UNDER THE HOOD: A Garden Party

Here are some pictures from the UNDER THE HOOD: Portraits of My Neighbors photo show. There was a nice turnout and it was a lovely event. The participants liked that they could take their photos home. We even had two, special over-fifteen-foot-long guests appear, one pictured near the bottom:

Participant or Spectator: Reflections on “Air Guitar” by Dave Hickey

by Sandra H. Martin

I recently heard an actor say how much he loved to hear that one guy in the audience who was still laughing after everyone else had stopped. That one guy was a participant who really got involved in the play and not just a spectator who was there because the Times said it was a must see and was sure to win a Tony. The spectator may have laughed because everyone else was laughing. The spectator may not have even understood what was funny, but that one guy really got it. And the fact that this one guy had this deep laugh that didn’t stop when everyone else’s did showed the actor that his art was really getting through on a human level to someone out there in the dark.

Americans are big believers in talent and big believers in smarts. Schoolchildren will believe that a classmate got that great grade simply because they are smart or that they made the school orchestra just because they are talented. And as Waylon Jennings observes they will hate that person. In America everyone is suppose to be equal, so it is not fair if someone has more “talent” than you do or is “smarter” than you are. They don’t see the time and hard work that goes into making the good grade or making the orchestra. And if they do see all the extra time and hard work they will still hate that person for making them look bad by comparison or for being a show-off. It’s un-American ‘cause we are all equal. They will be critical and wait for that person to fail. Americans will say, I’m not good at math or languages” and dismiss their own lack of effort or will to stick with something difficult.

Last week a student informed me that he had to have a C in order to transfer back to the out of state college he attended last year. I pointed out that though he made an effort to participate his participation showed no evidence of having studied the material as did his failing grades on tests. His reply was, “But I’m not good at languages!” I did not remind him that in September he had bragged that he got through high school without ever having to study because he was so smart.

When I was in college it never occurred to me to take any art course because no one had ever said that I had “talent.” My roommate was a descendant of Albrecht Durer and an art major. Every time I got the chance I was in the National Gallery in D.C. Other than my picture of a piñata party that my 6th grade teacher hung up above the blackboard I don’t ever remember painting or drawing in school. My parents did give me a course at the Houston Fine Arts Museum when I was about nine, which I loved, but I don’t remember being encouraged to continue with art. How many students in school today feel the same way?

A study of spectators in an art museum showed that much more time was devoted to reading the plaque on the wall describing the painting than actually looking at the work itself. Spectators go through the exhibition and read about and see every painting without really getting engaged with a single work. Participants are often mesmerized and completely blown away by one work in the whole show. I made seven trips to Spain and Mexico with students, but the experience I remember most was not being able to get one boy out of a beautiful room in the Alhambra Palace in Granada because he was so awed by the Arabic calligraphy carved into the alabaster walls everywhere he looked. The bus was leaving, everyone was there but him, yet he could not leave that room. He was part of that room, and I was the spectator.

Hickey says that “while spectators must be lured, participants just appear.” My son has a “wall” in front of his house in Ridgewood, N. J. that is interactive in that he puts out objects he has found interesting, and others who pass by can also add objects to the wall. Today he is having a “show “in his backyard of 150 photographs he has taken of his neighbors. They are all invited to the show. I will see who are the spectators and who are the participants by seeing who shows up and what their body language and conversations are like. It should be fun. Is this what Hickey means by “art as a social practice?”

What is the goal of young artists today? For whom are they making the art- Participants or Spectators? My guess is that the ones who really make interesting art are doing so because they cannot do otherwise.

UNDER THE HOOD: Show Preview

This is a selection of the photographs that will be in the UNDER THE HOOD: Portraits of My Neighbors show this weekend. These pictures are already available in a book online at Blurb (click here)

UNDER THE HOOD: Portraits of (My) Neighbors

click on the image to see a larger invitation

This is going to be interesting: 150 pictures of 40 of my neighbors from four diverse streets. The pictures will hang on clothes lines and will be tacked to trees. The best pictures will be in frames around the back deck. The neighbors are all invited to come, have some wine & cheese, etc. and are all supposed to take their pictures home with them at the end of the show or, if they choose, destroy them on the spot.

Freak Show: An Interview with Curator, Tony Ozuna

Works by Marie Hladikova and Lenka Vitkova in Freak Show

Drew:
First, I must congratulate you for the successful opening on August 21, 2009 of your Freak Show at the Califia Gallery in Horazdovice, Czech Republic. Before the opening you seemed a bit overwhelmed, perhaps frustrated, and then a week later you had a kind of post partum depression and expressed wanting to do this kind of work full time. What is it about curating a show that is so taxing and emotional? I always thought of it as a very controlled experiment.

