors used to invite us to get into the discipline of keeping a daily sketchbook/journal. I always resisted. After all, weren't the paintings the most important thing? I wanted to keep my marks fresh for the paintings! So for me it was always "either/or"—either I make fresh marks in the sketchbook, or I make fresh marks on the canvas. Somehow I was so rigid in my thinking that I couldn't play with it in a "both/and" sort of way. Now, looking back on more than 20 years of life and art, I feel like I ripped myself off.

[But hey, I certainly knew better than THEY did, didn't I?]

[And if any of my students and former students read this, well, now you know I used to be: "I-know-better." It's a wonder I listened to anybody or learned anything. And the eternal cosmic joke, now, is that I get to teach adorable versions of "me, revisited," which is to say, YOU!!!]

Looking back, I guess I saw discipline as a burden, rather than as a wonderful new possibility. "I'm an artist! Why do I need discipline? I need freedom and creativity, no?"

[Hogwash.]

My generalized lack of discipline has cost me and others, big time, in countless ways. And it permeates my life and work.
Ouch.


And yet I started a blog.
How odd. Why?

What I am beginning to see is that a weblog has a possibility of being for for others, not just for myself.

And that brings me to Landmark.

I went over the weekend to a very intense course given by Landmark Education. Landmark courses have been profound, not for "changing" and "fixing" my life [although that has definitely been one outcome], but for shifting how I RELATE to my life and everything/everyone in it. These shifts occur EVERYWHERE and they are radical. What we get to do in Landmark programs is to expose our hidden "stops," in areas of life that are deeply important to us. This allows new things to become possible.

Well, what did I get out of the weekend?

I invented the possibility of being YOURS.

This was completely unexpected, and is rocking my world.

My art is YOURS.
My actions are YOURS.
It is much more inspiring for me to create, to generate my website (which I have resisted for YEARS), to do pretty much ANYTHING, if I am yours. It is less isolating. Less lonely. Less about that insufferable know-it-all who is sure you don't want her anyway.

What if all people lived like they were YOURS?
What if you lived like you were OURS?

So, for the first time, I am EXCITED about taking on new disciplines.
Like a weekly weblog.
Like designing and keeping up a website.
Like learning new technologies.
Like finishing unfinished projects.
And so on.
And so on.

After all, I'm yours.
I'm accountable to you.
I'm creating art on your behalf.
I'm teaching art on your behalf.

Who I am is the possibility of being YOURS.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

first post | a bit on Alaska

ALL YOUR ART POST ARE BELONG TO US

A first!
A blog!
After watching the occasional friend and family member get deeply into blogging, I am finally taking the plunge.

Tonight I am unpacking from a family trip--- to Alaska. It was gorgeous, rainy, slippery, vast and magnificent. From jellyfish pumping around, and salmon struggling to get their tushies upstream (and *I* thought dating was difficult for us humans!), to whales blowing white foam out of the ocean, to the bear I saw taking advantage of those poor, sex-starved salmon.... an incredible visual feast.

And the GLACIERS! I could sit all day and stare at (AND LISTEN TO) a glacier.

So, after a week in chilly, moist paradise, I get back to my 90 degree (F) studio, on a truck route, in BEAUTIFUL industrial downtown L.A. Need I say more?

Near Ketchikan I visited the local totem-pole-carving mecca of Saxman Village. [For a description of the carving shed, see this article.] Yes, it was touristy, and yes, the contemporary art conversation would relegate this art form to anthropology or throwback kitsch, but I had a blast chatting up two remarkable carvers (both from the Raven clan). Outside of, or perhaps before, taking up carving totem poles, Nathan Jackson actually taught printmaking, too, and was as wary of me and MY artistic credentials as Mat Gleason was the first time he sized me up. [Hee hee!]

GAWD. Artists worldwide are all the same. (Hey, I'm guilty, too........)

Anyway, he and Bill Pfeifer (did I get that spelling correct, Bill?) work in this large, beautiful space with other totem pole carvers, tolerating the looky-loos from a zillion cruiseships wandering, summer after summer after summer. Could *I* create under those circumstances?

I must say, I was impressed and moved by their work and commitment.