The Paper-Free Drawing Center

by Drew Martin

One thing about The Drawing Center is that it likes to go out on a limb. This is in part due to its very narrow mission "to focus solely on the exhibition of drawings." With certain shows one might perceive that the Center is interested in anything but drawings, however, the scope is broadened by the Center's loose definition of drawing.

Drawing down on Wooster Street is an all-encompassing term, akin to thing or stuff, because it references anything with a line/edge/border/direction, which includes wire, yarn, a tree branch, even the narrative of a video.

The current show Drawing and its Double, which displays the printing plates of various artists since the 16th Century without their respective prints, may seem like a stretch but it is one of the Center's more conservative exhibits.

The paper-free concept so perplexed the Instituto Nazionale per la Grafica that it initially declined to part with these pieces from their collection. After seeing the show realized, the Institute has asked permission from The Drawing Center to show it (as is) in Rome, where the Institute is based.

The exhibition is quite remarkable. Shown in chronological order (starting with Giorgio Ghisi, whose work is pictured above-left), the progression of the plates reveal an evolution in styles and printmaking techniques. Even though all of the plates have a very tangible and sculptural presence, what we see from the 1960s on is an experimentation with the surfaces and imagery.

One of these is Umberto Mastroianni's plate for Lo stregone, which is engraved on lead and has holes in it. Pictured right is a print from the plate (not on display at The Drawing Center). The pure white circles and triangular spaces correspond to the rough holes in the plate.

The Drawing Center does not show the prints in order to focus on the plates as objects, the way perhaps a museum of technology would, but to emphasize the process, effort and skill of the artists' involvement with the plates. While making prints from a plate is a repetitive reproduction process, the preparation of the plates is where the true act of drawing is transferred and captured.

The problem with the show is that many of the glimmering surfaces are very difficult to see because of how they are hung and lit. Investing in non-glare glass would have been a wiser decision: the plates are ingeniously sandwiched in plexiglass so they float within the frames but the protective panes reflect you, the viewer, and the Center's interior. Magnifying glasses with small lights are available for the viewers but they are cheap aids and do not help that much...although they do like cool when you see someone else using them, as if they are scanning the works with a tricorder.

In the center of the space is a specially designed Drawing Room (it used to be across the street in a garage of a location). This area is designated to Paolo Canevari's show Decalogo. Although this body of work was originally commissioned and exhibited by the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica it seems a little out of place. The ten oversized nickel plates are flashy. The etched and inked images are cartoonish and blatant, such as the one of his burning skull, pictured below-left.

As explained by the Drawing Center:

Decalogo, the Italian shorthand for the Ten Commandments and perhaps the most well-known social contract or "rules to live by," continues Canevari’s investigation into how dynamic imagery can reveal political and social crises. The plates reverberate on both technical and emotional levels, and lay bare the artist’s acute and perceptive understanding of our times.

That being said, the biblical references do not affect me as much as they would someone from a strong Catholic background. It reminds me of one of my first art reviews for a show by Javier Velasco, “Linea Sutil” (Subtle Line). While I liked it and wrote favorably of it, the work was heavy in religious references, which lost their impact on me.

Of Mouses and Men

by Drew Martin

The first time I was introduced to Malcolm Gladwell's writing was in a book club at work. I had hoped we would be reading literature so I was disappointed when the first assigned book was The Tipping Point. I tried to muster some enthusiasm for the selection but I felt that I would be wasting my time by reading it so I borrowed a CD version from my town library in order to listen to it while I did domestic chores. I reasoned that since this kind of book is simply informative, I would not be missing anything.

Despite my first somewhat bemoaned experience, I went on to read Blink, which a coworker lent me, and Outliers, which I bought as a gift for my father because I had heard good reviews about it and I thought he would like it: I read it after he did.

Gladwell is no doubt a smart guy with a lot to say but his curious books leave a bad taste in my mouth. The reason for this is that he reads best when he is brief.

Writers are like runners. The journalist/blogger is the sprinter, someone like Gladwell is middle distance and a novelist is the marathoner. Gladwell is not the first out of the blocks and he runs out of steam after a few laps.

I am not alone with this sentiment: I recently came across a post from just over a year ago on the Volume 1 Brooklyn blog with the title: I Don’t Like Mondays/Smurfs/Long Pieces by Malcolm Gladwell.

What works well at length is good literature, which develops and embraces the reader into its microcosm. What you get with Gladwell's books, however, is an upfront idea followed by a bunch of case studies and a lot of referring to the title of the book in a kind of mantra/marketing slogan. Finally, there is a conclusion that merely repeats the idea he opens with.

This is not a criticism of Gladwell because I do not think he strives for anything more than this as a writer or intends anything else than being the social commentator and a bestseller along the way. He would also probably be the first to admit that his writing and books are simply a means of communication and are not developed or structured in such a way to have emotional powers or aesthetic qualities. For this reason, the medium for conveying his ideas is irrelevant (might as well be a YouTube lecture) but, that being said, there is a reason to contain it in book form: Gladwell's thinking is certainly tuned through his own reading and the way he gathers and solidifies his thoughts is in the process of writing (typing on a computer).