Tony:
When you saw me at the beginning of the week—it is true that I was overwhelmed and frustrated. (Just as I am now because I am typing this in again a second time since the last version got lost in ether-space). I had certain expectations regarding a number of factors involving the show that were not met. On the other hand, perhaps my expectations were unrealistic. It was my first experience as a curator and the next time around, I know now what not to expect and also what to do differently in order to meet certain expectations.

Drew:
In 2007 you were the Chief Editor for an issue of Umelec (a contemporary arts magazine based in Prague), which was devoted to Hispanic artists as well as foreign artists working in Latin countries. Though curating seems much more logistically challenging, isn't the role of Editor and Curator similar: identifying contributors, getting pieces, filling space?

Tony:
That issue turned out to be the Mexican Issue, though there were key articles, contributions from and about non-Mexican artists, including Luis Camnitzer of Uruguay/NYC. This was also a very taxing project especially, especially since Umelec publishes identical issues in German/Czech/English/Spanish. I controlled the English edition more than the others. My Spanish is not fluent, though Umelec/Divus thought that it was when I accepted responsibility for that issue. And so, also for the record, Marisol Rodriguez in Mexico City contributed immensely to the actualization of that project. I only got the applause for it in Prague. The Embassy of Mexico in Prague, by the way, provided funds for a good opening and party afterwards for that issue.

Especially since so many factors have to come together from a wide range of people/personalities/expertise it is more like producing a film and co-directing it as well (though I've never made a film). I will emphasize co-directing because I have realized that the artists (or at least some artists) can play a much bigger role in curating than is generally viewed. In my case, Marie Hladikova and Lenka Vitkova made some curatorial adjustments at the last minute and I was quite shocked to even consider it, at first, but finally I am glad I succumbed to their advice. A greater ego would have resisted simply out of principle.

Drew:
I would assume curating, in the end, is more satisfying...simply because it is more tangible, communal and you really see how what you have pulled together is immediately received by viewers. In addition to the curating and editing, you have also written many art reviews and articles about art for Umelec and The Prague Post. Does this curating experience change how you want people to experience art: firsthand versus through (your) writing?

Tony:
Yes, you are right regarding your first point. The greatest compliment or feedback I get from my reviews is that I have convinced someone to go and see a show that they would not have otherwise. Whether they agree with my take on the exhibit or not is beside the point. I prefer to write about shows that I have liked—that have given me something—though that is not always the case. I had the same attitude with this show, since I really wanted to get non-regulars into the gallery space at Horazdovice. Whether they liked it or not was secondary.

Drew:
You lived half of your life in California and half of your life in the Prague. You speak English, Spanish and Czech. What insight do you have on the visual arts from this perspective? Are they universal and unifying or are there so many cultural and lingusitic references that the arts have almost as great a challenge as a language, or even a currency for that matter: getting lost in translation or losing value in conversion? I felt that your Freak Show, for example, was really accessible.

Tony:
An important point of the Freak Show was to make it more accessible to the towns folk, than a regular contemporary art exhibit. That is why we plastered the town with flyers/posters as if it were a rock concert or a circus-sideshow the night before the opening. Still the opening did not attract as many non-regular locals as I was hoping. Through the week that we were installing the show, we had put posters in front of the gallery, and a lot of people wanted to come in to see the show, but we had to tell them to just come back. I hope they did, but it's likely that most didn't because they were probably just visiting the city that day. THEN only at the end or rather at the opening, did I fully realize that Freak Show as I understood the meaning in English had no comparison in Czech. In Czech we used the term “Oblidarium” which is the term for circus-sideshow or “freak show”, which was my main intention. But there is another layer of usage for the word “freak” (in English) which was lost in translation. Comics in the 1960s has something to do with this. For instance, Gilbert Shelton created a strip called the Fabulous Freak Brothers who were drug fiends (stoners), and so hippies claimed the term in an affectionate way. On the other side, it was used (then and now) in a pejorative way, as you can imagine the hatred that a “god-damned long-haired hippie freak” can meet in many places, especially in the USA.... the redneck or a policeman mumbling this to himself before he pulls the trigger of his gun. So on one hand the term was a badge of honor or it could also cost you your life. The Plastic People of the Universe were Freaks, in the definition above, and that was their only crime really. Then in the mid 1970s, there was a disco song called Le Freak by Chic, and it is great song to this day. A dance was created for it. This reclaimed the term for a different world, in a different era. And on in subculture lingo in the 80s, 90s, 00s, freaks change form, they have different styles—it is always changing and yet there is something constant about the term itself. And so this was a layer of meaning in the title Freak Show that I was not able to communicate to the Czechs as well as I thought.

