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“Those that can’t do, Teach…”

I have gotten into more than a few debates over the idea of artist as teacher, mostly online and anonymous and a few in person but generally, people don’t voice out loud what rides in the back of their minds; if you teach it means you cant make a living at your art, or “those who cant do, teach.” I admit to a nagging uncertainty as I reconcile the perception and stereotype of artist/teacher with the reality as I must have been exposed to something as a younger person that planted a seed of doubt in my head and keeps the suspense of that “cant do” saying slightly alive. The perception exists, but the reality is far from true.

It’s funny that education is touted in politics as extremely vital even as it is cut in line item budgets. Teachers are trumpeted as noble as they struggle to pay the bills. That damn saying probably keeps a multitude of talented and able teachers from even considering entering the ranks. Teaching is a job like any other and it’s unfortunate that it always gets second fiddle to, well, just about everything. We don’t encourage enough young people to want to become teachers. How else do you learn something new if not from a teacher? Slogging on your own has its value but experience isn’t always the best teacher (ask me about my friend teaching me about using a table saw after I showed him how I used it…)

I teach painting and drawing at a local college here in Rhode Island and have been doing it for 10 years. I came about the job by happenstance attached to hard work and by dint of more hard work have managed to keep teaching and doing it pretty well. I care deeply about my students and do my best to give them every ounce of information that I think will be helpful and pertinent. Some days it’s a real drag and others a complete joy but I keep my level of professionalism as even as possible no matter my own mood. I work as hard at teaching as I do at art or whatever job I’ve had.

My own art career is something that would be unsustainable without doing something else to make additional money. Some artists have nine to five’s, while some work commercially with their art skills and some of us teach among the various alternate professions. I’ve met less than a handful of artists who survive financially only by the effort of making fine art. This is a difficult field to sustain over a long haul.

What simmers behind the titled saying is ignorance. Ignorance of a particular field and unwillingness to look beyond stereotypes furthers this disrespecting of teachers. Teaching is an incredibly difficult job that is compensated disproportionally to the challenge and difficulty. I am sure that each of us can look back to that one teacher who touched us (or touched our kids - those who have them) in some profound way that is immeasurable. If so, where does that saying come from? Are we afraid of teachers? Is there some innate human trait that compels us to be overly critical of a perceived weakness? Professions, such as the arts that are regarded as relatively unimportant in the wider society make an easy target. Teachers of those professions are an even easier target.

What people don’t realize is how difficult a job teaching is. I teach two days a week at my college and each day’s class is 5 hours long. Most weeks I need another full day to prepare for those classes. I honestly can’t fathom how elementary and high school teachers make their days go by as smoothly as they do. Alongside all of this is the emotional drain of navigating 20 different personalities while making sure each student maximizes their potential and learns what they need to learn. It’s a recipe for exhaustion. Proportionally, I am more drained by teaching than by any day of my former hard labor construction job.

I don’t have an answer but I do know that in the arts, the teachers and artists who teach are as dedicated a bunch as any you’ll find. We certainly don’t do it for the money! Seriously, the arts and teaching do not pay as well as you think so there must be something else that compels us to do it. Call it devotion, call it caring, call it foolishness but don’t call it as something unworthy. Remember back to that teacher that affected you in a positive way (I know there are some bad ones too, as in any field) and question what your life would be like without that influence?

Could you do without it?

Posted 04 September 2008 † Jason § Career ‡ Comments (1)

Do Artists get stressed?

There are times when I pine for my youthful days spent working at a local deli / fish market where my tasks were organized and specific week to week, month to month. The only big change being relative to what fish was in season. In some ways, it was the happiest job I can ever recall as my coworkers were more than decent and the work was relatively interesting and enjoyable. Would I trade it for the current job I have making art? Certainly not. A more stress free existence is something I would trade for and maybe it’s more attainable than it seems but right now, life is running on stress and caffeine.

To say money has been tight during this economically challenged summer is a truism of magnificent proportion. I don’t teach during the summer so my modest but steady teaching stipend dries up for three months and I rely on savings and also potential art sales to fill in that gap. Car troubles ate up the savings before summer even started and painting sales have been absolutely non existent so the money influx has trickled to a stop. I have never had a summer act so stubbornly. I do have the backstop of a teaching job that starts in September so while things are challenging there is an end in sight. But it does cause a daily stress that accumulates like dust choking a flat surface.