Gladwell is a man of the times. His writings and contemplations reflect how most Americans think. He fits perfectly into this Facebook Era where a lot of brain activity is spent on networking and connecting the dots. Conceptually and philosophically, society has moved beyond a system of categorizing everything under the sun; regimented associations have given way to relational "databases," which is why Gladwell's style works.

Personally, I cannot get excited about his writing because it is too formulated for me. His approach to unifying concepts is not by rethinking them but by overthinking them. Instead of deconstruction we get reverse engineering. The problem with this method is that it is gimmicky and superficial. What he is selling with his books is fruit with sterile seeds. But again...I understand why readers like him: he has his niche and he is certainly prolific.

If there is one thing that I should point out with a critical eye, it is Gladwell's slight of hand with some of his analogies.

An analogy is faulty to begin with; it is the communication equivalent of duct tape and it has too much influence to favor or mock the original idea. When an analogy is used to rescue a complex concept that is one thing but when the analogy is used as a distraction or when it hijacks the topic, then you do have to question the motives of the person who set it up. My own analogies (herein) comparing writers to runners and Gladwell's books to fruit with sterile sees are unfair as they suggest physical limitations and impotence. They certainly are not flattering.

Gladwell's article Creation Myth, published in the May 16, 2011 of the New Yorker, is about the development of the computer mouse, from its innovator, Douglas Englebart at Standford Research Institute, to Xerox to Apple. Respectively shown here is the first mouse from each entity. Unfortunately, Gladwell uses a very politically charged analogy to compare the companies with the institute, which makes one question his intentions.

Plumb Perfect

by Drew Martin

At the end of my previous post I touched on the contemporary arts organization SmartSpaces and Shannon Plumb: The Window Series in the storefront of 200 Lafayette Street.

SmartSpaces matches artists with transitional public venues. Their mission to make art more accessible.

I like this idea a lot. It makes sense for the artist, the property owner/manager and for the existing or future tenant. Most importantly these types of projects add a little something to the lives of the people who are fortunate enough to view/experience the artwork.

For the past six years, I've been using a formerly neglected window at a dry cleaner down the street from my house in Ridgewood, NJ with similar ambitions. Pictured below/right is the first piece I did for the space (click on the image to enlarge). It is a photograph I took of a well (studnia) in Poland and the text of a conversation I had with its owner (translated into English).

The dry cleaner is on a busy street two blocks from the center of the town so I wanted to do something that would catch someone's eye, which the well did because it is quite peculiar looking, and then to accompany it with a very short text, which had the potential to unfold into a longer story. The idea to use this space came from a much larger-scale project I was part of around 1990, and have thought about quite often since that time as a good model for public art.

I was in the art program at The University of California at Santa Barbara while the city of Santa Barbara was renovating multiple blocks of its downtown, which flanks the main drag, State Street. Santa Barbara has a great little art scene that is bolstered by a very supportive Santa Barbara Arts Commission. As their website says, and to which I agree, No city of its size has as vast array of arts programs as Santa Barbara.

So with dozens of stores made vacant during the construction process and not wanting to see its vibrant downtown scene wither, artists were called upon to bring life to the area. It was a great recipe for success. The artists got space and there was a reason for the residents of Santa Barbara to continue to visit this part of town.

I had a small window with some narrative relaying my experiences with and fears of dentists and orthodontists, which was supported by a display of extracted teeth I had gathered from local dentists. I also sat in another student's much larger window space as a live model for her piece.

When I read up on SmartSpaces and Plumb last Friday, I was eager to see her work when I returned to the city so I walked over to Lafayette Street on Monday at lunchtime. I spent all of my lunch breaks the past month in the West Village working on my UNDER THE HOOD: New York project so I immediately felt a bit of culture shock being back in trendy SoHo where there is much more of a scene of people wanting to be seen.

I probably would not have noticed Plumb's Windows walking by at that hour: even though the sidewalk is covered/shaded with scaffolding, the two screens were washed out by the daylight. Non-the-less, I stayed for about fifteen minutes and watched a few of the videos.

I really like what such a SmartSpaces/Plumb combination yields but I think it works better in more desperate areas. In New York City it is hard not to stumble upon an art museum, gallery, public art project or even a really well designed retail shop window. No one else stopped while I was there but when I walked away and rounded the corner, there was a fashion model being prepped and the curious pedestrians had formed a crowd around the shoot. This is what there is to contend with in New York. I should really go back at dusk or in the evening to see what kind of response there is by people who stop to consider her work when it is easier to view.

Fortunately, Plumb has some of the work she has done since 1999 posted on her website, including one of the six videos in Windows, which she has referred to as Woman with a Fan. In this short movie (the clips in this series are around 4-7 minutes long) Plumb dons a burka.

This character is sitting by a window, which is reflecting an American flag and a few windows from an apartment building across the street, which are propped open by air-conditioning units. The character, with all but her eyes covered, is relying on a fan to cool herself off and tries to position herself every-which-way to get the best effect. Finally, after checking to see if anyone is watching, she lifts up the hem of the burka and scoops in the blowing air. Plumb's delivery is pure slapstick but the billowing burka takes the skit into something more akin to classic Saturday morning cartoons.

