Unanswered no more…
There were quite a few unanswered questions left over from March. I apologize for the delay,
In no particular order:
If you had to define ‘artist’ how would you do it? and how does this affect how you view art? tootlelulu
An artist is someone who leaves a record of their experience of present-ness. I’m trained to do so physically, with things. When I look at art I think about how and when it got made. I think about the person touching it, what their body was like, what their mind was grappling with, how they were still or moving, connected or detached.
You posted recently about “dating” (can’t remember the exact term you used) women again. Any insight in regards to how that came about, where it has taken you, and reflections on this change for you? kdotdammit
All through my adolescence I was attracted to both men and women, and while I had a couple of girlfriends in high school, most of my sexual experimentation was with men. Once I got to college things shifted: my primary sexual partners were women and I would occasionally head into NYC for anonymous sex in around Times Square. I went out west for grad school and then another shift: I stopped sleeping with women all together and identified exclusively as gay. In the subsequent years there were occasional women that I was attracted to but I never acted on any of it. After moving back to New York, I began to meet more people, usually younger people, around the kink scene. I was intrigued that quite a few of them identified as queer and seemed much less rigid about who they were willing to be sexual with. I had a lot of curiosity, and hoped to break into that scene, but was still in a long term relationship with a man I had met in SF. A few years later we broke up and I once again began to explore the fringes of the SM and Kink scenes in town. LJ changed a few things – putting me in closer contact with more people in an ongoing way. I was able to get to know a couple of women over time and in a way that simply isn’t possible in a casual social setting. I had friends in SM organizations here – both queer and mixed. I went to more events socialized more wrote more and developed a couple of crushes. (Interestingly enough, almost all the women I’ve been interested in since leaving college were women that were either identified to me as being lesbians or were women that I perceived as being such.) What was different this time around was that I acted on those crushes, expressing interest, trying to make something more happen. I made mistakes, wasn’t clear with people about what I wanted or was capable of giving them. Some parts of the past couple of years have been quite painful for me and for others. Other times have been wonderful.
I am still unsure of myself with women, particularly in situations that involve power imbalance. I’ve mentioned before that much of my early thinking was framed by 1970′s feminism, and it’s still very hard for me to maintain a clarity around the idea that there are situations where it’s OK for me to wield power over another person, especially if that person is a woman. Combine this with the fact that in one of my greatest character flaws is that in general I’m more comfortable expressing my power in passive, withholding ways than in active ways and you end up with someone who is very apt to send confusing, mixed signals. I struggle with this daily, and perhaps my willingness to act on my sexual interest in women again came about because I knew it was time to try to improve.
I do feel that the whole thing has entailed new levels of coming out, and I continue to be amazed by how quickly people form assumptions: it amuses me when I meet people in now and find out that they’ve asked other friends “if I’d consider playing with men”. I think I come across as gay, gay, gay. But you never really know how people perceive you.
If you had to use one sentence to describe your artistic sensibilities to someone who, while intelligent, has no artistic-clue, what would it be? katestine
I take things I’ve seen and found and reconfigure them by combining them with other things to make a record of my thoughts and experiences.
What might you have said to me if I had introduced myself on that elevator ride we took on 6th Avenue? abearious
“You’re taller than your user picture makes you look! Are you free for some coffee?”
Is there a good digital camera for under $500 that I can get, that’s easy to use, understand, easily portable, and churns out good quality photos? aceofhearts_ssc
Actually quite a few these days, but I use the Canon Powershot S3IS and I recommend it. 6 megapixels, which is really all that anyone needs unless they are planning on making very large prints. It doesn’t fit in your pocket, that’s for sure, but for me it’s worth having better optics on the camera and optical zoom rather than digital zoom. These days they go for around $280.00. For $60.00 more you can get the newer 8megapixel version, but the reaction seems to be that this is actually a step down in terms of image quality. I also like that the S3 uses doubleA batteries instead of some proprietary battery block, so if I run out of juice on my rechargeables I can always pick some replacement up on the fly. All the pictures you see on my blog have been taken with it.
This might be too long and involved a question to answer, or it may be the type of thing you don’t discuss… but I’ll ask anyway.
It seems like your work has changed from being performance like (I am thinking of the feeding video, and the bunny suit stuff) to being a lot more… crafty. Can you explain the development? atthesametime
There’s always been a strain of craftier more sculptural things in what I do. It just doesn’t get seen all that much. When I do my slide lectures, It’s much easier to see how that work weaves in and out of the other things. With this latest show I decided that I would go entirely that way, rather than to go more in the direction of video/performance. I wanted to show true abstract sculptures, rather than narrative or image based ones. I also wanted to show things that I had handled rather than things I had designed.
How much art do you start on or produce but then edit, redo, cull, reject, abandon, set aside, or destroy in order to get something you want to show in a gallery? thornyc
Hmm, I make lots of sketches for pieces – one of the several little black books I carry round is dedicated to that. Of those maybe one in ten goes on to the next phase of being made physical and of those about two thirds make it to getting exhibited. But a lot of revision happens along the way. Things don’t get abandoned or destroyed so much as reconfigured. In the case of drawings, about half make it to being shown.
If you were a temperature what would it be? earthmonkey69
94.2 degrees Fahrenheit. Chilly. Being a dumb American I can’t calculate the Celsius
How did your spate of reading of management-related books start, and how many have you read? Would you like the copy of “Jack Welch amd the 4E’s of Leadership” that’s gathering dust at my place? jazzbearnyc
While I’ve read self help books for quite a while, I only started reading business and management books when I began working with non-profit
art organizations. I attended a retreat facilitated by a named Michael Doyle and was so impressed with how he lead the event that I read his book: How To Make Meetings Work. Then in the 90′s I got involved with Debtors Anonymous. One of the guiding tools of that community is studying about business and finance. I realized that I had bought into the “Oh I’m an artist, I can’t think about or understand money” cliche. And so I began to try to pay attention to things like money management and through that I became interested in more general management. Part of my character is that I am very interested in how people come together in groups to work towards common goals. It’s why I’ve served on the boards on nonprofits and many business books are about just that, how to help people to make things happen.
I’m generally not all that much on leadership as such – but sure, I’d be glad to relieve you of your Jack Welch. Did you read it? What did you think?
I will hunt through the scattered posts from that month because I think there were a few more that I didn’t get to.
Tags: bdsm, making art, pansexuality, Question Month, reading