Drew:
At the opening you were quite articulate in introducing and explaining Freak Show to the guests and journalists and I remember when you first told me about the idea for the show about a year ago. Can you express the importance of having a real theme to a show and sticking to that vision as a curator.

Tony:
I think I ended up answering this in the last question, but to follow up just a little bit... I did not think this theme would work in Prague—I thought of it specifically for a small town and Horazdovice in South Bohemia in particular. However, now I think the concept could be transferred to a city like Prague. It would still be imperative to get local-community promotion on the streets to get excitement about the show, but I can imagine certain neighborhoods in Prague with appropriate galleries, where I think this could be even more successful than in Horazdovice.

Drew:
You have quite a range of talent in Freak Show artists showing for the first time sharing the space with pretty big names. How do you balance those levels?

Tony:
Two bigger names, Veronika Bromova (from Prague) and Doro Krol (from Holland) are friends of mine for many years, and so they agreed immediately. They fit the bill perfectly from their previous works. Then Josef Bolf is one of the busiest (most sought after) Czech artists these days, finally getting the international attention that he deserves. I'm very glad he agreed to do it, as he easily could have said that he didn't have the time. The other artists were chosen based on the theme, their prior works, their locale (accessibility), or charisma! Clint Takeda is also a long-time friend and I thought it was necessary for him to finally show his work in Europe, since he only shows in the Philadelphia area.

Drew:
I hear there might be a possibility to bring this show to Prague within the next year. How will you change things for a different venue and a different audience? And what would you change in the current installment is you had your druthers?

Tony:
I'm trying to settle this now....There is one gallery which has agreed to do the show again in Prague in August, which is when I'd prefer to do it. But the space is very small, less than half of what we had in Horazdovice. I think in this case, I would have to cut the number of artists to 4, maybe 5 if we use the outside garden and one is a video projection. Some works would change, maybe one new artist. I am also considering a much larger space than Horazdovice in a gallery I won't name, but there it would not be possible to have the exhibit until 2011, which on one hand gives us enough time to apply for grants to build up the number of artists participating (especially from the US), for instance. But the idea/concept could also lose its momentum in this lapse, of two years. Then the question is should I do a smaller version meaning a “Lil Freak” show in 2010 in a small space then a grander version in 2010 and would there even be interest in so many variations of this show? Should I just do something else instead? These are questions under consideration!! If I finally do the Lil Freaks show next summer, this gallery we would have it in is run by artists who also book indie rock and experimental bands from US, Canada, etc. so with their collaboration the Freak Show could eventually take the form of a Prague version of All Tomorrow's Parties, but with an art focus. Different locations every year, some of the same artists, always some new ones and with a music component in the whole event. This could really take off, if there is a public interested.... I would do it!

To read more related posts, click on the following:
Anticipating the Freak Show

Showing up for the Freak Show

Storming Art

" The Storm King Art Center is a museum that celebrates the relationship between art and nature. Over 500 acres of landscaped fields, rollings hills, meadows and woodlands provide a dramatic setting for more than 100 post-World War II sculptures by internationally renowned artists."

Today, I went with my son, Calder, and his 4th grade class to walk the grounds and look at sculptures. Storm King is a must-see for anyone in the New York area and is even worth a pilgrimage to see it.

Pictured below: docent and class by a Sol LeWitt's Five Modular, class climbing up to Mark di Suvero's Frog Legs, Calder drawing Frog Legs, the class moving towards Alexander Calder's The Arch, two pix by Isamu Noguchi's Momo Taro.

Economy of Loss

After meeting Yoko Ono the other day and reviewing her work, I started thinking more about one of my favorite artists, Eva Hesse, and her approach to minimalism. It is easy to reduce minimalism to just that, reduction but Hesse saw it quite differently. In Mignon Nixon's Eva Hesse (MIT Press, Cambridge 2002) Briony Fer eloquently sums up Hesse's perspective:

Hesse's work dramatizes some tendency within minimalism itself, in the realm of the "symbolic" and the formal resistance to "symbols" as such....Rather than looking at localized or particular forms as vehicles of meaning, I am interested in the symbolic procedure at work, which in Hesse's work, I shall argue, is based on an economy of loss.