I did not phone in to hear Plumb speak about the works, which is an audio service provided at the site, but I had previously listened to her online. Plumb is quick to explain that she is not criticizing the tradition of wearing the burka or the religious reasons behind it. The piece was purely an empathetic response to how hot she was once she put it on. While watching it, I considered how probably even the most ardent supporters of the burka would have to laugh at this...because Plumb is hitting on the core of humor here. It reminds me of an old Iranian film I saw where the reoccurring joke (which did not move me to laughter) was that a westernized woman returned to her home in Tehran and was driving a man around and he was embarrassed by this.

What I like about Plumb the most in her works is her energy. Technically "over the hill" (born a year after me, in 1970), she has the spunk of a hyper seven year old. Her lean body and youthful face with a dimpled chin make it easy for her to play some of her boyish characters as convincingly as her female roles. She is a pretty woman and a cute guy, especially with a mustache. Pictured right, is a still from Olympics (2005) of one of her male athletes.

Watching Plumb in action on screen seems less as a performance inspired by Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin (not to mention the antics of Lucille Ball) as it is a reincarnation of these greats.

Plumb is simply captivating to watch, whether she is in a solo skit, such as Woman and a Fan or layering herself in different characters in the same scene, as she does in one film where she plays a runway model, male photographer and several fashionistas at the pretentious event in one room. I think what works for me is that Plumb is so playful that she recalls a time when performers were still trying to figure out what to do with the new medium of movies. The absence of dialogue makes her work entirely about the physical comedy, which she is so good at.

The movie that I think shows off her facial expressions and quick mood transitions the best is Stewardess, which is just over two minutes long. Typically such a variety of expressions is handled by Plumb with different characters but in Stewardess she plays the flight attendant before a plane takes off, going through the safety instructions to a cabin of passengers. The only sound is smooth lounge music and all you see is Plumb from the waist up.

Plumb's props are economical but perfect. She shows a childish picture of a plane, a happy person and good weather and she flashes a brilliant smile. She flips the page and shows another childish drawing but this time it is of a plane plummeting and Plumb mouths a long Psycho scream. Instead of a seat belt, she uses a massive truck hauling hitch and tugs at it like a sideshow strongman. She pulls out a big paper grocery bag, winks at a nearby passenger and then heaves violently and repeatedly into the bag. She uses a dust mask instead of an oxygen mask and then for the flotation device, she places a wreath of balloons around her neck and acts like she is drowning but quickly takes it off and resumes her calm manner.

In Rattles and Cherries, Plumb explores the collision of her femininity and motherhood. She made it in 2004, a few months after the birth of her first son, Walker, whose needy squeaking contrasts the jazzy burlesque music. Plumb poses with various fruits, slithers up and down a cool lounge chair but is constantly distracted by her off-camera son so she can never get in the right sultry mood. Finally, she stops her act to nurse and rock him.

In her discussion posted on the SmartSpaces website, she speaks about her one-woman-show approach, partially influenced by the process of Cindy Sherman:

It's really important that I'm doing it because it's my only vehicle. I wanted to be a painter. I wanted to be a poet. I wish I could have been a rock n' roll star and write my own songs but I have not talent in any of that. I only have this talent in my body. So my body is my paint and guitar strings. And the only way for me to get everything out is to use my body.

I also like what she says of the inspirations for her skits:

I watch people on the subway and I kind of take them home in my head as an idea.

A great introduction to Plumb is an hour-long video I watched/listened to on YouTube, Artist Talk: Shannon Plumb. Plumb speaks about her work, shows many of her movies and then is interviewed.

Additional work by Plumb and her bio/cv can be found on her website www.shannonplumb.com

UNDER THE HOOD: New York

by Drew Martin

Yesterday I hung the photo show I did for the New York Public Library, which is a continuation of my UNDER THE HOOD series I have done in Ridgewood, NJ, Los Angeles and Prague. The New York version is comprised of 270 black and white film photographs of people, pets and places in the West Village neighborhood of the Hudson Park Branch.

I was hoping nobody would be in the reference room gallery while I was hanging it so that I would not bother anyone and so I could have some privacy. My art has always been this kind of shy approach to socializing with people.

I walked over to the library on my lunch break with my clothesline, clothespins, photos with pre-attached handwritten captions, scissors, black and yellow handled phillips head screwdriver and a sandwich bag full of short drywall screws.

I was supposed to hang the show at the beginning of the week but the branch was undergoing renovations so the gallery space was being painted and carpeted. I wanted to get it in before the weekend so I was glad it was back open by Friday.

When I arrived at the reference room gallery, I got a bit nervous because there was a young lady sitting in the corner working on her Mac. I unpacked my things and screwed in one screw to a wall panel where I would start to hang my clothesline. The next screw I had to put directly behind her because she was in the corner so I mentioned that I was just going to be stepping behind her to do a little work.

"I am hanging a show" I said.

"A show?" she responded.

I did not explain anything further but just tried to be quiet and hurry because I had a lot of work to do. In total I screwed in about ten screws and hung about 150 feet of clothesline. I attached each photo with one black plastic IKEA clothespin. It took longer than I had expected but I liked the effect because this manner of hanging the show had an installation art feel to it; the clothesline helped redefine the space and it leads into corners and spaces which are typically untrodden.

