Buky Schwartz (1932–2009)

Buky Schwartz (1932–2009)

Sculptor and video artist Buky (pronounced “Bookie”) Schwartz died on Wednesday September 2, 2009 He was 77.

I met Buky in 1979 and assisted him with his video installation Color Bars at the Akron Art Institute where I worked as an exhibit builder. I was also an art student at the University of Akron at the time and had limited experience in the visual concepts that Buky so patiently attempted to explain to me as we began the work of building the installation.

He wanted to build a wall in the middle of the gallery floor shaped like a triangle. Then we would plot out lines across the space and paint the video color bar across the gallery floor, walls and over top of the triangle. He told me when we were done that the sculptural space of the installation would appear on the video monitor as the traditional color bars used at the beginning of a video. I understood what the color bars were but still didn’t get how we were going to accomplish the task of compressing the visual space of the gallery that would become a visual burst of color and three dimensional form into a controlled two dimensional square when viewed on the video monitor.

I didn’t have to understand I just needed to build the triangle wall and prepare the gallery for the installation. I was an experience carpenter and exhibit builder I had worked on numerous conceptual installations. John Coplans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Coplans was the Director of the Institute and he liked Conceptual Art and installations. I had worked with artists like Vito Acconci http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vito_Acconci and Robert Morris http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Morris_(artist) and many others on their installations and Buky’s  request was simple and right in line with what I did all the time.

So, I got to work building the triangle wall, two by fours, drywall and mud. With the triangle wall up and the first coat of mud (Plaster or Joint Compound) applied and drying Buky said it was time to start installing the video camera. The process of mounting the video camera seemed to take as long as it did for the mud to dry. After careful positioning of the camera, Buky began taping, not with the camera but with tape. He taped a grid on the TV monitor where the color bars would appear when we were finished with the painting. As he did that, I applied another coat of mud to the wall.  The day was done, I worked late to finish the wall and coated it with primer.

In the morning is when things got interesting maybe even mind blowing. We began to plot out the positions for the painted stripes that would cover the floor and walls of the gallery. Buky working from the monitor directed me to the points in the gallery that would be our references. Wild lines radiating out from a central point running across the triangle and all over the gallery compressed the 3D space into 2D on the TV monitor. Even without the color applied, I could now see what was going to happen. We began painting the stripes of the color bar on the floors and walls. Hours later, a multi-colored square appeared on the TV monitor. After adjusting the light and the camera all the viewer could see on the TV monitor was a color bar. The gallery space though was a dynamic combination of sculptural form and color.

The viewer participated in the installation by walking through the gallery space while viewing himself or herself on the TV monitor. As the viewer walked through the gallery, they would appear to disappear behind the triangle wall and reappear as they walked past the wall. On the TV monitor, it looked like the viewer was walking through the color bars disappearing and reappearing through an invisible triangle shape.

What Buky did was define the three dimensional space by showing the abstraction of two-dimensional perspective that the camera sees and artists try to duplicate when they draw. What was so mind blowing is that the two-dimensional references now existed in real three-dimensional space? The viewer could now interact simultaneously between the two dimensions and see or experience the visual and perceptual abstractions that were taking place. Buky was explaining three-point perspective http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_(graphical) in an interactive setting that was cutting edge and in real time. Buky would have blown Masaccio’s mind. Masaccio the renaissance painter is credited with the invention of scientific perspective or three-dimensional perspective. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaccio

Color Bars wasn’t the last time I assisted Buky. A year or so later I was President of the Student art League at the University of Akron. The Student Union wanted to fund an art exhibition. They wanted something current and innovative; they wanted something that would rock. I discussed the request with a professor of mine Don Harvey. He suggested I call Buky to see if he would do one of his installations in the Student union. Even though I had developed a good friendship with Buky during our time working together, I thought he would never agree to do an installation. We had no budget to speak of, just expenses and a very modest stipend, hardly worth a major artists time, in fact the money we had was hardly worth anybody’s time. But I called Buky anyway and he immediately said yes. He said he had a piece in mind and would call me with the details later.

Buky called and wanted to know if I could get some logs, I could. I had a little firewood business and had plenty of logs, but he wanted log rounds of different sizes and lengths. I can do that I told him. Buky showed up as planned and I showed up with a truck full of assorted logs. I got to haul all of the logs up to the second floor of the Student Union while Buky surveyed the space. Well that was my job I certainly wasn’t the brains and I was young. If I had, had any brains I would have gotten volunteers from the Student art League to carry all of those logs upstairs and then back down after the exhibit ended.

Buky explained what he was going to do, this time I had an idea of what he was talking about after working on the Color Bars installation.

He arranged the log rounds according to the random shapes and sizes. He explained that he was going to paint random yellow lines across the logs to create a divided rectangle on the TV monitor. A similar installation can be seen in this video narrated by John Hanhardt Whitney Film and Video Curator 1974-1996.

Watch Video Here: http://blog1.videoart.net/?m=200706

During the building of the installation, Buky pestered me to show him slides of my Senior Show. I was intimidated, I felt self-conscious about my work, after all, here was a Master who I respected and admired. What if he said my work was crap what would I do?

So after we finished work on the installation we went over to the school of art. I got my slides. Buky and I went into the art history projection room. I loaded my slides into the projector and reached the moment of truth. I clicked through the slides one by one; Buky was silent and studied each one intently. I thought, he thinks my work sucks but that wasn’t the case. He was genuinely interested in the work and wanted to know why and how I had made the decisions I had made creating the work.

I had built three zig zaging steel walls in the gallery and poured coke slag against the sides of each walls. The slag like little hillsides sloughed down the sides of the walls and spread across the floor. I used the coke slag a by-product of making steel as a natural element in the installation. As the slag sloughed down the sides of the wall, it created a natural path. As would dirt or rock as it sloughs off a hillside or riverbank. However, I had neat paths sweep up between the steel walls, paths where people could walk.

Buky asked me why I had created these neat paths. I told him that the gallery director was concerned that people might trip on the rock like slag, so I made the paths to put the director at ease.

Buky was silent for a moment; I could tell he was thinking about what he would next say. He was very intent and very direct, he said, “Don’t make excuses, make decisions and understand why you make them and take responsibility for those decisions. Never do that again, never let anyone force you to change your mind about your decisions or your art”.

His advice stuck and it was some of the best advice I was ever given. What Buky explained was that I had made what would have been a great artwork just good by allowing the director to influence my decision-making. The decision to create paths instead allowing the material to take its natural form altered my intent my idea my art.

Buky was a sincere friend a friend who will tell you the truth and stand by you he was a true mentor. That was the last time I saw him. He went back to New York and I went to Graduate School. He later returned to Israel and I moved west. I don’t think that Buky ever really received the credit he deserved for his pioneering work in video in America. He was truly a Master and he was a visual genius. Buky broke new uncharted ground in the visual arts with his work. He was a giant among his peers and has earned his place in history and he was a friend, I will miss him even more now that he has passed.

Visit Buky Schwartz website:  http://www.bukyschwartz.com/main.htm

Watch Videos of Buky Schwartz at work:  http://www.videoart.net/home/Artists/ArtistPage.cfm?Artist_ID=1431

Read more about buky’s life:

Video art pioneer passes away at 77 By Ellie Armon Azoulay

Sculptor and video artist Buky Schwartz passed away yesterday. He was 77. Schwartz was born in Jerusalem in 1932, studied at the Avni Institute in Tel Aviv, worked as an assistant to Itzhak Danziger and studied at Saint Martins College of Art in London with Anthony Caro. In 1965, Schwartz was among the founders of the local 10+ Group, along with sculptors Pinhas Eshet, Uri Lifshitz, Ika Braun and other artists, including Raffi Lavie and Ziona Shimshi. In 2007, the Tel Aviv Museum displayed a comprehensive exhibition on the vivacious group, which held scores of shows throughout the course of its activity. More…http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1112390.html

Filed under: Art, Art News, Journalism, Media, News, On Art, Photography, Video Art , Buky Schwartz, Video Art

The Artist and Debt, Annie Leibovitz Images and Nightmares

The Artist and Debt, Annie Leibovitz Images and Nightmares

The Repo-man knocks at the door. “Let me in Let me in”! Not by the hair of my Chinnie Chin Chin is Annie’s reply to Art Capital Group. Today the old wolf at the door nightmare torments one of the most gifted artists in America; Photographer Annie Leibovitz who made a deal with a Company of Wolves with the hope of saving her home, her life’s work and her family.

