A Report from the Phantom Zone

I pull over into a gas station that has a fruit stand set-up in the parking lot. You know, one of those stands under a tent with a huge hand painted sign that looks like a Walker Evans photo. Everything is the size of something else. Oranges the size of grapefruit. Grapefruit the size of watermelon.

“It’s all organic. 100% natural.” Says the teenage girl behind the counter without lifting her head to look at me. Bored. Hot. Tired. She looks like she’s been sitting in the Georgia sun all day. Rotting. Or maybe ripening …

“How can this food be organic? It’s unnaturally huge …” I ask.

“I dunno. I’m just supposed to say that or no one will buy it. Everything’s all organic, all natural, all the time at this market. I guess it’s just our culture now.” She replies. “You know that’s true for everything …” She looks off to the side and then back down, as if testing me. Seeing if I’ll take the bait.

So, I do.

“What do you mean?” I ask, knowing I’ve sprung the trap. She’s been waiting all day to talk to someone. Sitting at a boring job can either be mind numbing or time for contemplation. The difference between a roadside fruit stand and a monastery is attitude. I think I’m standing in front of a monk who is just pretending to be bored …

“See people don’t understand that this isn’t simply a “market”.” She says without looking up. ” This is our culture. It’s the culture of the 21st century where the economy dominates everything, particularly the way people think. For food, people want things to be “all natural”; the fact that nature makes the deadliest substances around does not seem to matter. I bet if I told some people who stop through here that arsenic or cyanide are 100% natural (which they are) they’d eat some! Our culture is the manifestation of the ideas that drive the economy. Like what do you do?”

“I’m an artist.” I reply.

“Well the art market is just like this stand. It’s not just a market, it is culture. People have a hard time understanding this because we have no distance from it. It’s easier to look back in time at artists like Michelangelo. The church was the culture of his time, so he painted the Sistine Chapel. Everyone seems to have forgotten that Mikey resented the commission, because his feelings and intentions are not important. All that is left the expression of the culture of the time. All that will be left of this time is the market, unless something changes, which it always does. So what type of artist are you? Do you make work for the market, about the market, or something else?”

“You speak like you’re an artist …” I dodge the question.

She smiles. “Everyone needs a summer job.” She still hasn’t made eye contact. I finally see why. She’s been looking down because she’s been drawing on a pad I could not see behind all of the huge fruit. She’s been drawing me since I walked up. There are stacks of journals and drawing pads behind the tables.

“Do you sell those?” I ask.

“I sell fruit.” She puts the pad down, stands up and makes eye contact. “So are you going to buy some or what?”

Looks like I failed the test. Everything else was all business after that. I ask if I can take a picture and she says no.

So, I buy some 100% natural, all organic apples the size of softballs and drive off.

I don’t know why I bought the apples.

I’m allergic to fruit.


Walker Evans, Roadside Stand near Birmingham,1936


Massive apples by a regular apple.


Mikey’s Chapel painting

A Report from the Phamtom Zone

“Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.” - Marshall McLuhan

For a lot of people, myself included, summer has always been a time of extracurricular study. This desire to learn in the summer seems to have developed when I was in grade school and my parents would send me to places like computer camp or wilderness “adventures” or twice to Space Camp. (That’s right I went twice.) What my parents instilled in me was that it did not matter what subject I was studying because all learning made my life richer. This desire to learn virtually any subject has continued into my adult life where I’ve spent my summer months learning how to rock climb, getting my pilot’s license, living in Argentina to speak Spanish, etc. Several years ago I decide to spend a summer in the south of France at cooking school. Like all of my endeavors, if I was going to make the investment to study cooking, I wasn’t going to waste my time, so I enrolled at a professional cooking school. I had no intention of becoming a professional chef, but then again, I had no intention of becoming a professional artist when I enrolled in art school either.

