Look, See

• The Cornell show is on the third floor, which is normally the photography galleries, and has been that way since the museum opened.  I normally walk through the museum like a trained rat, knowing what era or medium will be in which gallery.  It was a little disorienting.
• All three shows are in dimly lit or dark galleries.  Man, that's hard on my eyes.  Here we are having a wonderful streak of beautiful November weather, and I feel like I'm wasting the day at a matinée.  But I understand why the lights are low:
  • Cornell's materials are vulenerable to exposure;
  • Wall's light box photos need the lights dimmed;
  • Eliasson fun house installation depends controlled lighting.
• Each of the shows involves a very different kind of looking, a different sense of scale to the body, and a different kind of space:
• Cornell's space is close and intimate-- the head or face is in relation to the object;
• Wall's is the public space of outdoor advertising-- the body in relation to the object;
• Eliasson's is environmental-- the body in the object, and a kind of rubbing together of nature and architecture, which I guess would be something along the lines of landscape architecture or environmental planning.
• They finally changed the paintings hanging in the Clyfford Still gallery! Nothing to do with Cornell, Wall, or Eliasson, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

More thoughts on Joseph Cornell
I thought I knew Cornell's work pretty well, the collages and boxes and films and drawers full of photographs and ephemera, but I was wrong.  Of course there is the myth about him as the obsessive naif, and I suppose I bought into that. But this exhibition shows him as an artist with extreme focus and clarity of vision, and the nerve and chops to realize his vision.

While Cornell's focus and vision might initially seem narrow, they were not simple; this work is complex in ways I don't think I can understand.  It's mysterious, and layered, and cinematic.  I think there is something in much of his images that is about capturing the feeling of singular moments in film- a moment or person of beauty, a certain juxtaposition, a movement, some kind of grandeur, something that happens in one moment in a film and then is gone; sitting in a dark theater watching moving images of projected light is thrilling, but certain moments in this medium can feel magical.  I think Cornell was after that magic.

That, and backyard astronomy, which is another kind of camera and cinematic experience. And celebrity worship, another kind of star gazing, And also the theater of the Peeping Tom or voyeur. And something that might look to us like nostalgia, but which was in Cornell's time the objects and images from his childhood, and from the generation just prior to him. These probably aren't original ideas on my part; they're probably in the literature, but Cornell's art definitely works in these many areas, as you can see for yourself.

Think of the Scrovegni Chapel, which is really one big box, and looking up at the ceiling, which is a deep cobalt blue above littered with gold stars, and substitute Lauren Bacall for Mary, and you're drifting towards Cornell.

It is a huge, impressive show, a bit of a landmark.  The biggest surprise for me was seeing the skill with with Cornell made things.  Components of some of the boxes are quite finely crafted, and there are collages that show genuine sophistication in terms of how color from different pieces are combined, how texture is laid next to another, how line and edge are used.  This formal kind of stuff is something I did not expect to be bowled over by. He knew what he was doing.

The low light in the galleries combined with the amount of work can tire the observer, so plan your visit: at first, you might quickly walk through the show; next walk back through and carefully see the first half the show; after that, take a break at a cafe; finally, go see the rest of the show.  Take your time-- it's worth it.

More thoughts on Jeff Wall
Lots of big photos, lots of light boxes.  Most look staged, though there are a few where you can't quite tell for sure.  I'm guess that they're all staged.  OK, so it's tableau. It's artificial. No Henry Wessel or Diane Arbus here. We're talking Baroque.

It's great to see the beautiful Northwest, and interesting to see the lower middle classes making it big in 20th century art.  Many of the people look a little downtrodden, and often wherever they are posed looks rundown, beat up, neglected.  What are the images in these light boxes supposed to be selling?  It doesn't look like a healthy product.  Maybe they're public service announcements. I can't tell.

Those light box images are kind of grainy looking-- bet they looked fantastic when they started showing up in the 80's.  It's a funny thing about, say, Vermeer or Bouguereau or Seurat or whoever you want to name- a painting made two hundred years ago still has the same visual resolution as a painting made today.  You know, no one at Sony's research labs is working on making paintings with a better resolution; every painting has 100% resolution, and always will... well, except for The Last Supper.  But I think it's a little depressing, you know, the state of photography-- all those light boxes, and they already look like relics stored in a billboard company warehouse.