Follow the Instructions

Tonight I went to a dinner for Cooper Union honoring architectural giants such as Thom Mayne and Cesar Pelli. Amongst others being celebrated was Yoko Ono. I was put on the guest list just this morning. When I saw Yoko as an honoree I became a bit giddy. I could care less about celebrities and my first memories of the Beatles was getting a dozen cavities filled while Strawberry Fields Forever piped through the headphones at the dentist. But all of a sudden I felt like I wanted to know more (much more) about this artist's work and her as only an artist and see her in the flesh. I am reading a biography on Paul Gauguin now and that separation of life and death made me more sensitive to seeing someone like Yoko alive and well. I went to The Strand at lunch and bought her book Instruction Paintings in hopes of having her sign it. It is a beautiful hard cover small (7" x 7") square book (published by Weatherhill, Inc., New York 1995) in Japanese and English...63 pages with only five black and white photographs. It is well designed and has a handsome slip case. I especially like the cover because of the lone image of Yoko's eye, which is often shielded in dark sunglasses in her pop icon persona. I speak Czech so there is an extra meaning...the word, oko means eye and ono, in Czech, is used as a form of it...i.e. to je ono ('that's the one' or, as Michael Jackson once sang 'this is it!'). Instruction Paintings is, however, the kind of book you typically would not buy because there are "not enough pictures" for an art book...but for Yoko, that's what I wanted...her in the most conceptual state. Since it's a full moon and I just turned to this page, here is one sheet (opposite the Japanese):

PAINTING FOR BURIAL

On the night of the full moon, place a canvas
in the garden from 1:00 AM til dawn.
When the canvas is dyed thoroughly in rose with

the morning light, dismember or fold it and bury.

The ways of burial:
1) Bury it in the garden and place a marker with a number on it.
2) Sell it to the rag man.
3) Throw it in the garbage.

1961 summer

Yoko was smoothly slipped into the event and although she brushed by and smiled politely at me she was soon a sea of people away and I dared not intrude upon her privacy. Very early on, however, she got up to go to the bathroom and popped back out into my side of the dining area. She looked a bit lost and no one else noticed her. I got up and asked her to sign the book and then I took her arm and walked her across the room and brought her to her seat. She turned, looked up and thanked me. She looked fantastic and young. I felt guilty for asking for her autograph but she was graceful and took her time. She asked me my name and asked me for a pen then signed 'To Andrew, Love Yoko '09.'

Sometimes we build a world of reasons and questions and act out in so many bizarre ways to get closer to something or someone but when there is an honest, mutual moment between two people there is almost an emotional sigh of relief in that simple unpretentious wink of understanding. I do not need to see her again or ask her questions about her work. Her written words are now narrated by her soft voice and I have felt her gentle touch in a helping moment. It's a relationship that works backwards.

Plaster Mars, Plastic Venus: A Mid-October Wall's Dream

Pictured here is a detail of The Wall at 209 South Broad Street, taken this mid-October with the old-school film camera my father gave me when I was a teenager (Ricoh with black & white TMax 400 film, developed by Bergen County Camera)

Pictured:
A pounded wood house sign with gold lettering
A Geisha doll I brought back from Kyoto
Plaster Mars [donated to Wall]
Ceramic French gentleman [donated to Wall] (head missing, replaced with burned spoon from the Santa Barbara Jesusita Fire of 2009)
Plastic Venus [donated to Wall]
Ceramic "I Love You" figurine [donated to Wall]
Old curtain rod, broken mirrors, hand-painted tiles, etc.

The large gray stones are from the original West Side Presbyterian Church, which burned down in 2002 (my parents' church, which I attended).

Murakami...About Running: A Book Review

by Drew Martin

When I was studying art in college, my peers and I were gathered one day to hear a visiting Italian artist talk about a project he needed assistants for. With much enthusiasm he revealed to us that his undertaking was to honor the Stadium. We all fidgeted in our seats and looked at each other with "Who let this guy in here?" expressions. Sports and the arts? It seemed like mixing oil and water. Though discus throwers, wrestlers, runners, boxers and rowers have been themes of classical art and for the realists; and, there was something in cycling for artists of the first half of the twentieth century, the arts have pretty much ignored sports as an inspired theme. The perfectly machined and symmetrical body in its neoclassical state seems fascistic. The athlete just seems too clean, plain and healthy for the creative soul.

