Newsletter, Dec 26, 2023
Studio notes: Music, news, disaster fiction, vinyl, CDs vs. streaming, sculpture, The Future, exhibition dates.
This month I started listening to music in the studio instead of news, disaster fiction, and politics podcasts. I dusted off an old subscription to Spotify, set the FM tuner to WFUV, and I haven’t really looked back. Music feeds emotional life – the subconscious, sex, love, joy, sentiment – and activates the mysterious parts of the brain that connect organically with the physical act of drawing and painting. By contrast, news keeps the consciousness near the surface – anger, outrage, frustration, helplessness.
Leaning into music, I went to see a couple shows, including a mesmerizing performance by Via Mardot at Sleepwalk in Bushwick. Via plays the theremin, an unusual instrument developed in the 1920s that introduced an early form of electronic music made decades before the more familiar Moog synthesizer arose. The theremin has antenna-like pieces that require only the proximity of the hands, without direct contact, to generate sound. Mardot’s performance consisted of slow hand movements above the small tabletop unit that produced keening, ethereal music. I should also mention that Sleepwalk is an enchanting club, like a secret hideaway, with low lighting, walls covered in rich damask fabrics, and rounded doorways painted with sparkly glitter, twinkling evocatively in the dim light. The intimate room behind a wooden door at the end of the long narrow bar is reserved for music and other performance projects. Am I on a set from Desperately Seeking Susan or Casablanca? Sleepwalk is hidden in plain sight right on Bushwick Avenue.
When I think of streaming music, I can’t help but think of old records and CDs – a physical manifestation of ephemeral emotional content, the same way that books and newspapers are arguably a material encapsulations of writers’ ideas. Dan Curland, my first husband, runs a venerated used record store called the Mystic Disc in Mystic, Connecticut. and naturally has a collection of rare, irreplaceable vinyl and CDs that used to sit in heavy crates around the house. Spotify is unquestionably a better way to maximize physical space, but, as Dan liked to say, compared to CDs the quality of streaming music SUCKS. It’s an interesting choice – space and convenience vs. sound quality and physical presence.
These days everything is available online, which is helpful now that we are all destined, at one time or another, to become climate refugees. Don’t forget to invest in some sandbags to keep the rising water out. I’ve been publishing Two Coats of Paint since 2007, and lately I’ve been wondering how much space it would have taken up if I had printed it out on paper and bound the pages in volumes. So, I googled “blog-to-book publishing” and found an outfit that has an online platform for importing the contents of blogs. All you have to do is type in the URL and, after processing for a while, the site spits out images of ersatz volumes. The company will organize it into a series of 300-page hardcover volumes for $119 per volume, plus shipping. The most recent year of Two Coats – December 2022 to midway through December 2023 – filled a six-volume set. According to my admittedly rough calculations, printing the entire 15-year project would be about 27,000 pages, printed and bound into 90 volumes. They’d make a great sculpture project (see the November newsletter for more on my interest in sculpture), but at a cost of more than $10,000, even the most basic version is out of my price range. If there are readers – art collectors, university libraries, grant funders, etc. – who want to help with the publishing costs, please shoot me an email. I would very much like to produce a full set and donate it to an art library or archive.
Until that day comes, Kenny Heyne, one of my talented former students from the UConn MFA program, is helping me research inexpensive alternatives – a spatial facsimile – to use in an upcoming solo show, yet to be named and announced. The details are still coming into focus, and I’ll keep you posted. We’re pulling together a catalogue that will be available sometime in March. Check out the studio website for images of some of the paintings completed 2023.
Thanks for reading the newsletter this month. Breaking my addiction to news podcasts and the pivot toward music may suggest that I’ve decided to ignore all the turmoil, tragedy, and despair in the world, but, no, I’m still as horrified as everyone else. And, given the overwhelming challenges ahead in 2024, wishing you a “happy new year” seems like a pathetic gesture. Happiness is beside the point. We artists must do the best we can to document and convey our personal experiences. If the work survives what looks to be coming down the pike, maybe future generations will thank us for it.
Ongoing show:
“Holiday,” LABspace, 2642 NY Route 23, Hillsdale, NY. Through February 11, 2024. Inquiries: julielabspace@gmail.com
Upcoming:
MFA Seminar, ART 5310 / Temporal Studies: Locating Your Studio Practice in a Contemporary Context, University of Connecticut, Dept of Art and Art History, Spring Semester, 2024 (teaching)
“La Banda 2024,” Tappeto Volante Projects, 126 13th Street, Brooklyn, NY. Opens January 18, 2024. Opening reception on January 30.
Solo show at a university gallery down south, opens at the end of February. Details to come.