Annie owes Art Capital Group 24 Million Dollars. To secure her 24 million dollar loan she used her real estate, her art collection and the rights to her artwork as collateral. Why she needed, such a large loan is at the heart of a story in the New York Times written by Allen Salkin about Leibovitz’s struggle with Taxes, Real Estate and Debt Management.

For Annie Leibovitz, a Fuzzy Financial Picture NYTIMES July31, 2009 by Allen Salkin.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/fashion/02annie.html?_r=1&ref=business

Annie’s struggle with debt was compounded by the recent deaths in the past five years of her long time partner Susan Sontag, the writer and her Father and Mother.  She also has children and recently added two giving birth to twins. At the same time of all of her personal issues, Leibovitz was managing the renovation of her three Greenwich Village properties, which alone was a source of enormous personal stress, controversy and a major financial impact on her personal fortune.

Who is Annie Leibovitz and how did she become a character in a nightmarish bedtime story?  In the beginning of her career Annie was I think simply in the right place at the right time combined with a genius talent to capture life on film. She became the staff Photographer for Rolling Stone Magazine when Rolling Stone was just another hopeful grassroots publication. Annie’s images dominated the cover with inside images of Rock and Rolls Greatest Artists. Her images sold copy and many believe were the catapult for the success for Rolling Stone Magazine. Along with fame came fortune and opportunity. Annie signed with Vanity Fair for a seven-figure salary estimated to be 3 million dollars a year with millions more in expenses for outrageously fantastic photo shoots where she made many of her trademark images. Annie was living the Artists dream of endless opportunity and budget to create her work.

Along the way, though she partied too much and developed a pattern of financial mismanagement. Just because a person is, an artistic genius does not make them good with money or debt management. Leibovitz’s ability to make money through her work offset her inability to manage money and debt until now.

Now is another moment of being in the right place but at the wrong time. Before Annie went to the Art Capital Group, who by the way is best described as a high end Pawnshop for the art worlds, Top Artist’s, Collector’s and Dealer’s, she arranged to sell limited portfolios of her work through the auction house Phillips de Pury. The auction that might have bailed her out fell short of the mark when the Art Bubble Burst in October of 2008. That left Annie in a real bind. She had spent millions on the renovations of her New York property and had to buy out a neighbor because of a lawsuit that added several million dollars to the cost. Then the taxman rang and wanted 1.5 million in taxes. With the economy and the art, market is shambles the wolf offered a deal that Annie gambled would save her.

Learn more about Art Capital Group and how it works.

That Old Master? It’s at the Pawnshop NYTIMES by Allen Salkin

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/arts/design/24artloans.html?fta=y

The fact remains that Annie Leibovitz has tremendous earning power and she may yet overcome this nightmare. Her photographic negative archive held by Getty Images is alone estimated to be worth 50 million dollars. That is why Art Capital is so aggressively after the rights to her images.

In fact, Annie still has time to pay them back because full repayment isn’t due until September 8^th, 2009. Never mind that fact Art Capital isn’t waiting they have filed several lawsuits against Leibovitz with the most recent this past week to gain access to her assets now. The prior suit was dismissed in part was to stop Annie from working for Getty Images because Art Capital alleged that it would make it more difficult for them to sell her Archive if she was working for Getty. The court ruled against Art Capital Group.

You may be saying to yourself that this story is outrageous and that Leibovitz is unique, but not so. In fact, in a city like New York where a one-bedroom apartment can cost a million plus she is in the small time real-estate market. When you combine renovation costs in New York City with the cost of property it is easy to spend a lot more money that you bargained for. I am sure that when Annie started this adventure the sky seemed to be the limit in the Art Market until the bust of 2008. Combined with the downfall of the economy and tight lending by banks Art Capital Group was in a great position to reap a profit.

Art Capital Group http://www.artcapitalgroup.com/Questions.html

The real enemy in this story is DEBT! Debt is the ball and chain that has hobbled Annie and it will do the same to you as an Artist. In fact, debt will stop you faster than a speeding bullet from achieving success as an artist.

Many artists are finished before they even get started because of debt. Yes, those student loans will sink you faster than the Titanic. You will find that the nice banker isn’t so nice and will tie you up in knots that you will struggle against for 20 years or more.

Even if you have overcome that obstacle and have achieved success, you still maybe burdened with the debt of a mortgage, car loan, credit cards and studio expenses like rent. All of the debt most American have, and when the economy goes south you still got that debt to pay back.

If this isn’t the reason most artists never make it; it has to be a close second and I don’t know what the first is. One thing I know for sure you as an Artist need to manage your money and debt in the most conservative way possible. Never count your chickens before they hatch. Pay as you go as far as you possibly can. And for god sake live in the Mid-West or Western States and stay off the coasts. New York City may be the Art Hub of the world but visit don’t buy.

You also need to understand contracts and the results of signing contracts not only with lenders but with galleries and dealers. If you don’t understand contracts then find someone who does like a lawyer so you can root out any fine print in the deal before you commit. You also need to use contracts when you are hired to do work or sell work so that your rights and the rights of the buyer or employer are clearly spelled out. What are the terms of ownership and who owns the rights to the image, painting or whatever?

The business of art is complex as is the business of money and they are equally the same. While your vision as an artist may be limited to your creative, genius the business of your art is all about the money and wolves are not endangered in the Art World environment.

Debt is food for the wolf and the wolf is always hungry and eager to make a profit or a meal out of your mistakes. Regardless of how outrageous your creative ideas are, keep your financial ideas conservative. The fact is most of us have to have steady paying jobs of some sort to just enjoy the basics in life, homes, cars, children. If you can limit your debt, you will in the long run enjoy more freedom to create your art.

If your lucky enough to make a lot of money spend wisely and pay cash when you can, never incur debt you absolutely do not have too. I know this isn’t what we have been taught but unless you want to be a slave shed the ball and chain of debt or better yet never let them shackle you to begin with. If you have to make a deal to get what you want be sure to very carefully weigh the all of the possible outcomes, good, bad and ugly. Is the risk worth the possible payoff?

I guess the other side of the story is as artists we all like the live on the edge. Risk seems to feed our creative nature. Somehow, we need to keep the benefits of life on the edge and maintain some control over our financial security. When economic times like today come the balance is tipped and we are, always going to have days like these sooner or later. Therefore, we have to plan for the reality while we are creating the impossible dream.

As for Annie, I am confident she will emerge from this crisis and continue to be successful. Art Capital will continue to find wholesome meals and Annie will earn more money in the next year than most of us will earn in our lifetime even after the wolves feed. She will also earn some profound lessons and they will serve her well as will the lesson of her bedtime story. When the Wolf came a Knocking.

Filed under: Art, Art News, Art Prints, Culture Economey, How to, How to survive as a Working Artists, Investing, Media, News, On Art, Photography, Uncategorized , Annie Leibovitz, Art Business, Art Capital Group, Art Loans, Art Pawnshops, Artists and Debt, Debt, Famous Photographers, Rolling Stone Magazine, Student Loans

Is Art Dead? is this the End

Don’t worry Mr.Stubbs is just Acting

You might think so if you read the plethora of articles written on the end of Big Art and Non-Profit Art Organizations.

Auction Houses are reporting poor sales and the values of previously valuable artworks are in decline or on the skids altogether. More over the fate of many Art Museums and Non-profit galleries are simply stated unknown with their endowments devastated by the financial turmoil that is everywhere. Other Arts Organizations from symphonies to seasonal festivals are canceling their entire seasons and Universities are closing their art galleries and museums and talking about de accessioning their art collections to raise capital. Collectors are in a panic as their wealth is failing and want to rush out and sell the treasures in their collections at drastically depreciated values.

You the average artist might get the idea that the end is indeed here for the Art Market. That might be the case for at least parts of the big art market, but I believe that Two Art Markets exist in two very different Art worlds. Just as I believe that two financial systems or economies exist in America.

Let me start with the value of Art. One market professes that the value in art is an investment and it operates much like the stock market. The perceived values of artworks are abstractions that are difficult for even the top experts to understand. What makes a Damien Hirst or a Jeff Koones worth millions? Is it the aesthetic importance or is it a rare commodity. Is value a false premise to begin with? The world’s great art treasures certainly, have real value but are they really worth the hundreds of millions of dollars paid for them or are their values just as abstract as the values of stock derivatives.