Haruki Murakami, author of After Dark, The Elephant Vanishes, A Wild Sheep Chase (to name a few), however, writes about long distance running in his memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (published by Knopf, 2008). As a renowned fiction writer (most recently winning the Franz Kafka Prize) and marathon runner (at least 26 under his belt) and triathlete, the 60 year old Murakami brings the life of an athlete and artist into a comfortable existence and even plays with stereotypes:

"You live such a healthy life every day, Mr. Murakami, so don't you think you'll one day find yourself unable to write novels anymore?" People don't say this much when I'm abroad, but a lot of people in Japan seem to hold the view that writing novels is an unhealthy activity, that novelists are somewhat degenerate and have to live hazardous lives in order to write....Basically I agree with the view that writing novels is an unhealthy type of work. When we set off to write a novel, when we use writing to create a story, like it or not a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface...so from the start, artistic activity contains elements that are unhealthy and antisocial.

A page later he offers:

To deal with something unhealthy, a person needs to be as healthy as possible...In other words, an unhealthy soul requires a healthy body...the healthy and the unhealthy are not necessarily at opposite ends of the spectrum. They don't stand in opposition to each other, but rather complement each other, and in some cases even band together.

Though What I Talk About...leans too much towards a physical journal and musings on the limitations of aging in the final chapters, Murakami's writing is always filtered through a literary mind...in discussing pain, he at times sounds like he is concluding Kafka's The Penal Colony:

I'm a physical, not intellectual...Only when I am given an actual physical burden and my muscles start to groan (and sometimes scream) does my comprehension meter shoot upward and I'm finally able to grasp something.

I love Murakami's simplest and most humble thoughts:

I don't necessarily write down what I'm thinking; it's just that as I write I think about things. As I write, I arrange my thoughts.

Or this morsel, bursting the horror vacui bubble:

I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.

If not words to contemplate for one's own life, perhaps this last quote here is something to mull over this Sunday during the New York City Marathon:

The end of the race is just a temporary marker without much significance. It's the same with our lives. Just because there's an end doesn't mean existence has meaning. An end point is simply set up as a temporary marker, or perhaps as an indirect metaphor for the fleeting nature of existence. It's very philosophical - not that at this point I'm thinking how philosophical it is. I just vaguely experience this idea, not with words, but as a physical sensation.

I Think I Feel: A Mediated Shoe Review

by Drew Martin

At The New School I once wrote a paper that compared air conditioning window units to television...this was before flat screens, when TV's were boxier. I reduced each to the common denominator: squarish metal and plastic devices, which you plug into an electrical outlet, adjust to a certain setting and then sit back and enjoy the machine's purpose. Though the AC unit is not an image displaying device, the window unit physically blocks your view from the outside world, just as the TV distracts your attention from reality. And though there is no obvious message transmitting through the AC unit, it does alter your senses. It cools you and makes you feel better and in doing so it makes you stop thinking about how hot you were, which is certainly a consuming thought. In a cooler, calmer state your mind can focus on and entertain other thoughts.

In the movie The Family Man, Nicholas Cage's character is transformed from a high-powered, single New Yorker into a middle class father and tire salesman in suburban New Jersey. In this state he tries on a $2,400 suit while shopping in the mall with his family. To a bewildered wife played by Téa Leoni he says "It's an unbelievable thing. Wearing this suit actually makes me feel like a better person." This pretty much sums up fashion and how we perceive clothing. Like air conditioning, we focus on how things make us feel but we neglect how they make us think.

I recently bought the above pictured Tretorn boots because I wanted dry feet on rainy day commutes. Shoes are a form a media...they send a message and they influence how we feel and therefore how we think. As far as the Tretorns are concerned...they are a bit clownish, too wide and my pair leaked from the toe and sole on my maiden voyage. I thought they would make me feel warm, dry and "cool" but they make me feel a bit silly and the slight leak makes me feel vulnerable. I think I was seduced by a shoe that does not live up to my dream of it. It makes me think further about design flaws in everything.

When I do think about shoes in more general terms, I usually remind myself of a passage I once read about an early encounter of the British and native Americans (perhaps it was from The Last of the Mohicans). The native examines a stiff, heavy Western shoe and compares it to his soft moccasin. He concludes that the foreigners are so insensitive and clumsy because their soles are too thick and can therefore not 'sense' the earth with their feet.

To Be or Not To Be

The Museum of Peripheral Art is currently developing its board and is seeking status as a non-profit educational organization in order to financially and creatively manage public art programs and projects. This status was pursued a couple years ago but was put on the back burner to develop the concept further.

Mission Statement
The Museum of Peripheral Art (MoPA) is a network of public art projects experienced in limitless contexts and environments.

Vision Statement
MoPA will be a catalyst for community development through the introduction of and dialogue with art at the street level.

Strategic Planning
MoPA’s long range plans are to establish MoPA sites around the world, which would be collaboratively created in conjunction with art education programs.

