Justice for the Margins

Yoshitomo Nara show at the Institute of Visual Arts (inova), Milwaukee, 2006. photo courtesy inova.

A friend brought this recent article in the New York Post to my attention--it's as if someone has been tracking me, like some caribou in the Arctic Circle.

New York Post "Urban Renewal", September 13, 2010

I have written about the different places I have lived over the past two decades: Seattle, Milwaukee, Phoenix and now St. Louis. (This excludes the big cities of New York and Los Angeles, but ignoring them makes the following point even more pointed.)

These housing acrobatics seem counter-intuitive to pursuing a "straight" path on a career ladder, but life isn't straight, is it?






















Ragna Robertsdottir at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007. photo courtesy SMoCA.

What these cities brought me were unparalleled opportunities for professional and personal growth. How else could I have visited Belgium, Canada, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom over the past fifteen years? Displacement is an important part of shaking up your world view.

















Rebecca Belmore and Osvaldo Yero mold for work on the US / Mexico border. photo courtesy F.A.R. (Future Arts Research) @ ASU.

I'm thinking about displacement because of an event last night. I was part of a celebration of the University of Missouri-St. Louis' Ferring Art and Art History Travel Program (named for Alison and John Ferring, two of the city's best philanthropists), held at William Shearburn Gallery in the Central West End.

The event, founded by Dr. Susan Cahan formerly of UMSL, gives 10 or so students free trips to art centers around the country. Susan left in 2009 to work at Yale, and I have taken over the program in her absence. Last March I took the group to New York. I worked them to the bone for four full days--that was my goal!

At Shearburn Gallery last night, three of the 12 students talked about their experiences in NY and how it challenged them and changed them.
















Ahmet Ogut work produced in PHX and part of my up-coming show with Ogut at Laumeier Sculpture Park. photo courtesy the artist, Amsterdam.

It was a pleasure to hear, again, the impact the trip had on the students. I thought about the first time I set foot in New York--I emerged from the subway to see a collapsed crane strapped against the side of a skyscraper (the trigger to my dislike of cranes on buildings). I know the Ferring trip could play the same life-changing role.

Since good art is everywhere, what is important for an arts career is knowing what is happening elsewhere. Sure, you can just be interested just in what's happening on your block, but I'm more interested in the expansive mind, not the small one. Think small and big!

I am gearing up to organize the 2011 Ferring trip, we'll likely go to New York again because of the density of the experience. And for those students who have never been on a plane or out of St. Louis, watch out, a growth spurt is coming!

This is the great part about teaching--the change is immediately apparent. Yet part of the goal for the students when they return is to figure out how to contribute to making St. Louis vibrant by seeing the energy of other places.

Again, travel is a great teacher in the appreciation of self and others.

Burnin' Truck Loads of Art

© Mary-Louise Schumacher

My dear pal Mary Louise Schumacher and I recently took four days to drive from Phoenix, Arizona to St. Louis, Missouri, for me to take up my new post as Executive Director at the Laumeier Sculpture Park.

We had four fun days of yakking about art, life and America. We would cover two topics per day, and eight hours was often not enough time for all our side-trips.

Our best image of the trip: this burning truck-load of cars, which threw off an incredible wall of heat as we passed dangerously close (what WAS that police car doing?)

This trip led me to reflect on my art career, which has led me deliberately, nomadically, zigzagging across the country: KS, NY, LA, MKE, PHX, STL. Each shift was triggered by a new school, new opportunity or a personal change.

The cumulative effect is that I have lived in big markets and small, each with their own great riches. We all are connected on-line, but we only live in one place, and finding that form of groundedness is what makes a move both challenging and rewarding. I have found the center in the most dispersed places, each with its own gem artists and jewel institutions that give a place, and its residents, life and meaning. With my move to St. Louis, I am honored to enter into a rich and complex society that, while outward looking, takes great meaning from within as well.

Buzz Spector, an artist friend from my LA years and recently installed dean of the College and Graduate School of Art, part of Washington University's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, sent me the lyrics from Terry Allen's 1979 double album, "Lubbock (on everything)" in response to our burning truck picture:

Truckload of Art

Recitation:

Once upon a time…
Sometime ago back on the east coast
In New York City, to be exact…
A bunch of artists and painters and
sculptors and musicians and
poets and writers and dancers
and architects
Started feeling real superior
to their ego-counter-parts
Out on the West Coast…so,
They all got together and decided
They would show those snotty surfer upstarts
A thing or two about the Big Apple
And…they hired themselves a truck
It was a big, spanking new white-shiny
Chrome-plated cab-over
Peterbilt…
With mudflaps, stereo, tv, AM & FM radio,
Leather seats and a naugahide sleeper…
All fresh
With new American Flag decals and "ART ARK"
Printed on the side of the door
With solid 24 karat gold leaf type…
And they filled up this truck
With the most significant piles
And influential heaps of Art Work
To ever be assembled in Modern Times,
And it sent it West…to chide
Cajole, humble and humiliate…the Golden Bear.
And this is the true story of that truck…

A Truckload of Art
From New York City
Came rollin down the road
Yeah the driver was singing
And the sunset was pretty
But the truck turned over
And she rolled off the road
Yeah a Truckload of Art
is burning near the highway
Precious objects are scattered
All over the ground
And it's a terrible sight
If a person were to see it
But there weren't nobody around

(Yodel)
Yeah the driver went sailing
High in the sky
Landing in the gold lap of the Lord
Who smiled and then said
"Son, you're better off dead
Than haulin a truckload
full of hot avant-gárde

(chorus)
Yes…an important artwork
Was thrown burning to the ground
Tragically…landing in the weeds
And the smoke could be seen
Ahhh for miles all around
Yeah but nobody…knows what it means
Yes…a Truckload of Art
Is burning near the highway
And it's a tough job for the highway patrol
Ahhh they'll soon see the smoke
An come runnin to poke
Then dig a deep ditch
And throw the arts in a hole

(Yodel)
Yeah a Truckload of Art
Is burning near the highway
And it's raging far-out of control
And what the critics have cheered
Is now shattered and queered
And their noble reviews
Have been stewed on the road
(chorus)

Allen's lyrics were in protest of New York's attitude towards LA / San Francisco. Both cities are getting along quite nicely, thank you, and have developed rich communities outside the East Coast.

While I would never advocate burning truck loads of art, I do agree that great art exists everywhere, you just have to learn context and history to understand the specific Modernist nuances of each community.

I look forward to doing that in St. Louis.