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Category: Reconnoiter
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Reconnoiter: Patricia Watts
Patricia Watts is the founder and curator of ecoartspace. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on the unceded land of the Tewa people.
ARTILLERY: What was the crucial purpose in founding ecoartspace?
PATRICIA WATTS: When I came up with the concept for ecoartspace in 1997, I envisioned it as a physical space where children and their families could learn about the principles of ecology through immersive environments created by artists. In its latest iteration since 2020, it functions as a global membership platform online where artists and scientists can learn about each other’s work, share resources and develop collaborations.
What are your outstanding accomplishments?
I’ve focused on art and ecology since 1992, almost 30 years. I’ve worked with hundreds of artists, mainly in California, and have assembled over 30 art and nature exhibitions. I’ve conducted video interviews with 30 pioneering ecological artists. There are not many curators that have had this focus for so long.
How do you gauge the efficacy of art that promotes ecological awareness/change? Is it functioning within its own silo or reaching mainstream culture? How do you know when it’s having its intended effect?
A majority of eco-artists are painters, sculptors and video artists. Their work is accessible for collectors, although galleries do not typically represent community arts practitioners or artists whose work is researched-based, collaborating with scientists. These artists, who are usually situated in the public sphere, have to seek support from foundations. I believe the full range of art-making practices keeps the conversation alive.
An art world focused on careerism and commodification, [and]environmentalism centered on activism and communal goals can be opposed in their aims. What kind of balance is necessary between environmental ethics, aesthetics and personal achievement?
Artists need to make a living, and art dealers connected with collectors can educate about artists concerned about the natural world. What would it take for artists and dealers to turn collectors away from work that has nothing to do with the reality we are facing today, to support art that makes a statement about the impacts humans have on the landscape? We need to be bold, stand up to those with disposable income to encourage an eco-consciousness.
What are the critical dialogue(s) that eco-artists need to address today?
We’ve gone beyond warning people about climate change—that it’s coming. It’s here, and people know it. If they are still in denial, they’re belligerent because they don’t want to change their habits or be responsible financially. Many eco-artists have followed the
research for 20 to 30 years now and know that behavioral changes are imperative for our survival. While government leaders try to address climate politically, the real solutions are on the ground, regenerating soils, protecting forests and oceans—more in the realm of activism. However, traditional artists can help create more activists, which is desperately needed.What does the future of ecological-based art depend on?
It depends on people with money who care about the natural world, who are willing to invest in programs that will rebuild our soils, support creative people who can imagine and make a real future where we do not depend on fossil fuels. We need innovative thinkers who can see the potential for artists, divergent thinkers, to play a role in this transition to a livable future.
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Reconnoiter: Kimberly Brooks
Interview with the artistThe acorn never falls too far. At age 12, an enterprising artist stood in front of White on White, the Kazimir Malevich painting at MoMA NY. She tugged on her father’s sleeve and asked the surgeon, “What does it mean?” His answer inspired Kimberly Shlain Brooks toward a career in the arts. Her question sent Leonard Shlain on a decade-long inquiry which produced the 1991 bestseller, Art & Physics. Shlain dedicated his studies to the art of science; his daughter focused on the science of art. Her new illustrated book, which reveals safe practices for oil painters, may revolutionize the popularity of the once-hazardous medium.
ARTILLERY: You are a busy practicing and exhibiting artist. How long have you been painting and where has that taken you?
KIMBERLY BROOKS: I started painting when I was in college, spending the first five years painting the figure. I have moved through so many phases since then, from portraiture to landscape. As I enter my 30th year with the medium, I am flirting with abstraction. I have an exhibition this summer at Zevitas Marcus in Culver City.
Beyond the title of your new book, The New Oil Painting: Your Essential Guide to Materials and Safe Practices, what can we learn?
I think oil painting is one of the most misunderstood of all the art materials, the diva of all mediums. Most people think they need solvents. This, among other reasons, causes many artists to opt for acrylics. I longed for a little black book on oil painting, a basic understanding that had everything I needed to know, about the materials, as I use them. I conferred with scientists, conservators and historians. I wanted to make it easily accessible, so I illustrated it with drawings, and thanks to Chronicle Books I have color photography as well.
What prompted your research? How far did you investigate?
I used to have a studio in Venice. One hot day, when I had been painting with all the smelly stuff, I suddenly had trouble breathing. It really freaked me out. I knew I had done some kind of damage, but I didn’t know how long it had been brewing. I then spent the next year trying every other media on earth to see what would satisfy me. Nothing measured up to oil painting.
How far did I investigate? Exhaustively. I ultimately learned that you really don’t need all those fancy, toxic things. An experienced oil painter may balk. Hopefully that person will get the book and discover how beautiful and simple oil painting can really be if it’s used the way science, not history, recommends.