Wait, am I looking at stills from some mid-80's TV show that I didn't know existed?

Wall wants to make paintings that have the impact of large paintings- impact in terms of size, and impact in terms of subject. He wants to be a history painter, like Jacques-Louis David or Charles Le Brun, but his history is that of the suburbs, the shabbily built and poorly planned, the oppression of being a capitalist worker pawn, the ordinary struggling person, our neighbor, how a fire engine pulls up to a house down the street we walk out on the porch and shyly watch from a distance.

They're spooky, and the size and the medium provide distance. We can look really closely without getting personally involved with anyone. We are witnesses with impunity. Whatever happens has so many witnesses that my testimony isn't needed. Something not so nice is going on, but there will never be any justice. That's the way things there.

We all know by now that photography lies. Knowing that Wall's work is a deliberate fabrication allows us to put that idea aside and to focus on a truth. The truth is that much of life is not glamorous. Most people, even famous people, still put their pants on one leg at a time. We are cruel and judgmental, although our conscience pushes us to overcome that base instinct. Wall's photos give us the opportunity to experience the distance between higher states-- consciousness and conscientiousness-- and more basic ones-- impulse, reaction, habit, and to observe how we move from one to the other. It's more cerebral than emotional, cool than hot. The notion is good; filling, but not that tasty.

More thoughts on Olafur Eliasson

Can anyone tell me why this show is better than anything at the Exploratorium? Sure, this is some family-friendly show. Makes you feel all good because you experience something kind of basic and pure and simple. But basically, it's purely simple backyard science-- fill a wading pool with water and drop rocks into it to watch rings collide and cross, and observe the shimmer of glimmering light on the pool's bottom.

What is the big deal here? Didn't Lucas Samaras already do the mirrored room? Why isn't Larry Bell a God, rather than this latest Golden Boy. How is Eliasson's moss wall a better work than any Richard Long stone or mud installation? Why is this better art than sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon watching a sunset? Why is this better than any waterfall? Why are major art institutions so enamored with this stuff? First Matthew Barney, and now this.

I don't care how many people laid on their backs in the Turbine Hall at the Tate gazing at the fake glowing sun of The Weather Project. This is some lazy stuff. And don't get me started on the BMW with the refrigerated exoskeleton-- you can keep your hi-tech message art.

What is with all of the clamor about this show? Why are people oohing and ah-ing? Geez people, go out on the balcony and walk through Barnet Newman's Zim Zum. Leave the museum, walk across Third Street, and enjoy the fountains at Yerba Buena Gardens.

Or, go back and walk through the Cornell show.

I like the groups of photos well enough, so some points there, but otherwise I can't even say, "Hey, Olafur, nice try." No Clapping Man-- he's napping.

===========================

All images borrowed from sfmoma.org

Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination: Saturday, October 06, 2007 - Sunday, January 06, 2008
Jeff Wall: Saturday, October 27, 2007 - Sunday, January 27, 2008
Take your time: Olafur Eliasson: Saturday, September 08, 2007 - Sunday, February 24, 2008

“There's nobody living who couldn't stand all afternoon in front of a waterfall. It's a simple experience, you become lighter and lighter in weight, you wouldn't want anything else. Anyone who can sit on a stone in a field awhile can see my painting.”

Agnes Martin

Place
An artist typically can’t help but absorb and reflect her environment in some way. Where she spends her times seeps in and affects the art, often in very direct ways, such as in terms of light or color or space, and also in seemingly less direct ways, such as an artist’s subject, intention, or spirit.

The pace of life in the artist’s environment, or the local political climate, may also somehow be in the art. Geography and weather of course help shape outlook and sense of place, and also whether one is near water, among hills and trees, in or near the city, or beneath one kind of sky or another. If making art is part of how one lives, then where one lives and works is also part of the art.

Sandi Miot made her way to Northern California after living many years in Florida. She says that on arrival she felt immediately at home and knew she’d found the place where she would live and make her art. Her studio is in a large 1930’s building on a former US Air Force base north of San Francisco, where she is a powerful force in the local art scene. The restored buildings there are solid and spacious, California-style Mediterranean constructions well suited to the landscape, built of sturdy wood and thick stucco, fitted with large windows, and topped with roofs of red Spanish tiles.

