Artists Questioned. What is the most unusual space you’ve ever shown in?

Lucy Hogg

All artists have questions they seek answers to. Sometimes they ask themselves the same questions over and over again, and sometimes they seek out friends and mentors who provide answers to their questions. If you ask the same question to several people you will most likely get several different answers, and then it is up to you to select the answer that is best for you. So the question is…What is the most unusual space you’ve ever shown in?

Lucy Hogg:  “The strangest place I ever showed my work in was the cafeteria at the Malaspina College (now called Vancouver Island University)in Nanaimo, B.C, in 1994. Their actual gallery space was too small to show the work, a 13′ wide painting. Lisa Maclean (who teaches there) suggested the cafeteria, so I thought, having just shown the work at the Vancouver Art Gallery, that this would be the demotic antidote. I don’t think the students liked it that much. The painting eventually found a happy home, now hanging over the bar in a restaurant in Washington DC that a friend of mine, James Alefantis, owns. The art institutions host their events there, so the audience is right. The last time I saw it it was necessary to spot clean what seemed to be some dried ketchup. it is a very resistant painting.” LH

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Artists Questioned. As a young artist how do you plan to establish and sustain an art practice?

 

Jessica Simorte

All artists have questions they seek answers to. Sometimes they ask themselves the same questions over and over again, and sometimes they seek out friends and mentors who provide answers to their questions. If you ask the same question to several people you will most likely get several different answers, and then it is up to you to select the answer that is best for you. So the question is…

As a young artist how do you plan to establish and sustain an art practice?

Alexis Bulman: “One year ago (almost to the day) I graduated with a BFA from NSCAD University. Right out of school I was accepted into multiple Summer exhibits that took place in Toronto, Halifax and Charlottetown. I won an incredible art award and had my name appear in an art publication I greatly admire.
When Spring came around all those exhibits came down. I began responding to multiple artist calls for
submissions but received rejection letters almost every time, it was incredibly discouraging. After receiving
yeses I couldn’t understand why I was receiving noes. On top of that I was so busy applying to submission
calls that I stopped having time to make actual artwork.

“Less than half way through my first year out of school I knew something had to change. I missed the
community at NSCAD and I missed making artwork.

“Eventually, I rented an art studio and began making art again. The studio was shared with two other artists
and I began volunteering on the Artist Programming Committee for This Town is Small, the Community
School Task Force, and the Abilympics Canadian Association, I also became a member of IMAC and This
Town is Small and began attending screenings, lectures and openings.

“My answer to ‘As a young artist how do you plan to establish and sustain an art practice?’ is this:
By maintaining a balance.

“Make time for making art, find that supportive artist community, apply to all kinds of exciting calls for
submissions but remember these two facts: 1) For any call for submissions there could be 100 other artists
applying who all want it as badly as you do. 2) All those rejections letters make the acceptance letters feel
even more incredible and rewarding.

“It’s a very delicate and difficult balance to maintain, but I’ve been finding it incredibly fulfilling.” AB

Jessica Simorte: “Establishing is easy – just show up. Get to studio and do what you need to do. It’s sustaining that is more difficult, because you have to keep showing up. You have to solve your own problems, and then keep giving yourself new problems to solve. For artists that really need to make, it’s just not an option not to. If I find myself without a studio, I’ll paint at the kitchen table. If (when) I’m broke, I’ll make drawings on scrap paper. I like to believe that if I make work that is truly honest, driven and with tons of perseverance – that’s enough. I’ll be happy with what I do, and others might be too.

“This might be a bit obvious, but having the desire and skills to communicate via social media is essential. Most of my victories have come from community that I’ve cultivated online. And lastly, be gracious. Always be gracious.” JS

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Artists Questioned. What are the do’s and don’ts of a studio visit?

Valerie Brennan, Glare,
oil & spray paint on mdf panel, 120 x 99cm, 2014

All artists have questions they seek answers to. Sometimes they ask themselves the same questions over and over again, and sometimes they seek out friends and mentors who provide answers to their questions. If you ask the same question to several people you will most likely get several different answers, and then it is up to you to select the answer that is best for you. So the question is…What are the do’s and don’ts of a studio visit?

Valerie Brennan:  “I have tremendous respect for artists so I always love a studio visit, as a visitor or receiving a visit, and actively welcome both. I don’t really have a list of do’s and don’ts as they usually progress very naturally, I feel an affinity with other artists so I find it easy to communicate and think we share an understanding of something fundamental as a fellow maker, so it’s comfortable. Some basic courtesies would be: be on time, be prepared: know the work of the person you are visiting and think of some specific questions that you want to ask. Find some common issues either in the creation of work or in the work itself that you can talk about. Don’t make it feel like an interrogation. Recently I had a visit to my studio and that person just spoke about themselves and spent the time listing their own achievements so that’s a don’t! Bring a bottle of wine that’s always a great start.” VB

Cliff Eyland: Studio visit do’s and don’ts from Cliff Eyland, who is both an artist and a curator:

– Precise directions to your studio or meeting place are essential. Do not be late. The visitor won’t be on time: be patient.