Photo by Stebs Schinerrer Acrylic or oil? Your thesis challenges the choice most artists have made. Thoughts?
Definitely oil. I think acrylic can be fine for very geometric work but I don’t like the way it dries so flat and fast. For me, it is not as sensual.
All of your many projects are redefining the term “synergy.” What is First Person Artist?
First Person Artist is an interview platform where I talk with notable artists and we answer questions from the audience. During the pandemic, I started hosting “Fireside Chats” and “Vampire Cocktail Hours,” where we gather to look at art online. If any readers are interested in attending the next event, they can sign up at Firstpersonartist.com.
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Reconnoiter: Miranda Garno Nesler
Interview with the director of Women’s Literature & History for Whitmore Rare BooksMiranda Garno Nesler earned her PhD from Vanderbilt University and serves as the director of Women’s Literature & History for Whitmore Rare Books in Pasadena.
ARTILLERY: How did you get started in dealing with rare books?
GARNO NESLER: Books have always been there for me. Even as a child. I remember going to a vintage bookshop and desperately wanting this copy of Tennyson. It was really because I loved the binding and someone had written notes all throughout it and another person had responded to those notes. Many people say that they love books for the stories that they tell and that also is true for me but my own attraction is tied up in the physicality of books really. The bindings, signatures, inscriptions, notes in the margins, book plates that let you know who owned the book, a loose leaf folded and left inside it: All of these are the signs left by individuals.
What is your specific interest in the world of rare books?
I am and always will be a specialist in women’s material. My job is to look for print and manuscript material that is written by, for or about women and other marginalized communities. My task is to preserve rare material that otherwise might not survive. Increasingly as I participate in the rare book world, I have come to include more material of POC and the LGBT+ communities because women are often [included] and when they participate, these communities interlock. So my job is about how to find that which speaks to the important histories of these people and then as much as possible get it into the hands of institutions and libraries who can take my research forward, advancing the work of making these things known through exhibitions, continued research and education.
What is your most satisfying long-term accomplishment in this type of work?
It’s a little bit hard to explain but the greatest joy and it’s accomplished over time is actually being able to delve into this field as a dealer and see multiple versions of the same books. I get to physically handle them and compare them. So from a personal point of view that is extremely satisfying and then I can work with the broader community to have these materials saved so they can be accessed and conserved and used.
How do you think locating and distributing these books will contribute to making the world a more just and significant place?
The world at large generally views the rare book world as a small set of collectors. That is certainly part of the business, but I work primarily with institutions and libraries. Together we are finding collecting and putting these materials in a safe place where they can be used to recount the histories and the stories of others. I think that that is essential to give the world the tools and the voices to make it a more just and significant place.
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Reconnoiter: Jonathan Hepfer
Interview with the percussionist, conductor, and artistic directorJonathan Hepfer is a percussionist, conductor, and the artistic director of Monday Evening Concerts, the longest-running classical, avant-garde and experimental music concert series in LA.
What has it been like reimagining your programming during the pandemic?
Over the past few years, I have had the pleasure of interviewing Éliane Radigue and conducting Yves Klein’s Monotone Symphony. The work of these artists taught me about the nature of purity of forms, reduction and absence. Radigue’s music is rooted in the tactility of masterfully sculpted sound, which of course, is itself immaterial. Klein’s work convinced me that painting, with all of its historical baggage, can be reduced: a) to single colors (monochromes); b) to a single color (blue); and c) to empty space (the void) while still completely retaining its “sensibilité,” or artistic/spiritual potency.
James Baldwin said that the artist should be like a lover: If you love somebody, you help them see things they are incapable of seeing themselves. A friend and mentor of mine, Hamza Walker always manages to do this for me. When I first visited him, I looked at Sol LeWitt’s work. But after discussing it with Hamza, I saw it.
These realizations led me to the conclusion that even if I can’t give concerts while physically sharing the space with other human beings, I want to use my curatorial faculties to help myself and others learn to see in this fashion. My resulting blog, Islands from the Archipelago, is a sort of public chronicle of my research interests. I’m trying to use this involuntary sabbatical to learn about new artists, and to find lesser-known works by well-known artists.
The blog is about unpredictable synapses firing, both for me and whoever might encounter these posts. When your synapses fire, looking becomes seeing. New ideas emerge in the process. Whether I am giving concerts or not, this has always been my objective.
Photo by Kacie Tomita. One of the things I love about attending MEC is the seamless melding of mediums—music and language being the most potent. How do you think about this relationship?
