Union Center for the Arts featured on KCET

May 11, 2012 Uncategorized
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We were pleasantly surprised by a visit from KCET’s program Form Follows Function, who did a special show dedicated to the building that houses LA Artcore’s gallery in Little Tokyo.  The opening shot shows the back of the Union Center for the Arts  building viewed from the Temple St. wall of the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, showing part of the recent pyrotechnic drawings by international artist Cai Guo-Qiang.

The program does an excellent job of describing the history of the building, the development of it into a haven for Arts organizations downtown, and a nice appearance by Lydia Takeshita, Executive Director and founder.

 

Lori Lipsman

May 10, 2012 Uncategorized
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Artcore:  What got you started with being creative?

Lipsman:  I would have to say it was exposure throughout my childhood to architecture, museums, and arts & crafts, and my good fortune to have had art throughout my schooling.

A:  Was there a specific moment when you realized you wanted to be an artist?

L:  Not really, I started taking art classes while at a community college and then found myself ingrained in the art department there. Once I’d taken everything I could there was an assumption on the part of the instructors there that one should move on and get a degree. That lead to to pursing a BFA, and then a MFA.

A:  Describe some of the highlights of your artist’s career.

L:  Art school and pursuing the BFA and MFA degrees. This was an invaluable opportunity to focus in depth and with great commitment to my art practice, but I often wonder if graduate school would have been better to do in my 40’s.

After my formal education I would have to say the biggest highlight in my career is that I never took a break from my practice, and it keeps developing and growing.

A:  What is your working method like?

L:  I consider myself a conceptual process artist. I get ideas, set up rules and processes to proceed towards the concept, and then change and break the rules along the way. Works tied to a conceptual process are done in a series, while work based on a specific theme (for example What Women Want, the environment, war, etc) usually end up being one piece.

A:  When you create, does it come naturally or is there some kind of ritual you use to put yourself in that state?

L:  Absolutely naturally and the creative state is with me at all times.

A:  What have you learned about yourself through your practice.

L:  Since my practice has spanned 30+ years, and is a part of my everyday life which includes self reflection, explorations, questioning, and play, if through this I did not learn a lot about myself, there would be a serious problem.

A:  What is the relationship between art and nature?

L:  Nature is also an integral part of my life and if this was not at times reflected in my art practice, then my art would not be true to who I am.

A:  What are the benefits that a person gains from being creative?

L:  I think this is like asking what are the benefits of reasoning. Creativity is not a separate part of being. Everyone is creative, and everyone has a creative process they use daily. Therefore, the benefits are infinite, and cannot always be quantitative.

A:  Does the artist have any responsibility to other people?

L:  Everyone has a responsibility to other people, and to themselves.

A:  I see a concern for juxtaposition, for balance, and even looking at the installation a fondness for order.  Anything you might say about this?

L:  I would not say concern. My process is very much tied to experimenting and playing around. I do not focus in on formality in my process or compositions of specific pieces.  I preferred that this series be installed geometrically because they are not about the installation. I see each piece as a jewel, and just like gemstones they can be appreciated on their own or together as jewelry. My design sense is for the most part clean and minimal, so displaying a series in a grid works great.

A:  What are some of the differences between the way you experience your work and the way others do?

L:  I think there is a huge difference. I have a very intimate relationship with each piece because I have been with it through a long process. The viewer on the other hand can only have a relationship with the finished piece, and has no connection to what I’ve gone through to get to this finished piece. I realize from talking to people at the reception that they wanted to know more about my process, which is why I found myself explaining YaYa, the circle device, and showing it to many people. But I am not sure that is such a good idea. I would really prefer people spend time with the work, let it draw them in, and have their own story and experience with it.

A:  How is art important to our communities?

L:  Very

A:  With the decline in art education in schools, do you have any ideas how we can teach creativity to the communities?

L:  I think the problem with our educational system is the categorization of learning. Instead of splitting apart the aspects of what needs to be taught, we should integrate everything. For example, instead of taking a math class you could take an architecture class, or design class, and learn math, art, sociology, community, etc.

A:  Where would you like to go next with your work?

L:  I never ask myself where I want to go next. I know I am always on a path, and as I follow, which ever turn or curve I take, my work will change.

5th Thai-US International Exchange Show

April 12, 2012 Uncategorized
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LA Artcore is proud to offer the fifth International Exchange Show with the country of Thailand.  As part of this program, artists from Los Angeles are provided with an opportunity to travel and interact with their colleagues and peers in another country, as well as exhibiting their work.  In turn, artists from the country visit Los Angeles and exhibit in one of our galleries, giving them a similar opportunity to experience another culture.  This mixture creates a community-based introduction to techniques, visual arts, and professional connection in another cultural environment.

The exchange with Thailand is due in no small part to the efforts of Dr. Kamol Tassananchalee.  His tireless effort as an art educator is firmly recognized in two countries.  Coming from a family of artists that attend the royal court of Thailand, he was recently honored in a multi-story Queen’s gallery for his lifetime achievements.  Photographs of Dr. Tassananchalee speaking before audiences show packed halls.  Painters in the country often create works that echo his unique style.  Rarely is the artist seen without an entourage of young students whom he has taken under his wing, whether on the road or in the garden and studio of his own home.

Dr. Tassananchalee introduces the artists he brings from Thailand to more than just the culture of visual arts in Los Angeles.  In close affinity with the role of nature that informs his own work, he takes them far out into the western wilderness, to places such as the Navajo reservation in Arizona where he has developed ties and friendships.  In these places the visiting artists have the opportunity to experience landscapes and environments that are new to them, beyond the cultural encounters.  The great expanses of the American West are a significant shift from the jungles, highlands and sparkling seas, of the Chao Phraya river valley and the Malay peninsula.

In addition to his guidance for visiting artists here in the states, he provides leadership for the reception of artists Artcore exchanges with that country.  In this recent exchange, artists installed their work in the Chiang Mai Arts Center, and were received warmly and met with an abundance of professional contact wherever they went.  They received gracious assistance from Richard and Rosslyn Garst of the University there, as well as comfortable quarters provided by hotel owner Thongchai Yukantapornpong, who is one of the visting artists that will present his work in the upcoming exhibit.

The journey made by these artists reflects an interest in sharing the creative process, and the travelers have an opportunity to discover much about themselves, and what they might have in common with artists beyond the boundaries and borders of culture.  Drawing from insight, nature, and the positive experience of humans that hold each other in esteem are but a few areas of understanding that can be refreshed by these exchanges.  It creates an opportunity for the two cultures to present to the world more than just observant eyes, and instead display the fruit of their creative labors, giving anyone who has the opportunity to view these exhibits a chance to connect on a more profound level to the people of distant places and perspectives.  Viewing another culture through the artifacts of personal creative passion is a method of cultural exchange that offers the best humans have to offer and reflects on all participants the glowing light of human possibility.

