GUEST POST BY HEIDI NORTON

As a photography student of the mid/late 90′s, Barbara Kasten was of great significance to me. I lost track of her during the first decade of the millennium, as the contemporaries of the Becher’s school (Gursky, Ruff, Struth) dominated the art market with their dry, representational Deadpan Photography. Now, as an educator 11 years later, I relish in Kasten’s renaissance. Abstraction is transcendental to me, but above all, I see Kasten as a pioneer of contemporary relevance.

Most people know her as photographer, but Barbara Kasten is an artist. Photography is a material to her, the camera’s use- very calculated and intentional. She treats it with equal significance to the rest of her materials–mesh, plexi, screen, mirror, glass, and light. Her influences are vast and span many decades: Irwin’s light and space movement of the late 60′s; Judd’s studies and use of modern industrial material; Post-Minimalism, and its tendencies toward performance; Process art; Site-Specific art; and Abstraction of the 40′s (Moholy Nagy), 90′s, and present. She is presently celebrating her first solo show in Chicago at Tony Wight gallery, Ineluctable, which runs through October 22^nd.

Barbara and I sit down and talk art–mostly me picking her mind. But flattered I am, as she is inquisitive about my work as well. See below!

H: Material became important to you very early on in your career. You were trained as a sculpture and a fibers artist. As a fibers instructor, you used fiberglass screen as a teaching tool to model 3d forms. Talk about your transition from fiberglass as a 3-D sculpting tool to its appearance in your first Cyanotype, Untitled 13, 1974. When and how was the camera introduced?

My first photographic works were photograms. When I discovered the industrial screen as a way to create 3D weaving maquettes, I also tried creating a 2D illusionistic rendition in the form of a photogram. That was in 1974, and I still use the same material today in the Studio Constructs.  In the process of arranging the photograms. I liked the way that shadows were captured in negative shapes.  I was also making life size arrangements using packing boxes and other geometric forms I built for that purpose.  At that time, Polaroid was a new color photographic medium; so when I was offered some 8×10 Polaroid film, I learned how to use my first camera, an 8×10 view camera.

H: Speaking of the camera, let’s talk about the relationship between the image created, the materials (light, plexi, screen), and the exhibited object (the print or projection). When we spoke, you talked about the “several stages of development before the image is where it should be”. Please explain this. Can you talk about the integral relationship between the construction/sculpture and how it is mediated through the camera? A minimalist like Robert Morris might have said that there is a “dematerialization of the object via the process of it being photographed.” Do you see the camera and photographic print as more, less, or equal in relevance to the process and materials?

B: Process has been the core of all of my work- whether it was the sculptural fiber pieces I did in Poland while on a Fulbright, the photograms in the early 70′s or the most recent Studio Constructs and video work.  The shadow- and the light that causes it- has been my conceptual grounding.  I am not interested in the object itself but how it serves as the means of recording light and shadow.  The photograph becomes the object when the light is merged with form and shadow on a 2d surface. It’s really the light that completes the action, whether it is in direct contact with light sensitive material or passing thru the lens of a camera.  The Studio Constructs go through many configurations before I arrive at the final image….The ‘sculpture’ stays set up in the studio giving me time to live with it and the images I make of it.  I can expose many pieces of film before I’m happy with it.  Why not digital…many reasons but the main one is that I like a slower process so I can think about the work as I make it.

B: How about you, Heidi? You currently have a show up at Northeastern University, Not to Touch the Earth (Reception this Friday, Oct. 21st,  from 6-9). In some of your work, the photograph seems to be a document of your process and in other work, the plants or objects are integral to the piece by their physical inclusion.  Talk about these different approaches and how you decide when to create a sculptural piece versus a ‘recording of the piece’ -if you see it that way.  If not, how do you think about the role of the plants?  Does the photograph play a different role in each of these approaches?  Tell me about the importance of the object in your work.

H: All of this work began from the image Whitescape, 2010, where I painted all the objects, including the plants, white by hand. Several weeks later, I was at my studio and noticed that the Dieffenbachia plant I used had begun to grow out of the paint. The painted leaves died and fell off and new life began to sprout from the center. I was intrigued by this–a very pleasant surprise– as painting the plants had left me feeling guilty.  The material of the paint was killing, yet at the same time preserving and stimulating growth. I included that same Dieffenbachia plant in the piece Deconstructed Rebirth- my third still life construction made for the camera. In that piece you see the new sprout and the decayed white leaves hanging from the plant. Almost a year later in My Dieffenbachia Plant with Tarp (Protection), the same plant reappears as a whole new plant. Only through the use of the camera as a recording mechanism is one able to see the inclusion of this narrative. With the camera’s ability to freeze time we can see the plants in varying states through life to disparity to death. Evolution of a Plant is a more literal example of this idea.  I think of the “New Age Still Life” series as sculptural construction. Like yours, these have several stages of development before they become images or objects on the wall. Higherself and Mango are shot in a studio with a plexi-glass shelving unit that was created to compress the space further within the 2D plane.  In the sculptural objects- glass and wax pieces- the plants are pressed to glass or embedded in wax. These materials are also meant to preserve, freeze, and maybe illicit death. The pieces are meant to activate one another; whereas the photographs are fixed- frozen in one state, in the way that Barthes talk about the “Death of an Image”. He sees death implicit in each photograph. He is struck by how the photograph moves you back through time, how you always have the past with you- the photograph as a kind of resurrection. The sculptures will transition in front of your eyes over a span of time based on the nature of the plant. Plants in various states between life and death, wax melting, the color of the plants from green to brown- they are in constant flux.