A funny thing happens to artists when outside stress builds, especially the financial kind, and while I have read of it in the history books, I never believed it to be true. Art making gets EASIER in times of financial strife. Logically, it actually makes sense. If you make art that people want, then you need to continue to make that art as people expect it and that puts great stress on your process. If you make something that people don’t want because they have no income to afford it then you are freed to make whatever you want! Honestly, as the summer has gotten hotter and the stress outside my studio rose with the temperature I found myself enjoying making art more and more. I cant exactly explain it but making art has become a release of sorts that doesn’t have any external or, by choice, internal pressure on it to be anything extra special or important. (I have intentionally taken a lighter approach in my own existential thinking this summer – thank god!) In fact, the past few weeks I have combined my love of old Star Wars figures with my current love of making paintings and the resulting paintings are turning out pretty cool! I never would have tried something so completely different if I was having a “normal” summer. Hooray for a poor economy!

I guess life does find a way to seek balance and it’s our job to see how that balance occurs. I remember times when the art went poorly and life was fun and entertaining. And also times when art and life took on the same shades of gray. That art is glowing and life is dull is just the reality of the moment and surely, most assuredly, it will change again.

And I’ll be surprised at that as well….

Posted 26 August 2008 † Jason § Day to Day ‡ Comments (4)

Contemporary Art in a Contemporary Culture

The internet is about 20 plus years old now. Total integration of that internet into our culture is about 10 years old. Blogging has been around for about 5 years as a serious undertaking. When I set up this particular blog almost a year ago, as part of my research I looked into what makes a successful blog. There were more than a few lists of “50 things every blogger should know” to promote and have a successful blog. In a way its baffling that something so new could have so many people with expert opinions of “how to do it best.” It served as a reminder of how ridiculously fast our culture changes and how we desperately strive to keep up with it. We become experts when the rest of us need them not because we have truly mastered an undertaking but because something new has created a vacuum of knowledge and someone will rush to fill it. Our society is moving along at a breakneck speed and the place that art occupies is/has changed.

The question of “what art is” has been rolling around too much in the meager space between my ears lately and especially difficult to grasp is the idea of whether art is at the forefront of culture or a small, anachronistic wagon pulled along behind. We artists like to think we are at the forefront of society, asking the tough questions, navigating the inner workings of culture and humanity with the skills of a surgeon. Are we?

There are two sides to the coin of art. One side is the artist and the questions they ask and the other side presents the answers with ideas and materials that are manipulated until they can be called art. Rarely can you see two sides of a coin at the same time so the artist and their art exist separately and the art must speak for itself. What makes the coin of art different from the other coins in the pocket of culture is the relative time artists spend polishing their respective coins (sometimes, too much polishing.) We like our art shiny so it demands that you “look” at it. Shiny and intriguing. What has been relatively constant is that the coin of art has been scattered with all the other coins of our culture, scraping and jingling together and adding up to the sum total of our society.

One hundred or so years ago, Marcel Duchamp started questioning the nature of art. The questions since then have gotten harder and harder and more and more critical. Today, an artist is almost obligated to question culture or question the nature of art and, god forbid; an artist strives to master the skills of his or her forbears… ANACHRONISM! What seems so troubling is that while our artistic ancestors of 100 years ago never wanted to take the coin of art away from the mix of the rest of the cultural pocket, it has become commonplace to create art that cares little for its audience and speaks only to the those in the “know” of the art world. The coin has been dropped. I am respectively tired of walking into galleries and seeing boring video feeds or piles of dirt that speak everything of an artist’s intellectual cleverness but nothing of their ability to communicate. Sometimes, I feel that the questions asked by contemporary artists overwhelm what their materials can do. Can a video feed be polished enough to intrigue the audience in the wake of our cultural familiarity with moving images? (see; Hollywood.) The ideas behind much contemporary art are usually incredibly precise and interesting but the execution is lacking, or, too self indulgent. When self expression turns to self indulgence, what does that become? The coin now only has one side. Artist and art led by ego…

The larger point I am struggling to circle is the question of art’s place in the world. The powers that be in the art world have seemed to effectively separate contemporary art from society. To get attention in the art world you need to be a kind of “cutting edge” that only the select few who are clued into the world of cutting edge will understand.  If you can’t communicate with society, ignore them. I understand this impulse because who wants to communicate with a culture that doesn’t care for your message or how you present it? What I don’t get is that so much of the conceptual basis for contemporary art revolves around relevant cultural issues of the day. If you make art that questions the nature of culture but wrap your message in a way that is unopenable by the very culture you criticize then what does that become?

My suggestion is that artists need to stop striving to be at the forefront of society, leading the way. Culture is moving too fast and to keep up we need to shed too much of import to keep our message relevant. Art has seemed to always hold an important place in society and what our society needs now is not more front runners, but some people to help put on the brakes.

Let’s slow this train down before it runs over our coin and flattens it.

