Peter Schjeldahl Lecture:

It is risky to think about what you do.
He says he is no scholar, but rather presents the illusion of scholarship by stealing from scholars.
>Oscar Wilde’s The Critic as Artist:
-praising beauty demonstrates its utility as a weapon.
-the critic is a fictional character, and the illusion is flimsy
-critics as artists are stylists
-makes a case for independent thought as ethical imperative.

Gertrude Stein says that artists don’t need criticism they need appreciation. Schjeldahl says that proper art criticism is not written for artists. An in response to the criticism of the critic, that why should someone who can’t make art get to judge its value, he says it is exactly because a man can’t do something that he can be the judge of it. Artists see as artists, the critic understands in a way the artist does not.

An artist must have an intellectual relation to their age, and no idea is true in itself.
Intellectual systems antagonize the critic as artist, and intellectual systems stand in relation not to present ages, but to previous ones. By the time modernism began to be understood, pop art was already making its appearance. “When in modern times has status stayed quo for more than half a generation?”

“Bad artists always admire each others work”

There is no fine art without self consciousness.
If you feel like a phony, or are uncomfortable with a compliment about your work:
Smile and say thank you. Keep moving!

Every good artist is an outsider artist in a way that counts. A life of art is a renegade pursuit. An original, burning dissatisfaction, usually first felt in childhood, distinguishes the artist from others.  Also felt is the urge to crash the circles of insiders, to force them to appreciate the likes of you. To be great you have to endure as much loneliness as you can, to the point of panic.

Educating yourself in public is very painful, but you remember every lesson.

Art is one of the only things that reliably makes our lives better in a world that makes everything worse.

Replace the word ‘practice’ with ‘work’ – notice how much lonelier you feel.

Art is about getting civilized, absorbing the culture and history of your place and time, trying to make it better, and passing it on.

Art is a dotted line around things that are temporarily not not art.
Aristotle’s definition of art is the habit of mind concerned with making.

There is a handmade quality of painting that cannot be duplicated. Every square inch is done on purpose, it is a membrane of decisions through one mind.

This culture can drive you crazy, it is all noise. A good painting brings everything to a stop.

The more you know the more you have to un-know, trust your first instinct. Until you have had the experience how do you know if you’re interested? Don’t read the wall text.

Field Trip Reflection:

Berkeley Museum:
Will Yackulic’s miniature sculpture “Trait Family A” really challenged the way I’ve been thinking recently about scale. I’ve had the idea in my head that a piece needs to be large to be impactful, but I was struck by the intimacy, delicacy, and personal engagement it demanded. It lead me on a line of thought questioning preciousness, value, possession, and the ever-present, ever-terrifying art market.

Southern Exposure Gallery:
I definitely liked the environment at this gallery, very un-snobby/elitist. I will keep an eye on it. The utility of the artwork was cool.

Kadist Gallery:
The Hank Willis Thomas show was so incredibly powerful. The use of sound in particular had a huge impact. I’ve been thinking a lot about how sound can have such a huge effect on mood, and how I can incorporate that into my future work to create a more immersive experience. The interactive aspect was especially interesting, I’m learning that I am conceptually drawn to work which requires participation.

SFAI:

Robin asked why we are not rebellious.
I think about this a lot. There is so much despair in my generation. I think it costs a lot more exist now that it ever has, and I don’t really just mean monetarily, (although that definitely contributes) but also socially, mentally, emotionally, we are afforded no recharge time. The world is changing and we don’t yet understand it. My generation is transitional, and we feel it. We don’t belong to the old or the new. We don’t know what to rebel against.
I am actually writing a paper for another class discussing the way that revolutionary language and imagery is appropriated by corporations for entertainment and to sell product. There is so much false, vague spectacle surrounding rebellion, I think that it tends to overwhelm and take the place of actual rebellion. So we need to find new ways to protest, because protest itself has been assimilated, turned into an aesthetic, and made part of the status quo. I think we are working it out though. I consider myself rebellious in small ways, less vocal and more in personal behavior. There are tons of things I do on a personal level that maybe don’t get recognized as rebellion, because they are not loud, but I’m trying to find the balance between accepting that and and doing them anyway, and challenging myself to communicate my objections better.

Eileen Quinlan

Relating the history of painting to feminist theory.

In 2000- photographing zoos not as the institution, rather finding a variety of landscapes without travel. A photo makes shabby environments more convincing.
Working in analog is not intended as a political stance, but it has become that way.
2005- (grad school) developed an interest in the way people want to believe in photographs, and especially in ghost photos. Ghost ceases to take human form in contemporary ghost photos, caused by dust on the lens. Started photographing smoke, using mirrors to double the volume of smoke.
It can be liberating to make work you don’t think of as your work. It is difficult to do something you can’t defend.