H: In the Alex Klein essay that accompanied the group show at Shane Campbell in 2010, “Terminus Ante Quem” she compares your process to that of process and earthworks artist, Robert Smithson. She writes, “he famously challenged what he saw as the misperception that art objects function as a kind of culmination or terminus as quem of artistic achievement.” Basically stating that the object supersedes the process, or the process is a building up to the object. People see your works, the final product, a very polished and refined photograph or projection, different than the “documentation” of the 70s. How has being grouped into a movement of photographers whose work is notable for its formal beauty and technical execution changed how the work is interpreted?

B: I happen to like beautiful objects, but beauty alone isn’t enough.  Some investigations of beauty can bring out the underpinnings of a structure or idea or process that doesn’t possess that same kind of beauty as the surface. However, I think that my process is important to the understanding of the work which ultimately becomes an object…. a beautiful object. The traditional photographic process is different than mine.  I carry on a continual dialogue with the subject, changing each step along the way, much like a painter might do. The process is intense and intimate and can include aspects of performance, documentation and sculpture.

H: You mentioned you are reading Donald Judd’s essay on the “specificity of objects” and the discussion of the “under developed rectangle”. Please explain it’s relevance to your work. We talked about using light on reflective surface to break or reconstruct space within your work and that reduction is the abstraction. Talk more about this.

B: I was in a show at Ballroom Marfa this year and visiting the Chinati Foundation re-sparked my interest in Judd.  Just to witness his immersion into the simple architecture of a small western town and how it became an extension of his vision and art. The barracks, containing row after row of polished, reflective boxes illuminated by the Texas sun, was an incredible experience of landscape and geometry merging through the medium of the sun.  Judd is straightforward and yet incredibly complex.  Its a position that I hope to develop more in my work and thinking.

H: Architecture within the constructed space and the architecture of the gallery seem integral to the work and installation. Please discuss the distinction between phenomenological space and imagined space, and how unambiguous, or understandable for that matter, the difference is between the two experiences.

B: An example of how I like to incorporate architecture is in the installation of ‘Ineluctable’.  The three 11×14 silver gelatin prints are positioned so as to include the corner when the viewer looks towards the work.  Upon close observation, one becomes aware that there is a corner in each of the pieces that reinforces and establishes the importance of the architectural element in situ.  The video ‘Corner’ also plays with the identity of generic structural architecture and light projection that alters its dimensionality.

B: What about the space and environments you create in the gallery’s space? Do you think of your work as environmental installations?  For instance the inclusion of architectural pedestals as in the piece, Michael 2011, shown in Jason Foumberg’s September 2011 Frieze review, or the collaborative piece with Karsten Lund, presenting shelves of books that were focused on plant life in “Not to See the Sun” exhibit at Ebersmoore last April?

H: I am interested in creating an atmosphere or environment in all of my spaces- the gallery, the studio, my apartment. When making work, I like to assume the personality of an avid plant collector, a botanist- my studio is a hybrid of herbarium and art studio.  I speak mantras to my plants. There is dirt, roots, wax, film and photographs everywhere. I am a creator and nurturer of things and sometimes these things have difficulty co-existing in the same space—precious archival pigment prints shot with 4×5 transparency film made on expensive baryta inkjet paper do not mingle well with dirt, wax and resin. But I like this mix- taking something precious like a photographic print or plant and submerging it into hot wax–pushing the integrity of the material outside of it’s natural limits.  Michael, the piece you mentioned, is maybe a good example of when these two polarities collide—to me, it’s both photographic and sculptural. When I created the display stands for the piece, I intended for them to not look like pedestals that reference high art. I wanted them to assume some anonymous person’s makeshift constructions. “After the Fires of a Little Sun”, the installation of books and mirror, are to reference a mantle and book collection.  Not necessarily my own collection (though all the books are/have been used for personal research and relate in some abstract way to my work), but maybe someone whose interests vary from botany, to color theory, to a 1970s back-to-the-land manual. The project grafts new imagery and typewritten text directly onto the pages of existing books. The artist and writer’s responses become merged with the research materials, producing an unconventional artist’s monograph/zine, fueled by the symbiotic combination of three elements: the original texts, the writer’s typewritten thoughts, and the artist’s wide-ranging visuals. The effect of leafing through this material (now collected in one volume) is a bit like stumbling upon some anonymous person’s avid research materials — perhaps a mad botanist with a flair for detours into the histories of art and counter-culture.