Of course, our focus is indeed classical music. But there is something about the atmosphere, or attitude of the world of the visual arts that feels more conducive to the direction I’d like to see MEC go over the next few years. Éliane Radigue is more interesting when you understand her relationship to artists like Arman and Yves Klein. The same is true of Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett, Butch Morris and David Hammons, Iannis Xenakis, and Le Corbusier. Art is more compelling when it speaks across disciplines.
Photo by Orion Carloto. What are you most looking forward to when the world reopens for in-person programming?
Three things come to mind: seeing friends and loved ones in the lobby, intermission (my favorite part of concerts) and that indescribable haunting daze that sometimes comes after a special performance ends, and you don’t want to applaud or talk to anybody for a few hours—you only want to be alone with your thoughts. That would be my ideal response to every concert we give.
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Reconnoiter: Kevin Duffy
Kevin Duffy is an LA-based actor, filmmaker and writer, who recently performed in Refracted Theater Company’s Homeless Garden—a reimagination of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard set in present-day where climate change and politics coincide. The play was performed live in New York City using a technique called panto-theater, where audience members listen to pre-recorded audio of the play on headphones while watching actors perform live at a distance.
ARTILLERY: Can you describe the showings of the play and how the live performances came together?
KEVIN DUFFY: It was socially distanced, COVID-compliant. We performed in two public parks in New York City. The audio of the play was pre-recorded, so it was like a soundtrack in a movie. The audience was about 50 people, which was limited by the number of headsets we had, and the audience and actors were listening to the same audio in the headsets. In Prospect Park, which was the first performance—we were among the trees—which was great for the play, and the next week we did it in Central Park. The sets were the environment.
Photo by Kayla Williamson. What were the logistics of rehearsal for the actors regarding COVID?
We had two days of rehearsal in person and we rehearsed by Zoom individually with the director beforehand.
How did panto-theater differ from other theater experiences you’ve had as an actor?
We wanted it to be a theater experience but it did feel a lot like dance because there was so much focus on the movement. I guess I had an advantage because I’ve done dance and I’m really comfortable with movement. It was like performing to a musical score except the score was actual audio to the play.
Did you find the movements were more exaggerated in regards to dance or typical theater?
That was part of the process; the director didn’t want them to be too dance-y but we are in this very strange situation in which we are wearing masks, have headphones on, and have to communicate physically with people who are at a distance outdoors. So you do have to adjust the scale of the performance to the environment.
Photo by Kayla Williamson. How do you see the future of theater progressing in light of COVID?
You hear about productions that are ramping up and different attempts to do theater in safer environments. Hopefully the theater-makers can acknowledge this is what’s going on and make that work for the piece. So instead of pretending that everything’s normal and I’m just standing behind plexiglass, wearing a mask, if that’s the case then it becomes part of the set or part of the design. So in this case the way the director incorporated that is by having us outdoors, by having us in a natural environment, which really worked with this particular play.
Recordings of the performance of Homeless Garden are available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Website: https://www.refractedco.com/homeless-garden.
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Reconnoiter: Carmina Escobar
Carmina Escobar is an extreme vocalist with an active teaching practice. Born in Mexico and based in Los Angeles, Escobar investigates emotions, states of alienation, and the possibilities of interpersonal connection through voice performances that challenge our understandings of musicality, gender, queerness, race, and the foundations of human communication. Her new project with Micaela Tobin, HOWL SPACE, is a virtual hub offering individualized teaching sessions, workshops, and salons. Beginning in October, HOWL SPACE’S pedagogical project will include virtual round tables with “voice Argonauts” Dorian Wood, Du Yun, El Sancha and Sean Griffin.
You work with “extreme voice” in projects such as Fiesta Perpetua!, a performance launched in 2018, which saw you floating in a raft in the Echo Park Lake and singing otherworldly songs. How is extreme voice so necessary in this political moment?
An extreme voice moves against the status quo. In this moment, it is necessary for our voices to challenge social and political constructions, to break them down or reshape them in order to shift our reality. Our voice asserts us in the world, enables us to project ourselves in it, and expresses our essence in being. Our voices in extreme decibels can join in a scream, proclaim through art, and create avenues for survival, change and agency.
There is a great muteness surrounding the pandemic. How does voice travel across the virus-related silences?
This state of constant lockdown has been a reckoning with ourselves and the power structures we live in. In between the loss, uncertainty, anxiety, and isolation, a blessing can emerge; our inner voice as a tiny dot in the background of the unconscious becomes louder and louder. We are forced to listen to it, to pay attention. I hold on to this state, to listen to my own voice, to learn from the silence which is not silence.
Photo by Sean Deyoe. How is teaching a part of your art practice?