Posted 11 August 2008 † Jason § Philosophical ‡ Comments (4)

Public Art

My (failed) entry in the recent “Art All Around” Competition in Portland, ME

Distinguishing art as being “public” has always seemed to be a bit of a misnomer. Making art, although a fairly selfish endeavor is made with a mindset towards some sort of public consumption. That artist who claims “I only make art for myself” and is challenged to never show that art to anyone, if it is only for themselves, will be the first artist to follow through on that challenge. We want an audience for our art and it does a major disservice to our broader reputation to claim otherwise. We want people to see what we do and we also want people outside our sphere of daily influence to experience the art we make - the public. Doesn’t that make all art “public?” I‘ve also had conversations with gallery owners who cite that galleries often function as smaller and much cheaper (free) version of museums. Most of the public isn’t a buying public when they visit art galleries and I lump myself in the category of affording to look but not to buy. The larger point is that although some art is destined to live its life in a completely public sphere most art is made with some intent of becoming, at least for a little while, “public art.”

I bring this topic up because I recently applied for (and didn’t make the cut) a call for public art in Portland, Maine. The proposal was to create designs that would adorn a good number of giant fuel tanks located just outside of Portland. There was a hefty cash prize and the opportunity for your design to exist in a very large and visible way so the possibilities were very enticing. In lieu of the incredibly low percentage chance of winning one of five finalist spots I kept my own designs manageable and only spent a couple days coming up with an entry. The final tally of 560 entries that were pared down to five finalists made it a less than 1% chance of winning. There is no bitterness or surprise at my not being a finalist because it was quite literally a roll of the dice that my design was appropriate, seen by the right eyeballs and seen at the right time. Imagine you are the 557th entry that some poor juror is looking at. Do you think you will get the same hard look that say, the 3rd entry got? You never know and you do the best you can when entering art competitions of this sort.

My general criticism comes indirectly from participating in this and other competitions that demanded acknowledgment of the “public” aspect of the art involved. I think much art today that exists as “public art” has gone through a filtering process where the questions that are asked diminish what is intrinsically valuable about the art itself. There is a lot of bad public art out there. (There are a lot of other reasons for bad public art as I’ve heard the process called a game of attrition where the artists holds onto as much as he or she can while committees strip things away…)

This undoubtedly raises the difficult question of “what art is” and I think we all have our “you know it when you see it” answer for that question. For me, I think there has to be an emotional as well as intellectual aspect that leads it to the label of art. I’ve recently heard about the brains emotional response mechanisms being 300 times faster than the intellectual response mechanism which summarizes into our feeling things long before we understand them. I think great art leads you to understanding through emotions first and the intellect second. OK, that’s my own take and it’s undoubtedly different from anyone else’s. Let the debate begin.

Often, in applying to competitions you are assailed with different versions of the question “how will this benefit the public” and you face a choice of changing your intent in order to better answer that question or remaining steadfast in your vision and risk not fulfilling the competition requirements. Now, the people who fund these competitions can choose any criteria they want to justify giving their money away. My question lies in how the work that results is changing the perception of what art is. Is art only about social change and issues of the moment? Is art about giving the public what they want and expect? “Art in the short term changes nothing, in the long term, everything,” I borrow this from an artist I admire greatly and it encompasses my belief that art better serves more fundamental ideas of our human nature than themes of the moment. The great challenge is to find the balance of talking about the narrative of our day to day, a social issue for example, and tying that with a wider theme of how humans struggle and have struggled with those issues. I greatly fear seeing a bunch of lobsters and boats as the winning theme of this Maine competition. Art becomes decoration and only presents the obvious. Decoration is fine, see wallpaper, but don’t call it art. It’s all very slippery and I don’t presume to present a black and white argument of what a balanced piece of art entails. I know I see a lot of “public art” that is completely forgettable and while it takes its place in the public sphere as “art” it doesn’t begin to serve what art can be.

Art and media and popular culture have blended so much that the value of a challenging, universally minded piece of art isn’t valued as it once was. I fear we are so inundated with news and information and issues of the day that the perception of just re-presenting that information into a new format makes it art. Great art is timeless while the fickleness of public taste and public consumption is not. Issues come and go while our humanity remains constant.

A better question might be “how does this benefit humanity?”

The answers might not be so forgettable.

Posted 03 August 2008 † Jason § Day to Day ‡ Comments (7)

Faith versus Frustration

You spend time at a favorite museum or read an inspirational book and charge into studio renewed with a sense of “I can do anything and it will matter” attitude. You spend days and weeks and maybe months on this or that project and things start to roll along with their own momentum. Things are good, you feel good and you step lively each day with anticipation of whatever discovery might await. Faith is strong and unquestioned.