As a whole, the time I spent in France was a fantastic experience, but one instructor at the school nearly ruined the whole thing for me. The fact of the matter is that I am not a very good chef and this one instructor felt it was his job to inform me of this every day. He would constantly berate and belittle me, saying that I was wasting my money at cooking school because I would never become a professional chef. He would go on long tirades about how the school was a sham because it was just taking money from people who did not really have a chance at becoming a world-renowned chef. He would then turn on the other instructors, calling them hypocrites who were just there for a check because they would actually try to help the students improve their skills even though they knew that most of the students would not go on to be top chefs. Of course, the other instructors tried to speak calmly to him and explain that it was ridiculously arrogant for them to assume they understood the reasons why any one student was at school and it was equally impossible for them to ever really know what any student was getting out of the educational experience. They would try to explain that their job was not to just inform that students that they would be failures as professional chefs and then belittle them into quitting but rather their job as a teacher was to simply help students improve their skills no matter what. The problem was that this instructor was so arrogant that he could not see that sometimes people have different goals for their education that might not be the same as the reasons he had for going to school. He could not see that he was not being helpful and honest by "telling the truth"; he was just not smart enough to see that there can be many truths, all of which are equally valid.

Take my experience at cooking school, for example. Except for that one instructor, I got more than I expected from my experience at cooking school. I may not be a master chef employed at a top restaurant in Paris, but now I can taste the ingredients and skill put into a master level meal. My life is totally and completely enriched by the experience because the school has changed how I interact with every meal I eat (and I can cook a few meals really well.) But, according to that one instructor, I wasted my money and all of the instructors who helped me enrich my life were nothing but liars and hypocrites because they didn’t tell me over and over again that I was a failure. The notion that people can enrich their lives through the learning process was completely missed by that instructor and I see now how that was his limitation and his loss.

In fact, cooking school is one of the reasons that I decided I wanted to be a teacher. I saw how fulfilled the other instructors were with their jobs. Everyday, people would go to them and ask for help at making something and by the end of each class, everyone’s life was a little bit richer. I can’t think of a better job than one where people come to me for help making something. I love teaching art and I don’t care if my students go on to become top artists because that’s not my job.

I’m not sure what I will spend this summer learning, but I’m sure it will make my life richer and I’m reasonably sure that I will not going on to be a professional at it (but I’ve been wrong about that many times before.) I highly recommend that everyone take some time and study something this summer. If it’s art school, that’s great. Just don’t let anyone tell you that education is a waste of time if you don’t go on to be a professional. Education is always enriching.

If you are learning or doing something interesting this summer, please share it in the comments section.


I spent one whole week just making omelets.


My wife and I teaching photography in the “summer” to underprivileged students in the “Ciudad Oculta” or Hidden City of Buenos Aires.
For info on what my wife and I teach in the summers, click here.

A Report from the Phantom Zone

I don’t know a single artist who if you ask them why they make art will say that their primary goal is for people to say nice things about them and their work. Artists, of course, have a wide range of motivations for making work that usually change from day to day and project to project. Some typical motivations for making art that I have heard recently include self-expression, need to make political commentary, desire to contribute to culture, etc. As we all learned when we were children, the reasons for making art are virtually endless and are entirely based on the individual. Regardless of motivation, it appears that art making is a relatively safe venture and the worst thing that can happen is that someone might say something mean spirited about a piece or perhaps even write a nasty article that misrepresents the work or artist. Strangely though, I have noticed that many artists become disproportionately caught up in what other people say about them or their practice. One bad review or spiteful comment and an artist’s practice can be severely derailed, even though exterior validation was never a primary goal for making work in the first place. Well, things have been placed in perspective for me recently as two of my close friends have become sick from making art. Suddenly, caring if someone else makes an offhanded or malicious comment about a piece of art seems ridiculous. One of my friends may die and that’s not a joke.

I’m sure all artists have heard anecdotal stories about artists who have been injured while making art, like Karl Zerbe. Zerbe was an artist in the 1940’s who fled the Nazi’s, had his work destroyed as “degenerative” art, became the head of the Department of Painting at the SMFA, but then had to stop painting because the toxic fumes from his encaustic paintings were killing him. I also know many photographers who have developed severe reactions to darkroom chemistry and can no longer be around the chemistry, but I don’t know anyone who has died. It was shocking to me that one of my friends has developed cancer from paint fumes and another is permanently injured. One of my friends, artist Michael David, is bravely open about how toxic gases released while he was painting have destroyed 70% of the nerves in his feet and 30% of the nerves in his right hand. Painting nearly killed him. Do you think he cares what someone says about him or his work any more?