The reason why I use clothesline is because the first show of this project was displayed in my backyard on my numerous clotheslines. They are actually forbidden in my town but there is nothing that will come between me and my laundry, especially freshly cleaned sheets that spend the day outside in the sun. In the Los Angeles version of this show Bill Wheelock, of The Thinkery, remarked how economical the clothesline system works for hanging art; quick to put up, quick to take down, with only a few contact points.

The process of this current show was very social in that I had to stop people I did not know, explain to them what I was doing and spend some time with them...often over half an hour just to get a couple casual pictures. But once the shooting was finished the process was singular and a bit lonely. While I was hanging it, I understood that I was going to walk away from it and not really be present when most people viewed the pictures. This did not feel right because the other three previous shows had a party feel to them. So I was happy there was someone present, perhaps interested in what I was doing at some level, although the way she said "A show?" I was not expecting any enthusiasm.

None-the-less, while I was going through the motions of hanging the show, I was also thinking about who this person might be. I thought perhaps she was unemployed, looking for job leads on her computer. I dared not look at her screen when I was behind her and I thought I should just carry on and then leave, with a simple thanks for her patience.

At one point she got up and asked me where the bathroom was so I explained to her how to get there. When she returned, she looked at a few of the pictures and then sat back down, saying something to me about her liking the show, especially that I had written personal captions for each picture. Eventually we spoke a little bit more about project and I showed her my write-up for it online (Won't Your Be My Neighbor?). Then to my surprise, she explained that she was part of an arts organization that was along the lines of what I was doing.

When I got back to my desk, I looked up the group SmartSpaces and was amazed by what I saw because it is an organization pursuing the kind of projects I have been interested in and doing since the late 1980s.

From their website:

SmartSpaces re-imagines vacant urban spaces as places to present contemporary art, with a mission to make art more accessible, while energizing local communities. Working with curators and arts organizations, SmartSpaces facilitates artistic interventions at the borders of public and private space, transforming empty properties into temporary public art venues, with information and tools that engage and inform the public.

It turns out this young lady is one of the SmartSpaces team members, Tristine Skyler, a New York based playwright, screenwriter, and producer.

SmartSpaces currently has a Window Series project by Shannon Plumb at 200 Lafayette Street until June 3. I listened to a clip of Shannon speaking about the project online so now I am excited to see her work for many reasons, which I can address it a post dedicated to it in the near future.

The Window Series (2010-2011) in the windows of 200 Lafayette Street. This series of six videos explores notions of voyeurism, intimacy, humor and silence in the context of a large city. Looking at a photograph of an apartment building in New York City, the artist began to imagine the different lives behind each of the individual windows, leading to an investigation of multiple imagined lives. click to listen

Select images of UNDER THE HOOD: New York can be viewed in an online book at blurb. click to preview

This show will be up until the end of June, 2011 at:
New York Public Library - Hudson Park Branch, 66 Leroy Street, New York, NY

Viewing hours:
Monday & Wednesday 10am - 6pm; Tuesday & Thursday 10am-8pm; Friday & Saturday 1pm-5pm

BOLI

by Drew Martin

One of the most serendipitous spaces in New York for art is 29 Downing Street. It's the residence and studio of husband and wife John Bennett and Karen Lee Grant. John is a sculptor and painter. Karen is a photographer. Downing Street has a number of interesting homes but John and Karen's place is the most accessible; the ground floor has been converted into studio and gallery space.

It is not uncommon to walk by and see John at work on his art or something on display, in fact, I expect it. I love how John and Karen so easily offer their talents and space to passersby. It is a reminder of why Greenwich Village has been such a magnet to artists for decades.

Even when no one is milling about and the house is closed up, it is still a place that is hard not to notice and feel engaged with. When renovating/reconstructing the space, John added a lot of personal elements, such as a lintel with triangle patterns and faces (pictured above) as well as other sculpted details.

Last night I went to their opening BOLI, which will be on display until the end of May.

A boli (pl. boliw), is a ritualistic object from Bamana, Mali (an original boli, pictured right). It is a power object whose function is to accumulate and control life force. The boliw are created from animal bones, plant fibers, honey, and metal, which are packed around an armature. They are covered with layers of mud, clay, dung, porridge and sacrificial blood.

John reinterprets the boli, using wire and concrete to define its form. The shaman's task is replaced with an artist's creativity, which at a certain level is one in the same.

Some of John's boliw look like the mortar part of a Mexican mortar and pestle. Karen has used these objects as the solid, grounded element in still life photography. She fills their cavities with various organic elements and photographs them.

The pictures are quite dark, but that gives them a certain softness and a mystery, like seeing wild animals just before sunrise, before they slip away from sight.

The contents of the boli really make each picture unique. There is one with tubers and avocados; the avocados are so ripe you can sense how soft they are and yet in the photographs, they can also be read as solid as the black-bronze surfaces of Rodin's sculptures.

In another boli Karen has placed tubers, pears and very old figs. They all lean to the right of the picture, which gives it a nice sense of movement, especially compared to the one with avocados, which stays put.