Nestled amid rolling hills on the west and the San Francisco Bay on the east, this location is wonderful in every way: open, quiet, light-filled, airy, and inviting. There is life here: deer are often seen grazing under the oak trees on the hill, one sees and hears birds, and there is the invigorating presence of numerous other artists whose studios are also located in this complex. Here, Miot works on a daily basis in a large white room with a high ceiling. There are several work tables, a desk and comfortable chairs, many books within easy reach, and of course her art— paintings finished and in progress hang on the walls, and works on paper lay about in various states of completion. This room is a place in which to work, to sit and look, and to contemplate.

Encaustic
It is important to know that Sandi Miot’s primary medium is encaustic, a way of painting with pigment in heated wax that goes back at least as far as the Fayum mummy portraits from Egypt around 100-300 CE. Entering the studio the senses are immediately filled with the smell of wax and the sight of the paintings bearing thick, lustrous color.

The next thing you might notice is the hot plates and the blocks of colored wax lined up in trays. Unlike painting in oil or acrylic, where you can basically squeeze paint from a tube and begin applying it immediately, encaustic requires tools, time, and preparation— the hot plates need to be turned on, the wax needs to melt, and each color needs it’s own pan and brushes. There is labor involved here, and you can easily see it in the paintings. Paint is built up in layers and often melted back down with torches, resulting in a surface that is thick and textured yet soft and smooth, in places almost liquid, puddled, earthy, and organic, such as in Miot’s Sapphire Silk, Garnet Ambience, and Citrine Veneration, (all 2001). In others, flame-carved crevices cut through a painting's topography to reveal layers of color, like sediment, a kind of geological history, as seen in Beginning and Sanskrit (2007). (Left: Beginning, 2007, Encaustic on Wood, 12" x 12" x 2")

Wax seals and insulates— the painted image is both on and in the surface. Encaustic's translucent quality results in a colored light that glows through layers, luminous like a burning candle, stained glass, or amber. Since wax cools quickly, it drips or runs very little, indicating a sense of brief or frozen time, which furthers the sense of a captured moment that Miot uses to good effect in paintings like Awakening and Prophecy (2000).

Encaustic requires a sturdy support. All of Miot’s paintings are on wood panels, which have a very particular presence— thick, heavy, strong, and crafted. Some of the work walks a fine line between painting and sculpture, often venturing towards relief, some projecting several inches off of the wall. Many works consist of multiple panels, each a smaller unit of a larger whole. A wood panel covered in wax presents several dualities: hard and soft, solid and liquid, opaque and transparent.

Connections
In Miot’s work the paint, the supports, and the imagery have an iconic, object-like quality. They have a historical connection in several ways to, say, Sienese panel painting: the wood panel feels like a shape, not simply a canvas; the painted image is luminous; details are carved into the surface; and they feel built to last.

I am reminded of Duccio di Buoninsegna’s panel painting Madonna and Child (ca. 1300) at New York’s Metropolitan Museum. The gold ground is flat and inscribed with the Madonna's halo, and the space of the painting is shallow. There is an association I make, coincidental but fortuitous, between this painting and Miot's use of wax and heat— at the lower edge of the gilded frame on Duccio's painting two rounded notches have been burned into place by candles set beneath the painting. Not only is devotion depicted in the painting, there is also evidence of devotion, the result of burning candles. A painting like Miot's Sanskrit (2007) comes to mind, which has a centered, brilliantly colored image and a carved, relief-like surface made with a torch. While Duccio’s image is painted in small, repeated strokes, Miot creates her image with a finely controlled flame.

Paintings such Dance I and Dance II, (both 2007), each square and in low relief, make me think of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s twenty-eight gilded bronze reliefs (1404-24) on the north door of the Baptistery next to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. And Miot’s use of multiple panels shares the narrative quality Ghiberti’s reliefs. These poignant, almost incidental visual rhymes made across seven hundred years, from Duccio and Ghiberti to Miot, are a reminder of art's history and its continuing value.

Images
Miot's art images are the result of constantly managed chaos and order. Paint applied gesturally suggests improvisation and intuition, while panels that are arranged in grids create order. Strokes applied deliberately contrast with less easily-managed areas where paint is carved with a torch. Geometric shapes hover over fields of scattered color. This contrast of chaos and order is an emotional push-pull for the viewer, who falls in and out of balance, moving from one state of consciousness to another.