Then, a car breaks down unexpectedly or that sale that seemed eminent fell through or you simply screwed up a favorite piece with a risky choice that seemed fruitful and ended up spoiling the mix. Frustration sets in and begins to slowly erode faith. Questions of what and how are being replaced by questions of why…

Frustration is inevitable. Some obstacle has imposed its will on your creative process and the uncertainty of how to get past it turns over to frustration when we linger too long on fruitless ways to overcome whatever that obstacle is. The infamous “writer’s block” (which exists for all creative practices but without such a catchy name) must be some confluence of eroded faith coupled with an overly difficult obstacle. Those obstacles come in tremendously different forms and where one artist struggles financially another might struggle conceptually and so on. The faith we have as an artist means we believe that somehow what we do has a benefit beyond our selfish impulse to create. Other artists can take the blame for kindling that faith in their peers. We experience other artist’s work and it imparts some magic and we do our best to instill similar magic to our own work. Faith helps us keep that why question at bay when we are working because we simply believe and don’t need to ask why. We can focus on what to do and how to do it. That why question is important to ask but is better asked when faith is strong because in asking it we open doors of self examination and that is difficult under any circumstance let alone when you’re frustrated. Of course, who wants to ask that kind of difficult question when things are going well, knowing the dilemma such questions might present?

The analogy I use is akin to the construction of a house. The foundation you build for your house is constructed with bigger questions in mind and with care and thought it will be strong. Once built however, you don’t start changing that foundation in the middle of a massive rainstorm because you discover a leak. You deal with the leak as best you can and when the weather clears you assess what changes might need to occur. Faith is the foundation we build our art on, frustration; a bad storm. If the foundation is continually leaking during those storms then some reevaluation and help might be needed but a small leak doesn’t mean the foundation is unsound (contractors might disagree but I hope the analogy holds water (haha.))

What do you do? You’re frustrated, things aren’t working and your ears are filling with self doubt. My own remedy, when I remember to take it, is to simplify the process and focus on fixing the leak and doing things I know will work to help me get back on track.

This summer, the dismal economy has stalled painting sales while financial burdens have also increased and I’m quite rightly frustrated and feeling overwhelmed. This has led to questions of validation and the why the hell make art questions and all those existential questions that go along with eroding faith. I’ve taken some steps to buffer the eroding financial situation and remembered past uncertainties that were also difficult and those situations worked out ok. In studio, I’ve taken a little pressure off the art by moderating my expectations and reminding myself to just make the work and ask the harder questions later in the process when my energy and focus are tighter. In short, I’ve reevaluated a little bit, plugged the leak and just kept moving forward as best I can.

Much of life, if not all of it seems to rely on faith. In the growing uncertainty of our global existence it’s understandable to have our faith shaken a little bit if not a lot. Maybe we will need a new paradigm of how we exist as the future unfolds but I’m not smart enough to even glimpse what that might be. For now, the old example of one foot in front of the other is all that makes sense. Sometimes, all you can handle is the next step and that’s surely the case for me.

Where do these steps lead? Do we really ever know?

Posted 27 July 2008 † Jason § Philosophical ‡ Comments (4)

Gum Arabic

Recent watercolors using lots of gum arabic!

Sometimes, you need to talk a little shop and extol the virtues of the minutest detail of your working process. Today we celebrate Gum Arabic and by default, watercolor. For a little primer; I have become recently re-obsessed with watercolor after a few years away while playing nicely with acrylic and other mediums. I cut my teeth as a sophomore and junior in college learning the wily ins and outs of painting as seen through the prism of watercolor. Something in the process of accumulating layer after layer of subtly transparent color spoke directly to my inner muse and I was as certainly hooked on watercolor as I am to breathing. Using it made too much sense despite protestations of my many classmates that it was too hard. Hard it is but look at what it can do!

A few factors have loosened our symbiotic grip on each other, watercolor and I, and over the years my use of the medium has drifted to a corner of the room where dust accumulates all too readily. Framing and selling work on paper is a pain and as an artist who desperately wants to live off the meager proceeds of art sales this small hurdle has diminished watercolors effectiveness. Additionally, the notion of watercolor as a difficult medium is grounded in a certain reality and its nature is a bit unforgiving but if you treat it right it will reward you. And, like that old friend you only call once a year and whose voice on the phone suppresses any feelings of guilt or apprehension as you slip easily into each other’s conversation, watercolor has always been close to my heart.