Ineluctable is on view until October 22nd at Tony Wight Gallery. 

Not to Touch the Earth is on view until October 28th at Northeastern Illinois. Opening Reception, October 2nd, 6-9pm.

Heidi Norton received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002. She lives and works in Chicago. Norton has presented solo exhibitions in Chicago and San Francisco. Group exhibitions include How Do I Look at Monique Meloche Gallery, The World as Text at the Center for Book and Paper Arts, Snapshot at Contemporary Art Museum in Baltimore, and the Knitting Factory in New York. Norton was published in My Green City (Gestalten) in 2011 and her spring show at Not to See the Sun, EbersMoore was reviewed in Frieze, September 2011. She currently is collaborating with writer Claudine Ise in a seasonal column for Bad At Sports called Mantras for Plants. Norton is represented by EBERSMOORE gallery in Chicago. She is faculty in the photography department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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I came across an article by Martin Patrick, Restlessness and Reception: Transforming Art Criticism in the Age of the Blogosphere, that discusses at length the role of art criticism today and — unlike most pieces I read about the state of the world — ends on a seemingly hopeful note. It thought I  could post something about it here because I find I’m often thinking about the web-context and what it means as a medium. I don’t especially feel like I have a handle on how best to exercise its talents, but I like chewing on the idea periodically, no doubt in hope of some Eureka! moment. “The web becomes a tool for ‘housing’ certain materials, indeed a virtual archive, or in Andre Malraux’s famous phrase a ‘museum without walls’ but then it is more important to ask how can newer arrangements, actions, conversations be created on the basis of these contextual settings” (Patrick).

I’ve seen a dramatic shift in Chicago’s critical dialogue. When I first moved here about seven years ago all anyone could talk about was the death of the New Art Examiner. Its demise added salt to the already throbbing (and ever hysterical) wound of Chicago’s second city syndrome. The Midwestern art market was not even capable of supporting a magazine that represented its interests and the rest of the country was disinterested in the activities of its midriff. While I’m likely misremembering the past (again, I’d just come to Chicago and did not yet understand its nuances), it seemed like that pang of insecurity propelled a number of other projects forward, as they insisted on creating modes of dissemination and representation. When I came here NAE had been out of commission for two years and its lament was continuous for the following four. Now, there’s an amazing vitality located largely on-line with artslant, art21, BadatSports (though I suppose B@S would resist the art criticism label standing somewhere between Vice and Cabinate) and many others. The mechanics of this phenomena are reflected in Patrick’s piece, as he points to the once-professional potential of The Critic (even in so far as it possesses archetypal potential); now much of the critical dialogue is activated and sustained by amateurs. Even those who are paid rarely expect a living wage and at best peddle together a variety of wages. “The blog—apart from the vast amount underwritten directly by corporate sponsorship—is most often an amateur/volunteer’s virtual space involving a greater probability of being generated and launched quickly, randomly, even haphazardly, and with more chance of rapidly ensuing back-and-forth discussions, responses, dialogue than a traditionally formatted journal, magazine or newspaper can generally allow.” That’s not to say the article is all positive.

This model of free labor is quite attractive to corporations. Additionally there some very real suggestions that the bite has been taken out of critical remarks (for instance, Mad Men’s ironic appropriation of the past that nevertheless collapses into a complicit reprise of old hierarchies, or how response to the Yes Mens’ NYTimes prank neutered the fake newspaper’s very serious critique message.) These aspects are also endemic to an Internet age, where we can constantly rewrite history. Then of course there’s the Internet’s shady origin story: “The origins of the Internet itself derive from the American attempt to establish a communications system in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack under the aegis of the the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) a wing of the Department of Defense, or ARPAnet[work]” (Patrick). Additionally the web facilitates a kind of sloppiness. (At this time I would like to retroactively apologize for my typos. If you want to be my editor without pay, give me a holler). But beyond slights of hand, on-line appropriation is fast, constant and cheap — it’s so easy, for instance, that images, text and ideas are borrowed, spliced, reiterated, misrepresented and so on and so forth. While on the one hand the frontier-like openness of this space, a space not yet settled and defined, is exciting; it lacks a codified rigor. It is still experimental and malleable and capable of much more. The question then remains: How to exhaust its potential as a response vehicle for cultural production? How do we embrace its shortcomings with its strengths? And does it truly challenge canonical ideas of art historicism?