The values of these treasures are as unreliable an investment as mortgage securities or stock derivatives. In fact, I would compare the Money that everyone is so upset about losing including me is a close cousin to Conceptual Art. It the money exists inside our minds as an idea without real substance. This money is simply numbers on paper or in a computer programs and has no real value except in the idea that is actually exists. In fact, recently when AIG was called (as in poker) to pay out insurance claims against losses they insured against they did not really have any real money. Their wealth was a concept on paper.

The same deal is going down in the Big Art Market. Values of artworks, endowment funds and the real value of all of these abstractions are now becoming Representational or Realistic, and the picture is a scary one to say the least. I guess because like the experts I just don’t get the whole concept and don’t know why it works or doesn’t for sure, maybe.

So where does that leave you the Artist, Writer, Musician, Actor, The Arts Worker. It leaves you with the second Arts Market and the Second Economy. Maybe I should just call it as I see it the real Market Place.

The Real Market is where real things get done, where actual work is preformed, real things are produced, and where real money, goods and services are exchanged. This is the market where the real value in what you produce exists. You write a book and you sell that book to someone that wants to read it. You sell a painting to someone that wants to hang it on the wall in their study because the real value is, they enjoy looking at the painting, it brings real pleasure to them outside it’s monetary worth.

It is where you take the money you earned from the sale of your painting and you buy lunch at the corner café. You tip the waitress and she takes the money she made waiting on you and buys fresh produced grown by a local farmer to feed her kids dinner.

The kids spent the day at the local Art Museum on school fieldtrip learning about art and making art projects and they share their new knowledge with Mom at dinner.

After dinner, Mom is amazed that the kids are forgoing TV and doing their homework. Johnny suddenly gets the math problem that was a conceptual enigma, but after seeing an abstract Artwork that the Docent explained to his class, he sees the math.

Jill is working on her English homework writing the poem she had been putting off but because the museum had, a poet read to the class she is inspired to write her own poetry.

Jimmy is in his room practicing his music lesson because at lunch, the museum had a drum ensemble perform and he too is now inspired to make music.

Mom decides that it would be a good idea to sign the kids up for more art experience classes and becomes a member of the museum that she pays for with the tips she earns from many different customers at her local restaurant.

Years later, her kids grow up and never forget the childhood experiences that the arts provided for them. They go to galleries and buy art, join museums and buy season tickets for the theater and local symphony.

And we all eat, drink and prosper. That is the value of the real economy. By now, you get the idea and if you think about it, you can insert any real product or service into the equation. It is this very simple premise, the exchange of goods, services and ideas that makes the real economy real and is where we Artists can find success.

How do we make this second economy work?

Once you begin to think about creating a real value economy you will figure it out, let your creativity your artist out to play.

I do not believe we can go it alone as independent artists.

We need to work collectively to create an Arts Presence. Places where multiple artists of every kind work in visible ways. We need to create a presence in our community, like an arts district. Even if we all cannot have a studio or shop, we need to create the availability a connection to each other. Some artists have formed co-ops where they work as a group and share the costs and work load.

The co-op does not have to be just visual artists. It could be a combination of disciplines. You could have a visual art gallery and a music center or performance component like dance or theater where the combined talents could offer dynamic combined events.

Examples of Artists Co-op’s

Tennessee

http://www.clarksvilleartists.org/

On-Line Co-op

http://burningartist.com/

Colorado

http://www.commonwheel.com/

West Virginia

http://www.icehouseartistsco-op.com/

Idaho

http://www.forestcraft.com/

Other artists have created Phantom Gallery Networks.

Before the current Boom and as business’s moved out of older Downtown areas for new digg’s in newly developed retail areas empty retail space became a problem across America. Many cities and towns had wide-open, depressed retail corridors that presented a dismal picture of the community. Artists working together with property owners, city officials and businesses filled those empty spaces with art. The programs also created events like Art Walks to bring people into these depressed corridors stimulated the local economy.

Today as the economy worsens and businesses close up shop, a lot of space is going to be available.

It will take someone with energy like you to organize and build a successful presence. You can sit around and wait for someone else to do something or you can take the lead and make it happen. Art is your life your lifestyle and your business.

Examples of Phantom Gallery Programs

L.A.

http://www.phantomgalleriesla.com/DowntownLA.html

Butte Montana: This link is to the Montana State Travel Site.

http://visitmt.com/categories/moreinfo.asp?IDRRecordID=16816&siteid=1

I added this link because it is a great example of how a presence can create value. Butte is in between two large National Parks Yellowstone and Glacier. Tourist travel I-90 and the Butte Phantom Gallery program gives them something to stop in town for. Most tourist use the internet to pre-screen their trips and stops. Tourists buy Art and Lunch.

More Butte

http://www.montanastandard.com/articles/2006/07/07/newsbutte/hjjdjcjciijigc.txt

Tucson

http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/96/13/04_1.html

My wife and I lived in a loft in an old Hardware store in Downtown Tucson in the 1980’s Downtown was vacant and artists created a presence. One Saturday a month the local Arts Co-op sponsored an ad hoc art walk that brought thousands of people Downtown. It was fun and changed the perception of the Downtown area.

Now with the economy again bad, folks in your community are going to be looking for something to do that is fun and free. Local business will like the idea too because they want people to come out and spend money. In Tucson, the little shops and restaurants sold a lot of merchandise along with art.

Another way to go is to use existing businesses as exhibit space. Café’s, Banks, you name it, will hang art on their walls and you can create events like art walks that will bring people out and into those businesses. Everybody wins.

Art Spots

One thing that another Montana Artist and I did in Kalispell Montana years ago was start an Art Spot program. Marshal Noice a local painter/photographer and I the Director of a local museum made Art Spot flags. We got all of the hardware together to hang a flag at an art location. We charged each location the cost of the flag, hardware, and publication and hung Art Spot Flags creating an Art presence throughout town.

We created and printed a simple two-sided card with the Art Spot business names and address on one side and a corresponding numbered map on the other side of the card. If you visit Kalispell Montana the program is still working. Tourists can easily locate local art businesses and museums following the flags.

Note: Kalispell has a sign ordinance that restricts signage that is why we chose a flag. Most cities do not restrict Flags but do restrict signs and banners.

We had had a vision of doing something statewide with signage on the interstate to locate art hubs in towns across the state. It could still happen.

Art Spot Link

http://www.hockadaymuseum.org/Links.htm

The Internet

Today the internet is a very good place to start a collective or Social Network for Artists in your town, county, state or across the nation. I started a Montana Artists Network a couple weeks ago. The purpose was to create a site where anyone interested in the Arts Artists in Montana could communicate with each other to network and promote the arts.

I used Ning, which is a social networking platform to create the site. Ning is free for anyone to use and you can create your own network with ease using Ning. http://www.ning.com/

I want to stress that this type of social network is very different from a website. The format is far more interactive and flexible. Members control their pages and can do a variety of things to communicate and promote their art. Members can up-load Photos, Videos, create discussions, chat, list events, blog and many more. This type of format is dynamic and easy to use and it is free.

Examples of Ning Type Networks (I am a member at all three)

Montana Artists Network

http://montanaartistsnetwork.ning.com/

Brooklyn Art Project

http://brooklynartproject.ning.com/

Arts for Arts Sake

http://artsforartssake.ning.com/

We need to work together and create real value for our communities and our customers.

In Philadelphia, a Group of Artists are Bartering, Art for Goods and Services.

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20090308_A_barter_economy_for_art_in_Phila_.html

Many of these ideas are not new they just faded away with the boom times of the last decade. These Gorilla Marketing tactics grew out of need during the last down times, some hung on while others did not.

Today as we again face economic challenges in the arts, we need to explore ideas outside of what became the Box.

Looking for a new gallery may be the real challenge in today’s market. It might even become impossible as galleries scale back or close their doors along with museums and other non-profit art organizations.

You might just get a show if that gallery owner sees your work hanging in a vacant window a Phantom Gallery he or she walks past on the way to work.

As for the Big Art Market, most of us never got there to begin with. That market has been a far away illusion that made sensational headlines and captivated our dreams of fame and success. For the majority of us our market is still right here in front of us. All we have to do is create value to find success.

Success is measured in many ways, your success is personal, what do you really want from art, what is success to you.

The value of the arts is like a spider web, woven in many directions touching many places.

There are no limits of what we can do together only our imagination will limit us or free us. Put your creative thinking cap on and let your imagination fly.

