Pairing My Fingernails

A conversation begun on Twitter the other night on the topic of low cost studios (#lowcoststudio)- mainly, how do the majority of artists (when I say majority here, I mean the ones who don’t necessarily make a living from their art) find the space to do their work. This usually involves a converted space in the home, such as a basement or garage. I painted out of my basement for four years and it worked out well for me, except for the typical onset of cabin fever. Anyway, I tweeted that I rent space from a church, and pay them in art. That had a few of you curious and wishing for a bit of elaboration. Here, I offer a little bit of insight and some images for you.

Seattle First Church of the Nazarene is in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle, about three miles from my home in north Seattle. It’s a 15 minute walk from my home to catch a bus for a quick 10 minute ride the rest of the way. They are not a large community, but they are active, taking full advantage of their large 1950s church building. Four other communities, including two Asian-speaking churches, use the building for worship. Converted offices are rented out to non profits like Beyond Malibu. Several other community groups use the space for practices, such as the Washington Scottish Pipe Band (who practice on Thursday nights – a great time to be in the studio, as the bagpipes are LOUD and beautiful).

The church also has a space that they’ve designated as an artist studio, which I’ve taken pics of and posted here. It’s really a great space, as you can see. High ceilings, lots of light, tons of space. I share it with another artist, and we’ve cordoned it off so that we each work on opposite ends of the room, with the middle being kind of a “living room” with chairs and a couch. I also hang work on that wall, which I suppose serves as kind of a viewing area.

It’s not perfect – the windows are west facing, so at sunset you get blazing sun coming in. It’s unheated, which in the winter is not fun. On hot days during the summer, it gets up to 90 degrees on the inside! And the floor may or may not be asbestos – I just leave it alone. It’s all part of the whole package though, and I love it.

So, the rent arrangement. As I said in my tweet, I pay in art. Twice a year, the church commissions me to make a painting for them, which I do and give to them. I’ll usually speak to the community on a Sunday about the painting as well. The church in this way has over the last few years built up a nice collection of artwork. Outside of the artwork I make for the church, I have full autonomy to make my work in the space at any time.

That’s the deal. I am fortunate and blessed to have such a great space at the cost (though the cost is relative – the last painting the church received I had a really difficult time parting with). I’m hoping to do an open house in the next couple of months, inviting the community out to get an inside look at what we are doing and working on. Details for that will come as they are hammered out.

The Sleep of Faith, oil on canvas, 38″H x 50″ W, 2008.

Maybe it’s because the figures are nude (or naked, if you’re not artistically inclined), or that the figure looks like me, or that the imagery looks kind of sexual in some way. Whatever the perceived reason, no one ever wants to talk to me about this painting. A friend recently asked me, which one of my paintings is my favorite? I pointed to this one, and realized that nobody really asks me about it. On the surface, I suppose it could be seen as a self-serving painting, wallowing in weirdness. I assure you my intentions go deeper, though probably still weird at their core. Hey, I like weird images. So, since I have my own blog for writing about things related to artmaking, I am going to take the opportunity to describe this painting to you, Dear Reader. I warn you that my grasp on philosophy is tenuous, as concepts in current thought race past me faster than I can digest old ones. I am also no art historian. However, I know what I know and that is where I am (or was last year, when I made this painting). Intrigued? Read on!

I came up with the idea for it at the tail end of last year’s By/For Vancouver Project. We had been working with the themes of The Beautiful, The Sublime, and The Grotesque. I was reading two books at the time: Umberto Eco’s A History of Beauty, and H.R. Rookmaaker’s Modern Art and the Death of a Culture. Both books look into the imagery of Venus as a representation of beauty. Rookmaaker takes it a step further, going into Modernism and looking at Manet’s painting Olympia as an example that beauty was being slowly destroyed – that we could no longer look at beauty as having any real representation of truth – since any form of objective beauty should point to God’s hand in forming our appreciation of it. Beauty is dead, Truth is dead, God is dead, etc. Perhaps Tracey Emin’s My Bed best expresses these conclusions. I remember seeing this work at the Tate Museum in London (the artist was a Turner Award Finalist), back in college on a study tour, and it has haunted me ever since. I don’t really wish to delve into art history or modernist philosophy here, as I am certainly no expert. I merely wish to briefly outline the subject matter I was looking at and reading about so as to give you some insight into my painting here.

I was in the studio, scribbling in my sketchbook, thinking about these things, and came across a drawing I had done one recent morning. It was of these sheep with animal heads. One night, I had woken up at 3am or so, and had trouble falling back asleep. This occasionally happens to everyone, as you start thinking about bills to pay, car repairs, job stresses, and your mind ramps up when it should be winding down. So to try to quiet my mind, I went to the old cliched approach of counting sheep. What my imagination spun was that the sheep had  animal heads like horses, dogs, cats, etc. Still jumping over the fence, one at a time, but as hideous hybrids, creatures from the Island of Dr. Moreau. Needless to say, this did not aid in my falling back asleep.

However, it gave me a great backdrop in which to work out this imagery for myself. So in this painting, on the bed, there lies me instead of “Venus”, who has been pushed off the bed to the side. Beauty, here, is not dead. She has merely been brushed aside due to my tossing and turning in sleep. The title “Sleep of Faith” also pays homage to Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, who to me seems to be addressing similar issues in his time and life. I wonder if The Sleep of Faith was more fitting. I believe that generally, it’s at the extremes of thought that we get ourselves into trouble. Concepts like the inherent goodness that exists in all of us (Humanism/Renaissance art), or the use of our rational capabilities and empirical discernment (Enlightement/Realist art) were not at their root bad concepts. I think they were quite good. But taken to their extreme, when the need for God has been entirely cast aside, saying we can figure life out for ourselves, and thus turning away from seeking Truth, or denying that it exists, has perhaps created the monsters we struggle with today.