“The internet offers a seemingly open public space that is simultaneously private, solipsistic, restricted. Within this reconfigured environment the digital archive acts as a kind of indirect critical mechanism and virtual repertory house for essential material to be potentially drawn upon by interested parties. That is to say, the accessibility lent to previously arcane and unusual avant-gardist phenomena goes a long way towards setting a tone for the integration of the wildly eccentric and experimental practices that are too long overlooked rather than solely the widely accepted canonical material which is in turn overexposed and despite its merits altogether lifeless. Thus the existence of new sites such as Kenneth Goldsmiths’ www.ubu.com facilitates the permissive and promiscuous notion of having experimental strands of poetry, prose, music, film and visual culture inhabit a treasure hunt/database ready to scavenged and relived via the use of mp3 files, YouTube-style streaming video, text files and so on means that Hollis Frampton, Marcel Broodthaers, Luigi Russolo and many more are incrementally closer to becoming household names” (Patrick).

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I’ve been following Dmitry Samarov’s work for a few years now, about as long as I’ve been living in Chicago. Oddly enough, I first became acquainted with Mr. Samarov through Twitter, which at the time he was just starting to play around with and I was still trying to ignore. How things change. From there, I found his website, Hack, where he chronicles his experiences as a Chi Town cab driver through sketches, drawings, and short written pieces. On Hack, Samarov’s drawings and writings go hand-in-hand–it’s hard to imagine one without the other, actually. I’ve followed Dmitry’s work through his website, found some of his writings archived on the Chicago Reader’s site, and even engaged in a few 140 character-length conversations with him on Twitter. But I’ve always wanted to interview Dmitry, and with the October 1, 2011 publication of Hack in book form (by the University of Chicago Press, no less!) and a slew of shows opening this and next month (including one at Lloyd Dobler Gallery), I realized that now was the ideal time. In this interview, Dmitry gave what is probably my all-time favorite answer to a question, delivered in his typical bone-dry style: “The dream, though, is and always will be to be unemployed.”

I’m very grateful to Dmitry for taking the time to answer my questions (via e-mail, natch)–maybe someday he and I will have an actual face to face conversation. Certainly there will be lots of opportunities to have a live encounter with Mr. Samarov over the next few months–including the book release party for Hack on October 1st at the Rainbo Club, 4-8 pm–a link to his full schedule can be found at the bottom of this post.

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Claudine Isé: Can you take me through a typical day for you, a day that involves both work as a cabdriver and work as an artist?

Dmitry Samarov: I usually get up somewhere between 11am and 1pm. I make tea or coffee, then check email and Twitter and nose around the internet a bit while waking up. Next I work on whatever painting or drawing I’ve got going, or, write a new Hack story if one needs writing. In other words, I try to get at least one creative thing done before leaving the house. Typically though, I don’t have more than two or three hours to devote to these things before I have to go out and drive the cab.

I drive from sometime in the afternoon until anywhere from 2 to 5am, depending on the day. I rent the cab 24-7 so I can take it home, saving the commute to and from the garage, and allowing me to work the hours that I want. In order to make a living at it however, I need to put in 11-15 hours a day. If there’s a movie, a show, or something else that I want to do during work hours, I can always take a break and do it. All I’m out is the money that might’ve been made. It’s one of the few real perks of the job: the freedom to be without a boss or manager asking you why you’re not at work.

After I get home, I’ll unwind with a movie or TV show or with looking around the internet (I don’t have a TV). Sometimes, if I can’t sleep or it can’t wait til the next day, I’ll write or work on an illustration for Hack. I hardly ever do any non-Hack-related work late at night.

CI: You studied painting and printmaking at SAIC in the early 1990s. Looking back now, what were the most important things you learned while studying there?

DS: It’s an open question whether my time was worthwhile or not. That being said, I certainly had a few teachers that made an impression. I took Dan Gustin’s figure painting and figure drawing classes nearly every semester I was there. Those classes strengthened my already-strong interest in perceptual painting. To this day, what gets me jazzed most is looking at something or someone out in the world and attempting to make marks that convey some small sense of having been there. The second most influential teacher I had there was Mark Pascale. He taught lithography but, even more importantly for me, was just starting to work as a curator at the Art Institute’s Print & Drawing Room. He’d pull boxes and boxes of Rembrandt etchings, Lovis Corinth gouaches, Lucien Freuds, Max Beckmanns, and many many more for me to peruse. Even though I doubt he was ever personally much interested in my work, his generosity in getting me access to work that might help me get where I was going left a lasting impression. I still speak to him occasionally and have met few more articulate or funny people in this city.

