Junebug

June was one of those months you saw coming from a ways off. A dark swarm of notation descending like cicadas on your field of calendar days. The buzz was ominous and getting louder. All you could do as it rose up in a roar was take a deep breath and dive in. 

I’ve been putting in my time this month in someone else’s shoes. I’ve gained a lot of ground and seen quite a few sights but all of my travels were in service of someone else’s internal compass, following their trajectory. 

At night, when I’d get back to my room, I’d throw my spent self on the bed and look over at my own neglected Toms. Still in the box. I’ll open them tomorrow, I’d think. But my legs ached with growing pains - teenage-style - and I knew I’d been stretched. 

It’s hard to quantify what you take with you when you work for an artist. The real lessons are hard to look at straight on, squirmy muse-like creatures. Perhaps metaphor is as good a method as any to describe it. When you walk in their shoes, you know their stride, what they stop for and consider, their pace, the height and brand and style of their heel, their posture and weight. You learn these things when you are busy trying to be an effective shepherd of the work that you respect and admire (which better be the case because it isn’t worth it - all the time and acrobatics involved in facilitating someone else’s journey - if you don’t believe that the byproducts of that journey are good seed for the earth).

One downside to assisting is that often my head is so full of someone else’s logistical matters, that my own get crumpled under the bed in a rat’s nest of receipts. (That one’s not a metaphor.)

I was at a garden party with Julie Heffernan, a painter I used to work for, in Woodstock last week as June conceded to July and I ran for the hills (of upstate New York). The attendees were art folk from the City and one painter was raving about a translation of Proust’s Swann’s Way by short story writer Lydia Davis. How expansive it must be, the painter exclaimed, to work so closely with such a master work of literature. To bring it down from its canonic pedestal on high and get your hands dirty with it. But wouldn’t she be tempted, another artist chimed in, to change the meaning here and there, just a little, in the service of making it more contemporary or flow better in English? A formalist painter asserted -- form is meaning. She changes the whole thing every time she translates a word. But wouldn’t it be daunting too? I asked. Probably, was the consensus. 

I asked because I’ve chosen to learn by surrounding myself with artwork and artists that inspire me the most. I imagine Lydia fully exploring every nook and cranny of this great work and then turning to her own short story. How do you make your own work on your desk beside something that’s carved its place in the pantheon of immortal works? Is it in hopes that your humble, awkward attempts will one day yield great shape or content, fed from the nutrients of their predecessor? Or are you really content to grow in the literary forest as a lesser tree, providing some shelter while you stand, some organic matter while you decay, and be neighbor to the greats?

Being asked to join Julie at the garden party (I was dog-sitting for her that weekend in her cozy Woodstock cabin) and talk shop with the artists there is another boon of assistantship. Strong artists have hungry minds and gather good company to feed them. Julie is very generous and quick to include me in her group.

Bags of shoes and clothes sent to the Studio.

The end of June was punctuated by a photoshoot for Elle magazine’s Women in the Arts issue. They are featuring the artist I assist. (It comes out in December!) She decided to have the five women who work for her included in the photo. She believes that having a strong team around her is invaluable and she wanted to showcase that. We used spider imagery for the set -- creating a web or a network.

I would like to say that I fell right into the roll of professional model. But the fact of the matter is, the Studio got into the body bags of shoes and tried on half of them before the wardrobe people arrived and we guiltily zipped them back up. I ran around with two different cameras snapping pictures of all of the stylists until they banished me to the far end of the room. The Studio greedily devoured the catered lunch that the chef had delivered herself, staying just long enough to explain each dish and the local origins of the ingredients, well before noon. When the shoot was over, I started posing various members of the Studio for my own photographs until the head of wardrobe commanded me to take off my shiny black fairy dress (not her exact words) and stay out of the camera crew’s way. It was awesome.

Light check for Elle shoot. Testing out the center of the spider.

So now it’s a few days on the other side of June. The rushing sound isn’t impending appointments but rather wind roughing up the river and rustling the oak trees. I’m in my family’s cabin on the St. Lawrence River. It’s the last day of vacation for me in the North Country, where time returns like a monarch each year, perching on the Point for the same view as always and getting ready for the next go-around with a cold river bath.