A radical pedagogy of the voice investigates not only the physical mechanics of its production, but also its ancestral trace. In our pedagogy, Micaela and I seek to understand the voice’s multiple possibilities by facilitating a space for its discovery and investigation. A radical pedagogy of the voice is also a tool to understand our world, to have agency in it, to express ourselves through art.
In your workshops and teaching sessions, how will we learn how to engage our voice? Is the end goal personal, spiritual, artistic, political?
The voice is a connecting thread across our communities and a tool to know ourselves. The goal of the lessons and workshops is to release the potential of your voice. When you come to understand your voice, you not only activate your sense of self but can also understand your own voice in your community. In HOWL SPACE we will investigate how your voice can aid your self-affirmation, offer therapeutic tools and be an instrument of liberation.
HOWL SPACE’S schedule of events and opportunities for registration, and info are available on their website: https://www.howlspace.com/. Follow them on Instagram @howlspace.
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Reconnoiter: Alison De La Cruz
Alison De La Cruz is a multidisciplinary theater artist, community-based facilitator, producer and cultural space cultivator who has spent over 20 years building intersectionally with Black, Latinx, Indigenous, queer and immigrant communities towards community-based art-making and storytelling practices, processes and products.
ARTILLERY: You know District 14 in Los Angeles very well. It includes the Arts District, Little Tokyo, Chinatown and Boyle Heights among other locations. What are the most important issues in the upcoming election for these diverse communities?
ADLC: Affordable housing, juggling the realities of ongoing transit-oriented development dealing with at least two parcels of public land and the implications for existing residents and small business owners. Food safety and security, access to adequate health care and a renewed attention to the city’s budget allocations to the police department, and other possible ways to infuse resources that don’t involve policing but look at holistic solutions such as mental health.
Voter suppression directed at people of color is baked into United States history. What are your concerns about this in the upcoming local and national elections?
The very climate in which we vote, the reality of voters being able to make their way safely to the polls, actually having enough time to vote and that their votes are being counted continue to be things I am concerned about. I’m also deeply concerned that lack of polling places and the wait times at the only open places also create an undue burden and impact on the ability of people to vote.
Alison De La Cruz portrait. Voting is an important tool in the democratic process yet maintaining a democracy requires sustained engagement. How can the art community stay engaged?
This time is ripe for artists engaged in multiple levels with our neighbors, communities, small business owners, civic leaders, hourly workers and local organizations to create new onramps for participation and community problem solving. How can we recruit more poll workers? How can we continue to collaborate with community members, business leaders and civil servants to image and
reimagine our neighborhoods and the services that are available to us?Younger voters may well decide the next elections. While there is intense activism, they may also be feeling intense disenfranchisement unless there is real systemic change. Do you feel there is such a thing as voter activism to believe in?
I definitely believe in voter activism and the power of the people to step up and step in. Over these last few months, we have entered the next chapter of what an engaged citizenry looks like and how that translates into voting. I am hoping that folks are not just picking up posters to hold in the streets, but engaging in organizing and trying to participate in making our city and region stronger. We are learning new pathways for voter activism across digital platforms even as this pandemic continues to impact our daily lives.
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Reconnoiter
Interview with Cliff BenjaminIn 2003, Cliff Benjamin and Erin Kermanikian founded Western Project. The pioneers were the third gallery to open in Culver City. In 2015, they moved out of their space and now operate in our new virtual frontier. I caught Cliff on the island Maui.
Beyond the obvious financial benefits, what were the other considerations that compelled you to abandon a brick-and-mortar gallery?
Even before the virus, our culture was quickly evolving technologically, so people have looked to experience the world through a media format more and more. That being said, it results in smaller daily attendance of people actually looking at an exhibition, or art directly. Showing and talking about work with clients was key as to why we went to work everyday. Sending jpegs was not as thrilling as a client discovering a piece of art in front of them.
What is the difference between the internet gallery and the private gallery? And, how do you now define Western Project?
Perhaps it is a matter of semantics or context. If a business wants to communicate globally it has to be on the web in some form. How it deals with clients is another matter. I think a private gallery is more geared to servicing a select group of clients, those who have had a history of buying and curiosity about collecting in depth.
In our conversation, you mentioned that some of the big internet art market sites were unproductive. What do you mean?
The proliferation of these sites certainly indicates the shift in values from a collector-based market to a shoppers market. It’s great that there is more of an audience for buying art, but at the same time it flatlines a quality of experimentation and risk in art making.
Are there any downsides to not having a brick-and-mortar gallery?
It certainly isn’t as much fun. I loved installing and curating exhibitions. Our Bob Mizer show was elaborate and museum quality, as were a number of others such as Bob Flanagan, Sheree Rose, Tom of Finland, Wayne White and more. And again, turning people on to new artworks in person was terrific. Seeing someone light up inside in front of a painting was the best.