The larger question of SAIC influence is an open one as I said before. Because of the kind of work I did (and continue to do), the school was never going to be a place that I’d truly thrive in. On the other hand, they had all the facilities in the world to put in the time and get better at what I probably would’ve done anyways. The trouble with art schools is that they tend to be inordinately concerned with current art world trends rather than giving students the rudiments of what they’ll need to keep making work past graduation. As an example, during my time there Jeff Koons gave a visiting artist lecture and you would’ve thought that Jesus had returned to anoint the next generation for all the excitement it caused; in my world, Koons isn’t fit to clean a grad school painter’s brushes. My time there certainly made it plain to me that I didn’t want to teach or participate in any similar art school program after graduation. So, perhaps by negative example, it was an important experience for me after all.

CI: To what extent are you able to make drawings and sketches while you’re in the cab? I imagine that sometimes you need to work quickly to get a certain face on the page, or to write down certain things that a fare or a fellow driver has said to you. Are you constantly taking notes or do you just have a really good memory?

DS: None of the illustrations for Hack were done on site apart from the pen sketches of taxis like this one [illustrated below]. Most were done from memory days or weeks or sometimes years afterward. As to writing, over the past couple years I’ve used text messages and Twitter for a sort of note-taking. I’ll look back through a couple days’ worth of messages and if something keeps nagging at me I’ll expand it into a story.

 

 

I have done a ton of artwork in the cab though. A couple years ago I did a series of gouache paintings of taxis out at the O’Hare and Midway Airport Taxi Staging Areas. There are also many pen sketches of similar subject-matter scattered throughout the Sketchbooks section of my website. I’ve done a fair amount of cityscapes like this one [second illustration below], from the front seat as well.

 

 

CI: I’ve always been interested in the fact that your art, or at least much of the work that I’ve seen, seems very much embedded within your work as a driver (and vice-versa). The subjects of your short written pieces and of your drawings are often based on encounters or observations you have while driving the cab (or, in the past, while tending bar). To be sure, this “entanglement” stems from necessity–we all need to work to live, to eat–but I also wonder, because your body of artwork feels so organically rooted within the other work you do–if given the opportunity, could you imagine chucking your day jobs and making artwork in some other, less-mobile fashion?

DS: I don’t think I’ll ever stop making paintings and drawings about living in the city. The workplace-related pictures were certainly made out of necessity and lack of alternate options. If I could stop having a day-(or more accurately)night-job, I’d walk away and never come back. I’ve tried to make do with the financial and time restrictions of not being a full-time painter. What else would I be doing work about but the places where I spend most of my time? I’ve done a lot of work that’s not cab- or bar-related as well of course, but there’s no way that something that you do 8 to 14 hours a day can truly be ignored.

The dream, though, is and always will be to be unemployed.

CI: The writing compiled in your book Hack was first published on your blog, also titled Hack. When did you hit upon blogging, or perhaps better described in your case, web publishing, as a way of putting your work out into the world? It’s been a very successful medium for you and I’m sure an inspiration to other artists and writers. Also, you use Twitter in a way that I really enjoy – as a way of having friendly conversations and exchanges, not as a tool for rank self-promotion. I’m curious though, why did you take up Tweeting?

DS: Hack first started as a sort of ‘zine or illustrated book that documented my years driving a cab in Boston (1993-1997). I didn’t know how to turn on a computer until late-2003. I was briefly married to a computer programmer and got a crash course in the subject at that time. We launched my website at the beginning of 2004 and I revived Hack as a blog sometime late in 2006. It’s not a blog in the usual sense, that’s for sure. It’s not a diary or particularly personal in the way many blogs are. For the most part, I’ve tried to string phrases together in some way to relate some of what I’ve seen from behind the wheel.

I wouldn’t know what kind of impact or inspiration the thing has had on other artists, it’s not for me to judge, but I know a few people have enjoyed reading my stories over the years and there’s some satisfaction in that, without a doubt.

I started using Twitter sometime late in 2008, I think. I’d been sending text messages to friends about what was happening or what I saw in the cab for awhile and Twitter let me share these with a few more people. It’s quite a challenge to say what I want to in 140 characters but I’ve enjoyed trying nonetheless. I’ve done plenty of rank self-promotion on there as well though. I’m not sure how much longer it’ll remain compelling. MySpace has all but disappeared and Facebook will hopefully go away soon too, so who knows? If I finally figure out some way to get paid regularly for my artwork, I’ll probably drop off the social networking scene altogether. Or at least, I’d like to think I would. We’ll see.

CI: You are and/or have been a cab driver, a bartender, a writer, an artist, a “sketch-artist” — all of which seem to require similar skills, such as being able to listen, to observe (often from a distance), to keep calm and to be able to think and act quickly and “on your feet” (as it were). All of these positions also seem to require a large amount of empathy and acceptance of human foibles, it seems to me. In a lot of ways all of your roles have more than a bit in common with that of a shrink. Is it hard for you sometimes, to maintain a sense of openness or empathy to the strangers you encounter by the dozens each day? I would imagine that if you feel pissed off or even just psychologically closed-off, it might impact the work because it’s coming from “that place” of anger or pissed-offedness. Or maybe that’s the point? I guess what I’m asking is, is it sometimes hard for you to remain “open” to people, because people can be difficult to be around….