The artists Artcore sent to Thailand received warm receptions everywhere they traveled, meeting many artists and teachers.  Their exhibit in Chiang Mai was well attended and included printed materials. Artcore will provide the visiting artists this year with the experience of Los Angeles cultural institutions, good food, and with any luck good weather.

For the 2011 exchange the visiting artists included some of the most successful and recognized artists in Thailand, including one painter who leads a double life as a celebrity kickboxer, and performed a traditional dance at the reception.  Observing their manner of cooperation was truly inspiring, smoothly installing their exhibit and maintaining professional attitudes throughout.  They even went so far as to graciously help extract a difficult bamboo rootball in front of one of the galleries.  The exhibit included printed catalogs, a delicious array of traditional foods, and a framed photograph of the Thai royal family gracing the entrance, who were involved in the supporting of the event.  Attracted to the exhibit, the reception was strongly attended, with Thai media conducting studio interviews for the 120,000 resident Thais in California.

Ramone Muñoz, who was among the artists that traveled to Chiang Mai, reports that his experience there was one of growth both culturally and aesthetically.  Describing Dr. Tassanachallee as “a master of calm and a true humanitarian,” he explains that being around the man taught him to have faith.  This was extended to his overall experience among the Thai: “They have a very deep appreciation for all types of art.  They are highly conscious of contemporary trends but also appreciative of more traditional and figurative modes of expression.  They also see art from a spiritual perspective and are influenced by Buddhist sensibilities.”  He went on to explain that they are the most gentle, calm people he had ever experienced, that they seemed to be at peace with one another and the world.

We are excited to see what the arrival of the Thai artists brings for them, and to continue our pursuit of cultural exchange and enriching the lives of the people of Los Angeles, one artist at a time.

Robert Seitz

Ann Phong

March 16, 2012 Uncategorized
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Ann Phong is an artist originally from Vietnam, who has been an educator in the Los Angeles area for over 18 years.  She speaks about her passion for art with an intense and energetic tone that captures your interest from the start. The artist discovers herself through art and points the finger to her students to become their own teachers.

She started drawing and painting when she was young, because she wanted to find a place in her family.  She had many siblings, and her older sister was smart and got all the attention, so she did something different to fit in, and so found a way to express her feelings.  After high school she wanted to study art, and applied repeatedly for two years but couldn’t get in because she was not a member of the Communist party.  By the third year she was depressed, feeling no sense of a future, “at the bottom of a basket”.  She would wander Saigon seeing other people’s difficulties, including the number of homeless people sleeping on the streets after their property was confiscated.  That was in 1981, and when she had a chance to escape by boat she took it.  Periodically from 1979-1984 they would receive messages that the SOS, a French organization, had ships waiting 200 nautical miles out on international waters in the South China Sea.  At the same time there were perils – knowing about the people trying to escape in small craft, many fisherman had turned to becoming pirates.  They knew the refugees would be carrying jewelry and valuables as they fled, and would rob them and often rape the women.  Many of these women, shamed by the experience, would throw themselves in the sea to drown, an image that still informs the artist’s work.  As a young woman it was a frightening choice to make, but she made it and survived.

Once in America and with nothing to her name, she followed the advice of a friend to study to become an orthodontist, even as she hated the whole direction.  It wasn’t until a car accident that she found herself stuck in bed and thought about her direction in life.  She asked herself, after risking so much to escape and leaving everything behind, why on earth now that she had won her freedom had she dropped her passion just to earn money?  Where did that outside priority come from?  She reaffirmed her original direction towards art, and it seemed hard to fight everyone and everything to stay with it, from her community’s expectations to her own husband.  She laughs, “This is what trained me to be a strong person.”

She explains that these experiences link her to issues all artists have to confront.  “I was burdened by all the big names like Rauschenberg or Picasso I had studied and who seemed to overshadow my efforts.  The turning point was when I made the choice to follow myself, and when I looked into myself, that’s when I saw the water.”

This is something specific I encounter when I speak with Asian artists.  Often when working with a Western artist, you are delivered a clean lineage of names that place the work in the context of history.  The Western artist uses lineage to anchor the work as Contemporary by preserving an established pedigree.  While the spectrum of art is broad enough to draw connections that can underline almost any approach, Asian artists frequently throw out the entire premise of history as influential in their work, preferring to focus the source for creativity within the person of the artist.  Some I have spoken with regard the Western tendency to describe their work via connections to previous artists and other cultural references as the “Trans-Atlantic Myth”, that Contemporary art is rooted somehow to the developments in Europe.  The focus on the individual, and the associated relationship to the experience of human and nature may be rooted in Asian cultures saturated with a history of practicing meditation.  Greater stress is placed on individual accomplishment that is gained through insight than through participation in an overarching historical myth.  The ultimate credit for creativity becomes decentralized, and belongs instead to the development of the individual.

In the current series of paintings, she works from the concept of a memory box.  “People have a box within that contains all of their memories, good and bad.”  When she opens her own box, she sees a lot of water.  Ocean water, and in the ocean, she sees life and death.  She had crossed the Pacific Ocean to arrive at herself; where she now lives in Long Beach, she goes down to the shore and “when looking deeply enough can see all the way back to Saigon.  The ocean is a powerful reflection of life, moving up and down, it is unpredictable, sometimes tranquil and sometimes violent.”  It is a duality that has parallels in her own life, and the way she experiences it.  When she looks in the box, she sees the water and it transports her to its changing nature.  Because of her experience with everything that culminated with the escape, it’s important for her to record her feelings as art, to record all that life and death she came face to face with.  “It gives me a way to connect to my people across the ocean, and to communicate with Americans as well.  This is not about something like sunrise and sunset.  I want to show the dramatic and intense parts in the flow of life.”

Her daily routine begins as a response to the world.  She reads newspapers, listens to the news, and contemplates what she runs across, processing the language.  During her long drives to work, she finds the process leads to the formation of images.  In her visions she gets blurry images of color that are well formed enough to dictate the size and format of a work.  When she sits down to paint, the images that appeared to her are then changed by her actions, and she “accepts the challenge.  The image, colors and brushstrokes have to flow together, yet the initial energy and intention as it appeared to me is still there.”

I asked her why she creates so much texture rising off the canvas surface.  “My life is not smooth, so my painting isn’t either.”  She loves sculpture but doesn’t have the room to do it in, and she also loves texture.  It makes the work tactile, and people want to touch the paintings.  She says, “They should go ahead, I use acrylics for their plasticity and strength, and they’re plenty strong for feeling with your hands.”

The paintings are built up in layers, often over a period of several months.  She loves the acrylics for the speed in which they dry and its glue-like properties, and the way they allow her to work quickly and in bursts.  She builds by responding to specific areas of the paintings.  “Paintings are like being in a relationship with a human, getting to know them is different each time.  Sometimes you know them right away, sometimes it takes forever to get to know your partner.  As long as the partner is still in the house, you can still change them.  And of course we’re artists, we can change our mind too!”