What is the next step for Western Project?
The next pop-up event will be an exhibition for Carole Caroompas. She has spent the last five or six years on five large paintings that are the most challenging works of her career. If you know Carole’s work, it has always been uncompromising, but this group of paintings is mesmerizing, difficult and direct. Not for those who want an easy read.
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RECONNOITER
Felicia Filer is the Public Art Division Director at the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. DCA is committed to the creation and maintenance of art in the Public Works Improvements Arts Program, the Private Arts Development Fee Program, the Citywide Mural Program, and the City’s Art Collection.
Could you please talk about how you came to be involved in contemporary art in LA?
After getting my MBA at Claremont, I knew that I did not want to go back into the financial services industry. I didn’t want to be involved in a consumer-based industry. I wanted to do something more meaningful and I saw an article in the LA Times about the Norton Family Foundation and how they were beginning to collect art by African-American artists. I wrote to them to get involved which didn’t work out but I ended up getting involved with Arts Inc, where I felt like I could meld my interest in business and in the arts, but what really catalyzed my involvement was an auction that I went to at LACE where I saw this extremely wide gamut of different types of artwork by all these different types of people. That was the real start for me.
You are involved in a myriad of activities ranging in territory and types of projects. Are there any things that you are particularly excited about at this moment?
I suppose if I had to pick one to plug I might talk about Current:LA Food. This upcoming triennial opens on October 5th. It is a temporary public art project and deals with the issue of food, so artists are being asked to use that theme as a prompt. Because of the ephemeral nature of the project and the thematic base, I’m particularly excited about this event. The way the artists involved take on the topic is becoming much more performative than object-oriented. It opens the doors for considering arts in public spaces with very different types of materials and in ways that are not just about being objects or more stable types of constructions that end up somehow responding to the place or the architecture. It also establishes a different type of precedent for that which is considered art in the public sphere.
Are there any other topics that you’d be interested in talking about with regard to Los Angeles?
There are things happening in neighborhoods and places all around LA… I want to be careful not to say that there’s some great big central pivot around which everything moves. So just because the art world doesn’t follow it the same way it does these large institutions doesn’t mean that these places and these events don’t exist. The other thing that I also think about is the sad reality that Los Angeles is still racially segregated and how that plays out in the work that is being exhibited. Different groups have to set up exhibition spaces just for their work and that is a drag. It creates a kind of self-reiterating isolation.
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Reconnoiter
Giorgio de Finis is currently the artistic director of MACRO (Museum of Contemporary Art Rome) where he has organized the sprawling MACRO Asilo project. He has opened up this institution to a citywide influx of creative energies, involving hundreds of artists, musicians, filmmakers and other creatives who intersect with the visual arts over the course of a year.
It seems to me that as a man of culture working within the visual arts that you always find yourself in a place where there is a turning point or at least there is a fulcrum. How do you see your role in this transformation of the way we can perceive the value of contemporary art in our lives?
I am an anthropologist, so I come to art with a vision that is different from those from this tradition. I see art in its anthropological role or within the realm of the human. My role right now is to create means through which mechanisms can start up that allow the creation and presentation of art. All this without judging in advance what is high or low, what will be historical, etc. My role is to make openings, create spaces where artists can do their work. In addition, I don’t believe in creating fortresses with flags and banners to declare that we are the most important thing around.Along with MACRO Asilo, if a visitor came to Rome today and did not want to focus on antiquity but on contemporary art, what would you recommend them to do or go see?
Obviously they should come to the MACRO—especially if they are interested in experimentation. Besides, many things are going on here including exhibitions, conferences, films, music and it’s entirely free. In addition I would suggest going to the MAAM (Metropoliz Museum of the Other and the Elsewhere), a museum—not a museum—where you can imagine another way of experiencing an art collection (http://www.disponibile.org/progetti/69-maam). Also, The National Art Gallery—Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (http://lagallerianazionale.com/en/) where they have mixed the collection in an extremely controversial way, no longer referring to the chronology but organizing it more like a rebus that the visitor must try to solve, without the traditional modes used by museums. And then I would recommend going to see a bit of street art. This is everywhere, between walls in San Basilio (http://onthewalls.it/) or in Tor Marancia (http://www.999contemporary.com/big-city-life-tormarancia-a-short-film- about-the-project), all around the Grande Raccordo Anulare (ring road surrounding the city), in short, it is a city where you find these interventions all around town.How do you think that art and above all how do you think artists can support themselves within a system of income that we have today in the art world?