It’s gratifying when your goals actually take shape in accomplishments and a myriad of factors have led me to reinvestigate watercolor as a material and set goals to learn more about it. I’ve started teaching a watercolor class. I recently saw the Turner show and dozens of his ridiculous performances on paper. I also need to refresh a working process that has gone a little stale and doing many pieces quickly is a way to go about it – thus watercolor. What I have wanted to avoid is this definition of insanity; doing the same thing and expecting different result. I want to use watercolor in a fresh way and do everything possible to make new discoveries.

By its very nature, watercolor hides little of the artist’s intent and ability. When you visits with a watercolor painting everything that has transpired under the artists watch is available to witness (enter gouache and all bets are off as gouache covers those “mistakes” just fine.) For the artist, that means a heightened sense of purpose must accompany each mark, each choice and each revision as the painting unfolds because what you put down early will have paternity over the finished painting. My own hand and mark making has become too familiar and my bigger goal for this recent series of watercolors is to challenge a more loose and aggressive approach with the paint while at the same time remaining precise within that looser framework – not easy. In addition I need to constantly remind myself to make different choices and to avoid my hand’s autopilot that will inevitably put down the same kind of marks it always has. If I am to avoid insanity I need to change the process in a deliberate way so that I am NOT doing the same things and I WILL see different results. Enter gum arabic.

Change is inevitable so why not embrace it and let it flow freely? Gum arabic is the binder that holds the watercolor paint together. Soluble in water it carries the paint to paper in a suspension of water, gum Arabic and pigment and when the water evaporates the gum arabic sticks the pigment to the paper and you have a mark and bunch of them make a painting. Readymade paints come from the art store with a kind of Goldilocks’ approach to the consistency of your paint – not too much gum arabic nor too little. Look closely at any of the masters of the medium and you quickly realize (ok, not so quickly, it took me 15 years to figure this out) that they didn’t settle with their paint as Goldilock’s “just right.” Watercolor is a medium of tricks and techniques more than any other and the difference is that those masters used their tricks as a means to an end where many of us get stuck using the tricks as the end itself. To expand your bag of tricks, it’s helpful to use weird materials; adding wax, adding salt or … more gum arabic!

The more I have looked at the masters (in person, especially) the more I’ve realized that they over-bound their paint. Gum arabic is the binder of watercolor and to over-bind it means to simply add more gum Arabic than the manufacturer intended. It won’t work for Goldilocks but it will for Wyeth and hopefully for me. More gum arabic does increase the difficulty of working with the layers because the permanence of how well it sticks has been greatly diminished but the flexibility has been greatly increased! The paint has a little bit more body than before so you can manipulate it more freely and while it doesn’t stick as rigidly to the paper this also means you can lift it off the paper more easily and suddenly watercolor becomes a medium of addition AND subtraction. The kinds of texture that come about are more a result of what you do with your brush, rag or finger than the happenstance of water flowing where it will. Slightly thicker paint sticks where you put it and while you don’t lose the “happy accident” quality of the paint you are forced to be a little more inventive in how you put the paint down (and take it off). In effect, you have more “control” but that simply means you have to pay closer attention because the paint won’t do as much of the work for you. Goal accomplished – do something different and something different results.

It’s amazing that the simple change of one variable has erupted into a frenzied few weeks of new paintings and surprises. Admittedly, I am bit exhausted in the unfamiliarity that at times feels as overwhelming as it is refreshing. I’ve often resisted this path of trick and technique in watercolor as a sort of magic show without substance. Painting is artifice though and the more tricks to help your illusion take shape the more compelling the show.

Posted 18 July 2008 † Jason § Purely Painting ‡ Comments (1)

Sustainable Momentum

Suburbs series (1998-2000) :: Mall Series (2000-2003) :: American Landscape Series (2003-2007) :: Sketch idea for new Suburbs Series (2008)

My interest lies in becoming an efficient and effective artist who can sustain momentum, production and growth long into the future. There are a myriad of factors that determine if a sustainable path will present itself and it’s only recently that I’m confronting an issue that feels akin to boredom. I’m not referring to the kind of day to day boredom of not knowing what to do with yourself but rather a more subtle sense of “the problem has been solved” so I better move onto something different to avoid boredom. That desire to strike out in a new direction when an old one has been fulfilled has served me well but I don’t wonder if I left those old paths behind too hastily. To help set the stage we need to be reminded where we come from.