Art has delivered to Phong a sense of self-confidence.  She says it helps her realize the worth of her life on this earth.  She experiences powerful moods that rise and fall, and it helps her to calm down when she puts it on canvas. “If we take the whole packet of ups and downs, we see more of life.”  Beyond herself, she can use art to get over the language barriers and communicate across cultures.  She tells a story of how touched she felt when a painting she had in Paris sold to a man who lived in South Africa, and only later did he ask for her name and to find out about her.  He didn’t know a thing about the artist, he just loved the piece, and that was a true victory for the power of visual communication across borders.

There are meanings behind what she does, but in the work she gives only hints.  The person who views the work can add themselves in, and experience them in different ways.  “A painting is like a house with many doors and windows.  All allow one to look out, but none of them have the same view.”  She takes the experience of the viewer into consideration, and adds that an artist has a certain responsibility to the viewer, in that the artwork is a part of the artist.  “It’s their identity, and we’re responsible for how we treat others in the world.”

As a teacher, she talks about how much it takes for an artist to mature.  “Money plays a strong role in all of this, it means a lot to young people and this is often their main concern for what seems like too long a time.  It takes time to calm down from the preoccupation with money and prestige, and too often by the time they mature they look back and haven’t really done anything, and lose everything they’ve wished for.  You know what you are getting into, and you have to make sacrifices.  You have to sacrifice the parties, the nice cars, the good place to live – you have to wait for these things.”

The rejection of prestige comes naturally for an artist with her background.  Foremost, for a survivor priorities shift significantly away from the mainstream, with great emphasis placed on the experience and appreciation of daily life.  This can evolve to the point of a sense of freedom that makes other social values seem remote and irrelevant.  Add to this a cultural viewpoint where success and maturity are much the same thing and priorities rooted in the individual are reinforced.  People from all backgrounds are very familiar with the phenomenon when an artist breaks through the preoccupation of the world and begins to deliver work that is more integrated with their being.  Retrospective shows are a great place to see this breakthrough in maturity visually, and for many educators this is the real goal.  Viewed from the context of a culture that views insight as the source of this maturity, it is quite natural to dismiss financial success and prestige as secondary.

This viewpoint on maturity is at decided conflict with the broadening culture of Globalism.  She notes that teens, especially the children of Vietnamese refugees, go through an identity crisis.  In her generation few pursued fine arts, and their kids follow in their footsteps.  Or the parents are so concerned with making money they forget to spend the time teaching traditions or getting to know the new culture their kids are experiencing.  Most of their children compromise and study graphic arts to satisfy the expectations of earning a living.  She advises her students to pursue their dreams despite all this, and that education is not enough, it only trains them to analyze.  To be an artist you have to go all the way.  Passion is not enough – you need a strong sense of commitment.  “We artists know it is a tough road to walk, that is rocky and may take a long time.  But we do it because we have a passion for it.”

We discussed the idea of what benefit having a cabin in the woods immediately after art school would provide.  She lit up, explaining that as a teacher she must view everything from the student’s point of view, which includes considering what it means to have no money.  “Right out of school, there is a big hole right in front of the students that they are about to fall into.  Also their minds have been filled with so many styles in art history, that they need time to cool and collect themselves without worrying about money and deadlines, at least for a while,” and the idea of private time within nature seems like a fitting way to make the transition.  “Having talent is good, but you need to connect to people too.  If you have an unpleasant personality no one is going to help you.”  She adds that spending time with yourself, and with nature, are ways to develop your personality in connection with creativity.  “In the face of nature, the concerns for comparison to others wash away, you ask yourself, ‘What do I do for myself?’  You have to balance life so you can keep up the enthusiasm in the short time you have left to create after you have handled the concerns of earning money and giving to your family.”

She also stresses the importance of support that exists for the creative community.  “Artists are strongly influenced by the writing of art critics, both personally and practically.  The words of critics shape opportunities, and often influence the decisions of collectors and people who look at art – it’s something we can’t ignore.  More people need to write about art if anything to broaden the number of points of view.  People shouldn’t worry about there being too much art or writing out there, or the increase of information that the computer has brought.  More art means the people who are looking are raised up a level.  When someone unfamiliar with art walks into a museum for the first time, they love the first things they see because they are easily impressed.  The more you see, the more you are invested, and the more you ask, ‘what’s next?’ You learn to discern, you become excited when you start finding the gems and that is your reward for your won effort.”

“The more you look, the more you start noticing trends in Contemporary art, and the next thing you know you start getting tired of seeing them, you begin to recognize what is just a trend to follow the money, and notice that the gems are artists working against the flow.”  That’s when you make the connection between the struggle to pursue passion, the challenge to work within yourself to forget the shadow of history and find your own voice, and the action of making work regardless of making profit.  That’s the moment when you make the connection between art and swimming against the stream, and really see the whole picture of art.

 

Artist Website:  annphongart.com

Simon Rahimian

March 10, 2012 Uncategorized
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When one meets the artist they are first struck by the poise and genteel manner with which he carries himself.  It seems an extraordinary counter balance to the energy and vivacity of his painting, and serves as an example of the way artwork can reveal dimensions of an individual that may not necessarily be communicated in the brief and open air of a dialogue.  Standing beside his own work, we are provided with contrast by which to develop a deeper familiarity with an individual.  One can shape manners, or be selective about their clothing and possessions, but such encounters leave me wanting the opportunity to perceive everyone I meet standing beside the mature development of their artistic expression.  This would seem much firmer than a handshake.

I asked Rahimian how he was introduced to creativity during his childhood.  He explained that as a boy purchasing toys was considered a luxury.  Instead, he would watch his mother, who was engaged in all kinds of handcrafts, make toys for him out of various materials.  This planted the seed of creativity in his mind, participating with the object of play by watching them being invented, resourcefully, and further made by loving hands with him expressly in mind.  Later, his mother encouraged the process by introducing him to tools and materials that furthered the connection between joy and creation, such as weaving a kilim (a small carpet) and making wooden toys for himself.  At the same time, as his connection to the making of things grew, he was surrounded by the influence of his father’s work, an antiquarian, that exposed him to prehistoric Persian art and the context of culture and creativity.

He cannot trace any point where he developed a conscious intention to become an artist.  Instead, he reflects to having a feeling throughout his childhood that he was different.  He experienced a lack of validation for his emotions and desires.  This effect was pronounced by the culture at the time, where a child’s opinions did not matter and were not taken seriously.  Finding himself unable to be heard led to feelings of anger, and ultimately pushed him to find a different way to express himself.  This came less from a need to be heard per se, but rather a way to sort out his own feelings on his own terms.