I have written before about the first MoPA project (see The Wall), which was is an outdoor shrine to my neighborhood and passersby. The first indoor MoPA exhibit was on December 2, 2006 and was held in a room in my house that was converted into a gallery. MoPA projects are primarily serendipitous encounters on town and city streets in niches and vacant display windows. Part of the scope of MoPA is to extend public space into private space, encouraging shop keepers and homeowners to turn over part of their property for the public. For this event, a room was given the name 209 South Broad Street Gallery and a show was put on for the neighborhood. The show was called The Winter House: Lost & Found and is explained in the invite:

The 'winter house' is the zoo building for animals that would not survive a winter in their viewing cages. The 209 South Broad Street Gallery is taking in a collection of sculptures from The Wall for the winter. The pieces are shown with a selection of other works that share the status of being lost and found. They have either lost their owner or function, but they have also been found; their forms rediscovered. Please join us for wine and cheese this Saturday, December 2 from 5-6 pm, for this pre-tree lighting event.

Some of the objects in the show included Tropaion, Polyphemus and Petina. Tropaion, (pictured at the top of this entry) was named after the Greek origin of the word trophy, which meant a monument of an enemy's defeat. It consisted of the spoils of the vanquished foe displayed at the respective battlefield or the capitol of the conquered nation. Many trophies were left at The Wall, as was the metal casing of this piece, originally for a clock. In Tropaion, a modern silver swimmer prepares to dive through an ancient building. Polyphemus, (pictured in the invite) is named after Homer's cyclops whom Ulysses blinds in The Odyssey. The two orifices of this piece allude to both the plucked eye socket and the groaning mouth of the giant. Petina (pictured left) is the mascot of MoPA and although its origin is a mass-produced lawn ornament, it has developed a unique character though its own demise after leaving its comfortable life on a suburban lawn. It is also the inspiration for the show, protecting it further from the elements, giving this animal a true winter house.

All the World's a Painting: An Interview with Veru Narula

Drew:
I have spent a lot of time discussing the relationship of image and text with artists. Your works seem to be a way for you consolidate a large amount of text in one space with images. Is this a way for you to personally wrap your head around a topic or do you see it more as a way to compress ideas for the viewer to unpack and explore?

Veru:
It’s a great question. The visual language is similar to the written or spoken in that ultimately, it is rooted in a means of communication. Whether it is an idea or a human complexity, language aims to connect. In my works, I’m not necessarily trying to compress an idea or explain my own interpretation. Rather, I’m trying to connect to this root idea by communicating with the viewer. Hopefully, it’s in a way that’s engaging. I always think to myself, “If I’ve done my job right as the artist, then the visual can only be enhanced by text.”

Drew:
Your work is a kind of story telling. Explain how you use different visual devices and layering to be allegorical and what do you think is effective in this approach and what do you see as a shortcoming?

Veru:
I definitely enjoy the process of story telling, and since I like to paint ideas, it’s a natural fit. One of the visual devices I use a lot is hands. It’s a very human and universal symbol, yet each gesture signifies a different action or emotion. On the one hand, it picks up the modern connotations and social interactions we’re so used to. On the other, it can be limiting for the visual vocabulary I like to employ. I have to make choices though, and some are obviously more successful than others.

Drew:
In your exhibition overview for your series All The World's A Stage, you refer to your work as 'contemporary' paintings. Are you using that term strictly in a temporal sense or stylistically? From the images of your work I have seen, it seems to reflect the styles of Kahlo and the past, deceased surrealists such as Magritte and Dali.

Veru:
I think contemporary certainly has a temporal sense because it chronicles many of the modern global political situations. More so, the paintings are contemporary because they consider the modern viewer’s exposure to varieties of media and the internet gallery of web images. The paintings are oil representations of today’s modern situations, certainly with some style precedents of the artists you mentioned, but also with new influences of today. Vibrant colors touch us in amazing ways, so I’m flattered to be compared to those precedent artists.

Drew:
When I think of Shakespeare in visual terms, very few images actually come to mind...perhaps King Leer with bandaged eyes, Hamlet with a skull, Romeo and Juliet by in their final moment, lying dead side by side. Perhaps this is because Shakespeare is so much about playing with words and not about conjuring images. Where do your images for Shakespeare start?

Veru:
I used to love Shakespeare when I read him in my school days, but didn’t really understand his universality until I revisited the works as an adult. I guess in some sense the images are part school-boy memories, part adult interpretation, and just given the parallels with the global political stage, part integration with the modern day. The beauty of Shakespeare is his universal appeal and the way he touches our minds through words. If I can touch a viewers mind through visual, then I know I’ve done something noteworthy.