4th of July flairs at dusk in Oak Point, New York.
(Photo by Billy Freeman)

The Other Wagners

"It is my favorite picture of my dad and mom. Maybe as happy and carefree as I ever saw him. He was a pretty serious man." -- my dad

I have a lot to say about work ethic. But I'm not going to go into it right now. I'd like to tell you that's because I'm exhausted from a marathon day in the studio. But I was actually celebrating my birthday at Spa Castle with some of my dearest friends. Instead, I'd like to share an email my dad recently sent me and my little bro.

Hey,

This quote makes me think of my dad and his dad…and you two.

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas Edison 

Love, Dad


My brother recently got into a favorite med school and my dad brags when he's slept more than five hours. Sure, the whole thing gets a bit questionable when you realize that the grails we sacrifice our sun and sleep and social lives for are noctuid larvae, rat surgeries and sketches of tiny men with animal ears.  But, then again, what's cooler than these guys:

“It is easier to raise strong children then to repair broken men,”

read a simple orange sign that bobbed up and down in front of us in the crowd. The festival energy of a protest is supercharged with goodwill and bright banners. We spent the first few hours milling around the booths and listening to the stylings of heated speakers and metal bands that blasted through a crude stereo system. The thrill of a demonstration is more satisfying than the kicks one gets at fairgrounds and carnival spectacles because, instead of indulging, you are aggravating – stirring up dialogue dust. Social boundaries dissolve way faster in this political cause cloud. Suddenly, instead of turning away, you accept a pamphlet with a smile from the boy with the piercings and the hoodie cut up like a macabre snowflake and strike up a conversation with the grizzled man in the wheelchair who knocks into you in the crowd.

Photo by Ali Giniger (instagram: @alinicoleg)

 

The art studio that I work for showed up armored with aprons that read “Artists for Immigration Reform.” I realized after the fact that maybe only artists know that artists wear aprons. But they made good blank canvases for slogans anyway. We thought we’d highlight the fact that we were artists because it is much harder to get a visa to live in the US if you work in a creative field. The elusive artist visa for this country requires the blood signatures of the entire top echelon of the art world pyramid inscribed on the skin of one of Damien Hirst’s sharks. (This is an exaggeration. But only kind of.)

The paper-mache barrier fence was a nice touch when fist-pumped into the air.

    

My apron had a strike through “HB56,” Alabama’s aggressive anti-immigration law that requires police to determine someone’s legal status if there is any suspicion that that person might be here illegally. It has turned all official interactions into checkpoints and encouraged racial profiling. The goal is “self-deportation,” a concept championed by its originator and Mitt Romney’s unofficial advisor Kris Kobach. And it is effective. People reach a threshold of harassment, exclusion, and fear for their families and they leave. A similar, though not quite as militant, law is in place in Arizona. Check out the podcasts for more:

           This American Life on Alabama 
           NPR on Arizona

  

Photo by Ali Giniger

I had expected immigration reform to be the issue of the day, but it was International Workers Day and the Occupy movement was out in full force. Any group concerned with race and economic inequality came out to play. And then there was the guy in the Captain America costume and the boy in a loincloth dragging a cross around who gave you the impression that this was status quo. It just so happened that today they woke up and got dressed and instead of being ostracized and run off by the police again they were embraced by the pit stained arms of thousands.

 

One group of activists took me by surprise. It was the first time I’d seen artists marching for… artists! Demanding more support from the State and raising awareness that being creative is productive. Signs read “ART IS WORK,” “PAY YOUR INTERNS,” “ART STRIKE,” “ANOTHER ART WORLD IS POSSIBLE.” This shocked me at first. Don’t these people know that they signed up for something inherently useless? Didn’t they get the memo that our country’s puritan roots would never support such frivolous antics? But of course, art has always taken progressive stands and demanded change. It just usually speaks (for good reason) through the medium itself. Either way, we agreed with their sentiments and joined forces with this group, marching alongside them from Union Square deep into the bowels of the Financial District.