At ten years old his uncle gave him a camera, an AGFA Click, and through the device he started seeing the world through a ‘different lens’.  He had never used a camera before, but quickly took to it and started seeing his surrounding with a different eye.  The behavior of light, the introduction of a frame, and the element of time are all things that such a device can introduce.  He would look to the clouds and tirelessly watch their changes, expanding his awareness and forming notions of the broadness of possibility within his mind.  Within a few years he had conducted his first oil paintings.

From there, the thread of painting has been steady and continuous.   He grew familiar with a personal feeling , one that urged him on to express and share it with others.  As certain feelings cannot be verbally expressed, visual arts is his method to communicate them.  At the same time, in the process of painting he gains insight about himself, and has observed the conscious rise of an awareness of these particular, wordless feelings that could not be developed in any other way.

It has led him to develop the sense of  a role and belonging in society at the same time.  Rahimian finds that the artist is a part of the overall system of things, and that art through different modalities reflects the changes as they occur in society.  But he is not limited to mere reflection of change – the artist also causes these changes by the simple existence of his unconventional mind.

In addition to his practice as a painter, he is actively involved encouraging others and engaging in intellectual interaction with a group based in Los Angeles, the Iranian Visual Artists.  It was formed in 1998 to provide opportunity, exchange ideas and information, and create a critical environment in which to present their works.  They also produce art shows for the public.  Through the group he has been able to arrange a number of shows, as well as talks and presentations, and welcome anyone curious about Iranian art.

I asked him about the relationship of his heritage and being an artist.  He explained that he could not deny the influence of his culture in the shaping of his mind.  At the same time, even as a teenager he would pay close attention to the symbols of common traditions in the world, and later still he discovered that they were imposed on the people by dominant religions.  He discovered, through observation as an artist, that there were many contradictory points of view that govern cultures, and he found it increasingly difficult to comply with them.  Ultimately this led to his having an open mind, and the ability to look beyond traditions, common culture, and set boundaries.

He believes that everything one sees holds a meaning of some kind.  Based on visual perception, and the level of development of this perception, people can connect to and relate a personal understanding of the meanings of every subject.  Even a plain white canvas has a meaning, but this meaning differs between people as its basis is in their visual experiences and their knowledge.  Essentially, the more one sees, and the more one knows, the more one is able to understand their relationship to what they observe.

When he paints, he pours different colors on a white canvas that are based on his feelings at the time.  Once on the canvas, he plays with the paint to raise a texture.  He uses this emotive texture as the background of his painting.  As he works the colors and their accidental intermixture leads him through a chain of new ideas  He finalizes them with a structure that encompasses the ideas that arose in the process, working on composition and the aesthetic to complete their presentation.

Rahimian has no expectations whatsoever that his audience will see in his paintings the things which clearly present themselves to him as he creates them.  What they see will depend tremendously on their cultural background, the differences are unavoidable.  Nevertheless, if he has created a suitably compelling work, something true to his own work in visual perception and knowledge, their minds will be challenged by the unfamiliarity of the paintings, and this strange challenge is ultimately their ‘feeling’ his world.

Phil Kho

February 27, 2012 Uncategorized
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Phil Jung Kho makes art as an instrument of free education for the public.  Teaching has played a central role in his life and profession, with over 30 years at university in Seoul, the Art Center in Pasadena, and the Pratt Institute.  His professional discipline centered around environmental design, an arena he entered for its holistic principles.  Early on as a student he felt that the combination of technology and design would be a way of improving the world and the lives of people everywhere.  Devoting himself to teaching, he came to develop a profound appreciation for the universal principles inherent in design as well.   This seemed to make perfect sense in combination with the aim of creating living and working spaces that made the most of resources and nature to serve the well being of the people that occupied them.  Towards the end of his teaching career, the artist reflected that a human life allowed him about 100 years to do everything he hoped to accomplish, and he chose to move into Contemporary Art to accelerate his goals for helping humanity.  In evaluating how he could best use his experience to serve others, in order to translate his actions and devotion into making art to serve as a gift.

California

Interviewing the artist, a highly affable and friendly man, I noticed he had a habit of predicating his sentences with the phrase, “So, also, basically…” which verbally is perfectly fitting as an introduction to the structure of his work.  In Korean traditional architecture, there is a ratio of measurement employed in the lattice of doors and windows called chang-san, the word for a 2×2 square. It is his idea of a perfect measure, similar in concept to the work of Richard Meier in the design of the Getty Museum, who worked with a ratio of 30×30.  He uses this basis as a symbol of the small components that make up a larger picture or system, and represent the individual element of the grid, which in environmental design is the most effective way of saving time and energy.  By saving energy, the grid is ultimately the way to save nature and the future.

Conceptually, the 2×2 represents the importance of the individual part in making the whole. The individual chang-san that comprise the grids are like pollen; the idea is to spread the pollen on the wind, and so spread global harmony as expressed through universal design elements.  The symbol of pollen describes the idea of his art as gift-giving, and he makes numerous 2” square paintings to give away as gifts to visitors of his exhibitions.

Gift giving is important to Kho.  He appreciates the US for the better life that residing here has provided for his family, and wants to donate his works to nonprofits to extend this gratitude.  Gift giving was something important in his family, taught by his father who was a doctor.  During the difficult economic times of his childhood, his father would treat people in their community regardless of their ability to pay.

The squares and grids are immediately apparent as a central feature of the paintings in his recent exhibition.  In each piece they are explored and employed in different ways.  In one piece the squares are made of paper with small circular pop-outs.  He explains they are peep-holes, from a distance they are points, while up close they are each opportunities to look closer, and through.  Other grids have small glittering points, representing eyes looking back out at the viewer in turn – the grid is interactive in its nature.  Some chang-san are written characters and letters, representing nature in harmony with human effort.  Everywhere one looks in his work, intentional symbol and meaning is incorporated.  One piece, California, is composed of the characters that come from a computer typographic font of symbols, revealing his love of code.  His work is a coded message to the world, presented with artful attention to make it beautiful, purposeful and meaningful at once.  Warm stripes of color at opposing angles represent sunrise and sunset.  Doors and hinges add to suggestions of activity, passage, and the approach and departure of distances.

Every show, Kho strives to bring about a different, significant shift in development.  In the series prior to the chang-san, his work has a more painterly and organic quality, with circles and points, seeds and pollen, abstracted symbols, musical notes and plant-like efflorescence.  In some of them, small sections of grid seem to approach from the background, predicting the arrival of the current series.  The earlier work reflected his investigation into nature, and the way we experience it.  He learned from the practice that abstract techniques are a response to the natural world.  From there, he wished to incorporate our manmade environments, especially technology, and show how they interact with nature.