DS: I’ve been accused of being cynical and misanthropic most of my life. I don’t know whether that’s so or not. Many times people just don’t get my tone or my odd sense of humor. I’ve been working service-industry jobs since I was 13 or 14 and I’m about to turn 41. That’d be a lot of years to hate the human race. In my own way I love people or at least I love watching them. They never cease to amaze. I’ve felt removed or apart from most crowds I’ve ever found myself in. It’d take someone smarter than me to figure out why that is but coming from another country probably has something to do with it. The critical distance has allowed me to observe others with clear eyes in my good moments. Being “one of the help”, not a social equal, has allowed me to eavesdrop and overhear in a way a participant never could. For whatever reason all these years haven’t soured me on the human race. We’re full of faults, to be sure, but I don’t hold myself above those that I see; put in their place I’d likely be making an ass of myself as often as they do, and hopefully, be funny and sad just the way most of ‘em are.

I don’t know that I’m “open” but I don’t judge (in the sense that I don’t feel it’s my place to correct others’ behavior); my role is to see it, hear it, and show and tell the world about it. It’s what artists have always done: shown those around them the world they live in.

CI: A lot of your work makes me think of the caricatures of Honore Daumier – your work isn’t overtly political, like his was, but it does deal with human folly and excess – especially drunkenness, or the ways that a person comports themselves in front of others when they think no one (except you) is looking. Anyway, I’m curious, which artists have had an influence on the way you think about your own work? Which artists do you love, just because?

DS: Daumier’s great. I assume you’re thinking about the illustrations of passengers in the book here. There’s definitely a caricaturish or grotesque aspect to many of those pictures. I’ve loved Breughel most of my life, as well as Lautrec, Goya, Guston, and so many others that have parodied the human form in various ways. Doing pictures for Hack has always been a challenge because what I love to do best is just to look at something and react and that’s just not possible there. Also, I often don’t think of those pieces as stand-alone visual statements but solely as illustrations to the stories, so, when doing them there’s no way not to think about book illustrations from the past and how image and text interact. Because I’m a visual artist first, doing these pictures has always been a way into the prose for me. They help me write.

CI: Tell me about your upcoming exhibitions.

DS: Here’s a listing of all my upcoming events, but as far as art shows go:

1. Rainbo Club: “Pictures of Books”     September 24-October 21

I’ll be showing oil paintings of books on my bookshelf. I’ve returned to this motif every so often for about 14 years now. The way the books lean against each other and the colors of the spines resonate against one another has always fascinated me. Also, as someone who primarily deals with a deeper space (in cityscapes or rooms) the shallow space of a bookshelf scratches a different kind of itch. It’s probably as close to abstraction as I’ll ever get. Finally, it’s funny to me to have a show of paintings of books when I have an actual book coming out.

2. Saki:  “Music & Baseball”     October 1- October 31

This show will contain album and CD cover illustrations, concert sketches, as well as other music-related artwork that I’ve done over the years. As well as a series of portraits of the 2011 Chicago White Sox that I did for a short-lived baseball column from earlier this year.

3. Lloyd Dobler Gallery:  “Hack: Pictures from a Chicago Cab”    October 14- November 19th

This will bring together most of the taxi-related artwork I’ve done. There will also be a few of the Hack stories displayed on the walls along with the original artwork that went with them.

CI: Thanks so much for talking with me, Dmitry!

 

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On the first floor of Chicago’s MDWY Fair, Hui-min and James Barry installed the boat they’d made together for The Mt. Baldy Expedition. The boat was the result of seven years of collaborative work. It was the first time I saw it, though I remember numerous conversations with both Hui-min Tsen and James Barry over the course of its construction. Suddenly it was tangible, out of water, clean, complete and upright. It sat on a large stand in the sparse warehouse room under high-ceilings, its mast still tied up: the ceilings were not high enough.

On The Mt. Baldy Expedition  website, their statement of purpose is as follows:

The Mt. Baldy Expedition is a 21st century voyage of exploration. Inspired by predecessors such as Ferdinand Magellan and Enrique de Malacca, James Barry and Hui-min Tsen have begun a journey of quixotic proportions across the third largest lake of The Great Lakes. Over the course of 2004 to 2006, Mr. Barry and Ms. Tsen are building a sailing dinghy, sailing from Chicago, Illinois, to Mt. Baldy, a sand dune in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore– “the once largest live sand mountain in the world.” Mr. Barry and Ms. Tsen are also conducting a series of educational and performative events throughout 2004 to 2006 culminating in a traveling exhibit and lecture tour to share the findings of the Mt. Baldy Expedition with the world.