The market has only and always represented a small part of what happens in the world of art. Artists must necessarily find other systems to live than the art market. I would say that I do not have an answer to your question but I would say that artists have to resist AND must continue to work. Only then can the ways to get that work to the world be found. -
Reconnoiter
Irene Tsatsos is the director of exhibition programs and chief curator at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena.
Sandra de la Loza’s current beautiful photographic exhibition “Mi Casa Es Su Casa” seems highly prescient. How did it come about, and how do you feel it ties into these anxious times politically and in terms of immigration?
I knew about that body of work from the early 2000s. It’s almost 20 years old, and it remains as relevant as when it was first made. I love the figures that are effaced, yet filled in with images and textures that are tangible, that exist physically in the community. The work evokes immigrant experiences and their legacies that are personally familiar, with struggles around identity, with wanting to retain and cultivate aspects of one’s cultural heritage, and at the same time, feeling an urgent desire to integrate into dominant culture, and the tensions and traumas that can arise from that conflict.
Sandra de la Loza: Mi Casa Es Su Casa.
You’re also exhibiting innovative and under-recognized artist Sara Kathryn Arledge. Do you feel that this exhibition also really fits the current zeitgeist in terms of the growing strength of women in the arts, and hopefully, politics?This exhibition has been in the works for more than five years, so it’s not a response to specific conversations of the day, such as #MeToo. That said, it certainly resonates—and of course the timing is always right for a conversation about feminism. Arledge can be seen as a feminist icon, an artist who advocated for herself, mentored others, and was deeply devoted to producing her work despite many adversities, to keep herself intact. She was active from the 1930s through the 1980s, and she addressed issues of gender, gender representation and the contradictions of cultural inequities in her films, her works on paper and her writing—before these subjects were overt in contemporary art discourses.
Sara Kathryn Arledge: Serene for the Moment. You’ll also be showcasing the MexiCali Biennial’s “Calafia Manifesting the Terrestrial Paradise” upcoming border interventions and exhibitions in collaboration with the Armory Center for the Arts. How do you feel the Biennial is helping to focus attention on the region and support it?
There’s a lot of things I like about the MexiCali Biennial—its history, and roots as artist projects. And I am very drawn to the complicated myth of Califia as a way to dig into some of today’s conditions. I know the organizing artists and curators, I’ve worked with them, and I admire their process, rigor and commitment to their practices and visions.
Artwork by Luis Alonso Sanchez from the MexiCali Biennial 2018. What are your plans for the coming year for exhibitions and beyond?
At the moment, I’m particularly excited about an upcoming exhibition with Tanya Aguiñiga, an artist and activist who uses traditional weaving techniques to make art, and cultivate intimate, interpersonal exchanges. I’ve invited her to use the trusses of the Armory’s 30-feet bow-truss ceilings as a loom, so there will be a giant new site-responsive work produced collaboratively with members of her team and the Armory community. We’ll also include documentation and ephemera from Tanya’s project AMBOS, or Art Made Between Opposite Sides, which involved artistic interventions on both sides of the entire length of the U.S./Mexico Border, conducted while traveling in a van from Tijuana and San Diego to Matamoros, Mexico and Brownsville, Texas.
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Reconnoiter
In 2016, Los Angeles-based multimedia artist Kim SchoeNstadt launched her “Now Be Here” project in Los Angeles where 733 contemporary women artists gathered for a group photo at Hauser & Wirth.
Tell me about how you started the project, Now Be Here.
Hauser Wirth & Schimmel just opened in LA and their first show was called “Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947 to 2016.”
It was a great show.
It was a fantastic show, but it was very familiar. We were seeing the same artists over and over again. I want to point out the timing of all of this—the primaries for the 2016 election had just happened, so we knew that it was going to be Trump versus Hillary. The other thing for me was that I had had a child, and I hadn’t been very active in my community.
Now she was in school, and I could re-emerge.Over the decades we’ve gotten used to seeing group portraits of men, the top 10 this or the top 10 that. I remember seeing a New York Times Magazine cover many years ago of what was called the “top” contemporary American artists, I think it was all men. So you saw the show at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel.
I saw the show and I saw the space—the courtyard and the roof where we could put photographers. I met with Aandrea Stang, their director of education, afterwards [with my idea], and she said, “Yeah, let’s do it.”
It was such a good choice—the place was centrally located, and you could take public transportation. Well-organized, too. You had two photographers [Isabel Avila, Carrie Yury], you had a sign-on desk. I’m assuming all of it was voluntary?
Yes, totally voluntary. One of my strengths is organizing. That’s what I did at John Baldessari’s studio, I was studio manager.
How did you get the word around?
First I made a list of artists, and sent it around. It was a shared list, and people added to it. The second list went to galleries, the third list went to curators. The idea was to be inclusive.