The chang-san series shows his search for the development of his ideas piece by piece.  With some, keyholes and eyes looking out suggest nature beneath every component at work.  In another work, the waveforms of nature undulate beneath the geometric surface of his grid.  In another, the grid has split in two and is peeling back like curtains, a doorway exposing the natural abstraction of his previous work describing the raw natural world.  His point throughout, and the reason he wishes to be called the “Two-Inch Artist”, is that a lot of communication can be fit into the smallest elements, like a 2×2 square.  Looking at their interaction now that order is defined by design principle, small adjustments, organic behaviors and randomness show the way nature reveals itself again and again, not just beneath – but in the way they influence the whole of the ordered pattern.  They show that through all human activity, nature reveals itself in our every action, and like it or not our every action becomes a part of the whole.  His next series was hinted at by a piece that raises the grid to 3 dimensions, less orderly as a surface yet still composed of orderly chang-san.  He explains it as the grid “tossed from a bucket” and so begins his study of the influence of chaos in nature.

We discussed a little about the history of art, and the role of Korean culture in art today.  He felt that three broad cultures each have made a contribution in contemporary art – that Europe provides the history and background, America introduced concept, and Asia provides for a focus on technique.   In the case of Korea, the country is responding to its experience with war in the 20th century, and as a whole the culture has created an environment where the youth feel encouraged to enter in the arts and participate.  This is combining with the effects of technology and global culture, which are exposing them at the same time to a focus on competition.  At the moment Europe, where this global culture got its start, is sleeping, while Asia is just awakening as a center for the future of society.

Personally, the artist does not feel his identity as a Korean is important – he is interested in expressing the big picture.  He feels the materialism of today is short-term, because it is not a strong force.  The stronger force is already inherent in the natural world, well told in the life cycle of the plant – to seed, grow, fruit and spoil.  This cycle lies beneath everything, while materialism is simply something that floats like a grid on its surface.  In this way they are superimposed on the truly strong forces, which are more like the air and water.  A truly aware and far-reaching use of energy and design is one that is connected, transparent and cohesive to these stronger forces.

Next series...

Fortunately, in Kho’s experience, there are so many artists, each one a chance to reveal this relationship; chang-san to the grid, the part to the whole.  He says that whenever the artist transcends being self-centered, the results naturally inform people who see the art, positively, and the act of creating this kind of art teaches the artist directly as well.  It is the way of nature, and he sees this growth extended into the development and popular use of technology as well.  It may be that we will live on the moon next generation – who knows?  But besides these lofty material goals, technology allows individuals to contribute, one pollen-seed at a time, to new grids and ways of designing our lives and cultural environments around our needs and our relationships to nature.

From a lifetime of working across disciplines in these areas, and teaching the timeless elements of design, he predicts that things will return to simplicity and harmony for human life.  His way of sharing this prediction is visual, through the act of gift-giving, scattering the small seeds of the universal harmony latent in the square, one piece of art at a time.

Jung Ji Lee

February 11, 2012 Uncategorized
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Jung Ji Lee is an artist who lived as a Korean in Japan, where he became keenly aware of the social differences that have informed his work.

M.S.M. Series

Lee invented a character to serve as a self-portrait, a personal avatar and invented archetype with its basis in Japanese mythology. The character is named Konodamazo, and draws on what the artist describes as an egolessness that arose in the post-war era. There are correlations to folk art and Primitivism in this practice, and indeed feudal era Japan presented the world with an extensive history of woodblock prints called ukiyo-e, which were collected into magazines called manga, a term that is well known to this day. The exclusivity and high cost of contemporary art led to the growth of a separate creative movement for younger generations in Japan, leading to the widespread development of a distinct graphic approach that they could relate to. This approach is found in manga – which has come to mean comic book art, anime – cartoon animation, and figurine sculpting. The distinctive graphical style serves both children’s and adult levels of subject matter. It shows cultural playfulness and decorative desire, forming a cultural gathering point among the otaku – a borrowed word meaning a fanatic of Japanese animation anywhere in the world, which describes the global popularity it has gained among the current generation.

Manga is also connected to a conceptual statement known as Superflat, which was introduced to the international art world by Takashi Murakami. Superflat is a post-modern art movement that describes a method of combining pop culture, fine art and graphic art by ‘flattening’ them into comic-book representations, a vehicle to express conceptual ideas while at the same time serving as a commentary on the ‘shallow emptiness of Japanese consumer culture.’ Lee explains that after rigorous academic training, the work of Murakami created a sense of permission to work with his invented character, work that is more comfortable for him and fuels his prolific productivity. He does not subscribe exactly to the theory that Murakami puts forth, but definitely took inspiration from the use of a character as a valid pursuit.

He loosely references the adaptability of Superflat imagery to superimpose all manner of ideas by flattening his concepts into a personified character, and does this to encourage the audience – especially minorities – to view their role in the world positively. Using this character as a way to cope with experiences of racial discrimination and cultural duality, the artist works with this alternate personification in a way entirely relevant to modern culture. In an era of global digital communication, the opportunity to reach beyond one’s immediate setting and invent an alternate identity to present to others has become very popular, and this approach relates to the daily lives of millions of people. Lee describes the act of seeking identity in the surrogate image eventually leading to an increasing personal interest in the world at large. From this discovery an ability to reconnect and communicate with others developed, along with the ability to accept opposites in the same space.

Primary in his practice is letting the character Konodamazo go as far as he wants to go. Recently Lee has been making small sculptures and photography using various materials, such as eggs and snow. This traces back to an original reference for the character, Humpty Dumpty from Alice in Wonderland. The character is easy to break, and fragile. It has an ephemeral quality, and serves the artist’s purpose in projecting himself into the role of the character, and developing a relational connection to his audience. People tend to forget that most things are ephemeral, indeed most human connections are as well. He wants people to appreciate how special every opportunity for communication is, and call attention our interactions, that the moment will pass. Meeting the character is essentially meeting the artist in his most vulnerable and receptive state.

Viewing his work one is confronted with a flurry of paint, drawings, marks and symbols, interspersed among them his avatar invention. It brings to mind the practice of automatic drawings, and their connection to abstraction. He explained that the appearance is abstract from a distance, but the details and interest become clearer as you grow closer. This is a direct metaphor to the importance of human communication. He does work consciously with compositions and color combinations, a direct result of his education at in Chicago. This perception shift on approach also refers to the combination of subconscious and conscious that he finds in the work of Jackson Pollack or Wassily Kandinsky. He wants to emphasize a feeling of created spirit, and like these artists he twists the canvas, freeing the image from a horizon line. He tries to create zero gravity, like some of Robert Rauschenberg’s work; Rauschenberg identified a correct way to hang the pieces, yet invited his collectors to twist them each month. For the viewer using the artwork in this way, there is an increased drive to figure out what differences lay between their perception and his own.

