Description



Steel Ice & Stone is a multi-media interactive installation.
Nine suspended LED panels and sensor-triggered sound create an environment for memory recall.

Monday, March 16, 2015

Shifting Priorities

"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans". So wrote John Lennon in "Beautiful Boy", though the phrase may be borrowed from an older adage. 

Adapted to the current wave of events, I'd adjust it to "Life is what happens while you are busy making art". Not to be overly dramatic here, but the all-consuming task of getting the piece resolved carries sufficient responsibility. Add to that the craft, the operation, the promotion, through to its presentation, you've put everything on hold. Everything. And, I haven't even talked about money. 

Oh, yeah, money. Remember that? As an installation artist I'm acutely aware of the nagging need to pay bills...strongly aware that you can't sell what you do, the art you make. At best, you can give a prototype to a charitable cause and save a little on the taxes from your day job (bubbling bile). 
A little hard to see but leaning over with his sig-
nature hat and vest, Beuys, the exemplary teacher,
with students in the front yard of the Academy.

Friends who were at the Academy in Düsseldorf when Joseph Beuys taught there clung to anything that carried his fingerprint  as an investment--with the possibility to sell in the future...? I wonder if Bueys found this entertaining. I miss Germany. I really do.

Anyway, I'm in the process of finding new avenues for the work while thinking about a new installation. And, of course, putting food on the table in the ever-unstable real estate market in New York. The once-artsy-fartsy neighborhood where I live is now referred to as the Gold Coast, despite the presence of five art schools in a 10-block radius. With that, it ought to be noted, that the real art--the experimental work of all kinds--is being made in Brooklyn and spreading to the Bronx. Artists require space and public transportation to do their work. Queens still requires a car to get around most of it, so other than Ridgewood and parts of South Jamaica (both places I've lived), artists are gonna look at other options.

A colleague suggested a university gallery in the Midwest that's open to experimental works but the curator gets back in a few months. Another colleague gave me a few leads, and I'll follow them up--hoping for a chance to get the work up again. But I'm also in keen understanding that it's hard lend 1000 square feet of space to show a suspended work that comes along with sound and needs power. 


What was I thinking?

So, I'm shifting gears to pursue a public space willing to show a mere part of the installation--three or six of the nine panels (more bile). 

Dammit! The hardest part has already been done. Is this work gonna reside under my bed, too?


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