Color is of course an important component of Miot's painting, as well as her use of multiple panels to make a single work. She often uses a saturated palette of pure and unmixed color, as in the vibrant, celebratory Night Music (2007). Recent paintings that consist of multiple panels hung in a grid or or rows are painted in an ordered spectrum of color that gradually shifts from one panel to the next, a gradation that suggests movement or a transition from one state to another.

Sunrise (2007) is a good example— the five deep vertical panels transition from a bright orange on the left, through red and purple, to a deep blue on the right. The color across the forty two panels of Lifelines I (2006), six columns and seven rows, transition both vertically (light to dark) and horizontally (blue to orange). Additionally, the panels in Lifelines I reduce in size as they descend in each column, so that it contains two kinds of transitions: color (pictorial) and size (physical).

Miot's art is both consistent and diverse, an interesting balance to maintain. Part of the consistency comes from her use of encaustic and certain formats. But it also comes from a concern for making images and creating meaning using a limited vocabulary of shapes and marks: squares, strokes, drips and thrown paint, layers, lumps, and crevices. And although diversity might best be illustrated by describing a few paintings, it isn't easy describing paintings that have so much built up color, so many different kinds of textures, and so many ways of treating paint.

Awakening (2002) contains a horizon line, with black above and orange below. In the black field three molten hot orange squares are each rotated in a different position, appearing to have burst spinning upward and falling back downward, like cubes of lava. It's possible that these three squares are actually the same square depicted three times in a kind of animation. This image evokes Kasimir Malevich's Suprematist paintings in which stacked squares, rectangles, and lines appear to move apart and evoke space and flight, a moment in time. (Right: Awakening, 2002, 48" x 48" x 2" Encaustic & oil on panel)

Dreams (2007), Eye Candy (2006), and Night Music (2006) are all diptychs, the images of which are made with drips and lines applied without a brush touching the surface. Dreams consists of two fields of deep turquoise blue carved into delicate vertical channels across which Pollock-like skeins of more turquoise are dripped and drizzled. The two red panels of Eye Candy have scattered magenta drops and a few quick lines of thrown yellow that span the two panels' dividing line. The color of Night Music is hard to name— both panels have a blue-gray ground across which a dense field of blue, lavender, yellow, and gray drops and lines are built up from the bottom edge, scattering out further as they ascend the painting. While these descriptions sound similar-- two panels side by side, a colored ground, dripped and flung paint— they really are very different images resulting in very different effects and moods.

Whirligig (2007) is a new direction for Miot's work. The twenty two panels are so deep that they are actually cubes. The smallest cube is at the center on the wall, and the successive cubes form a spiral several feet in diameter that eventually leaves the wall and trails off onto the floor. Every visible surface of each cube is painted, and the color shifts from one cube to the next in an expanded spectrum; the smallest cube is green, and the color of each cube moves through yellow, orange, red, purple, blue and full circle back to green on the largest cube. Each cube has drips of complementary colors, so that a reverse spectrum runs back through the spiral. Like Frank Stella, Miot brings the painting out into the viewer's territory, creating more than in any other work a shift from pictorial two-dimensional space into architectural space.

Understanding
I could simply write that Sandi Miot's paintings are beautiful, a word I haven’t even used yet, and although they are, that wouldn’t be very helpful in understanding her art. That her work is beautiful is so obvious that it almost goes without saying, but in fact she deserves credit for her mastery of materials and color. To further understand her paintings it is important to point out that her images teeter between representation and non-representation, and to recognize how she takes work from the expected flatness of painting to the realm of relief and three dimensions. Miot’s paintings provide us with the opportunity to experience and reflect on emotion and thought. The dichotomy of chaos and order is both something we feel and know as an idea. As Agnes Martin suggests, time spent in front of these paintings results in things to see and feel that might not be apparent at first glance. Miot’s paintings are models for ways of being and thinking. This is ambitious and inspiring, and a tremendous gift from the artist.

Chris Ashley
Oakland, CA
May 2007

Mel Prest: Alignments

Mel Prest's paintings are pictorial and physical, visually rich and optically complex, sensual and emotional, and engage the viewer in evocative experiences of time and place. In the paintings shown in an exhibition called Alignments at Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco April 4-29, 2006, there was much work evident in both senses of the word: many pieces of art, and lots of labor and time invested.