I asked how catharsis through the character Konodomazo has worked for him. He reiterates the comfort factor, perhaps linked to his continued use of it as he develops. Like many artists, he doesn’t relish being center stage in front of people, especially when it comes to public speaking. But to express himself as an artist, he must step in front of them somehow, and this easily explains the longevity of the character. In working this way he has also developed a strong conceptual observation of third person perspective, and also the curious relationship of having a projected first person view at the same time. He can watch reactions of himself from behind, and can address viewer from in front and behind the scenes simultaneously. He specifically remembers when this struck home, eavesdropping on a husband-wife couple that spent 20-30 minutes in front of his work, describing and pointing at details. Standing behind them, he was able to experience being able to talk with them at length, something he could not have done at the time ‘in person’.

R. Seitz

Artist’s website:  Konodamazo.com

John Rosewall

January 19, 2012 Uncategorized
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John Rosewall Portrait

It was a privilege to engage John Rosewall in a conversation about his art and inspirations.  The story behind his work begins with applied intelligence, concern for process and a multi-disciplinary approach to creativity, and ultimately arrives at an appreciation of personal freedom.

Rosewall’s work is immediately inspired by the explorations of early modern photographers.  The product of technical process, experiment and chance, it explores the relationship between manipulation and accident.  In particular through the Surrealists’ work with photographic methods, of Raoul Ubac and Man Ray, he explores the discovery of the photogram and solarization, processes that were likely arrived upon by accident.  His work is anchored in the legacy of experimental film usage, and then incorporated into pioneering digital methods for extending the process into new, modern frontiers.

Though he chose to pursue writing and is currently a professor of English, he took to photography as a kid.  When he approached it again as an adult for a creative activity, he gravitated towards taking 1950’s style street photographs.  That this took place anachronistically in 1998 was not lost on him, however contemporary photography for the most part left him cold, and he was more drawn to the work of the ‘30s to the ‘60s, such as that of Robert Frank, the documenter of the Beat generation known for his unusual focus and crop techniques.

John Rosewall Untitled

Ultimately, his interest in process and formal qualities developed into a highly abstract studio approach.  He works at home, where the creative workflow is integrated into daily life.  The method in its current form involves focused periods where he can shoot 20-30 useful negatives in the space of a few days, which provide for months of creative development.  The series he exhibited at LA Artcore in January began with plastic sheeting, which he cuts, folds, and crumbles into useable subjects.  Using large format 4×5 film, he shoots under various lighting arrangements, usually of two colors.  Then he scans the negatives, and the process is ported into Photoshop becoming digital media.  One of the primary approaches is to use tonal controls in an extreme way, inducing dramatic shifts in the image composition.  The artist has a specific experimental timeline that has lead to its current form, the third version of the current project, which began a few years ago by investigating reflected light.

Though chance was one of the first descriptions Rosewall came up with, over the course of our conversation he offered that perhaps it is less a matter of chance, and more the result of arbitrary decision making.  The first phase of the project was concerned with producing disembodied color and light.  The second phase involved the discovery of textures that started coming through this work.  Pulling back, the color and light began to take on textural qualities, looking something like aerial topographic photos.  In this way, through an arbitrary and visual process, he discovered between the outcomes and his internal participation the recognition of a resemblance to nature.  As he started seeing this relationship, he found it amusing after such a directed effort to divorce light and color from its natural appearance, processed through several stages of intentional ambiguity, to arrive again at an intersection with the natural semblance.  He started recognizing in the color palette he gravitated towards reflections in green and browns of his garden and the outdoor places he enjoys.  It brings to mind the work of Gerhard Richter, whose unconscious improvisations of color left him to describe the discovery of accidental vision, and the way images of the naturally occurring world will creep back into attempts to dissolve them through art.

John Rosewall Untitled

Rosewall notes that there is something connecting what he finds beautiful and encourages up from the abstracted, something that ties the random to an ordering participation in the observer.  From the intentional mess arises an unintentional, natural beauty.  He quotes Heraclitus, “The fairest cosmos is as a rubbish heap piled up haphazardly.”  He finds it amusing that we readily describe a garden or a person as beautiful, but strangely it’s not typically an accepted term with art.  Perhaps this is an appropriate, perverse invitation to something else.  In his usage, beauty is a word belonging to the visual language.  He’s intrigued with the elements that make something interesting, so deriving or observing balance out of chaos may be a movement towards beauty in a sense.

Speaking about this relationship between abstract and natural through the artistic process led to a few questions about the context and role of creativity in life and community.

When asked how it is possible to measure the improvements artistic creativity brings to community life, he found an immediate correlation in an exercise he gives his freshman English students.  He selects five artists that they may be able to engage with, and asks the students to form groups and choose one in order to come up with a theme that can identify that artist’s work.  He notices that with just a slight push they easily engage the art, and begin to share their ideas among themselves.  None are art majors, and don’t necessarily care about art, but their interest is nonetheless captured.  A community is formed through communicating, and ultimately some thematic agreement about the art is mutually arrived at as a group.

John Rosewall Untitled

Does this create a responsibility for the artist towards society?  Rosewall feels that creatively, there is a responsibility towards the work itself.  While he accepts Kitsch as a voice of the creative, he references Clement Greenberg’s famous essay that distinguishes Kitsch from Avant-Garde, in that art should be fairly serious  At the same time he embraces the other inference of the essay as it criticized Academic art as having become indistinguishable from Kitsch.  This was taken up as a standard by the Abstract Expressionists, that working in the abstract is one way to go about art with greater sincerity and responsibility.

So far as the Avant-Garde premise that art possesses an ability to predict, Rosewall reflects that the Post-Modern seems to lose faith in that ability, reflecting a loss of faith in a grand narrative.  He mentions the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who was driven by a more existential view that anyone could reinvent themselves, and by extension any place could be reorganized, ‘cleaned’ with strong modern design of the specters of social revolutionary thinking.  If anything, and there are many artforms to consider, he sees a contemporary search for a new form, something to build on the language that came before.  Perhaps it is as simple as a way to transcend advertising vs. utopia.  In any case he doesn’t see a lot of statement going on with the top levels of art; it seems oriented towards the production of product, with no trace of anticipation at all.

Ultimately, he feels that it is more important to focus on another perspective – that perhaps art has no agency whatsoever.  It’s easy to get trapped by concerns for purpose, and hard to justify that art can accomplish set purposes.  The process of creating art is also its own realm of creativity, a visual practice.  When he sees work with a complicated written statement, he wonders to himself, why not just write it down?  Writing is its own creative language, while art seems to say the most when it involves the least rational discourse.