On the back of the boli, the movement of the objects creates a look of raised bristles on the back of a boar or some other alarmed animal. Karen's photographs do not simply treat the boliw as empty containers and they are not merely complementing her husband's art; they complete them.

The strongest part of the show is this combination because while the traditional boli is layered and contained, the boli here is revealing and offering.

We need to look at these as opened boliw, exposing their organs, their sustenance and perhaps their offspring. As with the process of how they are created, the power they hold as ritual or art shares something sacred.


BOLI
John Bennett, Sculpture Painting
Karen Lee Grant, Photography

May 5 to May 31
11am to 7pm Th Fr Sa Su
4pm to 7pm Mo Tu We

or by appointment: 212 242 1703

29 Downing Street 10014
at Bedford Street

http://www.29downingstreet.com/

To Sleep Perchance To Dream

by Drew Martin

I have been thinking a lot about sleep/rest recently, probably because I have defied it and have been denied it for so long. The analogy is that being awake is being alive while sleep is a form of death. But it doesn't work this way; there is a point when being awake and alert is counterproductive and the body cannot repair itself properly so the equation flips and you find yourself so tired that you feel like the living dead and sleep represents rejuvenation, because that's what it is.

How does sleep and media/art coexist? The references are abundant. Computers go into sleep mode when inactive. A sleeper film is a movie that takes everyone by surprise. The concept of sleep is played upon throughout history in mythology and stories such as Rip Van Winkle and although it is a tired theme, it takes on new meaning in science fiction whether it's in the long cosmic journey in 2001: A Space Odyssey (movie still pictured below, right) or in more recent films such as Inception.

Sleep and media are intertwined. Dreams are a form of media...they are internal movies presented to us with puzzling storylines. Dreams and sleep have been depicted throughout the history of art and contributed heavily to the surrealist movement.

Sleep is also often a transition from media or on the border of media. We stay up too late watching movies and reading books and at the same time a boring film or tome puts us to sleep.

The genius integrator of sleep and media was Andy Warhol with his 1963 film Sleep (pictured on top and below). It was his first film and was planned as an eight-hour-long movie of Brigitte Bardot sleeping but was made by filming his his friend/lover, the poet John Giorno, sleeping for six-and-a-half hours. A ninety minute section was duplicated and looped to stretch it out to eight hours to approximate a night of normal sleep.

"I could never finally figure out if more things happened in the sixties because there was more awake time for them to happen in (since so many people were on amphetamine), or if people started taking amphetamine because there were so many things to do that they needed to have more awake time to do them in... Seeing everybody so up all the time made me think that sleep was becoming pretty obsolete, so I decided I'd better quickly do a movie of a person sleeping."

What I have been interested in most recently is less about the relationship of media and sleep so much as substituting media with sleep. This means in times when I would normally read, write or watch something, I simply rest and perhaps sleep, which happens now while I am commuting by train or during my lunch break.

When you are young, the idea of cramming one's mind with ideas and experiences seems urgent but as you get older and wade into midlife I think you start to realize that the younger, less experienced, less educated version of yourself was just as nice a person as you are now. In many cases that former self was even nicer so what was the lesson learned from all of those novels and movies? What did all of those informational articles about the world really prepare you for?

I am 41 now and although I still love to read and travel and explore life, I also know that these things will not really change me much as a person. Instead, I want to rediscover those moments when I was a better friend, less stressed and keeping closer to my convictions. So I use the rest time to reflect on past experiences and remember friends and family members. It's not simply recalling a memory so much as it is pulling it off the shelf, dusting it off and rereading it.

The New School

by Drew Martin

The other day I was walking around 14th Street and Fifth Avenue for the first time in quite awhile and noticed that my graduate school, The New School for Social Research, was gone; a hole in the sky and a crater in the ground. It was an odd feeling, not a tragic, sad loss like the Twin Towers but one of good riddance. What was there before was a cruddy building so I am glad the students and teachers/staff will get something decent, even though there has been a lot of criticism about the new design (pictured left).

Seeing the sun shining through the void, reminded me of how I once spoke of my Masters experience:

The facilities were horrible, the teachers OK, and the students fantastic.

I had classes in three different buildings but spent most of my time in the one that was demolished. The more inspiring original building, a few blocks away, by Joseph Urban is the school's landmark building, not to mention that is houses an Orozco mural (detail, pictured below, right). Perhaps it's no coincidence that one of my favorite professors, Richard Lorber, held classes there.

In the now-razed building, my teachers were not great. One instructor had not even finished her own Masters yet and should not have been teaching. The other adjunct, who I liked a lot, lost control of our thesis tutorial class and even asked me if I could return (after I handed in my thesis early) in order to bring peace to the sparring students. That the students were at each other's throats, was what I liked about the school. They were high-spirited, intelligent kids from an array of countries whose ideas often clashed for the good of the academic banter.

The construction site on this unloved corner of Manhattan also reminded me that one of my favorite classes had nothing to do with an edifice. I went to The New School because instead of getting an MFA elsewhere, I wanted to focus on theory and broaden my background of the arts to media studies. None-the-less, it was required to take a couple practical classes so for one of them I chose an audio course, which was conducted entirely online.