As young artists we are plunged into the depths of creativity and asked in every possible way if we’ve stretched ourselves and our projects to the limits. In that process, like an athlete, we are tuning our creative muscles to always look beyond the recognizable boundaries and see what potential lies beyond. There are many ways to challenge yourself artistically and few examples might be; you pick up a different tool than you’ve ever used before, say, using a palette knife to apply paint instead of using the familiar brush to do the job. You might rephrase or ask a different question to spur discovery; instead of “how do I paint skin?” you might ask “what color choices do I make and how do I apply the paint to show the transparency of skin?” Mostly, we are trained to ask the same questions in many different ways so we might find different answers as we make our work. Funny enough, with the basics in hand and a few years under your belt, it is these kind of subtle differences that start to inform what can be called our personal vision. Our goal is to stay devoted and excited about the artwork and this training helps us keep excitement alive in that devotion.

That all sounds great; you are trained to think outside the box and push the limits with curiosity as your best innate tool to fulfilling those aims. Where’s the problem? The problem arises in looking at the reality of human nature that gets bored and also overwhelmed doing a task over and over. Even a task as seemingly exciting as the one detailed above can become mundane with repetition. Does that sound weird? You are continually challenging and questioning and looking for new frontiers and it’s boring? You want to turn off curiosity and do things routinely?

The point of reflection I have arrived at comes from examining the past ten years of my own career. Every 2-3 years a new show has arrived with a new body of freshly finished work and when that show and work ended, the approach of finding that next big new thing in my work settled in and for the next two to three years an entirely new series erupted. I feel the equivalent might be found in a baseball player who is asked to play a new position every three years. It’s the same game but there are a whole new set of skills and variables to learn and implement with the new position. After a few new positions, that player is going to bristle when asked to step into the fourth and then fifth new position – it’s exhausting to start over despite it still being the same game of baseball. I am starting to feel the same way as I step into a new series of works. What is so in need of changing that I leave behind my old position?

As I look back to the original premise of becoming an effective artist for the long haul I realize some new ordering of my training is necessary. As you get older, you have less energy than when you were younger – I think we can all agree on this unsympathetic fact. Your life also fills with more responsibility so the efficient spending of that energy becomes more important. Starting completely anew takes a lot of energy and A+B=C doesn’t work as well anymore. As I’ve heard about relationships; you pick your battles. In a way you and your art are dancing in a kind of relationship and the relative importance of art in my life has changed from when I was a twenty something. I need to pick my battles more carefully and the training that compels a brand new approach every few years will lead me to a battle that is more than I can handle right now.

Thus, the new work will be a little like the old work as I revisit an old series with (hopefully) wiser eyes and sensibilities. I’m not ready to change into a new position on the baseball field as I feel I won’t put as much into discovering the intricacies of that new position / series of artworks. I am feeling bored and exhausted with that approach to making new work.

The analogy that seems apt is found in the struggle to climb a mountain. When you’ve reached the top and had time to reflect you are often set to wonder what it would be like to climb that next peak. Right now, I am more interested in re-climbing that same peak but finding a different path to reach the summit. Who knows what I’ll find on the way up.

Posted 12 July 2008 † Jason § Philosophical ‡ Comments (1)

MAINE AND WHAT’S IMPORTANT

My (almost) niece has been visiting us for almost three weeks now. She is nine years old and we have been changing our daily patterns quite a bit in order to accommodate her nine year old self. It’s been good training for potential kids of our own! This past long weekend we took a trip up to our family cabin near a small lake in Maine and as part of a deal we struck, my niece is writing a journal of her experiences and I promised to also write a “journal entry” of my experience. Here it is.

Our trip started awaiting the arrival of her “pop-pop” (grandfather) who was driving up from Delaware to meet us in Providence to then caravan up to Maine. He arrived around 9 a.m. which meant he’d been driving since 4 a.m. which meant he had been up since…ug. It was early and we were barely ready to go when he pulled in and once he gave a flash glance of our new condo, he declared it time to go. Jade (my almost niece) and I drove in one car and “pop-pop” and my fiancé were in the other (lest we seem rich or gas guzzling fiends, we had planned separate departure days from Maine at the conclusion of the weekend.)

With some nap time for Jade on the voyage up and some quick stops at rest areas and grocery shopping sites we pulled in comfortably to the cabin at around 1 p.m. and a sunny day awaited us. A quick perusal found little wrong with the cabin after it sat dormant some seven long months and the only glaring issue was the semi submerged docks down by the lake. We usually take the docks out of the lake around Thanksgiving because by attrition it falls on the last person at the cabin to close up and make the place ready for the long winter. My Dad rigged a new system for the docks last year that unfortunately left them underwater by winters end. We have been searching for years for the ultimate low investment / high yield solution to dock removal and installation and we obviously haven’t found it yet.