Do the Arts Need a National Bailout

http://davideubank.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/do-the-arts-need-a-national-bailout/

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Culture Economey, How to survive as a Working Artists, Investing, News, On Art, Painting, Photography, Politics, Uncategorized , Art and the Economy, Art Co-op, Art Marketing, art sales, Investing in Art, Phantom Gallery

1934: A new Deal for Artists.

Franz Kline 1910-1962

• 1934: A new Deal for Artists. A retrospective of American Art of the Depression.

 

The exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum showing now through January 3, 2010 is an example of what a government stimulus program can do not only for the arts but also for the country. The selected works tell the story of the Great Depression through the eyes of American artists of the time. President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration created the first government program to support the arts nationally. He and his administration understood how art could sustain the American spirit during a time of crisis and great hardship.

 

The program only lasted six months from December 1933 to June 1934. Artists were paid to depict “the American Scene”. Many public artworks were as we know them today site specific like percent for the art projects. Others were created throughout American in cities and in rural America. Artists not only had an opportunity to earn a living through the program during the depression they also were able to serve their country in a time of crisis.

 

You can see the exhibit on the web at http://americanart.si.edu/

 

One thing I noticed is that many of these artists went on after the program and had very successful and influential carriers like Franz Kline.

 

Once you are at the Smithsonian site, you can click on the link to see the Flash Program of the exhibit. I had trouble with the Flash version and you may have to adjust your computers program to view it if your security program blocks the application. I have included the link to the Non-Flash page that I found worked just fine.

 

Non Flash Link

http://americanart.si.edu/education/picturing_the_1930s/non-flash.html

 

Take a little time and look at what artists did during the last depression a time of crisis not unlike today’s financial crisis in America. It is clear to me as an Artist that the Art’s can sustain the human spirit in times of crisis and that Art can give us not only hope but purpose in our endeavors.

 

Enjoy the 1934: A new Deal for Artists Exhibit

 

http://americanart.si.edu/

 

http://americanart.si.edu/education/picturing_the_1930s/non-flash.html

 

 

 

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Culture Economey, How to survive as a Working Artists, Journalism, Media, On Art, Painting, Photography, Politics, Uncategorized , American Art, Art of the Depression, Depression, Franklin Roosevelt, Franz Kline, Obama Stimulas Plan, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Stimulas

Join the Montana Artists Network

Montana is home to many artists working in every imaginable venue. Almost every community has some kind of arts program. Yet artists are spread across a vast landscape and often are isolated from one another. Montana is a very large place and traveling from one end of the state to another is a journey. We Montana Artists often do not have the opportunity to communicate with each other to share our work and ideas. This week I started a social network on Ning in hope of bringing Montana artists together in a central location on the web so we can communicate. Ning is a cloud network that supports the site. Montana Artists Network, http://montanaartistsnetwork.ning.com/

 

 

In addition to communicating with each other, the site offers the ability to promote our work and our ideas to the world.

 

Nothing is in stone, the site can develop in anyway the users want it too. Collectively we can have a lot of fun promoting our work and our ideas.

 

• The Montana Artists Network was created to link artists throughout Montana in a central network to promote the arts in Montana.

To join is totally FREE. You can create your own page and promote your art. You can create Blogs, Discussions and List Events. You can upload your photos, videos of your artwork to your page. The Network is open to anyone interested in promoting the Arts in Montana: Artists, Galleries, Art Organizations and Patrons of the Arts.

Why did I create the Montana Artists Network? After much thought and participation in other Artists Networks, I felt Montana Artists needed a site where they could easily communicate throughout the state with each other, share their ideas, artwork, and promote the arts in Montana globally.

In addition, cost and user friendly was a major factor in creating this site. The Ning network is free and is easy to use. You have complete control over the content of your page. You can use the page editor to control the appearance and options you like. You can add other technical resources to your page like Twitter and many others.

As the de-facto site manager. I will do my best to address any suggestion you have. Please let me know how the site is working and if there are things we can do together to make the site better.

I look forward to promoting the arts in Montana with you.

David Eubank

 

Check it out and Join the Montana Artists Network and please invite your friends to join too, the network is open to everyone interest in the Arts in Montana

http://montanaartistsnetwork.ning.com/

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Culture Economey, How to survive as a Working Artists, On Art, Painting, Photography , Art in Montana, Montana Art, Montana Artists, Montana Artists Network

New Art from the Middle East

Tala Madani Elastic Pink Painting

• New Art from the Middle East

Saatchi Gallery London Jan 30th – May 9 2009

 

• (See the Exhibit Here)

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/unveiled/

 

• The Saatchi Gallery in London is currently showing

the new work of 21 Middle Eastern artists in an exhibit that is

• well worth the time to look.

 

If you can’t get to England the on-line exhibit is done very well and I think is exciting. Just use the link and see for your self.

 

The collective works of the 21 artists offer us a view of different cultural ideas that are in some cases stunning ideas to what we in the west have come to believe about the Middle East. These bold artists tackle often sensitive and controversial ideas about their personal experiences and their relative cultures.

 

Ideas about Tolerance, Sexuality, Religion and Life today in the Middle East.

 

I spent some time going through each artists work and I have to say I enjoyed the new work and the show. However, what I really saw throughout the exhibit was hope. Hope that through the eyes of these bold artists we can find a sense of cultural understanding in our differences and our similarities.

 

Related Article by the L.A TIMES

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/europe/la-et-mideast-art11-2009feb11,0,5332594.story

Filed under: Art, Art News, Culture Economey, Journalism, News, On Art, Painting, Photography, Uncategorized , Art News, Culture, Middle Eastern Art, Modern Art, New Artists, New Painting, Saatchi Gallery, The Art of Politics

Copyright Fair Use and The Transformative Factor

Orginal Manny Garcia Photo with Faireys Hope Poster

The Question?

Can you the artist use, transform a copyrighted image in whole or part into a new work of art without permission of the original author.

That is a question that Shepard Fairey is about to answer.

Boy this guy Fairey is really mixing it up, with his recent arrest for graffiti in Boston and what I believe is a very important law suit in New York. The Associated Press wants credit and payment for Fairey’s Obama Hope image. They contend that Fairey violated Copyright Law when he used a photograph taken by Manny Garcia to create his famous poster of Hope.

I have written a lot about Shepard Fairey recently because his work in general is tied to a history in art that is of great personal interest to me. His work is connection to political propaganda and the Dada movement. And I think he does a good job as a image maker/artist.

I don’t know if Shepard Fairey intended to set landmark legal precedents in law when he started making images or when he made his now famous Obama poster, but that is what he is doing.

The reason this is so important is that the outcome of his argument with the Associated Press may in fact have a major impact on you and me as an artist. At issue is the Fair Use clause in copyright law.

I want to make it clear that I am not attempting to defend Shepard Fairey but I am attempting to defend his right; the right of Fair Use. Fairey is a convenient source because of his current case. Furthermore, I hope you will use the links I have provided to the related articles and the actual court documents to make your own argument about the issue.

That said, I have some issues I want to share with you not only about the Fair Use law but also about how the story is being presented.

First AP claims infringement of copyright over the use of the original image. What they don’t claim is that they in fact may not even own the copyright to the image. Manny Garcia the photographer may own the rights. AP never contracted with Garcia for ownership. He was a temporary hire with no contract by him or AP that would transfer ownership of the image to the Associated Press. Therefore, before AP has any claim they will have to establish ownership. And that may be another legal case in itself.

Second, is the fact that the current image in the press shown around the world is not the entire photograph that Manny Garcia took of Obama? The original image was of Obama sitting beside George Clooney. He was at a fund raising dinner for Darfur relief aid, at the National Press Club in Washington D.C in 2006. The image Shepard Fairey used and altered is a cropped version of the original.

Third is the fact that Fairey took the cropped pose and significantly altered it. He not only altered the image by transforming it into a very graphic and abstract version of the original, he altered the content or purpose. He created new work of art based on the original by adding new expression and meaning.

Why is this important, because many artists use other people’s images for inspiration and transform those images into new works of art? Any body who has clipped pictures out of a magazine to make a collage has done exactly what Shepard Fairey did. Those old wallpaper design catalogs count too.

Equally important I believe is for the press to get the story right. Why didn’t they print the original photograph that I found in a link to court records, provided by the Mercury News? It took me about 5 minutes to find a version of the image I could use, when everybody else published the cropped version.  I think the image they used unfairly slants the story and implies a different approach to the work Fairey created, inspired by the original image.

Copyright law is as complex as image making today. With new digital technology and the internet, available images have multiplied by a thousand fold and fair use is a major issue for artists everywhere.