The teacher was invisibly up in Boston and the students were chiming in from all over the world. It was really great and oddly enough, it was my most intimate class. All of our projects were audio posts, including our introductions to one another. There was something about just hearing each other's voices and sound projects on our own terms that was much more intriguing and liberating than meeting at a set hour in windowless room, in a poorly built building.

Rely On Your Ears

by Drew Martin

Rely on your ears is RadioShack's slogan for its Talking Watch (pictured left) geared for the visually impaired. There is no light on it, but when you press a button, a lady's voice (who I have nicknamed Radia) announces the time and this is also true of the stopwatch function.

I recently bought this watch for twenty bucks because I needed a new way to record my mile track times. I did not want to hold a digital stopwatch and I also did not want to spend $100+ dollars for a Garmin. The Talking Watch sounded intriguing, especially because I typically run before sunrise and don't like to look down at a wristwatch. I recently tried to carry my BlackBerry for a trial mile because the app I downloaded showed the splits nicely but it was too awkward to use and it slowed me down.

The Talking Watch is geeky and clunky (it's quite thick), but I love it for timing the mile. When you start the stopwatch, Radia's voice counts off "One second, two seconds, three seconds..." she continues to ten and then counts off every ten seconds, "Twenty seconds, thirty seconds, forty seconds..." when she gets to one minute, she continues to only call out the minutes, "Two minutes, three minutes, four minutes..." At four minutes it is all or nothing and I know I need to bring it in before she says "five minutes." It works for me because I don't have to bother to look down. I can even stop the stopwatch when I cross the finish line and then, when I am ready, press the talking function to hear her read off my final time.

When I went to RadioShack to get a stopwatch, the young sales guy gave me a nice, digital hand-held one but I did not like the split function. When I inquired about the Talking Watch, he shook his head and said "You don't want to buy that."

"Wow," I thought "it must be really bad if he is dissuading me." But I took it out and looked it over and liked it because it was so bizarre, so different than what other runners are using.

When I went to look for an image of it today, the salesman's comment hit home. I read the scathing reviews...people really hate this watch...they're furious about it and rightly so; most people bought it for an elderly, blind parent. Apparently there was an older version that everyone loved, which RadioShack discontinued. Here are just some of the comments:

Too many features. Not user friendly. Stopped working and not even a year old.

Please do not buy this watch for a blind person. It is very bad and unusable.

Have used older flat watch for over 10 years as alarm clock. Liked the rooster crowing. Do not like this version at all - tried to return but over 30 day return limit. Would buy older version if I could find it - ANYWHERE!!

Bought this for my blind 96 year old mother. She has been user the older version for several years and likes it very much. Too many buttons, and I don't think it was really designed for blind people, but lazy people who do not want to look at the watch. Would like to get the older version if available anywhere.

I bought this for my blind mother who had been happily using the previous RadioShack Talking Watch for years until the battery died. The new one has too many features, is very hard to hear...I'm not sure who this was designed for but it wasn't elderly blind people.

I have been buying the old style for my blind mother for years. She cannot handle the buttons on the new one and she cannot understand the voice. Also, the band is uncomfortable. The old watch had a band that could be replaced with an expansion one that is easy for older (mom is 100) people to use. I am returning the watch. You should do research on your products before presenting them to the public.

Old watch was very clear to hear. I bought two (new watches), one for my blind mom and aunt. Both started to get upset because the watches were not clear and not nearly as loud as the old watch. Very disappointing.

My 94 year old mother with low vision had used the former model with ease. This new watch has too many buttons and she keeps pressing the wrong ones. I am constantly having to re-set it as she has low vision and it is too complicated for her to do. She cannot hear the voice clearly unless she puts it quickly up to he ear and even then sometimes it is too late. We had previously taken the watchband off and relaced it with a Velcro band to make it an easy off-on for her but could not do this with this one. It is not user friendly.

Voice is totally inaudible...Please bring old model back.

Purchased this watch for my dad who cannot see nor hear very well. The older watch was perfect. This one does not speak loud enough. Please bring back the other one!!

I have been buying LCD Talking Watches for years from the Radio Shack for my blind mother-in-law. I replace the watch band with an expandable watch band. An elderly blind person has difficulty with the bands that come on the watch. Now this new design you cannot replace the band. Therefore I must take it back. Very poor design. Why the change from the 63-5042 model?

It hurt my finger to push the talking button. The button needs to be on the face and it needs to come with a flexible metal band.

Sounds like there should have been a recall/redesign...or at least, bring back the old model.

The wristband is nearly impossible to use and the sound is a bit muffled, but I mumble too, so I won't part with Radia because of her speech problem. I do like how you can set it up so she calls out the hour on the hour, which I find comforting.

While looking for the Talking Watch image, I also found some cool digital braille watches online (one of them pictured right) but if you misplace it, it would be much harder to find without Radia calling out to you.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

by Drew Martin

I have been doing a series of neighborhood photography projects since the Fall of 2009, trying to understand what comprises a neighborhood; the people and places. I started by taking black and white portraits of my own neighbors who were then invited to a show in my backyard and were asked to take their pictures home with them. It was a hit; the show became a party and lasted into the evening.