Highlights of the day included sighting a monk with a sign that read “Occupy Time” hanging from his back and “Occupy Space” hanging from his front. I also loved watching a women’s group – protesting the neo-conservative, repressive dialogue about women’s health and sexual freedom that has recently been spouting from Republican presidential candidates – melt into a chorus of oohs and aahs at the appearance of a baby in a stroller.

 

Back before the parade began, my street artist friend Felix drew a chalk circle by the Gandhi statue. He tagged it with “good luck” in one section and “bad luck” in another. The “good luck” side was immediately occupied by the most flowery of the ribbon-wearing, barefoot hippies. Signs of “PEACEFUL PROTEST” and “LOVE” sprung up in this place as if it was a goodwill garden. Soon the arbitrary circle was ringed with people and a shrine of peaceful objects began accumulating in its center. People began to meditate and soon the circle was too thick with bodies to see the “bad luck” anymore. These harbingers of peace might have been reluctant to plop themselves down on just any plot of dirty, crowded pavement. But inside the chalk circle they were safe, sanctioned, choreographed -- not by society’s red tape -- but by an outsider, by old magic and old pagan ties. It was a reminder that the central mountain is everywhere. And an illustration of how a few simple lines can start to mean something. 

Ekphrasis

He made the earth upon it, and the sky, and the sea's water,

and the tireless sun, and the moon waxing into her fullness,

and on it all the constellations that festoon the heavens,

the Pleiades and the Hyades and the strength of Orion

and the Bear, whom men give also the name of the Wagon,

who turns about in a fixed place and looks at Orion

and she alone is never plunged in the wash of the Ocean. 
(Description of Achilles' shield from The Iliad, 483-489)

I saw this on my way home from writing this blog post at a cafe! Chillin on a street corner. Certainly a sign...

Ekphrasis. Sounds sinister. Like in the medical, hesitate to Google it kind of way. “But really it’s creative alchemy,” Caleb, the Classics PhD student, assured us. “It’s a dramatic description of art in a piece of literature.” We were circled around him story-hour-style. The MIMA space had been emptied of furniture, musical equipment, my paintings and the surprising number of lambskins that usually adorn its surfaces to make way for an incoming Pratt show. Only a handful of essential instruments and a lone painting, too big to shove into my car, were left standing.

When a work of art is described through another medium, it morphs and becomes a new piece of art in this form. Ekphrasis isn’t about exhaustively cataloguing the parts. It’s about translating the impact. One early, powerful example of this is the description of Achilles’ shield in the Iliad. The shield is hewn by the god Hephaestus after Achilles’ original armor is stolen by the Trojans and the death of his friend throws him into a state of mad bloodlust. The description of the shield’s concentric rings of imagery is epic, encompassing all of the senses. Within the bold, detailed metalwork, lutes and lyres provide a dynamic soundtrack; reeds sway in windy marshes; characters argue and marry, dance and chop each other to bits on the battlefield.

These stood their ground and fought a battle by the banks of the river,

and they were making casts at each other with their spears bronze-headed;

and Hate was there with Confusion among them, and Death the destructive;

she was holding a live man with a new wound, and another

one unhurt, and dragged a dead man by the feet through the carnage.

The clothing upon her shoulders showed strong red with the men's blood. (433-438)

These pictures are navigated much like a god from on high might effortlessly zoom in and out of the worlds below, moving close in to see a maiden collecting flowers for a festival and then zooming out for a panoramic view of the cosmos. Scholars and artists have tried to map out the shield of Achilles and, although there have been many interpretations, the scenes depicted within resist being frozen in a 2-D plane by mortal hands. Words are necessary to communicate the magic of an object made by the blacksmith of the gods.

Then Caleb announced that this week our song-writing workshop would stem from my painting. (The one left standing. Which was fitting because the painting is from my Outpost series and is about the last remaining thing in an environment hell-bent on tearing it down.) It would be our own “visual to musical” version of ekphrasis. We started by asking questions about the painting. Just questions, no answers. “Is it being built or falling apart?” “Is there any way out or in?” “What’s making the light?” “Who lives there?” “Are they happy?”