My other friend who has just had surgery to remove the cancer caused by paint fumes would prefer to remain anonymous, but not because she is afraid of what people will think. In fact, she has entered a phase of art making that I believe most artists would be jealous of. She truly does not care what other people think about her or her work. She continues to make artwork because it adds meaning to her own life and part of that meaning is allowing other people to share in her life by displaying the work. If someone else likes it or doesn’t like it, she doesn’t care. It’s not for them; it’s for her.

She is in the place where I want to be when I make work. Whether it’s artwork or writing or anything else in my life, I want to be in a place where people are welcome to say whatever they want because I don’t care. From now on, every time I make something that I allow other people to participate in, I will think of my friend and her unbelievably positive and wholly freeing attitude of not caring what anyone else thinks. Well, I guess that’s not quite true. I wrote this article in particular because I know my friend with cancer will read it and I hope she’ll know that I have nothing but love, respect and support for her. Anyone else can comment whatever they want about me, my writing, my artwork, whatever. Believe me, I don’t care. A snide comment is not the worst thing that can happen.


Michael David, “Atlantic”, 2001-2002, Oil and wax on wood, 30”x26”
Michael David’s work is available through Lowe Gallery


Karl Zerbe, “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife”, 1945, Encaustic on Canvas, 47”x36”
Karl Zerbe’s work is available at Mercury Galllery

There is an article on how to safely use encaustics here.

Interview with Julian Cox about Richard Misrach

Richard Misrach’s “On the Beach” opens at the High Museum tonight and runs through August 23.

Heidi Aishman

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Heidi Aishman making work for the Peabody Essex Museum exhibition "Trash Menagerie"

A Report from the Phantom Zone

The recent economic slow down has hit the entire global arts community extremely hard, but strangely, I have not seen many artists using the current state of affairs as the central dialog of their work. This could be because the changes in our economy occurred so recently and quickly, but in general it seems that making art about crisis is one of the fastest and most fundamental ways that people process and respond to any set of circumstances. I have even heard of an artist who collected pieces of debris and was making sculpture while in the Superdome in 2005. The American Red Cross reports that some 275,000 homes were lost during Katrina, and, rightfully, that loss has become the nexus of thousands of artists work. Same with 9/11, same with the wars, or any other large cultural crisis. Artists usually take pride in being cultural first responders that help society gain perspective and work through a crisis through the act of making art. Many estimates expect unemployment to top 30,000,000 by the end of 2009. By the end of 2009, RealtyTrac estimates there will be some 2,000,000 families who have their homes in foreclosure. And that’s just in the US. Where’s the work on those losses?

One installation I saw at the Contemporary in Atlanta had an installation by Detroit native and conceptual sculptor Mark Wentzel called “Morale Hazard”. Wentzel’s installation deals directly with the current economic climate and the traumatic loss felt over the transformation of the auto industry. For his installation, Wentzel has suspended a 1965 Ford Mustang (a classic Detroit muscle car) from the ceiling of the Contemporary in front of a wall drawing of a mustang running head long off of a cliff/graph of economic indicators. Crawling away from the hanging Mustang is an anthropomorphized V-8 engine that appears to have evolved its’ own legs and corporate necktie as if the engine itself is desperately trying to abandon the discarded husk of the previous generation’s concept of the automobile for something new, organic and unknown. Wentzel’s work is able to provoke conceptual questions about our teetering auto industry while simultaneously producing visceral awe at seeing a 3000 pound machine hanging from the ceiling. His work challenges icons of masculinity, freedom, and independence while raising questions about our dependence on the previous century’s social and financial structures. Mark Wentzel’s installation is a fascinating example of work that has multiple modes of entry and directions for interpretation. Subsequently, his gallery talk was filled with people who had hugely diverse interests, like people who were interested in art, people who only wanted to talk about the economy and some people who were just interested muscles cars.
If you have a chance and are Atlanta, go to the Contemporary and check it out. If you see any interesting art about the current economic crisis, please leave a link to it in the comments section.