When exhibiting: consider scale. Thinking about how a photograph has a sculptural presence, questions of touch and aura.
Pictures as democratic or disposable, compared to painting.

Photos as Objects: how they circulate in an art context: editioning establishes limits.
-Deflating power as unique object by showing the whole edition.
-Creating two prints of different sizes from the same negative, showing side by side. People want/prefer one o the other, but are forced to deal with both.

There is circularity to work, no linear progress. Maybe you figure more out, but you keep asking the same questions and don’t get better.

Materials almost always smuggle other associations in with them.
Canvas: paintings, garments.
Slatwalls: relation to retail.
Mirrors: psychology, vanity, surveillance.
Smoke: alive/organic, aftermath of an event, intoxication, suffocation.
Flowers: funeral, ceremony, sending coded messages.
Plaid: retinal stains, old country, clan heritage, anglocentrism, class, luxury.
Quilts: craft, high/low art, imperfections, obsessiveness, logic and pattern.
Yoga mats: self care, spirituality, class, bodies.

Every day objects are made strange through photography.

The Hand:
This is complicated in photography because there is no hand, all is smooth surface. Gesture can be achieved through: pulling apart and sticking together negatives, letting film sit in water until the image disintegrates, shaking up film in a coffee can full of nails, disturbing polaroids by manipulating chemistry packet, scratching with a tack.

Collaboration:
It gets lonely working on your own ideas. It is a challenge to try a new medium, confront uncomfortable ideas. Yoga show with Matt Keegan, the banality of artists’ lives.

2013: Curtains show, thinking about death
Piece based on GuTai artist Murakami
liberating materials to express themselves
Thinkng about the aging process, how people and materials age. Re-appropriating old photos, photographing photos.

There are questions of dominance inherent to portraiture: how you want to present vs how they want to be represented.

Nudes:
Point and shoot rephotographed on 4×5.
Body emerges from a cloud of chemical disruption (vinegar/tequila bath)

Question of Sculpture:
How artworks can react on body and on space.
Art as architecture: talks to the walls and floor.
Activate the viewer, make them conscious of theater.

Series of mirrors on scanner: pushing against the brutal logic of the beam is exciting because of how limiting it is.

Color has a different immersive force than black and white.

It is hard to think retrospectively when you are actively making things.

Analog is not “the authentic.” Digital has its own fallibility. But is the digital too smart to be cracked?

Jane Dickson Artist’s Talk
(at Art Space 1616)
Ask self:
What do you want to be known for?
What do you know that others don’t know?

There must be a trade off between what you have inside to express and what the world wants. Art is part of a dialogue.

Tried to paint what she was afraid of: paint one thing and think something else.
-Las Vegas: a 3D labyrinth: built to get lost in.

What about the personal is familiar?

Stripper series: oil stick on sandpaper.
Highways on astroturf. Is the contemporary American landscape always connected to the highway?

dream houses on carpet.

People are interested in art that relates to their own life.

Art is a compulsive activity. If you can stop you will stop, or find something practical to do with it.

Rather than defend your position make it a conversation.

Whatever you do ends up becoming a part of you and part of your art.

Paint what you have something new to say about.

Be in group shows. Contextualize yourself!

Everyone wants to “discover” whoever is already going to make it.

Making art is the easy part, getting it out is more than 50%
-the art part is Shirley Temple, leave tender in the studio and be Stage Mom.
-try to not only communicate with the dead if you want to have a living career.

There is no such thing as a weak tie. Reach out!
Hrag Vartanian Lecture

>Art as a way to plug into something bigger than self.
-to challenge group think/power/status quo.
>Writing and criticism to reflect time and place – the critic is essential as arbiter.
>>Reminds me of something UCD professor Talinn Grigor said, that sometimes an artist doesn’t know why specifically they make the choices they do, maybe it just feels right for some inexplicable reason, but the reason is there. A lot of intelligence goes into the creation of art, but it is not necessarily intelligence that can be articulated into words (if it could be there would be no need to make art) so the critic/historian acts as a translator.
>Discussion of the Museum (what is the museum becoming?)
-as public space dwindles museums may fill role
-venture philanthropy
-the nonprofit as a “smiling face on ugly practices”
-rush to build (Saudi Arabia to spend 1.7 billion$ to build 230 museums in 10 yrs)
-the warped reality of global capital:
worker camps, piles of garbage, classes of workers

> Conversation on why more women don’t ‘make it’ in the art world. “Not many asshole women artists” included as a possibility?? Seriously? i just don’t believe that’s it.

