Eco-Macho, Not-So-Macho, Thoughts on Bloggery, and a Media Invasion

[Susan Robb, I Am A Land Animal]

“Eco-macho…taps into that old and apparently endlessly rich metaphor of the Northwest as a place rooted in the interpenetration between the urban and the rural, a place that’s both somehow ahead of the mainstream and off the grid. The idea has been cultivated by Northwest artists and writers from time immemorial. Just to name a few recent examples: Charlie Krafft, with his Mystic Sons of Morris Graves crew and his weapon ceramics; Gretchen Bennett, with her Native American blankets, street stickers in the form of Mount Rainier, and colored-pencil adaptations of Kurt Cobain on YouTube (not to mention the Aberdeen native himself); Claude Zervas, with his Eva Hesse–like Northwest rivers and passages made in thin, white cold-cathode fluorescents with their dangling wires; Susan Robb, with her both hopeful and dark insistence on humans as animals. This is the current Northwest School.”

I just read this article by Jen Graves this morning, though it was written last April. It is so directly pertinent to our conversation about Regionalism. Talk about forgetting our own art history; even one that was articulated just one year ago! Or, in my case–rather than forgetting–just now learning our art history. For various reasons of life and cliff-hanging tumult, my attendance to all things art-related in my three years here has been spotty, at best.

I am very excited to be becoming a part of this art community, but I don’t really know that much about it, yet. It is with this confession that I named this blog; I started writing as a way to get to know the artists and spaces in my city. Also, my baby was taking twenty minute naps (which, to any babies reading this, DOES NOT REALLY COUNT as a nap) and blogging was a way to do something creative, at home, in a short amount of time. This medium is ripe for someone with a rather impulsive personality. I get all excited and worked up about something and make some seemingly-confident statements, click “Publish” and proceed to be overcome by the urge to run and hide under the nearest pile of dirt. Maybe this is just another extension of what it means to try to make your life as an artist — sticking your neck out; submitting to likely rejection; passionately, unknowingly, reinventing the wheel.

[Gretchen Bennett, Mountain of Dirt Sticker]

Sometimes the abundance of what I don’t know hits me like a sack of glass bricks, and I’m humbled by people that really do know a lot.

Seattle’s art-writing media are changing in nature, and I wonder how this will change the content. We are losing the model of the few people (i.e. “critics” that are invested full-time, employed, and published on real live paper) that know everything, and we’re gaining many voices (many of them artists who are already spread thinly across many projects, with time to write only in the wee hours of the morning) that know some things about some things. It is mind-boggling to me that I, for example, now have a platform not too different from that of some people who are much more entitled to it. Despite this fact, the seasoned critics have been nothing but gracious and welcoming to us renegade blogging artists. They could have relegated us as cocky, hapless, new-sheriffs-in-town; instead they’ve added us to their blogrolls with open arms, declaring that if people aren’t reading our blogs, they’re not reading about art in this town.

[Claude Zervas, La Bûche]

Likewise with some of the art spaces here. In the spirit of exercising my rights as the gushy, why-not-lay-it-all-on-the-line artist, I wrote my letter of (intentionally unrequited) love to the Henry, never thinking they’d entertain my ideas. (It simply felt necessary go through the motions of asking the question, if that makes any sense.) Now Betsey Brock wants to meet me for coffee and help me with an exhibition proposal.

So, in light of our collective examination of what’s missing in the Seattle art scene, this here is a gleaming representation of what we’ve got. Instead of an art establishment that turns up its nose at artists challenging the foundation, Seattle has one that joins in.

[Charles Krafft, porcelain firearm]

The Vancouver Problem: Joining the Conversation

I’ve been thinking a lot about Jen Graves’ essay The Vancouver Problem, in which she explains why she thinks Vancouver is a better art city than Seattle. As a relative newcomer (3 years) who has lived in several international art cities, I’ll add my voice to this conversation.

Sadly, I have to agree with much of JG’s argument: if Seattle and Vancouver were left to brawl it out in front of an international audience, it is clear that Vancouver would win. Vancouver has built itself as an international art city; Seattle has built itself as a Pacific Northwest art city. [Sighing, heart sinking.] I disagree, though, with her estimation that this disparity between the two cities is largely due to a higher quality of art and artists up north.

Conceptual art has a much stronger presence in Vancouver, and conceptual art is what puts cities on the map, presently. That said, I don’t think Seattle should force itself onto the international map by painstakingly re-packaging itself as a conceptual art city.  While I recognize the relevance of minimalist relational art as much as the next MFA graduate, I am often distraught when mediocre work within this genre is locally applauded simply for existing; as if enough praise will coax more (and presumably better) such work into being. Likewise, I don’t think Seattle’s ticket into the larger forum will come from its doting on the age-old Seattle aesthetic of Morris Graves et al. These seem to be the two dominant voices in our community: One camp works to mold Seattle into a typical international art city; the other camp looks only in a mirror for inspiration and relevance. Neither one seems to be drawing from the internationally engaged artists under their noses. There is certainly a place for the region’s art history, just as we must encourage excellent work in all media– whether conceptual photography or installation or (even!) painting.

This will probably be a long post, and I am holding a squirmy baby. So,

to be continued…