It’s dawned on me that I haven’t seen much art this summer, which is the nature of things in Albuquerque–I should be going to The Petting Zoo on Sunday (emphasis on should). Maybe I’m not interested or maybe there’s not much to see.
Now that I’m back from California and have settled in with our new guest artist at Working Classroom, Charo Oquet, I’ll finally be going to Santa Fe to see the biennial. I haven’t heard too much about it–other than the press–and I’m hopeful that it’s a good show.
If I need to use the restroom at my work, I need to go three doors down and ride the elevator up to the second floor to the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce.
I usually take the stairs when I come back. I’ve gotten in the habit of pushing the large steel door open as wide as I can and trying to make it down the full flight of steps, calmly, without running, before the door above me shuts. It has a sort of “I just activated a sinister plot” feeling to it.
I have a friend who once asked me if I thought any of the artists we knew had any idea what they actually did. “I think most of them,” he said, “have no idea that they’re actually doing something else.” And it’s strange that while soaking up the fog in California last week, I was struck by the possibility that everything I’ve been making in my studio might not be at the center of my art practice. I mean, I’m blogging here. I’m partnering with Ben Meisner to open another gallery. I have tried to gather shit loads of interviews (sorry Martin!). I have taught and worked at art on a community level–which describes generally what I’m doing now–and which is different from Harrell Fletcher and Portland State and social practice; not better, just different. It would be normal for me to ascribe a secondary status to these activities–ignoring the fact that I have chosen, time and again, the problems that they bring up. It’s just that these other things are on the same level as everything based in the studio. I know somebody has written something infinitely more quotable about art not ending at the studio door. And now I’m off this early morning to said studio and then to look for artists and then to look at a little painting. But maybe a little coffee first.