With the docks in, swimming began in earnest and also with some trepidation. Jade, although an excellent swimmer (she competes and wins in pool competitions) has never swum in a lake before and the size of the lake, a rock, sand and leaf strewn lake bottom and all the newness made her first few paddles reluctant ones. None of it was enough to keep her half fish self from overcoming nerves and we soon found it impossible to get her out of the water. Campfires, s’mores, hot dogs cooked outside, sleeping with bugs in the room, sleeping with silence are only a few of the first time evers that Jade experienced in her 5 days in Maine. That we had a great time is an understatement of epic proportions. All of us clued into the experience that Jade was having and we fed off it to make our own more rich.

As the ultimate arbiter of my own fun I’ll embarrassingly recount a game we played on our way home from the famous “Pizza Barn” that was played again the next day on the docks. The “Memory Game” is like the old Milton Bradley Simon game where competitors sing a few verses of a made up song or ditty and the next competitor must sing exactly or nearly so (with discretion) a repeat of what they heard. That I can’t carry a tune is something even my Mom wouldn’t disagree with so to have me belting out silly jingles about trees and clouds and telephone poles at a high pitch of potential embarrassment meant something had been jogged loose in my inhibitions for the better. I don’t sing but there was no problem singing with Jade. I do laugh however and this game produces some huge laughers. My Fiancé forgetting her OWN SONG as she was singing it was quite funny…

Unless you spend time around kids it’s so easy to forget how magical life can be at their and any age. I recall fondly my own days visiting my aunt and uncle in Syracuse, NY and the amazing times we had doing this or that. Especially fond are memories of Beaver Lake and the myriad trails and boardwalks we spent hours hiking and exploring. My kids memory might be clouding locations but I also remember swimming at the said lake and seeing the roped off depths marking where cliffs dropped into untold fathoms of water below. It was terrifying and thrilling to walk near the edge of a cliff while standing in waist deep water and see the blueness turn dark in the murky depths below. I would often spend weeks (or so it felt) visiting my aunt and uncle and the memories are incredibly precious. That I can act the cool uncle or at least as cool as I think I am is gratifying in ways I never imagined.

I’m reminded of the claims I make as to how and why art is important and to the depth of meaning we struggle to inject into the art we make and wonder if the circuits don’t get crossed at times. Those experiences of childhood are equally as potent as any great experience with a work of art and probably more so. The sense of wonder in watching Jade experience her first s’more (ok, the chocolate and marshmallow ain’t bad either) or the joy of simple swimming is really what makes life go ’round. Remembering my own fond times is a surprising byproduct. That we pile so much importance on other things, things more complicated and usually less interesting and certainly less wonderful is unfortunate. Inevitable and unfortunate. I think we make art to remember the wonder of life and the importance of it. Along the way the issue of what art is supposed to be all about seems to have gotten cloudy. My own life cascades too easily into the tunnel vision of day to day craziness so that art dips into that craziness isn’t too surprising. That craziness is a real thing in this world so to ignore it would be dishonest and at all cost art needs to be honest. Sometimes that craziness feels like you are swimming out of sight of shore and I wonder if art can’t act as life preserver or compass or something like that. When art feels like an anchor, what good is it?

A simple solution might be to spend a little more time with kids and to listen a little harder to what they see and hear and experience.

We’d learn something or at least we’d have fun.

Posted 04 July 2008 † Jason § Day to Day ‡ Comments (3)

Goals and the Plans that go Awry…

A goal for this summer was to reevaluate how I kept track of and followed up on goals. You need to plan to make plans! That initial goal has been accomplished and I now have a binder I keep with me as much as possible with a better organized system of keeping track of what is supposed to get done.

Among the goals to be accomplished this June is a series of small landscape watercolors done from life study along the various bike paths here in Rhode Island. We are fortunate to have an amazing system of bike paths and the ones I’ve chosen follow RI rivers dotted with old industry and dams and waterfalls. I’ve loved waterfalls almost forever and there are some real gems along the Blackstone River in particular. I want to spend time outside this summer and I want to reevaluate the kind of color choices and brushmarks I usually take for granted in studio. When you work from life you are assailed with an enormous amount of experiential information that begets a need to be more inventive to visually interpret it. It’s humbling and exciting and frustrating all at once.

A funny thing has happened as the initial goal in my head (and on paper) to make 40 paintings in a month has been much more difficult to navigate than anticipated. The amount of energy it takes to concentrate for 6-8 hours of life painting is enormous and a few 95+ degree days sapped physical energy very quickly. Couple the fact that this goal has more emotional weight than say, blogging (sorry readers…) and I have to be careful how many other tasks I pile up in a painting day lest exhaustion set in. Rain? Forget about a day of watercolor outdoors in the rain…Aint gonna happen! I also forgot how droll mid afternoon sun can appear as the most compelling light to paint from happens either real early or real late in the day. I’m an early riser but not that early and I dread late afternoon work. Like any new(ish) endeavor, you can’t hope to plan for every variable and the stated goal of 10 paintings a week – 40 a month has already slumped into barely an average of one painting a day.