What did you do with the photo afterwards?
It was posted online, it was free to download. It would be nice to do a book.
After that was New York and Miami, both at museums (Brooklyn Museum, Pérez Art Museum). And then the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., contacted you. Six hundred artists RSVP’d, and 465 attended.
It included artists from D.C., Virginia and Maryland. The museum went all out. We had our own cocktail. In addition to the programming [in the two weeks prior], we also had an artist resource fair right after the photo. Upstairs there were like 15 nonprofits that support artists. It was pretty amazing. Linn Meyers was my local collaborator, and Linn has actually gone on to found a residency program.
I understand you’re going to the Bahamas for a residency.
Last spring my gallery E.C. Lina, formerly Chimento Contemporary, took me to VOLTA NY, and I received the Baha Mar Art Prize. Baha Mar is a resort in the Bahamas, and they have an art program, gallery and studios called the Current. The Current gave out this art prize, and with it comes a residency, a commission in February.
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RECONNOITER
Roger Herman is a Los Angeles-based artist and professor at UCLA department of art.
How long have you been teaching painting at UCLA? Was teaching a profession you wanted to do, or was it a matter of practicality, a way to supplement your income as an artist.
I have been teaching for about 35 years. First at Cal State Long Beach as a visiting artist, a little bit at Art Center in Pasadena and then as a tenured professor at UCLA. I never thought of it as a career or a job. I enjoyed it and came into it more or less by accident. I never asked for it. I was lucky that people wanted me to do it.
In Germany where I studied, teaching is a little more relaxed and may not be as academic as it is here. But at UCLA, the climate was very collegial and you can pretty much orchestrate your own program.Is painting dead, and why do so many people want to bury it?
Of course, not. Just look around. This is the first time that Southern California has a boom of great painters with international reputations. Great variety and energy. Painting was declared dead when I went to art school in the ’70s. Then later again in the ’90s, then again by the academics, declaring it to be a commercial commodity. Dead or alive, it is one of many art forms depending on what is in fashion.Can you immediately tell when a student has natural talent for painting? And if one doesn’t seem particularly talented at the beginning, can they become a good painter? In other words, can GOOD painting be taught?
I do not know what GOOD painting is, nor do I understand what natural talent is. Interesting artist? Maybe. Students need confidence. One can guide, but I do not know if GOOD painting can be taught. Most of the time, I do not know what I am doing myself. Teaching art is overrated. The students learn most from each other. If you get a great group together, they do the job on their own.A lot of young painters show the influence of their college instructors in their work. Do student painters develop their own style, or do a lot of your students become miniature Roger Hermans?
I hope not.Does teaching painting keep you fresh? Do you ever learn something from your students?
It keeps me on my toes.What’s the standard advice you give to students when they graduate? Should they embark on a career as an artist (and a painter) or are there better ways to pay off student debt?
The art schools in Southern California are pumping out about 300 MFAs a year. Art schools have become a place for contacts in Southern California. They have been a social lubricant for artists to network and learn from each other. But there are other ways. They should, instead, save the tuition that has become ridiculously expensive and spend the money on a good studio and hang out with smart people who share their interests. It is easy for me to say, coming from a country where a tuition is free. -
RECONNOITER
Anuradha Vikram is the artistic director of 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, which is currently celebrating its 30th year. Vikram is also a senior lecturer in the MFA Social Pratice Area Emphasis at Otis College.
One Googles your name, and the term “transnational futurism” populates the results as the focus of your research. What does that term mean to you?
I think I might have made it up in trying to describe what I do, and I figured, why not? I feel like I’m a transnational person. I was born in New York, and I’m American born and raised, so in that respect I’m very “one nation.” But my family has a history of being based in multiple nations. My mother and father both are from India. My grandparents lived in Brazil, Libya, Egypt and the United States because my grandfather was working for the United Nations. So in a way I actually think of my curatorial work at 18th Street where we do these international residences as diplomacy work—that’s where the transnational part comes from. I want to make sure that the take that I am presenting is not a kind of America-centric take. And then futurism, I’m kind of wondering if I still want to use that term so much, partly because I think that the future of futurism is pretty much the present.Is there a credo or inner manifesto that drives your decision-making process as artistic director at 18th Street?
I would say I am driven by the goal of introducing the local to the rest of the world. I think it’s extremely important to understand where you are, and who your community is, who your stakeholders are, and to be very connected with them and with the place that you’re in as you’re bringing people from elsewhere here. We serve two functions here at 18th Street: one is to introduce the rest of the world to LA, the other is to introduce LA to the rest of the world. So we have to make sure that we’re serving both those sides.18th Street is celebrating 30 years. As an international crossroads of sorts, what does “transnational futurism” look like in practice, concerning its residency programs?