I also want to note that Shepard Fairey has openly given Manny Garcia credit for his image and the inspiration the image had on Fairey’s work. As an artist have you ever been inspired by another artists work? Have you ever used another artist’s work as a starting point for your work?

The history of art offers many examples of fair use and transformative images, just look at an Andy Warhol image of a Campbell’s soup can. Campbell’s tried to stop him from using their trademarked image and lost. Warhol transformed the Campbell’s image into a new work of art that was inspired by the original. Warhol added new expression and meaning to the image.

I don’t think the Associated press has a case and I think Shepard Fairey is rightfully protecting all of us with his legal action against AP.

Read the actual court documents and related articles below.

Tell me what you think, add your comment, it is important.

AP wants credit for Fairey Obama Image, Boston Globe.

http://www.boston.com/ae/media/articles/2009/02/05/ap_wants_credit_for_faireys_obama_image/

Mercury News Article. Court Documents Attached PDF

http://www.mercurynews.com/newsspecialreports/ci_11666008

PDF at Doc Stoc. You can download the complete court documents PDF version with images free here. You just have to register.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/4104616/Obama-artist-complaint-vs-the-Associated-Press

Excerpt Stanford Fair Use/Copyright Stanford University Libraries

The Transformative Factor: The Purpose and Character of Your Use

In a 1994 case, the Supreme Court emphasized this first factor as being a primary indicator of fair use. At issue is whether the material has been used to help create something new, or merely copied verbatim into another work. When taking portions of copyrighted work, ask yourself the following questions:

Has the material you have taken from the original work been transformed by adding new expression or meaning?

Was value added to the original by creating new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings?

In a parody, for example, the parodist transforms the original by holding it up to ridicule. Purposes such as scholarship, research or education may also qualify as transformative uses because the work is the subject of review or commentary.

EXAMPLE: Roger borrows several quotes from the speech given by the CEO of a logging company. Roger prints these quotes under photos of old-growth redwoods in his environmental newsletter. By juxtaposing the quotes with the photos of endangered trees, Roger has transformed the remarks from their original purpose and used them to create a new insight. The copying would probably be permitted as a fair use.

Stanford Website/Fair Use

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/index.html

Related Posts

The Art of Politics

http://davideubank.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/the-art-of-politics/

A very well written article on the copyright debate and Shepard Fairey

Shepard Fairey is Not a Crook: by Steven Heller

Filed under: Art, Art News, Art Prints, How to, How to survive as a Working Artists, Journalism, Media, News, On Art, Photography, Politics, Shepard Fairey, Uncategorized , Artists and copyrights, Copyright Law, Fair Use Law, Shepard Fairey Associated Press Lawsuit

Swimming with Water Wings in the River Styx

Guest Contributor

Jacob Eubank is a Photographer and Writer Living and Working in the Greater Seattle Area.

By Jacob Eubank

Gallery Photographs  http://www.jacobeubankphotography.com/ltgrant/

Swimming with Water Wings in the River Styx

On December 10, 2007, my father and I embarked on a journey that would take us across much of the Western United States. Just over a year ago, looking back provides an interesting perspective. We were certainly in different times.  Driving southward through Washington and the Oregon Coast our minds were focused on the devastation caused by tremendous rain and wind that occurred in the first weeks of the month.  Our trip was made possibly only because Interstate 5 had reopened only days before our departure. It had been closed due to flooding. Elsewhere in the country millions of people were struggling to keep their families fed in the midst of one of the worst series of ice storms that have hit the central United States in over a decade. It’s interesting to have come full circle, because as I’m writing today the waters are again receding. Now the second year in a row that I-5 has been closed due to catastrophic flooding. Nearly every river in a hundred mile radius was above its banks for three to four days. The conversations I have nearly everyday with neighbors and people who share my community are eerily similar to the conversations that transpired in the first days of our trip. Nobody can quite seem to recall the weather being this extreme in the past twenty years. It was only three weeks ago that we had over a foot of snow chocking the roadways of the greater Seattle area.  This snow stayed on the ground for over a week. It is undeniable that this is irregular. On our long drive to California, we thought much about this. Our leading scientists have concluded that even if our climate were on a normal rising cycle, humanity has still made an impact, and has accelerated this process beyond its normal pattern. Before December 2007, the Oregon Coast had never had a storm on record that had produced Category 3 Hurricane force winds. As we left Oregon and arrived in California adjusting our route to take us through Sacramento, we couldn’t help but see the extraordinary challenge that faces every one of us around every corner.

In Salem, OR I found a need for earplugs due to my fathers boisterous snoring. As I walked into the lobby of our motel I inquired with the clerk at the front desk where I might acquire such a thing. He responded kindly that I could just run over the Wal-Mart across the street. Perhaps I’m foolish and have just been too far removed from an automobile society living in the walk-able city of Seattle, for I took his words literally. As I started walking in my pajamas and flip-flops, I found out it was quite more than just across the street. In all, I ended up walking across roughly three quarters of a mile in each direction. My trek was across many vast parking lots.  As I walked I was reminded of one of the neighboring towns where I spent many days as a growing teenager. In the town of Kalispell, there used to be a thriving downtown. Many small independently owned businesses lined the streets; there was quite a lot of diversity for such a small community. Bookstores, art galleries, and many other attractions filled in around the Historic Hotel and saddle and tack store that remain relics of a time before ours. The last time I had come home had been quite the culture shock. I’d been away for almost a year, and upon arriving again it was as I had landed on Mars. In downtown Kalispell where Highway 93 shares the title of Main Street, roughly 40 percent of the business spaces were empty with signs of for lease availability in their windows. It has now been replaced with a development not unlike that of Salem. What once used to be flowing fields of wheat is now covered by asphalt. The aquifer that lies underneath it, which was once pure, untainted glacieral melt water ten thousand years in the making, is now forever linked to those parking lots. Those sewer drains that permeate the surface now carry all of the debris and carcinogens that fall from our vehicles, straight down to that very aquifer.

The next morning as we got back on the interstate with our headings towards Sacramento, the extent of how reliant we are on our automobiles for everything. The amount of cars on the road was staggering. I thought Seattle was terrible for traffic when I first moved there, and upon seeing Sacramento, I couldn’t imagine what Los Angeles is like. The connection between our reliance on the automobile, and our increasingly extreme weather patterns were becoming more unpredictable had become undeniable for me. I felt it was shameful that so few people could realize the true gravity of this situation.

California brought many other realizations as well.  As you come over the mountains in Northern California, you pass through Redwoods National Forest. This is one of our last great old growth forests in the United States. In 1991, nearly two decades ago, the National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry concluded that less that six percent of our forests consist of old growth. The tragedy found in the story of the American Redwoods is that there are no old growth Redwood Forests that exist any longer outside the gates of protected land. In just under a hundred and fifty years a once thriving and ancient forest was reduced to near exhaustion. A forest thousands of years in the making disappeared in just over an average persons lifetime.  This again hit home for me. Where I spent much of my youth was in the shelter of a similar forest. In the many acres that compose Glacier National Park, reside pockets of some of the oldest growth cedar that is found in Montana. In the past year, the forest that surrounds these protected lands has shared virtually the same tale. Over the last several years the community in the Flathead Valley has felt the same critical stress our forests of Northwest Montana have. As harvestable timber has become consumed faster than it can replenish itself, the radius in which retrieving that wood has expanded.  For a short time this business model was sustained by the creation of several trucking companies in the area to haul the materials the extra distance.  Slowly but surely though, those additional forested areas became thinned out, and the bubble burst. It quickly became apparent to these business owners that it was no longer cost effective to haul these immature logs as far as they were. As the logging industry began to collapse, larger corporations swallowed up the failing smaller independent sawmills, thus ensuring their business another few months at a time. Last week, Plum Creek, one of the largest timber companies in the country was for the first time forced curtailed its operations, by shutting down its MDF plant at its Northwest Regional Headquarters. This was one of the last large production lines that had remained open over the last several years. It is a huge blow to the community who had relied on Plum Creek as a reliable source of income. Now, with the environment at the edge of falling into chaos, the real costs are falling into the light. The cost of taking our forests in these ways is being set into the lap of “we the people.” It also threatens the species native to these old growth canopies. Disrupting the balance of biodiversity has wide and long-term effects. It leaves our forests prone to disaster, with nothing left standing to keep the balance. In the last decade there have been numerous naturally occurring events that have had huge consequences as there simply were and are not sufficient numbers of trees standing to survive these events. From bacterial and viral diseases such as Red Blister Rust that effects the ever becoming rare white pine trees, to invasive beetles that destroy the bark of several other species of pine to the point at which the trees atrophy and die. The point that kept resurfacing for us came again and again; what will the ultimate cost of our modern expansion be?