And suddenly the boat was real, placed not in a lake or a boat show, but in the middle of an art fair. The project began as a pipe-dream and from its inception, through a countless slog of hours, repetition, collaboration and patience, James and Hui-min managed to—actually—build a functioning boat. To me the project contains in it, the celebtration of amateurs (as lovers), visionaries, and pioneers: traits I see among artists’ biggest contribution. Our world is increasingly and self-knowingly specialized. There are well-trodden roads that define the way things ought to be done. Houses are to be bought, not made. Roads are to be traveled on, not deviated from. Similarly, if you want to be published, you ought to find a publishing house. Under the eaves of those admittedly useful establishments, expectations are defined. It nevertheless useful to remember how things are built, in order to recall how we are in each capable of building our own worlds that can contain their own unique expectations and standards. At least in my artistic community, I am constantly aware of people creating for themselves, building their own communities around spaces and practices—even Bad at Sports, as a site of artistic writing, thought and discussion is a kind of self-generated and generating boat. Very often those projects begin with an amateur’s spirit. The practice of research is integrated with the end result.

I wanted to ask James Barry and Hui-min about this project. This interview will take place in two parts. This first part focuses specifically on the boat and James Barry has answered my questions, about its inception and the course of the project. Next week, I’ll post an interview with Hui-min that pulls back to more abstract questions of exploration.

Caroline Picard: How did the Mt. Baldy Expedition become a project?

James Barry: I started working on the Mt. Baldy expedition in the fall of ’03. I was in my second year of grad school at SAIC.  I had just finished a long term project that summer, and I was still casting around for something new to work on. I had wanted to make something that would fly and made a boomerang. It broke on the the third throw, but it did fly.  I started working on a wearable theater, stuff like that, but nothing was really working. At the time I had lived in Chicago for about 7 years, and I didn’t really get out of town very much. So I asked a friend and teacher of mine who rode the Metra where you could go on it.  He gave me a bunch of suggestions. One of them was Mt. Baldy, and he told me a little about it and Michigan City.  So one weekend I took the train there to see it.

When I got there, there were two train stops. I was trying to get off at the “downtown” by Mt. Baldy and the lake, but the first one seemed too small, so I waited for the second. Wrong choice. I ended up in some residential are. I walked for a couple of hours trying to get to the lake, but it didn’t work. I was lost, and it was getting late. So I ate at a Mexican restaurant and decided to head back to Chicago. On my way to the train station I met up with two Michigan City juvenile delinquents who thought terrorizing a lost Chicagoan was the most entertaining thing to do that night. After about an hour and half of their unwanted company, I finally caught the train home.

Shortly after that I was out with Hui-min and some other friends from school. We were in a bar just joking around talking about projects etc. I told the story about trying to go to Mt. Baldy. At some point, I mentioned that it would be funny to build a little boat and sail it to Mt. Baldy and compare it to Shackleton and people like that. We all laughed, and Hui-min said she could sail it there.

I liked the idea and started to work on it and eventually went back to Michigan City. This time I got off at the correct station, and found a lot of information about the history Mt. Baldy/Hoosier Slide, Michigan City and their relationship to Chicago, tourism etc. at a little museum/historical society there. Everything just fell into place very easily, and it was really interesting to me. Ever since I had come to Chicago, I had missed the Northwest. (I’m originally from Seattle).  This homesickness had translated into a little bit of an obsession about wooden boats and the history of exploration.  Before studying art, I got an English degree.  Reading and writing literary criticism for years had created a huge aversion to literature. For about six years I only read stuff about boats and history, preferably both. Hui-min and I were good friends and would talk about this stuff a lot. We had similar interests. After a couple of months, I asked her if she would like to collaborate on the project for real. She agreed, and we went from there.

CP: How long did you think it would take to build the boat?

JB: Before this project, I had only worked on two boats. One when I was a little kid with my Dad. My job was basically to hand him tools and name the boat. The second time I actually got a CAAP grant to go back to the Northwest and take a boat building workshop at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding. I had been doing a lot of work that investigated different sorts of social interactions. This was suppose to be research into a boat as a microcosmic social environment and to learn new craftsmanship skills. It was a lot of fun and very challenging. We actually built a Norse Faering in just 12 days. I had also been building case interiors, etc. for museums for quite a while, so I thought we could build the boat and sail it in about 6 months. Totally wrong! First off, we had never built a boat alone. We had also never built this boat. And I had never built a boat with a deck, which seems like a small thing but was a very educational experience for me. We had all sort issues too. Money was a big one. We wanted to build the best boat we could, so we bought the best materials we could, and it took time to earn that money. We also weren’t making a sculpture of a boat, but a real boat, so we really made sure every thing was done right which takes time. And then we still had our lives, jobs etc.  Hui-min was injured at home and had a long recover one year and then later had a prolonged illness. I had a job as an exhibition manager that basically took up all of my spring every year and about every 4 to 6 weeks I’d have at least a week that it prevented me from doing anything else. But we just kept working on it a little at a time.  Knowing that someday we’d get there. It was difficult, but also fun.