Drew:
You link Shakespeare's works with current events. Why is painting the meeting ground for these parallels, as opposed to film, cartoons, essays, etc?

Veru:
I love the paradox of it all! On the one side, you have current event imagery which we see from Twitter, or internet entries or news broadcasts. By tomorrow they’re in some archive only to fade out in news highlight reels. When you stand in front of a painting, you’re always in the present. It’s physical. It’s immediate. It shines. I love that, and I wanted integrate an exhibition that combines theater, literature and visual art.

Drew:
Tell us a little bit about you upbringing? You were born here but have been influenced by other cultures. Your last name is Indian. Your first name is from the Slavic root for faith/belief/truth. How does all of this influence your imagery, palette and storytelling? Your use of Shakespeare suggests a very universal outlook and searching for a common ground.

Veru:
I’m very fortunate for my upbringing. I am an only child, and my parents always allowed me to explore my creativity and not get bogged down in paradigms from others. They both painted, but in very different styles. My dad was an engineer, so he was very controlled and linear. My mother is more emotive, so she connects to a viewer in a very real, Aquarian way in her art.

As for my name, I think having two cultural references definitely is a reminder of the global spectrum in which we live. As a part of Generation Y, it’s just how we think, and I’m grateful. I’m not so naïve to realize it’s a lot of hard work bridging cultures around the world. It takes a lot of patience, understanding, controlling of egos. Open mindedness is hard to achieve, and there’s a lot of history we need to address to move forward, but in the 21st century I hope we will bridge more of the gaps. It may sound idealistic and cliché, but I look forward to a time when the earth shall be as one.

Drew:
Tell us a little bit about your 'day job', which in your case is more of a career, and how your paintings and professional work influence each other, not just in approach to things but also in terms of being alone with your painting versus being part of a larger, more social organism/machine.

Veru:
In my day job, I work in marketing and graphics. It’s great hours because it gives me time in the evenings for painting, and I learn the business approach to imagery and visual. When you’re working behind someone else’s brand, you learn a whole new side of things, and new perspective on visual interpretation in a way that is both positive and harmful to the brand. From that respect, it keeps me grounded with a wider spectrum of people. When you’re working on paintings in a studio, you have a much smaller subset of those perspectives. As the artist though, you have full autonomy, and I love that ability to realize a vision in its entirety. I’ve never believed in having to have just one singularity, but rather a progression in one’s day- it keeps me constantly learning!

Drew:
What is your favorite painting and why?

Veru:
Within the series All The World’s a Stage, my favorite painting is Honest (Iran) Iago. Here I compare the Iranian president Ahmadinejad to the character of Iago, who tempts Othello into believing his wife has had an affair. The colors are beautiful and the contrast created visually by two views of Iran was exciting. I painted it in 2007/2008 before the re-election of 2009, and that prediction of him manipulating the government and the people came true. The fact that he was able to carry the election, and the way he’s reacted to the UN probe on Uranium enrichment is really startling, and it’s an affirmation of the painting’s prediction.

My all time favorite painting of mine is one I did called A Prayer in Sacre Couer (pictured above with hands comment). Thematically and visually, it’s about a woman who lights a candle, and her hands become the Church. It’s about taking control of one’s spirituality that transcends religious dogma. I had envisioned this is what the mother Mary might have done many years after her son Jesus was resurrected- Somewhere quiet and by herself. I think it is a very personal piece, at a time in my life where some major life decisions were very raw, so it means more to me than just the pure execution of the work.

Drew:
Thank you for your time. In parting, tell us a bit what you want to do with your paintings in the near and distant future.

Veru:
Thank you for having me. Next on the horizon, I’m in the midst of an underwater painting series that looks into different Alternative Energy sources. Often times, Alternative Energy or Clean Tech can seem theoretical or abstract. I wanted to get personal, and look at our daily activities of swimming, kissing, loving, growing and contrast it with how to think innovatively about new means of energy sources. My ultimate vision is to turn a gallery or space into an underwater think tank!

Different Strokes: A Book Review

by Drew Martin

Through my writings at the Museum of Peripheral Art I have primarily addressed the visual arts because my education and lifelong interests are in the arts but I would like to cast a bigger net to incorporate my graduate work and matured/broader interests: Media Studies, which incorporates the arts, film, literature, television, radio and the Internet. My comments will not be typical of film and book reviews because they reach beyond the specific medium with an interdisciplinary scope. (See earlier posting on Synesthetic Interpretations comparing Stanley Kubrick's treatment of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey)

I just finished reading My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. (published by Viking, 2006). It is the most open and beautiful writing I have ever read. The beauty is not in the craft, style or structure. I even winced a couple times at the grammar ("self-medicating themselves")....but this is the closest I have come to feeling befriended by a book and its author without the trappings of cynicism or unhealthy and needy emotions. Typically, I would feel a slight pang of sadness upon completing such a thoughtful book but it is so liberating that one can only walk away from it feeling content and one with this world.