Last spring, I did a similar show around friend's gallery in Los Angeles and then in the summer I continued this project in Prague as part of a larger group show. I am not trying to repeat myself; each time I do a new version of the show I think it's the last time but then another intriguing opportunity pops up.

About a month ago I bumped into John Flood of the New York Public Library, who mentioned I could do another show in the Reference Room Gallery of the Hudson Park Branch. In March and April of 2010, the library hosted TogetherAlone, a show of forty ink drawings, many of which I drew in that space during my lunch breaks. A neighborhood photo show seemed like a natural fit for the space since I having been working two blocks away from this Leroy Street branch for over 11 years and have spent thousands of hours taking in the area on my midday walks.

So I pulled out the Ricoh my father gave me when I was a teenager and bought several rolls of black and white Kodak film and started shooting. The camera has a lot to do with the shoot. It has a very short lens so it is not a setup you would bring on safari or to a sporting event. With a shallow depth of field and nice bokeh (the aesthetic quality of the blur), it's a great up-close people camera. What I especially like about it (particularly because of the black and white film I use) is its realism. A lot of subjects, however, don't care for its frankness. That being said, this is an unedited shoot; I am showing every picture I took without any alteration.

I like the element of surprise in film. You may take a picture of someone you may never see again and you are not sure for at least a day whether or not you actually got the picture. I attribute the look of my pictures of people not only to the physical aspects of the camera, lens and film, but to the time it requires to manually advance the film, adjust the light settings and get the perfect focus. People are used to quicker, digital snapshots so the extra few seconds tend to relax them a bit.

I took my time when I shot my neighbors in NJ but for the LA and Prague shows I shot 200 pictures in a couple hours and had them developed the same day for LA and the next day for Prague. That felt too rushed for me and I wanted to enjoy this project more, which having a full month to prepare allowed me to do.

I like talking to John at the library because he is always very patient and insightful. When I explained that I was going to hang all the photos on clotheslines in the reference room, as I had done in all the previous shows, he mentioned (and then sent me) pictures of the library's site, prior to construction, with the tenement houses strewn with clotheslines. And when we started discussing the idea of what a neighborhood is, he brought up Jean Jacobs, who was a big advocate of sensible urban planning and reminded me she was a longtime resident of the West Village. John was quick to point out that the neighborhood of our library is arguably the most famous neighborhood of New York. This reminded me of a coworker I sat next to when I worked as a graphic artist for BMW in Montvale, NJ.

The man was a jazz drummer who often performed in the city. When he found out I was moving to Ridgewood, NJ he said the most curious thing. "Ridgewood has done what the Village had set out to achieve". I did not understand it at the time but now I do. There is a great sense of community in my town, as there is in the West Village, the difference is the West Village also has constant changes to contend with, franchises replacing small shops, an influx of office workers and the domination of Bleecker Street by trendy stores, such as Marc Jacobs' Bookmarc replacing Biography Bookshop.

It is a really interesting (and sad) situation. One can simply work in the area and go to the Dunkin Donuts for morning coffee, Chipolte for lunch and meet up with another transplant coworker at Starbucks after work or one can absorb the neighborhood, get to know the people that have been living there for decades and support the smaller stores. Most office workers do the former. This neighborhood is the best of neighborhoods if that is what you want; and this is really true of every place. A good neighborhood is both a very defined physical space but also a psychological state.

My shoot in Prague left a lot of people scratching their heads. It was part of a show was called Freakshow II, and my idea there was to photograph people who lived and worked around the gallery, where they typically would not venture and whom the artists and gallery owner wouldn't be too keen on reaching out to. It was a neighborhood that I tried to force upon the gallery and the locals, which worked in some regards but also failed. I am glad that I did the show but it really made me realize that the idea of neighborhood is quite different around the world. In many places there is a preference of avoidance and as much privacy as possible; it's easier.

My own concept of neighborhood came from growing up in tight-knit neighborhoods in northern New Jersey where towns meld together, and block parties and neighborhood garage sales still take place. I was also greatly influenced by neighborly shows such as Little House on the Prairie. I love my role as a neighbor. I like giving a hand helping someone with a project and visiting friends on their porches for a glass of wine.

All the pictures here are from this shoot, Under the Hood - New York. A book of the show can be viewed on Blurb...

The show will be up from the beginning of May until the end of June, 2011 at:

New York Public Library - Hudson Park Branch, 66 Leroy Street, New York, NY

Viewing hours:

Monday & Wednesday 10am - 6pm; Tuesday & Thursday 10am-8pm; Friday & Saturday 1pm-5pm

Triple Rush

by Drew Martin

There is a new reality show on television called Triple Rush. It follows three New York City bicycle messenger companies and emphasizes the harrowing work the riders endure, often escaping death by the skin of their teeth. I don't typically watch television but I find this show fascinating for several reasons.

For starters, when I was a kid I thought the New York bicycle messengers were the coolest guys in the city. New York was definitely a tougher place in the 1980s and the bike messengers seemed to embrace that mad chaos. They broke all the rules, often riding opposite traffic, between streams of cars, relying on whistles gritted between their teeth instead of brakes.

I still think they are a cool, with their stripped-down fixed-gear bikes, purposefully hipster clothes and on-the-move lives.