Within a day of leaving Sacramento, we finally arrived in Death Valley. In the middle of the night we drove into our first unobstructed view of the night sky either of us had seen for some time. As we parked the car in the middle of the highway and shut off the lights, darkness set in. I lit a cigarette and turned my eyes to the sky. Moments before, we had finished a conversation that led us to stop the car. We had been talking about the nature of the sky and the stars.  We had been focused on the central theme of how many people have never seen a night sky like we were experiencing. Many of the friends I had made since arriving in Seattle had spent their entire lives in the city. This was something I couldn’t imagine myself. So upon this realization, we stopped the car and got out.  As I inhaled my first drag and blew the smoke out through my nose, a giant green fireball tore across the sky. Death Valley really is incredible for one great reason in my mind. At night, you have an almost perfect 180-degree dome view of the sky. As this meteor rumbled over us, we were able perceive the curve of our atmosphere. The brush and dry cracked desert that it scoured were lit up with the green glow we all experience in the momentary flashes on July Fourth, except this lasted for seconds. As the light faded and we were plunged back into darkness we looked towards each other and just chuckled and simultaneously exclaimed, “Whoa…!” We finished our cigarettes and continued driving until we reached Stovepipe Wells. That night we spent many more hours under the night sky, reconnecting with the world our ancestors saw 10,000 years ago.  I went to bed that night after a few Johnny Walkers with the thought of how great it is that this truly special place has been set aside. The next day would prove to surprise me once again.

Furnace Creek is an interesting place. It is the second of only about five places in Death Valley where drinkable water has been found by drilling a very deep well. This is because the valley floor used to be an ocean, so the only water on the surface is full of salt, and therefore cannot be consumed. What we found in the late afternoon was something I never expected in a National Park. We pulled into the gas station furnace wells and as we filled up the car we surveyed our new surroundings. There is a small lodge and a few private residences fill the rest of this small settlement. In the middle of it all though, there were hundreds of Date Palms.  I’m not kidding, palm trees in the middle of a place that gets less than two inches of water a year. It was even more disheartening to discover their long established golf course. For decades now they’ve been pumping the little water in their special aquifer and using it to maintain that perfect green turf. I’m sorry, but I firmly believe Death Valley is no place for a golf course; A golf course in a desert like Death Valley offers as much purpose as making popsicles in an oven.  I was truly shocked to see that the NPS would allow non-native species to be planted within the boundaries of the park. The entire purpose of the NPS is to keep these wildernesses pristine. The golf course was just insult on top of that, a complete mockery of the design we have made for our special places that need to be preserved.

We explored the valley floor for a while longer, and had to make our way on home to Montana. The road out of Death Valley that we took led us on our way back North through Las Vegas. Our entry to the city of lights was the defining moment of our realization that has brought us to this project.  As you drive in or out of Las Vegas, on each end of the city you’re greeted by two separate power plants, one of which burns coal to generate electricity to run all of those sparkling lights that make up the Vegas Strip. We couldn’t help but think about how out of harmony we are with our planet.

Our drive continued through Utah, Idaho, and ended in Montana. Through the last leg of our trip we slugged along processing all that we had seen. Deciding we needed a rest, we took up residence in the lodge at Chico Hot Springs, MT.  It was the perfect end to our journey into the unknown.  In Chico, a few year round employees run a small lodge, the hot-spring pool, and a greenhouse and garden. During the summer months the community central to Chico grows their own food in the garden, much of it ending up used in the lodge’s restaurant. In the winter, they are able to maintain their comfort foods that normally would be out of season. They have a greenhouse that utilizes the hot mineral water to generate enough warmth in the soil for anything they want to grow.  They actually maintain an avocado tree year round, and are able to harvest that fruit in even the coldest winter months. They certainly have found a sustainable, low impact way of life in Chico. They don’t take more than is needed off their land, and because of such, will be able to benefit from the natural beauty of the hills and mountains of south-central Montana into the future. This was a glimmer of hope in the wake of such an incredibly desperate time in our history. The challenge is enormous; it is a scale of such magnitude that it will take the cooperation of people across the globe. Our trivial disputes of borders, religion, colors, and many of the things that make us different must stop. Without a decisive move on a global scale to abandon or alter our current trends and ways of life, we are all going to be recipients of the repercussions. If we continue to saw down our forests, pollute our air, destroy our clean water, and poison our land, our planet is going to become a harsh wasteland that is uninhabitable. This is the cost of our expansion. Many of these precious few resources that are still harvestable are dwindling. Much of the material is wasted in inferior quality design, the by-product of which is cities that are devastatingly impaired when it comes to surviving natural disasters.  If we keep expanding at our current rates, there will not be enough left to make it through another century before we consume everything on this planet. The degradation we see in the Western United States has only occurred in the last hundred and fifty years, and it’s speed grows exponentially every day. What is going to be the legacy we leave for the next two generations? With the changes that have occurred in the lifetimes of my father and his father, if this arrogant design that is the way we live is allowed to continue, there may not be much left in the world of my future grandson.

Filed under: Art, Art News, Art Prints, Culture Economey, Environment, How to survive as a Working Artists, Journalism, Media, On Art, Photography, Politics , Climate Change, Columbia Falls, Death Valley, Environmental News, Hurricane Winds, Jacob Eubank Photography, Kalispell, Montana Artists, Photography, Seattle Photographers, Washington Artists, Washington Flooding

Living on the Edges of 2012

Plum Creek winter 2007

Living on the Edges of 2012

A cold damp wind blows across my face; it burns the eyes, as I look toward a sky empty of artificial clouds of steam and smoke that once dominated my view of the valley where I have lived for the last 13 years. Today only, a passing car breaks the silence, as the constant hum of Plum Creek one of the largest sawmills in the Northwest is quiet. The sound of nothing is deafening and suddenly frightening. The mill had operated seven days a week working three shifts, seldom was there ever a break in the clouds of smoke and steam. The economic collapse that has rocked America has arrived in Columbia Falls is a small town of around 5000 residents known as the industrial heart of Northwest Montana with a stunning blow to our small community.  Plum Creek is one of the largest timber corporations America. They are also one of the largest landowners in the country only second to the Federal Government here in Montana and they are in desperate trouble. The demand for wood products have ceased with the collapse of the housing bubble.

My mind wanders as I listen to nothing this morning. I think about Last year 2007.

It seems like it was so long ago now that my son and I took a road trip to Death Valley. It was only a little over a year ago now. Our purpose was to take photographs to document our trip. It was a photographers outing. We both just wanted to get away from the must do’s of work and life itself. But that trip turned into something far beyond what I expected as did the coming year 2008. We had two weeks to ourselves, no obligations. The impending changes of 2008 that December before were just talk. Talk about how improbable it was that Barrack Obama would even make it through the primary elections let alone become President. The economy was not really on the radar as much as climate change. We drove south from Seattle down the coast where a category 3 hurricane type storm battered the northern west coast like never before. The road, lined with trees torn out of the ground, snapped off mid trunk as if twigs were a testament of the power of that storm. Seawalls breeched by record tides flooded; devastated the small towns along the west coast that were now in a state of organized recovery. No national press about this storm dominated the news like Katrina but the damage was impressive, severe. We stopped to take pictures and walk on the beach in Oregon. You would hardly know that only a few days ago the ocean covered shoreline up to the first stories of homes and hotels along the beach except for the line of debris that had been contained along the sea walls. People were collecting wood scattered by the storm, building fires to warm themselves as they waited for the sunset. A man was moving big logs on a stairway that led up to a patio at one of the hotels, was asked him how all those logs got there. He told us about the storm and that he had never seen the water come up as far as it did water pushed by a weeks worth of hurricane force winds. He told us how the town of Oceanside had been cutoff with no escape by tidal flooding that blocked the roads. He told how the residents banned together to help each other and share food and whatever else they had.

As we journeyed on toward our destination, we talked a lot, about the effects of coastal flooding we had witnessed and changes that were occurring right now. Maybe it was just random events as weather is, or maybe not. We talked about the Mayan calendar and the Hopi prophecies http://www.geocities.com/whitecrystalmirror/prophecy.html that predict and end to this phase of modern civilization in 2012. We talked about how these prophecies might play out, how this might happen. Would natural disasters like Katrina, Oceanside or the results of climate change, play a role in the end of modern civilization? Or would our behavior today as a society be the catalyst for failure.