'Honey I'm home,' she said. The wind turned its mouth up at the corners.

This won’t surprise any recent MFA graduates, but these are not the questions that artists get asked in an academic or critical setting. More often you will hear, “How are the derivative, impressionistic marks in the bottom left corner detracting from the formalistic unity?” But these were refreshing inquiries and way more representative of the way I talk to myself about the things that I make. Then, each of the musicians came up with a phrase associated with the piece, set it to music and played it for the group. With all these melodic fragments floating around in our heads, we began to play, improvise together, build something in the spirit of the thing.

Playing the Building

MIMA and I met for the first time at Princeton. It was Indian summer and that Kingdom of Learning was green-drained and autumn brilliant. Universities are in their element in the fall – the pace is right. Unlike the stillness of winter or the silliness of the warmer months, the fall casts campuses with a dignified, wizened air. Princeton students bustled up and down the grounds, kicking up leaves like bio-bright plankton, wrapped in wool sweaters, clutching mugs of warm tonics.

MIMA is a creative collective that provides music workshops for kids with limited resources around the world. This was their 10 Year Anniversary and they were celebrating by bringing their music and methods back to their place of origin. I’d been recruited by friends to assist in transforming Terrace, the most hippie Eating Club (not saying much when you’re used to Oberlin’s Co-ops, the most hippie of which is constantly pushing the boundaries of the word), into a Living Instrument. Each room was to embody a different character of music: dissonance, consonance, rhythm and silence to name a few.

Laini and I getting dressed in the study.

I was cast as a dryad (ß favorite phrase ever) and was put in charge of the Bacchanal-themed entrance hall along with fellow woodland spirits Laini and Kate-Lynn (painter and poet respectively). Our job was to usher in the collegiate recruits, strip them of as many clothing layers as they would part with and cover them with body paint (!). It was the anti-chamber, the portal between the codes and protocols of university life and something more playful.

The gears of the Living Instrument were set to start up at dark, so we spent the afternoon taking stock of our room and the beautiful fall grounds and then combined them. We dragged in bags of leaves and branches and ornamented the windows and tables with drapes and garlands. Then we went upstairs to a stately study (leather couches and Viking-sturdy tables), threw the remainder of our scarves and clothes into a giant colorful pile, and went about wrapping each other up nymph-style. It was clearly a room that would raise a disapproving eyebrow to such a flurry of ladies’ garments. Other MIMA members were donning bright onesie bodysuits, sumo second skins and Mexican wrestling masks. There were definitely clothing items that never made it out of that costuming cyclone alive. I swear a grumpy armchair swallowed some of the more flamboyant items out of spite.

The line to enter the Living Instrument ran long around the side of the building as night settled in. When each person entered, they were handed a small glass of ritual punch before being lead into the belly of the beast. Inside, they were guided throughout the house and directed in different exercises by MIMA musicians. I would hardly recognize these team leaders when I saw them later without their war paint. I had to re-meet them when we started hanging out as civilians in Brooklyn. And still, their alter egos sometimes flicker across their plainclothes, Clark Kent-stylings.

In the afternoon at Terrace, there had been a bright, open sunroom where students breakfasted. But no light came though the glass that night and the space was filled with a giant plastic bubble that the recruits filtered into at the close of their tour. Inside, the ears met nothing but the soft whirring of fans that kept the ceiling afloat. It was the silence room. Signs were held up to take us through different breathing exercises, to quiet and focus the mind.

So then the masses cleared out, most likely funneling into the nearest frat party. The MIMA managers, dressed as all manner of mythical beasts, circled up around a blue-suited Martian who bounded around the inside of our ring, leading us in a chant that grew and swelled and exploded into a primal scream and then melted into dance. Wild lose yourself dance at the hands of DJs you could trust your rhythms to. Who would build the beat slowly and wait until you were just dying for the music to peak and then take you to an epic height and cradle your descent.

We dragged ourselves into the hotel lobby just before the sun came up, a molting mess of melting mutant parts and raw human skin exposed. Blinking fiercely and working to get our spines steady, we looked like we had just hatched out of some psychedelic cesspool. Dripping colors onto the beige linoleum. The man at the desk didn’t look up as he handed us our keys.