Mel Prest: Ladder, 2006. oil on 28 panels, 112 x 13 x 2 in. overall (Photo: Gregory Lind Gallery)

The paintings are oil on wood panels. A work may consist of a single panel measuring up to twenty four by thirty inches, or two or three smaller panels hung side by side either abutted or slightly apart, or multiple arranged panels in the five or six inch range that border on installation.

At a glance each painting's palette may initially appear somewhat narrow, but this is actually not true- a range of color within a painting, and from one painting to another, is extremely important to Prest's work because each work's subject, or intended sense of place or mood, is distinct.

One constant among the paintings are painted lines of mostly uniform width. These lines appear to be the width of the brush used to make the line, meaning that, in a sense, the lines themselves are actually brushstrokes. These lines are hand-painted, and slightly wobbly or tremulous. The surfaces of many of the paintings comprise a field of either vertical or horizontal lines, though a few others combine lines of both directions. Often these lines continue onto a painting's side. These painted lines are drawing, are carriers of color and indicators direction, and when combined in a field they become the painting's image.

As an example, Ladder (2006) is an installation of twenty two panels hung high on the wall in two aligned columns of eleven panels each, making a single work measuring 112 x 13 x 2 inches overall. The panels subtly change color in a gradation from very pale blue at the bottom to a dark blue gray at the top. Thin painted lines span the surface of each panel's front and continue around to the sides, ending at the wall.

Mel Prest: Pale Dusk, 2006, oil on two panels, 16 x 24.5 x 2 inches (Photo: Gregory Lind Gallery)

In relation to Prest's work one might immediately think of painters whose work is highly optical, such as Bridget Riley (1931, Britain), Victor Vasarely (1906, Hungary - 1997, France), or Richard Anuskiewicz (1930, US). But Prest's work isn't intense and busy in the way of these three artists; her work is warmer, softer and slower, more about place, time breathe, and the peripheral. One might think of the systems or processes of Sol Lewitt (1928, US) and Josef Albers (1888, Germany -1976, US), but Prest's intentions are not diagrammatic or schematic. Perhaps in terms of light one might think of Mark Rothko (1903, Russia -1970, US), but Prest's paintings are more crisp and intimate rather than gestural and heroic. I mention Agnes Martin (1912, Canada - 2004, US) not because of any grid-based relationship, but rather because of an attitude about paying attention at a slow rate of speed. Martin said, "Anyone can look at a waterfall all day"; she does this with restraint and dryness, while Prest's paint has more body and is lustrous. It might seem a reach to invoke Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840, Germany) or Albert Bierstadt (1830, Germany - 1902, US), but I think one can find in Prest's work these two painters' qualities of light and air, luxurious nature, and relaxed wonder. I would call this Romanticism.

A team of students in COMM2320 - Media Industries at RMIT University, Melbourne chose the following topic for their research project: "How well do various Internet-based media exploit the affordances of the Internet, and what recommendations might be made to media practitioners who seek to utilise the full potential of the Internet as a medium and as a distribution entity?" I was contacted by one of the team members, Laura Lancaster, about being interviewed. I agreed to participate. The following case study is published on their project wiki. Laura's post-project self-assessment is on her own weblog.

I answered Laura's questions via email on June 5, 2006, and the interview itself is basically an unrevised, unedited, first-thought first draft with several typos and sentences in need of a little straightening out.

Chris Ashley - A Case Study (link)

I think a vast component of what the Internet affords greatly benefits the creative media but in particularly independent artists. The independent creative media are able to exploit the affordances of the Internet to gain recognition, distribution and commercial/critical success. In contrast to pre-existing mediums, the Internet is especially valuable to the independent creative media who find they are able to fully exploit it within their personal confines. The Internet has become a solution to the many problems this minority has faced before, including lack of recognition, high cost of exhibition and distribution and many more. Though large and leading creative media companies have fully exploited the affordances the Internet has to offer, it seems independent practitioners are finally not being left behind and are able to utilise the affordances without their previous limitations. Whether consciously or inadvertently, independent creative media practitioners have found ways to exploit this medium and gain opportunities that would previously not been available to them. For these people, the Internet offers what no medium before it has.