CP: What is your impression of the boat as an object now?

JB: My short answer would be, “I see it as a boat.” But I think it is important to realize that in this project we were always having to deal with two related issues. One, it’s a conceptual art project where we play with things/terms from everyday life and history to try to communicate our experience and our take on the world. Two, we are building a boat, and our lives and the lives of anyone else who sails in it depend on this boat functioning. We were novices, but we were informed novices, so we were always very careful to take all the proper safety precautions, and when you think like this it is difficult to not think of it as primarily a boat.

Aside from that, the boat is something I care a great deal about. It was kind of amazing when we had almost finished the boat. We had started out with about 4 huge piles of wood that we built the shop and the boat out of. At the end when I was reorganizing the wood and sorting it looking for pieces for this and that section and thinking damn where did all that wood go and then realize it was sitting right there on the other side of the shop. I fitted almost every single piece of wood on that boat. There are stories about every part. To me that boat is very much alive.

CP: How does that compare with your experience of sitting in it, floating on the water?

JB: When we were putting the boat in the water, I was exhausted. I had quite my job two months before and had been doing nothing but working on the boat. The last two weeks in the shop were a madhouse, very long days, seven days a week. A lot of my former student workers from SAIC had been coming in to help out, my landlord, the neighbors in the building and even the neighbors next door. That was really cool. Most of these people had been hearing about the project for years. So when it came time to actually put it in the water, I was excited but also a little scared. We didn’t have a trailer or anything like that. We had moved the boat to the harbor on my landlord’s former county flatbed truck. It was old, yellow and had a big hazard light on top. The boat looked really interesting tied down to it driving down Roosevelt. We rolled it to the water and down the ramp on a make-shift furniture dolly. There was about six of us moving it including this guy who had just gotten off a boat and just thought wooden boats were cool. He had actually gone to the same wooden boat school I had. I think his name was Dav, not sure. He was a big help. He and a friend of mine from L&L Tavern, Neil, who also just happened to show up really helped us with getting the rigging right and transporting it from the truck to the water. So when we where going down the ramp, I was at the bow. I had the painter in one hand and a line attached to the dolly in the other. The boat kept getting lower and lower, and I was starting to get worried. It’s only suppose to draw four inches of water. There were no waves, so it was hard to tell what was going on. Dav was at the stern, and he told Hui-min to get in it. She did, and I was like, “Oh no, has she bottomed out?” Then I realized Dav was in water up to his thighs. I pulled  the dolly out and got in too. I was just amazed. She floated and wasn’t taking on any water at all. It was a little late in the day, so we had to deal with a lot of drunk people on speed boats coming in. They were not very patient with us at first while we got our sails up and got ready to go, but then some of them asked us, if we had built it. When they found out we did, they stopped complaining.

Being on the water actually sailing after almost seven years of working on this project was just so cool. We weren’t that good on the water, not embarrassing, but we definitely needed some work. We knew that this would be the only time we could sail her, so it was very exciting and fun but also sad. All I wanted to do was keep sailing her everyday.

CP: How did the dynamic of your partnership with Hui-Min develop over time?

JB: Hui-min and I were good friends. We were both just really into this subject, so it was very fun. In the beginning, we just worked on the project all the time. But collaborating is very similar to a relationship. The project started out as this very heady Romantic conceptual art piece, but then we had to deal with these very practical concerns, researching glues, paints, finding wood suppliers, creating budgets and “time lines.” This stuff is all great and also very much informed our work, but you get a little bogged down, and after years of working on the same project, we both wanted to move on to something else. I think we both sort of out grew the project and artistically started to move in different directions. We are very close though. Making art together in a 100% collaborative relationship for 7 years, you get to know each other really well.

CP: Can you separate the boat from the way you two worked together?

JB: Yes, the boat was kind of the center piece to the MTBE, but it wasn’t the only thing we worked on. We also did a lot of writing for text pieces and lectures/performances, shot and edited a lot of photo. Hui-min did a lot of illustration. There are actually a lot of projects that we had started for the MTBE but never finished and made public. I hope we will be able to publish some of this work on our blog, but we will have to just see what happens. We are both doing our own thing now and pretty busy. I’m sure some of it will come out eventually. Concerning the boat though, it is of course very important to both of us, as is the history of our collaboration and our friendship.

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This week: Double header! First Brian and Patricia talk to the fine folks at the Kadist Art Foundation in San Francisco. Next Christopher Hudgens and Richard talk to Artist Lauren Levato about her new show at Firecat Projects “Lantern Fly Sex Cure”.

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