“Do It” Exhibition @ Verge

This was fun! The space bounced and chirped with laughter. i was able to catch the finale of a tablecloth being yanked out from under a set table, resulting in the shattering of glass and crashing of silverware. Cool energy and opportunities to connect with strangers.

Hesse McGraw Lecture:

Only humans see rainbows.
“You don’t make art by making art.” -Michael Rush
There is a perceived lack of artists willing to engage with the totality of life.
Artists are the only sane people.

Creative Autobiography (from Twyla Tharp)
1. What is the first creative moment you remember?
>i drew an orange shark with its mouth wide open about to eat a fish. It was swimming down and the fish was underneath it. i traced an oval stencil to draw the mouth. i thought it was THE COOLEST picture.
2. Was anyone there to witness/appreciate it?
>My mom said she liked it, but she couldn’t have thought it was as cool as i did. Then again, i recently found the drawing which she has saved for twenty something years… it looks, somewhat disappointingly, like a normal kid’s drawing and is not quite as much a mark of genius as i had imagined it to be.
3. What is the best idea you’ve ever had?
>To pursue art with full focus and intention. To engage in willful battle against doubt and cynicism, to humble myself, and to work hard for the privilege to be here.
4. What made it great in your mind?
>Art is meaningful, and with an environment of support i’ve felt my sense of hope increase exponentially. It is easy to get overwhelmed by how much bad there is in the world, so it is important to look for solutions, and to surround yourself with the people who also look for solutions. i finally feel like i’m not living in an isolation chamber.
5. What is the dumbest idea?
>  i don’t want to share this information. My mistakes are my own, though i will say that they stemmed from fear and/or despair. Mistakes and bad ideas have played a huge role in shaping my personal narrative but i don’t wish to carry them forward in a public way.
6. What made it stupid?
> Both the mindset which led me to, and the consequences of.
7. Can you connect the dots which led you to this idea?
> Feelings of general unease, knowing what i did not like about society but feeling unable to define it and powerless to change it, poor channeling of energies, inverse creative urge toward self-obliteration.
8. What is your creative ambition?
> To create a body of work which will contribute in a meaningful way to the human conversation.
9. What are the obstacles to this ambition?
> Time and life-span, how to survive the day to day.
10. What are the vital steps to achieving this ambition?
> -Understand/pay attention/read/see
(what has already been said and how?)
-Work
-Repeat
11. How do you begin your day?
> Contemplate dreams, read, drink coffee, plug in (obviously a lot depends on obligations for the day, but generally i am up and working on something early.)
12. What are your patterns? What habits do you repeat?
> Habits are liable to change based on circumstance.
13. Describe your first successful creative act.
>The shark.
14. Describe your second successful creative act.
> i drew some ducks and a pond.
15. Compare them.
> The first was purely from imagination, the second a study.
16. What are your attitudes toward:
-Money
> Sense of horror and revulsion toward global capitalism, disbelief in economics as something that is real, and yet, i want $$$$
– Power
> Still figuring out. Related to $$
– Praise
> Learning to accept it at face value. i used to read so much into everything, wonder ‘do they mean that?’ but now i don’t mind if someone is disingenuous, i can simply say ‘thanks’ and move on.
– Rivals
> i’m not sure if competition is stifling for an artist or encourages growth. i’ve always preferred collaborative games to competitive ones.

17. Which artists do you admire most?
18. Why are they role models?
19. What do you and your role models have in common?
20. Does anyone in your life regularly inspire you?
> i’m still kind of new here / v open to new friends.
21. Who is your muse?
> Constantly changing. Today it is David Bowie
22. Define muse
> Anyone who takes risks/ cares about stuff/ wants to inspire.
23. When confronted with superior talent/intelligence how do you respond?
> Some mixture of wonder and self consciousness.
24. When faced with stupidity, hostility, intransigence, laziness, or indifference how do you respond?
> With boredom, mostly.
25. When faced with impending success or threat of failure how do you respond?
> Mild panic.
26. When you work do you love the process or the result?
> The process, and sometimes the result.
27. At what moment do you feel your reach exceeds your grasp?
> Almost always, the only exception being when i am completely focused on a tangible goal. My thoughts otherwise spiral.
28. What is your ideal creative activity?
> I would like to create a completely immersive world.
29. What is your greatest fear?
> Dying.
30. What are the likelihood of either of the answers to the previous two questions happening?
> 95%
31. Which answer would you most like to change?
>
32. What is your idea of mastery?
> When you can work in a trance and obliterate time.
33. What is your greatest dream?
>To understand everything.