One thing I have learned is that goals need to be attainable and a plan to produce 40 awesome paintings in a month from life study wasn’t attainable. Rust at painting outdoors and all of the above factors have made it imperative to scale back the goals to manageable levels. A cute saying one of my students mentioned to me “You shoot for the moon and even if you miss, you’re still among the stars.” Corny? Yes, but all things in moderation and especially self criticism for not reaching the highest pinnacles you had planned is in order when “shooting for the moon.” What I have accomplished is worthwhile and the initial reasons I set out on this task are being fulfilled, if less intensely than my ideal self imagined.

Below are the pieces accomplished so far in chronological order;

Posted 20 June 2008 † Jason § Purely Painting ‡ Comments (2)

­­Too Many Brushes

Aren’t we all pack rats of some sort? Whether we hold trivia in our memory or the trivial in our closets it’s sometimes difficult to get away from the things we accumulate. That old one year rule, you know, “if you don’t use something in a year, get rid of it…” isn’t quite a truism from my point of view. I haven’t used my cross country skis in two years and it’s not that I didn’t want to – there wasn’t any snow! That adage is even more questionable when it comes to the things we use in our art studio or the places of our work - I would even hesitate to get rid of some random art supply after 5 years. You never know…

For example, let’s look at roll of tape. I was visiting my studio mate and his stuff a few weeks back and stumbled on a roll of specialized silver tape that was used to mask off the edges of slides (remember those.) I remarked my great surprise and lamented that I too once had such a roll of tape but tossed it a few years back because I no longer used slides and hadn’t used the tape in, oh, a few years. “You never know” was the response I got back. Funny enough, I have been thinking about that roll of tape I threw away (and that silver tape was EXPENSIVE!) because I have a particular painting that needs a particular width of tape to help mask off a certain area and that particular width of tape isn’t really made anymore and that silver tape was a certain width …see where I’m going? I waited a few years ‘till I tossed that roll of tape but damn, I wish I still had it.

These past few weeks as weather changes I have begun painting outdoors again and as I packed my satchel (ok, backpack but satchel sounds more romantic) with paints, paper, assorted tools and… my brushes, I never questioned the enormity of brushes I was bringing with me for a day of painting. As I count now, there where 35 brushes in the canvas carrier I stuffed undiplomatically into the pack for that first day. For an 8 hour day (more like 6 of painting and 2 more for walking and setup) that’s about 4 ½ brushes an hour! The equivalent might be going to a meeting at your place of work and bringing a box of both pens and pencils, just in case. As I rendezvous back at studio and look at the jars of brushes sitting on my table and remember I have another whole box sitting somewhere in a pile of whole boxes I’m requestioning my never throw anything away in studio attitude. I do use a lot of brushes when I paint but not THAT many and usually it’s the same ten or twelve. Do I need all those brushes?

To ward off insecurity I tend to overcompensate so, for example, I can move laterally between brush choices as opposed to moving forward and simply tackling the issue at hand; like the fact that painting landscapes from life is hard no matter what brush is in your hand. All of those extra brushes got in the way, literally and figuratively and after my first day of painting and I quickly pared it down to 7. I marvel at how difficult it was to cull through all of those brushes and actually choose the 7 to keep. It felt as if some untold potential was being stripped away as each extraneous brush was lifted from my pack. I’m always challenged to remember that tools are a means to an end and the real struggle is always more importantly an interior struggle. Overcoming obstacles and limitations in seeking growth is the reason I make art and the reason I am taking this foray into landscape painting from life – it’s a difficult task for me and if I’m diligent and thoughtful I will learn and grow from it. All of those extra brushes gave a false sense of security and while it was easy to recognize the silliness of too many brushes its harder to recognize other more subtle overcompensations.

I will be getting rid of some brushes permanently because it’s just silly that I’ve never thrown any of them away despite that some are really worn out and some I have NEVER used! (I have four #6 round Cotman watercolor brushes all in various states of too much wear and I keep them still and never use them?) There is certainly a balance between too much and not enough and although I miss that roll of silver tape, I really could get another without too much effort or cost. The struggle always comes back to being honest about what it really takes to perform the task at hand and to pare down what isn’t important for what is. Those extra brushes weren’t important.

Now I need to figure out what is.

Posted 14 June 2008 † Jason § Purely Painting ‡ Comments (2)