I Jump Into the Transistor Ambiguity of New Media

Good news- I've been asked develop a solo show at 911 Media Arts' new gallery here in Seattle in the spring; curious news - against all precedent, it will involve painting, sculpture, ceramics and VIDEO projection. Now you all know, or may have noticed, that video art is often terrible - pretentious, lazy, short but never short enough narratives that take up valuable gallery space designed carefully for subtle light. (Not that there isn't plenty of bad painting, I've done my fair share myself. )

However, I finally had an idea I wanted to explore in video, involving projections into 3-d "nubbins," perhaps of frosted glass, mounted into large white ceramic vessels, stacked on their sides so you can project into them. The hope is that by manipulating the video, an interesting figurative image can wrap around the nubbin, creating a 3-d projection, and making the vessels into little theaters. Thus there should be a repeated thread of figurative mark from the painting through the paint sculptures through ceramics/projection. Any stuff or process can make good art if it is used specifically, and I suppose there is a little insert-german-word-here that makes me want to show these new media wonks how art gets done.

In the meantime, Liquitex is sending out a photographer and interviewer to my studio this month for a profile to be featured in some of their adverts (eek!) for a new paint that thank god I happen to really, really like. I will post them when done, in the interest of full disclosure and shameless self-promotion. My old strategy of shameful self promotion has not been working as well.

This new marketing presence is expected to lead to actual sales of actual paintings, the desparate, persistent need of any painter ("nothing so motivates an artist like the prospect of immediate gain" - P. O'Brian) , through some unknown mechanism yet to be described or observed. But the new set of imagined arctic abstracts seems promising, and any video work gives one new media street cred, a necessary annoyance in the neo-Duchampian world order.

I would have deleted that, but once you say "neo-Duchampian world order," it's gonna stick.

For more informations on nubbins, consult your local library.