The next morning found us sprawled on Princeton’s Elysian Fields, drawing energy up from the plush grass underneath. Gentle bouts of guitar and yoga and conversation would start up and then fade into the sunshine as we worked ourselves back up to consciousness. And of course there was Terrace’s house-made breakfast buffet complete with everything. (Yeah, they had that. And those.)

A communal painting at MIMA's new space in Brooklyn.

MIMA music party and reception for my painting show.

So why the flashback to this musical evening a year ago? Well, as it happens, MIMA set up headquarters in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn this January (relocating from Brazil). And so did I. Their space -- exposed beams, white walls, high ceilings – plays host to all manner of jam sessions, teacher trainings, workshops for kids, dance parties, yoga classes and communal painting parties (that was me). It’s becoming my second living room and the hive brain that’s based there is a powerful, creative organism.

If you want to join in on future events, shoot me an email and I’ll keep you posted. I have paintings up now and we’re planning an epic Folk Fe(a)st for May 12th.

MIMA Brooklyn

MIMA Music

With whom would you weather the last storm?

One of my roommates, who already thinks I’m nuts (as I have recently taken to staging and filming elaborate rituals around the apartment), wanders down to the first floor one Monday evening. He gets half way down the staircase and looks out, but can’t see the floor. Instead, a canopy of colored fabric has risen to mid-stair level. A blanket sea spreads out beneath his feet and flows to the far corners of the finished basement. Swaying slowly in it’s own imagined currents. Shadows dart beneath the folds and fabric ripples on the surface. The underworld of the tent fort is occupied.

“Come on in!” We call. He wades in like a sport as we hoist up the remaining mast and string the last sheets to sail. The tent fort is finished when all of the collectively gathered sheets and blankets, chairs, poles, nets, hammocks, light fixtures, scarves, canvas swatches and tarps are connected to each other with some sort of pin or swath of duct tape.

There was no plan. The only blueprint I had for the evening was a well laid out veggie tray flanked by vodka tonics and friends who were game.

Once we had the structure in place, I took pictures of people in various poses for paintings – some staged and some candid. I’m making paintings with tents in them because they can suggest military outposts, refugee shelters, shantytowns, campgrounds, children’s forts, circus setups, post apocalyptic societies, native villages and romantic alcoves. What a medley! Sorting through all the associations and composing different combinations should keep me busy for a while.

When you look at a simple, low-tech shelter, you can read a lot about its maker and environment. Often its pieces are pulled from the immediate surroundings. Its production is transparent, as opposite to black box architecture and design (systems with fancy façades that render their complex, inner worlds unknowable) that dominate our infrastructure today.

Why go to all this trouble to stage elaborate life-sized references when the end product is a 2D image? (Did I mention drinks, friends and a good playlist?) The photographs that I took from the setup are very helpful to work from. But even more importantly, I find that once I’ve built something, I have a more comprehensive understanding of its form when I go to paint it. I’m able to turn it around in my head better, see it from all sides, so that I can play with and warp it instead of having to accept it as it comes in a still photo.

The other reason I gathered people to my basement was because my paintings are about young people gathering --- the patterns they make and how they group together. It made sense to set up a situation in which this stuff happens naturally. That way I could document the kinds of interactions that I’m interested in exploring “in the wild.” In the narratives that I paint (and write), the characters are often faced with extreme circumstances (environmental catastrophes, crumbling buildings, broken bodies). These were the people that gathered from nearby in Brooklyn when the stakes were low. But what if the waters really were rising and this was the group that got together to weather the storm? Would the structures that we built to stay afloat and the silhouettes of our huddled bodies look at all like this?

Thanks to the models! Check out the multi-talented bunch: Don (video art and mixed media), Siobhan (dance and dance writing), Marie (drawing and bookmaking), Felix (drawing and street art), Itzy (design and mixed media), Anton (journalism), George (film)

Ritual Still

A still from a video Don and I made last night as part of our new project, Ouroborix. There were many takes which meant many glasses of wine which means many glasses of vitamin water this morning.