– You do not need to know why you are being visited, so don’t ask.

– Neither the visitor nor the person visited should have expectations about the results of a studio visit

– You are not obligated to provide anything more than a glass of water to the visitor. By the time they have seen you they have probably had enough coffee, and they just don’t need your alcohol and/or drugs.

– You should not have sex with the visitor, even though sex hangs in the air of many a studio visit, as it does with many artistic encounters. Save it for later

– Do not be surprised if your visitor says nothing about your work, especially if they are doing many studio visits that day.

– Allow the visitor to take photographs of you and your work

– Studio visits, especially the first studio visit (and of course when the artist does not have a studio) can be conducted in a coffee shop with a laptop. Do not overestimate the visitor’s need to see your work in person. The visitor pays for coffee shop drinks.

– In most cases, the visitor is going to understand your work, or at least easily place it in a context that they understand. You don’t have to struggle with problems of comprehension. What can’t be fathomed in your work can’t be fathomed by anybody, you included.”

Becka Viau: Studio Visits – Do’s and Don’t

Don’t do this

1 – Get your self too worked up about meeting someone you think is powerful or cool. Curators and other artists are people too, and they have their self doubts just like you!

2 – Prepare a boring powerpoint about your life, your inspirations, and your influences. (If you do this you may as well just give the studio visitor some old hard candy and send them away.)

3- Tidy the studio like the pope is going to visit. You should be in your natural environment – I mean if there is old mouldy food around and the place stinks for heaven’s sake clean the filth, but don’t polish the china. Make sure there is a comfortable place for you and your guest to sit and chat.

4- Try to show the visitor your life’s work. This is almost as bad as a dull power point.

5- Gift your Art on the first visit.We all know what kind of relationship that leads to.

6- Talk about everything but your ideas, your process, your practice. Good and meaningful visitors will be naturally interested in what you are doing in the studio, that is why they are there in the first place. So, feel confident, talking about yourself and the ideas that are currently in your head is what this visit is all about!

Do this

1– Be calm and prepared. Have a card or your contact information ready to give out. Think about what is current and relevant in your studio. Has the visitor requested to see a specific work? Is that work ready and accessible – easily viewed in its best light/situation? (still in the studio.) If you are showing digital work, test it before the visit and make sure it works. this will help you not get too worked up.

2- Have a little beverage or refreshment available – this is mostly for you – pick something that will help you be calm and relaxed. I usually am drinking tea or coffee, it gives me a) something to do with my hands and b) something to do with my mouth when I should be listening and not talking.

3- Don’t have a strict plan. A script is the last thing you want when hosting a studio visit. Be honest, be open and let the conversation go where it will (as long as it stay on topic to what you are thinking about/ working on in your studio.

4- Invite them back! Invite them to check out your blog/website … or to be your friend on your social networks… If you are like me, art is my life, I basically am thinking about things all the time, and I reflect this in my online life … So do this, unless they are jerks, then just give them an old candy cane and send them on their way.

A very helpful link about studio visits:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6OV-ZwG6Z4

Pan Wendt:  Do’s and don’ts of studio visits:

Do: Think of curators as potential editors and collaborators. Curators are interested in artists and their work, and want it to succeed. Most curators are not gatekeepers. Nor are they the imaginary “public.” There is usually no need to be willfully mysterious or gnomic in this context, or to think of the studio visit as a performance.

Do: Flaunt it if you got it. Whatever it may be.

Do: Have some work to look at (and I don’t mean things that could just as well be sent via dropbox). Postpone the meeting if you don’t. Ask yourself, could this be achieved with a phone conversation? If not, it’s worthy of a studio visit.

Do: Give some sense of your working process. The more information the better.

Don’t: Be too prepared or too underprepared. I think this applies to life as much as it does power point presentations or studio visits.

Don’t: Assume that a studio visit means a show, or be too demanding on the spot about what happens next. The art world is a game that’s as deeply implicated in the highly indirect social forms of salons and playful repartee as it is in academic discourse and other courts of intellectual law. One must demonstrate aesthetic sense beyond one’s own work.

Don’t: Expect regular studio visits. This is just a matter of numbers. If a given curator can do (if they’re lucky) 50 studio visits a year, why would you expect that you will get to present your case with regular updates every few months?

Don’t: on the other hand, worry too much about your performance. Just enjoy the chance to go into detail about what you do. If a curator is visiting you it’s because they probably already think you’re a good artist and like your work. Remember that curators are usually failed artists, or wannabe artists! A comforting thought.