I would say that the transnational aspect of my work is reflected in the residency programs here by all of the programming that we do to introduce both the internal community of international artists and local artists to one another in ways that are meaningful. We are seeking ways to integrate those communities more and more. From an internal perspective, we do monthly potlucks where the artists literally sit down with one another. We also are implementing a mentor artist program. We’ve identified a number of artists in our local studio program who are mentors. They have very established exhibition histories; they’re often also very established as faculty at universities and colleges in the area and they have an interest in mentoring our artists and gaining something from that experience. So we’re going to develop more opportunities to directly pair artists together in that way, in a kind of inter-generational way.Regarding futurism, or future-oriented programming, 18th Street was founded in a spirit of something like a “United Nations for Art.” And the idea was that artists would show us the best path to a more harmonious future for the globe. Artists are visionaries. They see the future and sometimes they work in ways that are also technologically sophisticated, or ways that look at technology not for its sophistication or the way it impresses us now as being new, but rather with a mind to how future generations are going to see that technology.
Thirty years is a long lifespan for any nonprofit contemporary art organization. Can you put a finger on what has been the prevailing factor responsible for the longevity?
Absolutely, it’s very very clear. Our founders were able to acquire this property and endow it to the institution. That is the only reason we are still here. If we did not own this land, we would not still be here. It’s property. Look at Self Help Graphics: they have ensured their longevity by buying their building. There are other ways to do it. You can have long term partnerships with civic partners for example, but I think what is not a good way to do it, as people are finding out, is by having a developer who says “Hey I’ll give you the space…” But then they change their mind in a year because by then, they’ve already capitalized on the advantages of having art, so then they don’t want to spend the money anymore. Plus, they are often not very realistic about what the real costs of what they are proposing to do are. So these are challenges that I’ve seen a number of institutions that either have closed or are now in the process of closing confront. I’m very grateful that 18th Street has our property because we don’t confront that particular issue. -
RECONNOITER
In celebration of Artillery’s inaugural Food Issue, caterer and collector Tom Peters has agreed to divulge several of his secret and most cherished recipes. He began both his profession and his passion in the early ’80s. Since then, he has amassed a clientele that reads as a Who’s Who of the art and entertainment worlds. His art collection, swelling to over 900 works, can be seen as a thorough history of contemporary art in Los Angeles.
Peters is an admirer of the “beautiful” and “labor intensive” work of artist Brian Wills. The craftsman-like minimalist is a fan of the gourmet’s “refreshing” gin cocktail.
THE COLLECTOR’S CHOICE
1-1/2 oz bombay sapphire gin
3/4 oz st. germain liqueur
1/4 oz simple syrup
3/4 oz fresh lemon juice
2 thin cucumber wheels
1 blood orange wheel
3 sprigs fresh mint
club sodaTo a cocktail shaker, add all ingredients and muddle. Shake with ice and strain into a Collins glass. Top with club soda. Decorate with cucumber wheel.
Power player Sarah Watson is a director of the Sprüth Magers gallery. Her history in Los Angeles is as impressive as it is dynamic. Her palate favors Peters’ signature dish.
CHICKEN COLLAGE
Serves 8 to 10 guests
6 whole boneless chicken breasts with
skin (12 pieces)
1-1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1-1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup pitted prunes
1 cup dried cherries
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup dried apricots, sliced
1 cup small spanish green olives, pitted
1 cup of capers with juice
6 bay leaves
3/4 cup dried oregano
1 head of garlic, chopped
brown sugar
cilantro
white wineTo create the marinade, mix all measured items in a bowl. Add the chicken breasts. Marinate overnight. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a roasting pan, ball the chicken breasts with skin up. Stuff the marinade between the chickens. Sprinkle brown sugar on top of the chicken. Slowly pour the white wine over the chicken until the pan is half full. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 1 hour or till done. Turn the oven down to 250 degrees and cook another hour. Remove from the oven and let sit for 15 minutes. Sprinkle with cilantro.
His roster of artists dominates the international headlines. Gallerist Bennett Roberts of Roberts Projects has a preference for this classic side dish.
PALETTE PILAF
Serves 6 to 8 guests
2 cups mahatma rice (long grain)
2/3 cup vermicelli, crumble into small pieces
1-1/4 sticks butter
5 cups swanson chicken broth
salt and pepperIn a medium skillet, melt the butter and add the vermicelli. Stir constantly until the pasta is a golden brown. Add the rice and stir until well coated. Turn the heat to high and stir until the rice flows with a lava-like consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste and the chicken broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cover. After 10-15 minutes, stir and re-cover. When the rice is cooked, remove from the heat.