The main reason I like Triple Rush is that I am friends with the owner of one of the firms, Rob Kotch of Breakaway Courier Systems. I rode with Rob for thousands of miles a few years ago when I commuted with him regularly on bike from our town in northern New Jersey into Manhattan and back. I rode every day for six months and covered six thousand miles in the broiling summer afternoons and the freezing winter mornings. Once we rode together through a severe electrical storm with lightning bolts crackling all around us.

I've stopped riding but Rob is still out there almost every morning. He does it for exercise, camaraderie with other bike commuters and for the sake of alternative transportation but he also rides to be in touch with his messengers and to get a feel for the road conditions each day.

Rob is shown in the first episode giving an eye-opening safety lecture to new hires. It's a Scared Straight approach (his words) but the rookies should be thankful. It's the only messenger company in New York City that has a safety program and Rob's been doing it for 20 years.

The show is interesting to watch because the cameras follow the riders close enough to give a sense of what it is like to ride in the city. Bike cams and quick editing contribute to the effect. In the first episode, there were 1,400 cuts during the 43 minute run time.

The amusement of the first show was watching young guns from places like Lincoln, Nebraska get miserably lost. You feel a dispatcher's pain and frustration when a new messenger overshoots his pickup location by 20 blocks. How is that even possible with a straightforward city grid in midtown? And when the new messenger is on time, something else inevitably goes wrong, like losing the "gold," the delivery manifest.

The term 'triple rush' refers to a pickup that needs to be delivered in 15 minutes or less. For the veteran messengers it's a higher commission, for the rookie, it's an impossible task.

Triple Rush is on the Travel Channel (on my Fios system it's channel 170 and it plays at 10pm on Thursdays).

Literary Aphrodisiacs: Anaïs Nin's Delta of Venus

by Drew Martin

I recently finished reading Anaïs Nin's Delta of Venus. While much of the text can be read as autobiographical, or at least as experiences worthy of Nin's intimate participation, there is one passage, through the character of Elena, that seems like a direct line to a behind-the-scenes Nin.

"People express audacity in various ways," said Elena. "I usually turn back, as you say, and then I go home and write a book which becomes an obsession of the censors."

"That's a misuse of natural forces," said the man.

"But then," said Elena, "I use my book like dynamite, I place it where I want the explosion to take place, and then I blast my way through with it!"

As she said these words an explosion took place somewhere in the mountain where a road was being made, and they laughed at the coincidence.

Before we celebrate Nin for her audacity and carefree spirit within the pages of Delta of Venus, it is important to read the preface and understand what fueled the writing. The preface is comprised of a few of Nin's diary entries from 1940 and 1941, and concludes with a postscript from 1976. She explains.

Here in the erotica I was writing to entertain, under pressure from a client who wanted me to "leave out the poetry."

Nin was not alone in the mission to satisfy this man. A colorful array of writers churned out the stories at a dollar a page.

The homosexuals wrote as if they were women. The timid ones wrote about orgies. The frigid ones about frenzied fulfillments. The most poetic ones indulged in pure bestiality and the purest ones in perversions. We were haunted by the marvelous tales we could not tell...We told a story and the rest of us had to decide whether it was true or false. Or plausible. Was this plausible?

Although Nin embraced the work and brought much of herself to it, the arrangement with this client was taxing.

But one day we reached saturation, I would tell him how he almost made us lose interest in passion by his obsession with the gestures empty of their emotions, and how we reviled him, because he almost caused us to take vows of chastity, because what he wanted us to exclude was our own aphrodisiac - poetry.

She penned a thrashing letter to this invisible force.

"Dear Collector: We hate you. Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone I know how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships that change its color, flavor, rhythms, intensities...Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine...

That being said, this abstract brawl between the Nin and the client reminds me of television scenes of good guy/bad guy fights, with an ally outside the tumble, unable to shoot down the villain because the two are so intertwined, whirling about. Nin controls the final outcome and pens scenarios and lines that benefit female fantasy more than anything else.

"For the first time, a real woman," he said. "So many have come here, but for the first time here is a real woman, someone I can worship."

I like Nin most when she is playful but I also find her fascinating when she takes something so common as a belt and loads it with meaning.

Pierre was sitting at the edge of the bed and had slipped his pants on and was fastening the buckle of his belt. Elena had slipped on her dress but was still coiled around him as he sat. Then he showed her his belt. She sat up to look at it. It had been a heavy, strong leather belt with a silver buckle but was now so completely worn that it looked about to tear. The tip of it was frayed. The places where the buckle fastened were almost as thin as a piece of cloth.

"My belt is wearing out," Pierre said, "and it makes me sad because I have had it ten years." He studied it contemplatively.

...[three paragraphs of erotica]...

Then suddenly the realization that the belt was so old, that Pierre had always worn it, struck her with a strange, sharp pain. She saw him unfastening it in other places, other rooms, at other hours, for other women.

She was jealous, acutely jealous, with this image repeating itself. She wanted to say, "Throw the belt away. At least do not carry the same one that you wore for them. I will give you another." It was as if his feeling of affection for the belt were a feeling of affection for the past that he could not rid himself of entirely. For her, the belt represented the gestures made in the past. She asked herself if all the caresses had been the same.