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Artists Questioned? What are you listening to as you work?

Phillip J. Mellen, “as yellow as certain days” 12″ x 12″ acrylic and house paint on canvas 2014.

All artists have questions they seek answers to. Sometimes they ask themselves the same questions over and over again, and sometimes they seek out friends and mentors who provide answers to their questions. If you ask the same question to several people you will most likely get several different answers, and then it is up to you to select the answer that is best for you. So the question is…What are you listening to as you work?

Ruth Marsh: “Lately I’ve been listening to Head Hunters – Herbie Hancock, and Brian Eno & David Byrne My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. And also the CBC, as always! Q and Ideas! Oh, and of course As it Happens. Sometimes it’s necessary to have silence. I find if I don’t have any outside distraction I can handle silence; the radio and music are great for focussing attention away from multiple sources onto one thing.”RM

Phillip J. Mellen:  “I have recently made a music mix, titled: Songs for Rockwell Kent. Maybe it’s the romance in it all? Some of these songs span over a decade. While listening, I am reminded of the prettier side of the painting struggle. Some of these songs are timeless. I am doing something timeless, no? Painting.

I often change the lyrics in my head. Sometimes I sing along. Some of this music makes me show my teeth as I sing. No so much anymore. These new/old songs are prettier. More smiles and more, well, more prettiness. It’s a poetic experience listening to this music. It enhances my experience while painting. It makes it’s way in. My mind and my paintings. The surrounding environment is important to me as I paint. The mind is important and is just as much an environment. The studio is a mess, but not inside myself. It helps me clear things and preps me for painting.

I’m after the same things in my paintings. It pushes me, and also can slow me down. Making music is a creative process, too. It’s all about process. For me, music is a big part of it. I conduct my work. This may be a collaboration.

Some of the musical artists on the mix are: Joanna Newsom, Dirty Three, Anni Rossi (early), MW Ensemble, Zoe Keating, Rachel’s, and Mountain Man.  Thank you!” PJM

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Artists Questioned. What would you recommend as essential reading for an artist?

Jamie Powell, Purple Reign Acrylic and spray paint on cut-canvas, 8″ x 10″, 2013

All artists have questions they seek answers to. Sometimes they ask themselves the same questions over and over again, and sometimes they seek out friends and mentors who provide answers to their questions. If you ask the same question to several people you will most likely get several different answers, and then it is up to you to select the answer that is best for you. So the question is…What would you recommend as essential reading for an artist?

Jenny Hampe Endresen: Essential reading for an artist???? Oooooh: so much! I mean, there’s poetry, literature, art history, biography, artist’s journals…. Where do I begin?! Well, the first book that came to mind was Roger Cardinal’s “Outsider Art”, which had a huge impression on me as a 22 year old…. Then, the collected writings (rantings) of my dearly belovéd Jean Dubuffet…. The journals of Joan Miró…. The diaries of Paul Klee…. “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, by Kandinsky…. The collected writings of Piet Mondrian…. Letters of Van Gogh…. “Search for the Real”, by Hans Hoffman…. “Raw Vision: Outsider Art and Beyond”…. “Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry”, by Jaques Maritan….”The Transformation of Nature in Art”, by Ananda Coomarswamy…. “The Unknown Craftsman: a Japanese Insight Into Beauty”, by Soetsu Yanagi…. How’s that, for a start? I could list HUNDREDS of books that have had a huge influence upon my art…. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, e.e. cummings, J.D. Salinger, Meister Eckhart, etc. etc. etc. 

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Brian Frink: Books that have been important to me…..I’m writing this on a plane.

John Berger’s, Sense of Sight

John Berger is one of my favorite writers who wrote about art.  It is difficult to label him a critic.  He did write some criticism yet he wrote much more.  Sense of Sight is a collection of his short essays.  Some are about specific artists others are musings.  His prose is compact, full of allegory and poetry.  My favorite essay in this collection is The White Bird.

Suzi Gablik, Has Modernism Failed?

In 1984 Ms. Gablik had the audacity to suggest that Modernism might have failed.  Well she had the audacity to ask that question.  It was a question on a lot of artists mind and this book neatly presented it.  She paralleled the development of Modernist art with industrialism in Western society.  She suggested that the ethos of the individual, a concept that found its full flowering in late Twentieth century America, had run it course.

I had moved from New York to Madison Wisconsin.  Ms. Gablik gave a talk about her book at the Madison Art Center.  I had the great fortune to hear her speak and buy her book.

The Empathic Civilization,  Jeremy Rifkin

This a big fat sprawling book.  Rifkin examines the idea of empathy.  He proposes that humans rather than being naturally competitive are instead, naturally empathic.  He describes the ever-increasing empathetic response in humans through the advancing development of our civilizations and our technologies.  He makes the assertion that we are well on the way to developing into what he labels Homoempathicus.  He also makes the claim that our future survival as a species is dependent on this evolution.