I researched a visual artist, Chris Ashley, who furthered his artistic career by starting a blog on which he displays his art. As you can see his blog, entitled Look, See contains many abstract coloured drawings in hand-coded HTML tables. He also writes a lot of commentary about other artist, including other online visual arts bloggers. I chose Chris as I thought he has exemplified our research by utilizing the affordances we’ve identified practically. The blog is a great example as it is a tremendous tool that is often overlooked, although it is exemplar of what the Internet affords to its users. What’s amazing about Chris is that he is one of the few emerging artists who is using the weblog unconventionally. Traditionally, blogs area a publishing medium, with ‘diary-like’ qualities in which individuals can create a personal space to express ideas and opinions. Recently, the role of the blog has changed, and has been used for other purposes: as a knowledge management tool, primarily to make money. These aspects are only just being realized. Chris Ashley uses his blog to promote and advertise his art, and also uses its social aspect of linking and commenting to gain contacts and to communicate with people with similar interests. In an interview we conducted with him he stated:

"Most art-focused weblogs are not a tool for an art form; in fact; the most common use of a weblog in the art community fill some pretty obvioius functions that are basically time extentions of print-based publishing: commentary, reviews, news, promotion, gossip, and pictures. A second common function of weblogs among artists are for studio views – showcasing work in progress or finished, installation views, a kind of window into the artist’s working world"

"And I think what sets my weblog apart is that it has not been a place to merely talk about or link to other art. The images are not incidental to my weblog. My weblog has become an art practice, and it is one part of my overall art practice."

One of the key affordances of the Internet is that it is a network and in this sense Chris Ashley’s blog is extremely successful. It has become a way for him to gain contacts he would otherwise not have. In our interview with him he expressed in his ‘pre-blog’ days he found it very difficult to gain contacts in the artistic world, but since he started his blog he now has countless contacts and is in touch with people that share common interests. This is a result of the power of the blog as a tool that can be commented on and linked to as well as commented and linked from. In an interview we conducted with Chris he emphasised the importance of the blog as a network:

"My consistent and long-term online presence has brought me some attention and opportunities"

"As with any other popular weblog, the attention consists of and is promoted primarily by links from other over time to my weblog; without that there would be no traffic beyond the handful of friends and acquaintances who might check-in anyway. Without other people linking to me and commenting on my work there wouldn’t be as much recognition, although by now I also get a tremendous number of hits daily from search engines, too"

Another reason why the blog as a medium can exploited so tremendously is that it is essentially free. If you have something to say or something to show you can do it at a no cost. This is how the Internet differs so greatly from other mediums. Users have the ability to exhibit and display their work for free to an enormous audience. The blog is also exemplar of how the Internet is used as a personalized space. Bloggers are able to make it fashion it as they wish, and more importantly have full control of the content. Again what is successful about Ashley’s blog is the way he has taking this idea further to benefit his career:

"I have long thought of my weblog as a studio, a gallery, an archive, a study, and a library. It is part of my art practice. Much of the contents of my weblog are not about art; the content is the art. The weblog is a tool to sustain and improve my own practice"

If you are looking to exploit what the Internet offers for your various personal benefits whether they be artistic or commercial you need not look any further than the weblog.

Chris Ashley: Complete Interview

1) Your blog is somewhat unconventional in terms of the earlier purposes of a weblog (i.e diary-like confessions, personal opinions). Do you see blogs as having specific conventions or restrictions?

I’m not sure that the original purpose of weblogs was for diary-like confessions. Weblogs- not just web-based writing in a daily or serial format, but writing done for and in an actual weblog application- originally gained hold in the tech world during the late 90’s dotcom world, specifically through an application called Manila developed by a small company called Userland.

Early on, weblogs were very tech-centric; they were used primarily for listing and linking to tech and general news, very brief commenting or editorializing, news and updates. In some ways a weblog was a one-person message board that both acted independently of and referenced other one-person message boards. Weblogs also began to fill a social function during these rather heady and intense times, when tech companies were popping up like crazy and scores of people moved around the country to these new companies. Small communities would develop around a ring of weblogs that might emerge out of a circle of friends or co-workers, and the weblogs would be full of information concerning the logistics of work and social life, inside jokes, and, increasingly and inevitably, I think, personal information. One started to note several strains of writing: opinion pieces, diaristic writing, journalism-like writing, jokes and pranks. Much of the writing in early weblogs, perhaps until 2001 or so, was still tech- and business-centric, and there was a lot more focus sense there were so few weblogs.