After a long day of driving, we approached Death Valley it was dark. Night comes early in December.

Stop here I have to take a leak. Here was nowhere in the middle of nothing, just a dark road, where no artificial light could penetrate the darkness except the headlights of the car that connected Death Valley with the rest of the world. Turning off the car and headlights, we got out of the car, lit a smoke, and proceeded to relieve ourselves when the sky lit up like a roman candle.  As monstrous greenish blue fire ball with a tail that stretched across the horizon burned right over our heads. Did you see that? “What the Fuck was that”, Jake said. “A meteor I think”, I answered. Excited by the event our consensus was, let’s go!  We jumped into the car and headed down a steep grade that seemed to go on forever to the valley floor. Every now and then as the road turned the headlights, spied large water tanks located in turnouts. The water tanks were a reminder of where we were and how fortunate it was December and not August because the modern automobile is still no match for natural heat of that desert.  As we arrived at Stovepipe Wells, we were still taking about that Meteor. That Meteor and the hundreds we saw over the next couple of days really change me, as did the scorched wasteland that is Death Valley. That was little more than a year ago December 2007 before the turmoil of 2008 had occurred. I really didn’t know then what I know now because now was the future then.

Now it seems that economic collapse is perhaps the immediate threat to the system of how we live. The cascading failures of banks and businesses that have sustained our way of life are collapsing. Perhaps the Mayans and the ancient ones of the Hopi Indians knew that history has a way of repeating itself, that human prophecies are self-fulfilling. These events of collapse and failure are the historical facts of life of written history of history no longer spoke by silent voices. A silent history recorded in the ruins of past civilizations here in the American Landscape. These Ancient ruins and ghost towns preserve the presence and failure of our ancestral people and our history.

Today the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company, CFAC is also quiet; their plotlines are cold and empty, as the demand for high-grade aluminum has vanished and the costs of energy and material have soared.  CFAC as we call them around here has announced that they can no longer operate at today’s prices in today’s metals market on Christmas Eve and they have decided to close permanently.

Semi Tools a high tech company a front-end manufacturer in the computer industry, a company that supplies the computer manufacturing industry worldwide with the machines that actually make your computers.  Announced they have to reduced production and cut their workforce by more that fifty percent. These dramatic events have occurred over the last two weeks, with CFAC announcing on Christmas Eve they will close permanently and Semi Tool and Plum Creek making their announcements this past Friday January 9 they will curtailed until further notice. This news came to workers who were on mandatory furlough for the past month as an emergency cost saving measure by all of these companies had returned to work after the first of the year. In addition, Plum Creek has told all of their contractors to stop work, stop logging operations. The news is devastating for a small town a small community and for America, that is already suffering the effects of the housing and construction market failure. In one week, more than a tenth of our small population lost theirs jobs and these were the highest paying jobs in the Flathead Valley as well as Montana.

We moved to Columbia Falls about 13 years ago where I became the Director of the local Art Museum located in downtown Kalispell Montana. This was at a time of franchise infancy in the community. Wal-Mart and Costco arrived to the Flathead valley just after the first McDonalds. Before that, the infrastructure of the Flathead Valley was local Mom and Pop un-franchised businesses. The Flathead Valley of Northwest Montana was mostly untouched by the mass distribution of corporate enterprises that dominate the larger communities of America. Its sense of place was unique; a small Home Town, a Rural Paradise that offered a haven from the large urban communities of modern America. It was a place where a kid like Jake can grab a towel and walk to the end of the street to the community swimming pool with no worries. Thirteen years after McDonalds and the explosion of Franchise Businesses I can hardly recognized the original community I moved too in 1996. The valley has taken on the same visual characteristics as the rest of America it has become part of the Homage-O-Nation! As you drive through the valley on U.S 93, the landscape reveals the same architecture, a true assimilated American Community. Wal-Mart, Boarders, Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, Walgreen’s and a plethora of corporate franchise restaurants to supplement a major anchor complex. You seen one you seen em all. This is how goods and services are delivered today, the Architecture is functional and predictable, a box with ornamentation stuck on it giving each box an identifiable appearance, or as I like to think of it, a CODE. One-step farther inside the box and we identify the product line. It really doesn’t matter what McDonalds you walk into anywhere on the planet, you know you can get a Big Mac and you identify the product with the architectural Code. The architecture is the reinforcement of the Code an image of the corporation, the franchise; it is part of the brand. This is where the sameness of products of the landscape, cityscape and culture started. The code or brand reinforces the product into our culture and our ideas about ourselves changed. We began to seek our comforts in unifying products. These products help us define our status or place in the social economic pecking order. These product identifications, brands, codes enhance our personal likeability our sexuality to others. Many of us now live in towns in houses and neighborhoods that all look alike. Even the color of the houses and building are regulated, all the same color scheme, no variation on the theme is tolerated.

The Development that we have come to believe we need, that we want, has created a sameness that has overtaken the cultural landscape across an America of endless McDonald’s, Strip Malls and Big Box Stores that has grown into new cities and towns, not built to live and walk in, but to drive to. Development and Sameness has changed us as a culture. Perhaps this is how it happened? Developers brought us development and products and we were all told we needed them and we believed the developers, the corporate retailers, and their advertising and we believed we needed these products. This idea is in stark contrast to having true needs and then developing products and services to fill our true desires and needs. I am sure we all really want a MacDonald’s hamburger that is smaller than the pickle slices on the bun. But “Your Love n It”.

Today’s headlines detail the failure of our way of life, a human system on the brink of Collapse. If the effects of this rapid growth this manmade disaster only impacted Columbia Falls and the Flathead Valley then perhaps emergency aid and relief could help stabilize the situation. The effects are in fact global and not centralized to us alone. The effect of our modern model and its collapse will touch all of us around the world in ways; we have yet to experience because of “How We Live” and our dependence on a global market place that apparently according to world leaders has become un-stable, unsustainable.

This is not a new story in the history of civilization. It is a story of transition from the past to the present and an uncertain future. Several years ago, I read Jared Diamond’s book Collapse. http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_9780670033379,00.html

He compares modern Montana with past civilizations. He writes about the people of Chaco Canyon http://eubank.home.bresnan.net/ and the failure of their system, their way of life. They exhausted the natural resources that had been the source of their success as a culture. In the end the climate, the environment changed and civilization failed. Throughout the Western United States lay the ruins of the past. The people vanished as their environment no longer sustained them, from the Wupatki http://www.nps.gov/wupa culture in northern Arizona to the Chaco http://www.nps.gov/chcu Culture in New Mexico they were gone with countless others. Today the reasons why these civilizations failed is part speculation and part science, the mystery of what, when and where they went remains un-spoken in stories of a vanished civilization. After reading Diamond’s account of the failure of the Chaco Culture, I wanted to go to New Mexico and see for myself this place of mystery of un-spoken stories. As I embarked on my expedition of discovery in November of 2006, I went as an Artist not as a Scientist. My discoveries are intuitive, based on my feeling about this place.  My intuition, my gut feeling about what happened and what remains were my source, my sense of this place. Diamond writes about an enterprising culture that had a purpose to develop beyond their limits and technology to sustain them. They were a culture that destroyed their sustainable environment for the sake of development of expansion. It is un-clear in the forgotten stories why this development was so important to the Chacoan’s.  Some archeologists believe the people used the pueblos during ceremonial seasons and that only a small population of people inhabited the area year round. As the story goes, thousands of visitors would come to Chaco during the ceremonial seasons to celebrate their stories, their beliefs. Perhaps this account is true or maybe there is a story untold. Diamond writes about how the people deforested the landscape. They cut down all of the trees of what once was a forest far beyond what the eye can see into the distance from the canyon so they could build their city. What remains is a desolate landscape void of any large trees. Ponderosa Pine covered the landscape before. Diamond estimates that the Chaco people cut down tens of thousands of trees as far away as a sixty-mile radius from the Chaco site. This was a time when horses did not roam the landscape and all of the timber moved was by the manual labor of the people. They carried or pulled the fallen trees to the city and they built great structures. In the process, they changed the flow of water, their life substance and slowly the environment turned against them. Corn, which was the food of the gods no longer, grew in this place. Slowly they vanished as a culture. There is evidence that the last Chacoan’s began recycling. They salvaged material from older buildings and reused them to continue building new ones. But this was an effort too late because the environment became the master of this land– a land unable to sustain a human presence. To be sure, descendants of the Chaco Culture still exist. Fragmented disenfranchised from one another they either sought survival on their own or assimilated into other groups. They became us a thousand years into the future or perhaps we have become them and as future inhabitants look back from a thousand years forward.