Installation shot of Mark Wentzel's "Morale Hazard"

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Preview discussion with Mark Wentzel before his gallery talk at the Contemporary in Atlanta, May 23, 2009

Interview by: Steve Aishman

Printology Atlanta 2009

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Printology Atlanta 2009

Steve Aishman

Mattress Factory Open Studios 2009

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Mattress Factory Open Studios 2009

Atlanta, GA

Interviews by: Steve Aishman

YouTube version

A Report from the Phantom Zone

A Report from the Phantom Zone:
Why I love abstract art and think it is getting better.

“The eye is the natural master of pattern recognition. The eye demands satisfaction by invoking in us strong feelings of puzzlement.”
- John Whitney (IBM’s first Artist in Residence in 1966)

As a science, pattern recognition seems like a simple to understand statistical model of machine learning where raw data is observed and then classified. However, there are some fascinating philosophical implications to pattern recognition as the science is applied to human cognition. Most people are taught that perception functions like Johannes Mueller's notion that nerves telegraph messages to the brain where perception occurs. Others like J. J. Gibson propose different models like ecological psychology where Gibson writes, “The very idea of a retinal pattern-sensation that can be impressed on the neural tissue of the brain is a misconception, for the neural pattern never even existed in the retinal mosaic.”(1) Essentially, Gibson promoted Thomas Reid’s concept of direct realism and rejected the notion that all of perception is in the mind. Gibson’s concepts had a large influence on designers like Donald Norman who wrote "Things That Make Us Smart”, which talks about how humans create visual tools like diagrams to "overcome the limitations of brainpower."

As an artist, this is where things get very interesting. The Flynn Effect seems to document that average IQ points seem to be rising about 3 points a decade. While this may not mean that people are getting more intelligent, it certainly means more people are able to achieve higher scores on a test that fundamentally times people on various types of pattern recognition. Have you ever seen an IQ test? How many questions are of the form “Which these best completes the following sequence?” or something conceptually similar like analogy questions, etc.? Our society defines intelligence as pattern recognition. The implications of this are massive and simple at the same time.

Artist throughout history have used pattern recognition in their work for centuries, but perhaps none more than abstract artists like Kandinsky who developed his aesthetic using a specific geometric vocabulary. Kandinsky famously said, "There is only one road to follow, that of analysis of the basic elements in order to arrive ultimately at an adequate graphic expression." But what happens when the viewer’s vocabulary of geometry has changed? Kandinsky’s abstract images are fundamentally constructed out of a vocabulary of lines and basic shapes such as triangles and circles. Today’s viewing public has a much more extensive geometric vocabulary and has become used to seeing and identifying geometric objects that Kandinsky had never heard of, like fractals or patterns from chaos theory. On a fundamental level, the Flynn Effect illustrates that viewers today are much better at pattern recognition and can recognize far more complex patterns than people in the 1940’s.

This has two interesting effects. 1. Visiting a museum is a very different viewing experience for 21st century viewers of abstract art than it was for early 20th century viewers. So, the next time you go to a museum and see a Kandinsky, try to look at it with more complex eyes and see what happens. 2. Contemporary abstract art is continuing to get more and more complex in fascinating ways that many people dismiss because the concepts have been around for over a century.

An examples of this is Yoon Lee who just had work at Pierogi in March. Where Kandinsky’s painting had squares and circles, Lee’s images contain Lorenz attractors and Mandelbrot sets. (While the term “Lorenz attractor” might sound complex, they appear in the graphics shown on the Weather Channel constantly. They are representations of the apparent chaos of a storm that for centuries was thought to be unpredictable, but contemporary scientists can predict the final outcome of storm using chaos theory. Human understanding of math has changed so dramatically over the last 100 years that what used to be viewed as images of abstract and unpredictable storms swirling are now considered useful scientific data.)
I’m very excited by the prospects of more abstract art and how abstract art actually reflects and supports the complexities of our society’s abilities to recognize patterns. In many ways, we can see how abstract art fits in with Donald Norman’s concept of how humans make visual representations to make us smarter. So go look at more abstract art. It will make you smarter.

(1) J. J. Gibson (1966) The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. P. 263


Kandisky
"Composition 8"


Yoon Lee

The Machete @ Aurora Cafe

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The Machete @ Aurora Cafe Interview by Steve Aishman