A fairly natural outgrowth of the tech-centricism of weblogs was an interest in the use of weblog in education, both as sources of information and dialogue about educational technology in general, and as tools themselves for teaching in learning in K-12 and higher education. Early on a number of educational technology weblogs emerged, including mine at UC Berkeley; the original purpose of my weblog, begun in March 2000 was to explore it as a tool for schools (I had just come out of teaching elementary school and began work at UC Berkeley on a technology-based K-12 outreach project).

As an artist, however, it wasn’t long, sometime in late 2000, before I first began to use my weblog as a place to research and talk about visual art, but very soon after I began to think of it as a place for my own art, and this is when I stumbled on using HTML to make browser-based images out of colored table cells, a really dumb, obvious, crude, not terribly flexible medium; I call them HTML drawings, other people call them HTML paintings- I don’t really care what they’re called. After a year and a half or more my weblog began to increasingly be art-focused, and beginning in July 2002, I think, my focus shifted nearly exclusively to art. And I think what set my weblog apart is that it has not been a place to merely talk about or link to other art. The images are not incidental to my weblog. My weblog has become an art practice, and it is one part of my overall art practice (I’m a painter). Most art-focused weblogs are not a tool for an art form; in fact; the most common use of a weblog in the art community fill some pretty obvious functions that are basically more timely extensions of print-based publishing: commentary, reviews, news, promotion, gossip, and pictures. A second common function of weblogs among artists are for studio views- showcasing work in progress or finished, installation views, a kind of window into the artist’s working world.

So, now having set a little context, you ask if I “see blogs as having specific conventions or restrictions?” I’m not sure of the usefulness of this question, because now weblogging is so broad that having expectations or upholding standards across a general population of webloggers seems no easier to apply to the online world than it is to offline writing: some people are clear, diligent, thoughtful writers, and most people simply aren’t. That’s just the way it is.

One convention includes more compact writing: shorter paragraphs which allows scanning and supports the readers quicker, easier grasp of contents and weight. Certainly, there is the convention of the reverse chronological structure of a weblog. And there is the convention of linking: quoting something and linking to the source as a reference; hyperlinking embedded in text; the use of linking as a compliment or validation; the use of linking to generate traffic, increase search engine results. An important convention is that as a reader of a weblog I expect content to be fresh; rarely updated weblogs lose their readers quickly. In my case visitors know that everyday there is a new drawing on my weblog. They know that it is live. A weblog is a living thing, in that sense, and many weblogs, though not all, seem to have a limited shelf-life.

Another convention is the ability for readers to comment on weblogs they read. Some weblogs get lot of this kind of activity and little communities build around them. After a few attempts I made a decision early on that I did not want any commenting or a guestbook- I prefer more one-to-one interactions, I don’t really have time to keep up with comments, and having been in the position of moderator for other online forums I know from experience that it is something I no longer want to do, ever.

When I think of restrictions I first think of the various weblog applications and the kinds of functions they support: drafting; timed-publishing; ease of posting images; ease of modifying templates; and so on. I don’t think this is what you’re asking about. As far as the restrictions of a weblog as publishing medium, well, my expectations are realistic. What is a weblog supposed to do or be? That’s up to the weblogger, I think. If you want to be some kind writer, or want to post photos, or you want to run a news and information source for some purpose, then it’s quite possible and easy do so: identify your audience, do what you do with this audience in mind, do it regularly, link to others, keep up with your email correspondence, be nice and courteous, give credit where credit is due.

2) How has exhibiting your art for free affected your career in terms of recognition and promotion?

My consistent and long-term online presence has brought me some attention and opportunities. I assume that there is some quality to what I’m doing on the weblog- something that is attractive or interesting to others- that is that causes this. As with any other popular weblog, the attention consists of and is promoted primarily by links from others over time to my weblog; without that there would be no traffic beyond the handful of friends and acquaintances who might check-in anyway. Without other people linking to me and commenting on my work there wouldn’t be as much recognition, although by now I also get a tremendous number of hits daily from search engines, too.