John Rosewall Untitled

For Rosewall, who uses it as a central part of his process, technology is a double-edged sword, and it relates in some respect to questions of creativity and impact on culture.  He observes that it leads to gaps in memory, and has contributed to an anti-creative, anti-intellectual culture.  He notes that Shakespeare is for most limited to a vague high-school memory.  He tells the story of being caught indoors while traveling one spring break, and using the time to watch many new movies.  Given his tastes, they were acclaimed and artful works popular among creative people at the time.  When he told his students about them, not one was familiar to them, they had not even heard about the movies he had watched even though they were new releases.  Their knowledge was limited to blockbusters, as technology has largely multiplied the imprints of an increasingly limited store of paid messages, drowning out the increasing store of flourishing creativity that is never introduced to them. Technology brings abundance for the artist in one respect, increasing accessibility such as making portfolios shareable instantly, and being able to bypass the traditional gallery gatekeepers by going directly to the public.  At the same time, it’s easy for everyone to get lost in the massive cloud of art that’s out there.

We discussed modern culture, punk rock, and the issues raised in early contemporary art.  Touching upon the work that is currently widely on display in the city with Pacific Standard Time, he commented that Los Angeles works ranging from the ‘50s to the ‘70s  had a peculiar advantage: the artists assumed they were going to be ignored.  You could do anything you wanted to with that condition.  That’s freeing, which leads to the ability to engage with experimentation.  As far as higher purpose goes, it’s not clear that art can do anything, but considering how one values the doing of things simply for pleasure you can arrive at something which for the artist is highly important.  Perhaps, he muses, the true purpose of art is to have no purpose, something that he finds to be a distinguishing feature of humans.   This paradox of being closely involved with something of no purpose is something special.  Humans have an engrossing tendency to build our lives around points and purposes.  Art can reveal a paradox, something additional, and outside the everyday world.  Something freeing, but just as natural as any purposeful tendency, underlining the artist’s enjoyment of the fact that an art that has no purpose is a kind of freedom in itself.

Artist’s Website: http://johnrosewall.com/home.html

Artist’s Blog: http://johnrosewall.blogspot.com/

R. Seitz

Barbara Mindell

January 15, 2012 Uncategorized
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“I dig deep in my art, down into the numbness and pain to where the movement calls.  I respond.  I find that I am lost, and I paint to find my way through.  My paintings are like maps, giving me insights into navigating the terrain of my life.”

Moving into Form

LA Artcore remembers artist Barbara Mindell, an inspiration for many people, and an exemplar for employing art to reconcile and endure.  Many aspects of her work serve to celebrate life’s mystery, and in the context of her life help others discover a connection to their own lives.  Her paintings are deeply intertwined with a concern for healing, in her case a healing of the spirit, an assertion of life’s vitality by transforming the intractable into the fluid.  By using painting she explored the dynamic within human existence and her own situation, a physical trauma which resulted in paralysis and required the use of a wheelchair.  She created a legacy that points the way towards fully inhabiting our own bodies, our mental environments and our creative capacity.

Tomb

Mindell’s paintings are a blend of abstraction and figure, using color, position, and form to describe the constant shift of volition.  The artist found that the movements between form and formlessness correlated to the conscious and unconscious, body and mind, or foreground and background.  Her work was fully integrated with her essential pursuits: seeking to understand implicit response and interconnectedness, and of widening her own perception and expanding personal evolution.  The paintings are volatile and peaceful, capturing transformation with energetic brushstrokes and alternating light and dark.  The figures move from spectral to occupying the center of an intimate stage.

Nerve    Spine

“My large abstract paintings reflect inner biological landscapes of the soul.  I work with the suggestion of images of the interior of the body – bones, nerves, blood, tissues and cells – placing them in a wider context of their oceanic existence, where they can become something else.”They remain a powerful insight into the personal transformation of the artist’s perspective, and record not only her own process, but the devotion with which she served others as a teacher of Continuum Movement, a holistic body and spirit renewal program.  She found painting was a way to escape the feeling of being condemned: by translating herself into color and image, she could soften the sense of imprisonment she experienced.  We all have much to learn from the insights of such artists, who can manifest most vividly the internal condition as a full spectrum of human response and life, regardless of exterior situation.  In a miraculous display of transference, the experience of the body is extended to the canvas itself.   Mark Strickland, a close friend, writes in a catalog published for the exhibition: “Abstract expression starts from not knowing what you’re seeing.  You look, you listen, and you respond by touching the painting where it needs to be touched.  You develop a very sensual relationship with the painting, as if it is a living thing.”

Monologue

Individuals close to the artist describe watching her healing process unfold in her paintings, and can mark the moment when the painter let go of a more locked experience in relating to her body, causing the figures and forms in her paintings to lift off, to float and encompass an integral independence in themselves…

RLS

William Dean Sarno

January 15, 2012 Uncategorized
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William Dean Sarno is a sculptor who always knew a few basic things about his life, and works with a strong ethic that comes from knowing sure-footed direction.  He always knew that he wanted to travel, and likewise knew as young man visiting the Art Institute of Chicago that he wanted to make art.  Using the GI Bill to attend art school, he found decisive steps towards a clear interest took shape quickly.  Studying art became all consuming, and he mentions that starting later than other students may have had something to do with the intense level of activity that described the start of his career.  In addition to his studies, the young artist captained a fabrication workshop which quickly took shape, and with numerous employees his sculpture and portraiture talents found a matching demand for museum installations and anthropological exhibits.  The real-life work relationship set many precedents, as did the abrupt change of lifestyle that followed the drying up of arts grants during the Clinton administration.   Faced with a major transition in life and fatherhood, he found a versatile work environment full of adequate movement with the LA Times Classifieds department, until that opportunity also closed up and left the artist looking for a new adventure.  He chose, true to his energetic character, to embrace an intense and wildly different existence as an organic farmer in Tennessee.

Beginning a description of the viewpoint that informs Sarno’s work is well illustrated by these major life shifts in his livelihood, and becomes circumplex when the importance discovery plays for his work is described.  He feels that art is entirely about doing something fun, the sort of fun that in practice may be something like a journal, but in experience can give rise to godlike feelings of creation.  He recalls being initially concerned whether he would inherit that gift which was already understood in his family to be paramount to life’s enjoyment.  His grandmother played seven instruments, was a pianist for Dean Martin, and it came as a matter of grave concern when it appeared that the young Sarno did not have a lick of musical ability in him.  He knew differently, and found his match easily enough in the visual arts.  As though confirming the lineage with music was but one manifestation of possibilities, that flavor of polymathic ability simply skipped a few generations as he sees the musical ability resurface in his son Nolan.  He found this common thread when he discovered the young man plucking around the fret-board of a guitar.  Asking what he was doing, why he was not trying to play a song, he was informed his son was ‘looking for sounds’.  In this there is a real commonalty with making sculpture, looking for the notes that will make up a song.