This short book (fewer than 200 pages) is really two books. The first part professionally/academically details the debilitation and recovery from a stroke by the author, a neuroanatomist.

"The type of stroke I experienced was a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of my brain due to an undiagnosed AVM (arterovenous malformation). On the morning of the stroke, this massive hemorrhage rendered me so completely disabled that I describe myself as an infant in a woman's body. Two and a half weeks after the stroke, I underwent major surgery to remove a golf ball-sized blood clot that was obstructing my brain's ability to transmit information."

The second section is a kind of self-help guide to one's mind, emotions and relationships (with people, food, music and the universe).

"...I learned that I had the power to choose whether to hook into a feeling and prolong its presence in my body, or just let it quickly flow right out of me. I made my decisions based upon how things felt inside. There were certain emotions like anger, frustration or fear that felt uncomfortable when they surged through my body. So I told my brain that I didn't like that feeling and didn't want to hook into those neural loops. I learned that I could use my left brain and tell it what I wanted and I didn't want. Upon this realization, I knew I would never return to the personality I had been before. I suddenly had much more to say about how I felt and for how long, and I was adamantly opposed to reactivating old painful emotional circuits."

I do not think Bolte consciously/cleverly set up a lobed book, divided left then right-brain, respectively. It was just a simple way for her to write: tell the facts, then say what she learned. The account of the stroke is fascinating and a must-read for everyone because it takes a compassionate look at an injured mind and is relevant to anyone with a friend or relative with special needs and is just as helpful for the average passerby to rethink the state of someone he or she pities in public. The second part is worthy of its quotes from Einstein and Gandhi because it deconstructs the thinking of such intensely intelligent humans. If there is a fault to the book, it is that it caters to people like me, severely right-brained. I imagine many sections are quickly dismissed by more analytical people, but Bolte guides the reader so gently into her calm, quiet world and establishes that we are all a blood clot away from her experience so she is able to disarm the most suspicious readers. With this approach she naturally uses a lead-in that parallels our engagement with her and her story/book.

Bolte's recovery is a matter of will and discipline but is also an act of pure love by her mother, who reteaches her new (37 year old) infant how to count, read, walk, talk and think. It is an account as touching and astonishing as Helen Keller and "The Miracle Worker". When I finished reading, I thought to myself "Now there's a book one certainly cannot turn into a film" but that just brought to mind Julian Schnabel's painterly The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which turns Jean-Dominique Bauby's stroke and resulting locked-in syndrome into a narrated 'art' movie.

It would be a great pity to offer us anything other than Bolte's deep and abstract inner thoughts. A book is personal and contemplative and in this form Bolte wraps the reader in her insight like a plush blanket.

Though Bolte occasionally lingers, she is not exhaustive and I often wished she would go off on more adventurous tangents to entertain the thoughts she initiates. I would, for example, like her to explore in greater detail the feeling of creating art and how one experiences viewing art. I would like to think that the arts have the ability to stimulate the parts of the brain in the audience from which the creators work from in order to share joy, creativity and love...and, in doing so have the ability to develop that part of the brain, which would then override more primal instincts.

Bolte explains that before recovering from the stroke, she could not write or read (a left brain activity) but she was able to type on a computer because it is a shared, ambidextrous action using both sides of her brain. Does this mean that writing by hand and typing with both hands access different thoughts? Truman Capote once commented that Jack Kerouac's On The Road was not writing but typing. While this quip illustrates Marshall McLuhan's 'the medium is the message,' Bolte seems to be suggesting that the message is already influenced by the medium on a neurological level even before it is expressed through the medium. Is the ambidextrous, keyboard-ready mind simply working from a less analytical part of the brain than the hand-writing mind, which generated wonders such as the Declaration of Independence?

I started missing the effect of Bolte's written kindness the morning after completing it. The influence wore off too quickly. Bolte's magic is not a removed, external beauty but one that flows within you. The book is not plot driven or a mystery, reduced to simple facts and conclusions. It is experiential and it reminds me that even while her story is told through a book, the book is really just paper and ink that stores the energy of her mind and the content of her thoughts.