Opportunities come in a couple of ways- seemingly out of the blue and through relationships. For example, a few opportunities seem to have come to me out of the blue- someone contacts me and offers an opportunity, and it turns out that they have been watching what I’ve been doing for some times, and that they have been aware because of links to me, so they know that others are paying attention; this implies some kind of reputation. For example, I was on a panel at the New Museum in New York, Blogging and the Arts, last spring- that invitation came out of the blue. The invitation to show in Richmond, VA at 1708 Gallery, which just closed May 27, also came out of out of nowhere from my point of view because I wasn’t aware that the curators of that show had been looking at my weblog.

On the other hand, probably a better way of having opportunities occur is correspondence beyond the weblog- several people who are aware of my weblog and who have written have become regular correspondents- friends- and those relationships are very important. Just to be clear, yes, they have been important in that opportunities have come out of those relationships, but much more important is the relationship itself; the weblog is part of it, a part of being available, being within someone’s field of vision, but the more personal contact- email and occasionally phone, is really a more fruitful way to make things happen. For example, and opportunity to show in Philadelphia last October came about both through my presence as a weblogger and through a relationship via email that developed after someone contacted me about the weblog and we began corresponding.

3) What other aspects of your blog do you find beneficial?

The most beneficial thing to me, which I have written about a fair amount, is that it is a tool that forces me to do something everyday, and that the tool, the weblog, has become for me a studio, and exhibition space, and an archive. Pulling a quote from my introduction for an online panel from the –empyre- mailing list last June, I wrote:

In the past three years my weblog has become my studio, an exhibition space, and an archive. I show work everyday, seven days a week. The idea of an audience, no matter how small, motivates me. I have total control over showing the work, storing it, and saying what I want about it in public. The archive aspect is important- I can easily go back through my work and compare various bodies of work.

Read the complete intro

4) How has being online assisted you in coming into contact with other visual art bloggers with common interests?

For a long time, in the early days of weblogging, perhaps up until 2003 or 2004, there were very very few visual arts webloggers. Eventually search engines and RSS feeds and other tools helped people with common interests find each other.

5) Do you find it important for artists to be in communication with people that share common interests? Is belonging to a group important to you artistically?

Maybe it’s just my personality, but belonging to group is not important, and may not be such a good thing for the art. A few good trusted relationships, are invaluable. It is important for an artist- and anyone in any field- to be able to talk to with others with whom one shares a common language, history, or outlook. As you know, I’m sure, all people tend to towards birds of a feather. It’s important to have another pair of eyes looking at your work, to have someone asking tough questions, who has another point of view. It is also important, perhaps more important, to be in the position of having to do the same for another artist, to get outside of one’s own expectations and to try to experience and articulate what one sees in someone else’s work.

6) How does your artistic career compare between now and your pre-blogging days?

After living and struggling with the artist’s life for many years in my twenties and early thirties I decided to be a productive citizen and teach elementary school. During my ten years involvement in the schools art became something put way on the back burner, at times so far back the burner was off and it was off the stove. Restructuring my life to re-establish my art practice as the center of my life as much as possible while still working, coincided with uses of technology over the past six years. The use of the web, my weblog, and email come pretty naturally to me, and I can’t imagine having accomplished much art career-wise without these tools. I think I’m a better writer than a extemporaneous speaker, and I can be a little shy and take time to form relationships. Establishing relationships that come from my other strengths are a big bonus for me. Other people who are very good a face-to-face right from the start, who don’t mind telephones, who are naturally at ease with others don’t understand that well. These tools allow me to establish a presence and some relationships more easily. My discomfort with schmoozing was always a handicap to my art career when I was younger.

7) If you didn’t have a blog, would you continue utilizing the internet to benefit your artistic career, and if so how?

Yeah, sure- if you don’t have a web site you don’t really exist, right? Without the weblog I would work harder at a regular web presence. Because of my weblog I feel like I don’t have to worry about that so much. And email is an essential tool- make polite inquiries of others, send brief email compliments- “I just wanted to say that I like that new painting you posted”-, say thank you, and be understanding when someone doesn’t reply right away. Build a mailing list using every email you can and use it to announce shows, events, the completion of a new body of work, web site updates, etc. One way to establish a presence and relationships would be to participate in discussions on other people’s weblogs- that can lead to personal conta