The artist has found through his travels an interest in how people regard art, the way it sometimes defies the ability to easily relate.  He cites the experimental verification of this in the works of Bauhaus, particularly Josef Albers, noting the way relation can be informed by familiarity with the subject’s material application.  He tells a story about the workers who installed the sculpture Split Button by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in Philadelphia.  How does an individual who is not versed in the dialogue of art approach such a work?  For one thing, he replies, the viewer approaches the work on the terms of his own knowledge about how objects in the world are made.  A workman installing the object surveyed the situation and pronounced to the artists, “I can fix that for you, you know.  I’ve got a welder.”

Most people who are not involved with art will tell you that they know what they like, and just as freely admit they don’t know anything about art.  And it’s hard to translate how personal everyone’s knowledge can be involved in the piece, just one more reason to appreciate what art does for the public at large.  What people see in art is often the leftovers of how their own knowledge frames the encounter, and this is how art indirectly exposes ourselves to our own, differing frameworks.  This can be truly interesting for people who have worked with various materials, and can include a perspective on fabrication.  He often reflects on an artwork in the light of work’s interplay with a final sculpture.  Depending on what one knows – woodwork, anatomy, metal, systems – one notices and can appreciate different aspects of a work.  In the end, after experiencing a widening array of places and materials, the lesson becomes plain that one should not close their mind to the possibilities of doing and seeing.  Just one work can unfold countless new experiences for different people.

One can even see the coalition between work and levels of understanding by getting into the wildly different yet epic painterly approaches of Mark Rothko or J. M. W. Turner.  There is a degree of workmanship in evidence even with the laying of color, and for someone that has known a material relationship to work, there is in evidence some display of the artist’s life story, what they went through to arrive at what the viewer sees.  Sarno feels that you often have to actually engage a technique to really get into a show.  This is a fascinating anecdote about art that can be quickly shared in description, but is powerfully challenging to achieve without rolling up the sleeves and making the difficult crossing between encounter and being so involved one can really see the story.  He mentions this challenge, related over time in the Arthurian myths and rekindled in W. Somerset Maugham’s book, the Razor’s Edge: “The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard.”

The artist has drawn much of his creative vitality from having always been able to pick up and leave.  This attitude is reflected in the way he has lived his life, the way he has approached gathering work experiences, and how he approaches the inner movements of his creativity.  Once life faces him with reaching a concretized point of being afraid to move, he moves right away to diffuse the obstacle and the potentially toxic experience of ennui.  There is a subtle and encouraging connection between getting lost and being clear.  Even in the less literal sense, he finds that making art can directly lead to being experientially far from the activity at hand.  Working in a familiar way, undertaking the often repetitive tasks behind his sculpting techniques, art is far less a fixed point of directed awareness, rather it can be a comforting departure for mental wandering.  “When I’m sanding, not every part of me needs to be there.”
This separation of art and state of mind can overlap when activities are reversed, especially when he is actively creating, and he observes an interweaving of very distinct lines of thought in and out of the studio.  In the middle of going about life’s daily business, he may be suddenly be overwhelmed by the solidification of some creative seedling he had planted in the back of his mind.  In the studio his thought may be miles away from artistic concerns.  Inversely, the subconscious may deliver answers to creative questions in dramatic flashes while he is pushing a shopping cart around the grocery store, or feeding the chickens on his organic farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  It all serves to strongly illustrate the differences between levels of consciousness that make up his life.  Even with direct involvement in conception and fabrication, fully driven by intentional aims, he arrives at results he could not have previously known could exist.  New discoveries that arrive simply by working towards what he does know, sometimes appearing before him unexpectedly, the unknown just arising from himself after years of close-working familiarity.
Amidst the gradual process of building skills, embracing changes in perspective, and allowing his creativity to run its own level of background activity among the levels of his conscious mind, he recalls the moment where he questioned where and why things came out of the way he managed his work.  It seemed to him to be like running, a process in which his being is constantly involved with his environments, both within and without.  Totally embracing the work involved and the benefits that can seem spontaneous which hitch along for the ride, he turned his creative approach to farming in an analogous way.  Having resolved to take up farming, the most direct action was to approach a local farmer, and offer to work for free, in trade for gaining the skills, and getting his hands into the actual work of farming.  The farmer found this strange and didn’t expect much of it, but Sarno’s methodology translated into a year of having the most fastidious, detail oriented and uncomplaining farmhand a farmer could hope for.  The artist explains new ventures this way – “If you leave for somewhere else, what else can you really take with you (but your attention and your effort).”  Hard work is something of an inner challenge to the comforts of movement the traveling artist has embraced throughout his life.  “(Work is) jealous of other roads, other possibilities that may be easier than digging in to what you’ve committed to.  But it is the hard thing that will make you great.”

Odd and priceless qualities can be discovered by getting to know others, and art is one platform where these qualities surface.  He applies this consideration to his work creating portraits of people, feeling strongly that the artist should get to know something about the person they are portraying, to be able to put something actual into the work.  One thing that people can see when looking at your work, is a glance at what sort of language the artist has developed.  This language isn’t necessarily going to be found pleasant or even come close to being familiar, such as the reception faced by Georges Seurat, nor even suited to what is considered relevant and contemporary for the situation at hand.
The continual uncertainty, cultural shifts and sheer energy that moving around interjects into the thought process all keep creativity reassuringly alive for him.  He finds little that is sanctimonious about making art in itself, feeling that the fact of it is not a one-direction faucet that is strictly ranged between on and off.  It also includes a considered and rational level that is scientific, and even then he mixes up this methodology, as he does not have the patience for pure scientific method.  It comes down to personality, he confides.  There is no real why to it in the end, you enjoy it or you don’t.  When the time comes that you actually want to make the work, it is easy and natural.  He recalls being moved to tears by this lesson about joy and work by observing the fruition of music in his son, observing his look for the marks and shapes of his musical instrument, and seeing the continuation of his grandmother’s passion.
Sarno has found that there is also a pronounced release in finding joy within one’s creativity, something that proved so crucial for a man who has struggled with dyslexia and finding a way to fit into the world.  Art can reveal good qualities about people who are otherwise considered incapable.  This is especially true with kids and the arts, where there are no limits; society has yet to impose anything on them.  He would love to see the schools incorporate more doing, and less drilling, if anything to delay the creativity-interfering imposition of standards as long as possible.
Ultimately the sculptor wishes to relate that much good comes from letting these things, creativity and human bonding, become enriched by taking their own natural course and speed.  Allowing ideas to work unconsciously just as much as making work a consciously engaged adaptability to a situation.  He espouses movement and change to keep the world refreshed, so that it can provide opportunities to discover new things about yourself and others.  He finalizes this with an earthy example – in learning about land ecology as he produces food and livelihood from his farm, he found in the cycle of living and productive land that there are benefits from leaving dead leaves on the ground.  Left to themselves, they break down and nourish the soil, far better than scooping them up, setting them on fire, and sending the nutrients up and away as smoke in the air.

RLS
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