James Elkins  What Ever Happened to Art Criticism?

A slim volume by the Chicago based art historian and writer James Elkins.  In it he asks the very simple question that forms the title.  Elkins is a wonderfully clear writer with an accessible style reminiscent of Berger.  As it turns out something HAS happened to art criticism, it is gone.  He quickly breaks down where it went and speculates on some ideas on how to get it back.

James Elkins, What Painting Is

An amazing book about painting, I don’t know what else to say about it.

Ree Morton catalogue from her New Museum exhibition

It was 1979 and I had just moved to New York City.  I walked into a place called New School For Social Research.  In the New School was a gallery called the New Museum it was run by the legendary Marcia Tucker.  On this fall afternoon I happened upon an exhibition by the great, late Ree Morton.  This exhibition marked me, sitting in my imagination nudging me towards a quirky, idiosyncratic formalism.  It was asymmetrical and strange.  I used what money I had to buy the catalogue and it has been a cherished part of my library for thirty-two years.

David Douglas Duncan, Picasso

This book was a Christmas gift from my parents when I was in high school.  It was a gigantic coffee table style book meant to glorify Picasso.  I loved it.  I pored over the many black and white images of the artist at home, in his studio, at the beach, cavorting everywhere and making art out of his leftover meals.  Included were all of the paintings he had made for that particular year, 1974.  I still go through this book.

————————————————————————————————————————————- Ashley Garrett: I actually don’t feel there isn’t a book that couldn’t be considered essential reading for an artist! The sources of inspiration for artists are extremely wide and varied. I don’t feel that I can recommend a particular book or line of thinking to another artist, but would rather encourage other artists to look far into their own channels of thought and follow each line as far as possible. Read wide and deep, ask questions in the text, and find the next book that approaches that answer, and on to the next question. Integrity for an artist is to stay intensely curious about the world and all the things and thoughts in it. I find myself constantly re-reading books by Joyce, Dostoevsky, and Nabokov, Steppenwolf by Hesse, Nausea by Sarte, Ibsen’s realist cycle and his early plays, poems by T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath–just like in making work, go to the edges of what you really don’t know, and read from there. Books that were given or recommended to me by other artists mean a great deal especially: just a few are Virginia Woolf’s first novel The Voyage Out by Curtis Hamilton, Ibsen by Katherine Aungier, The Poetics of Space by Noah Post, Wallace Steven’s The Palm at the End of the Mind and Henri Michaux by Brian Wood, William Butler Yates by Farrell Brickhouse, and a few great ones by high school and art school teachers including short stories by Flannery O’Connor and TJ Clark’s The Sight of Death.

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Lisa Pressman:  I have many artist books that I look through but I like to reread  books that discuss the creative process.

Twyla Tharp: The Creative Habit

The Writing Life :Annie Dillard

Daybook: Anne Truit

May Sarton: The Journals of Solitude

Trust the Process Shaun Mcniff

Art and Soul: Audrey Flack

Anais Nin: all the journals

Concerning the Spiritual in Art Kandinsky

Free Play Stephen Nachmanovitch

Art and  Fear, Ted Orland

“This is on my list to get ASAP:”

The Infinite Line: Re-making Art After Modernism by Briony Fer

Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as Meditation

Art Critiques: A Guide (Second Edition) – James Elkins; Paperback

“I also did a series on my blog about what is on your book shelf?

Here,here and here.

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Jamie Powell:  Here is my list of books for artists – they are in no particular order.

Needless to say I lean towards artists writings.

Essays On The Blurring of Art Life

by Alan Kaprow

edited by Jeff Kelley

Jasper Johns

Writings, Sketchbook Notes, Interviews

edited by Kirk Varnedoe

WET on Painting, Feminism and Art Culture

by Mira Schor

Philip Guston 

Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations

by Clark Coolidge

Letters To Young Artists

edited by Peter Nesbett, Sarah Andress, Shelly Bancroft

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Sarah Saunders:  I’d recommend “The Art Instinct” by Denis Dutton. It’s a history of aesthetics from an evolutionary viewpoint. It basically looks at why we consider anything to be art, or beautiful. He’s not interested in judgement, critique or defining good art; it’s more about the instinct to be concerned with anything called art at all. He discusses the universality of this instinct across cultures and time. It looks at the question mainly from the observer’s point of view. I’d be interested in a similar take from the creator’s viewpoint, the basis for our motivation to create! Sadly, he died shortly after this book was published.

The other book I’d recommend is “The Language of Ornament” by James Trilling. It’s a survey of the history and expressive language of ornament. He makes a case for seeing ornament as a distinct category of art. He looks at the role of ornament; seeing it not simply as added on embellishment, but as a visual language in it’s own right (with history, expressive force, relation to material etc.).

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