School after School

I was sitting in the meeting room at the Fulton County Library in Johns Creek for the Fulton County Arts and Culture Public Art Seminar. As looking at powerpoint presentations by its staff, I suddenly felt as if I was in school again . . . it's painful for me to trace back my MFA schooling, yet I remembered a specific reading from one of my first theory classes regarding 'art institution' and what 'schooling' means . By constantly drawing yourself near people's inspiring presence, critical discussions, and new endeavours, you can indeed find yourself in a mode of self-schooling.

Before I go further, I would like to encourage you to apply for Fulton County Arts Registry. Go to http://www.fultonarts.org/forms-and-applications for application (they're in a process of updating the website). If you become a part of its registry, you automatically become a part of pool to be nominated for the Fulton County's public art opportunities. In upcoming years, they are expecting 15 projects with a budget of between $20,000 and $140,000 each. They also have a mentorship program to assist selected artists for public projects. Deadline March 11, 2011 and October 14, 2011.

untitled (body object series) #5-bushhead, 1984/1993, Ann Hamilton

I got home and saw my newly purchased book, Art School: (Propositions for the 21st Century). I am so very excited about reading this book, to re-visit what art schooling meant to me, and how other artists are taking steps to move forward from their art schooling experiences. One of my art heroes, Ann Hamilton, answers to a question in this book:

What matters most in art making for you? Did art school have anything to do with you coming to understand this?

What matters most to me is paying attention. Art is the result of multiple acts of attention, and I hope that art making cultivates forms of listening. It seems to me that making allows one to create a situation to find what one needs to do in the world. It's a way to short-circuit your self-consciousness. I wait by keeping busy, by not worrying too much about whether a project is "good" or "successful." In school I was perhaps too concerned about this, but I slowly began to realize how making something is very different from thinking about it. If you sit around and wait for an interesting idea, you will wait for a very long time. I now believe that making is a form of thinking; experiences are a set of questions that propel me forward. They may be small questions, but they offer nourishment for the long term.

After flipping through a few pages of this book, I ran down to the basement and pulled out some of my early graduate school reading materials. I traced some of my favorite readings with underlines, highlights, and notes on... and was stunned to find how impactful those readings were in my developing body of work. I noted on words like 'stratum : a layer of material, naturally or artificially formed, often one of a number of parallel layers one upon another' and 'iteration : act of repeating.' These words were prophetic of my works to come. I also obsessively underlined and wrote notes on the article Wolfgang Laib: Transcendent Offerings. Here is a quote that is so clear in Wolfgang Laib's influence on my work:

The perishable and ephemeral materials Laib emplys indicate his comfort with impermanence; he cultivates the moment. The labor that goes into Laib's art is a form of meditation, its own reward; he is content to spend countless hours collecting pollen (it can take months to fill a few jars) and then shaping it into tiny cone-shaped hills for a piece . . . that a single sneeze could blow away. Requiring a form of labor that would be impossibly tedious to most of us, Laib's work with pollen, in particular, embodies an intrinsic awareness that it will exist only as long as its creator is available to make it happen.

 

 Ah, love going back to these thoughts and notes!


Today, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center announced Louis Corrigan as a winner for Nexus Award 2011. Being able to work with someone like Louis Corrigan (a founder of Flux Projects and Possible Futures), I consider, is another schooling for me after school. Witnessing someone with a vision to generously and courageously support the art community has been eye-opening and uplifting. I am now challenged to think about patronage, artistic vision, and communal relationships as an artist. To read more about the award and Louis Corrigan, go to http://www.burnaway.org/2011/02/corrigan-wins-nexus-award/.


Cheers,
G.

Stay Here in Atlanta

When I talk to some people in Atlanta art community, the ultimate questions comes down to this:

"How do we then make this city of Atlanta a great center of arts and culture?" 

No, we don't have MoMA, Guggenheim, PS1... or SAIC or... the Bean that makes you feel better about being warped and being an artist. No, Atlanta is not a great walking city nor an efficient transportation city and it is slow. Right, Atlanta is so polished, somewhat restraining for young artists with this raw urge of creativity. When an artist puts something like "working in New York" or "Brooklyn-based artist," all sudden, it sounds legit and cool.

Yet Atlanta has a huge potential in becoming a great city of arts. It won't look like New York or Chicago or LA, and it shouldn't. I am going to be an optimist here.

I was talking to Louis Corrigan about this very specific issue after the Momentary Performance at Piedmont Park last Saturday. And we both anticipate of Atlanta becoming something of great. But we have to find ways to hold young artists in Atlanta. There have been a few energetic non-profit arts organization like Flux Projects, Possible Futures, or Idea Capital that sponsor interesting projects for artists. Swan Coach House Gallery supports local emerging artists through its prestigious Forward Arts Foundations Award (2010 winner is Lucha Rodriguez). And there are many amazing spaces for artists to explore. Cathy Fox's ArtsCriticATL and BURNAWAY have been diligently putting a list of cultural happenings in Atlanta with critical reviews. Hey... this is a lot of stuff happening in the city.

Cinque Hicks writes interesting articles on his Frame of Mind column (Creative Loafing, Atlanta). He specifically talks about this issue on this article, Artists should embrace Atlanta's open playing field.
Some quotes from the article - 

Atlanta loses a steady stream of creatives every year. Seeking better public funding, smarter collectors, more adventurous galleries, and more powerful critics, artists go where those resources seem abundant. And you know where that usually turns out to be....

... I'm not making an argument that one city is better or worse for artists than any other city. But I am arguing that Atlanta's anonymity, its very formlessness, may be what makes it possible, even beneficial, to be an artist here.

So dear young artists,

I would like to make a plea. Consider staying in Atlanta. And if you are living somewhere else and thinking about your next place to live and make art, consider Atlanta. I will open my arms wide to welcome you! With our raw, not-so polished energy and urgency to create and live creatively... we possibly can make the city of Atlanta into something we imagine it to be - for us.