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=IESYMFtLIis

For me Jared Diamonds story of Chaco Canyon has real meaning as a modern Montanan. As the economy, stock markets and global development soared to never before seen heights, the evidence of the cost of that great expansion are present all around us. Building boomed as more people bought homes and big rides SUV’s. Corporate development seemed destined to reach every undeveloped area in the modern landscape while small and large sawmills closed by the dozens and left once thriving communities dependant on them devastated in the wake of their failure. If you look at a map of Montana where the forests cover the land every community saw, mills go out of business. They failed in the midst of one of the most prolific periods of building and development in our history. Over the last ten years, year after year dozens of wood product, timber businesses failed after decades of sustainable production. Why, the availability of harvestable timber was not, is not available, it is gone. The once abundant old growth timber stands are gone, harvested. The existing stands today are in a second harvest or re-growth period. The re-growth period of Timber in this region spans the measure of a human lifetime, about 80 to 120 years. The second growth timber now harvested, replaced the old growth stands harvested a century ago. Add to this the devastation of forests by fire and rural development the supply of harvestable trees declined disproportionately with the development of our society. Today’s demand has placed unsustainable pressure on the natural system, demand on the forests for trees. Timber a renewable resource for the wood products industry is now on the fringe of collapse with the pressure of current demand. Time is the enemy in our current business model. Demand operates on a much faster clock than natural growth.

People ask me if I am a religious man and I tell them I am a spiritual man. Religion I think is a collection of ideas that a group of people agree on, principles that the group shares and follows. A spiritual belief recognizes the ideas and principles of all religions and agrees to share with tolerance those that seek a higher truth the fundamental truth of all things.

Jake and I discovered a joy in the adventure together and found that our ideas, our hopes, our paths were spiritually connected through our individual work as Artists, Photographers, Writers and our relationship as Father and Son”. While we were sitting under a sky full of falling stars in the desolation of Death Valley, we arrived at a moment, an idea that things fall apart that all things change and are renewed. We talked at length about the environment and the impact of our modern society. We talked about how millions of modern people have never seen the real sky, unmasked of the artificial illumination of modern cities. We talked about the disconnection of modern human beings from their natural environment and we wondered how civilization could go forward with out reconnecting to the natural environment in a sustainable way. Our present time is shocking and full of fear and the unknown, of what the future may bring. But if we are still the masters of this place this land this planet then we have the power to choose our future a sustainable future.

Elders Speak

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1299816/indigenous_native_american_prophecy_elders_speak_part_1_5/

Coming Soon Energy and Metal

About The Project http://davideubank.wordpress.com/about-jacob-and-david-eubank-and-the-living-on-the-edges-of-2012-collaboration/

Sources:

Semi Tool

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2009/01/11/news/local_montana/news_8768521326_01.txt

Plum Creek

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2009/01/09/news/local_montana/news_8768521326_02.txt

CFAC

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2009/01/09/news/local_montana/news_8768521326_02.txt

CFAC and Plum Creek

http://www.hungryhorsenews.com/

Plum Creek Formaldehyde pollution

http://www.scorecard.org/env-releases/facility.tcl?tri_id=59912PLMCRPOBOX

http://www.hungryhorsenews.com/articles/2004/09/29/news/news01.txt

About Plum Creeks New Bio Filter System

http://www.timberbuysell.com/community/DisplayNews.asp?id=3681

Blog about Formaldehyde

http://www.toxictrailers.org/2008_03_01_archive.html

Toxic Emmissions

http://static.uspirg.org/reports/toxics03/toxicreleases1_03report.pdf

• Coming Soon Energy and Metal in Montana

Filed under: Art, Art News, Culture Economey, Environment, How to survive as a Working Artists, Investing, Journalism, News, On Art, Photography, Uncategorized , Columbia Falls Montana, Economic Predictions 2009, Obama Stimulas Plan, Plum Creek, Sustainablity

Change Happens

 

• It seems like it was so long ago now that my son and I took a road trip to Death Valley.

It was only a little over a year ago now. Our purpose was to take photographs to document our trip. It was a photographers outing. We both just wanted to get away from the must do’s of work and life itself. But that trip turned into something far beyond what I expected as did the coming year 2008. We had two weeks to ourselves, no obligations. The impending changes of 2008 that December before were just talk. Talk about how improbable it was that Barrack Obama would even make it through the primary elections let alone become President. The economy was not really on the radar as much as climate changes. We drove south from Seattle down the coast where a category 3 hurricane type storm battered the northern west coast like never before. The road lined with trees torn out of the ground and snapped off as if twigs were a testament of the power of that storm. Seawalls breeched by record tides had devastated the small towns along the coast that were now in a state of organized recovery. No national press about this storm like Katrina was in the headlines but the damage was impressive. As we journeyed on toward our destination, we talked a lot about changes that were occurring right now. Maybe it was just random events as weather is, or maybe not.

 

• After a long day of driving, we approached Death Valley it was dark.

Night comes early in December. Stop here I have to take a leak. Here was nowhere in the middle of nothing, just a dark road that connected Death Valley with the rest of the world. We got out of the car, lit a smoke, and proceeded to relieve ourselves when the sky lit up like a roman candle.  As monstrous greenish blue fire ball with a tail that stretched across the horizon burned right over our heads. Did you see that? What the F_ _ _ was that Jake said. A meteor I think I answered. Let’s go! So we jumped into the car and headed down a steep grade that seemed to go on forever to the valley floor. As we arrived at Stovepipe Wells, we were still taking about that Meteor. That Meteor and the hundreds we saw over the next couple of days really change me, as did this scorched wasteland that is Death Valley. But that was in 2007 and I really didn’t know then what I know now because now was the future then.

 

•  As I watched my son work, I realized how much he had learned in school, studying his craft as a Photographer.

He was perfectly at home with a camera in his hands; the camera was an extension of him now. He had encouraged me to bring his old digital camera with me; I wasn’t really a digital guy then, so struggled with this new gadget. While for him, the digital technology was just part of him. Jake I thought has always had a good eye a Photographers eye an Artists eye. Even back when he was a kid and I taught him how to develop film in the laundry room. He always made interesting and stunning images. Now I got to see him working at a professional level with confidence and excitement.

 

We spent the next couple of days running around Death Valley taking pictures by day and talking about what we had done around a campfire at night while watching an amazing meteor shower drinking Johnny Walker. Too soon, we headed home to Montana, it was the holidays and we promised to come home. Jake finished school and graduated in June. I went back to work life was good. Then came the bust, chaos, fear, and well you all know the story so it needs no repeating. Jake is still taking pictures, but jobs are lean. Me I am laid off for the winter and hope that spring will bring more work; there is nothing here in Montana now. That seems to be the story across the country, bad news and more bad news. Its damm, depressing.

 

 

Jake and I are beginning to work on a new project and have been talking on the phone and planning. Death Valley and our experience there is a starting point for what I, we hope will be an exciting Photo Documentary project, a future project. You see we have to keep going, we have to keep keeping on. So this is where I leave you with a poem I wrote about our trip last year.

 

 

 

 

 

You can’t see the meteors for all of the shooting stars

 

 Meteors hidden by the tales of shooting stars

 

Foreign palm trees thirst in the sands at the bottom of the world

 

The desert broom blossoms with scant drops of morning dew

 

Butterflies nap in shady crevasses of wash cut walls waiting for the night

 

Ravens fly to and fro calling to those who wait for their voices ready to hear

 

Land void, punctuated by the transgressions of fickle men

 

Abundant rainbows of solitude waiting to fill the dry breath of eyes looking

 

Spring weeps courageous over the land parched after seasons of scorched thirst and death, full of breath and spirit and life

 

Do not grieve that; that is to pass and passing, continuance replenishes the void

 

Hope rises with every new sun; rest comes when coolness covers the world with a moon dark

 

Shooting stars hide meteors with fireworks in the moonless sky

 

Glass bottles melt in the fire so hot, cracking in the cool desert air into mirrors reflecting the end of all things that must come

 

Morning brings the grey dove of this desert that feasts on the ashes of the night lost

 

Follow the raven that sees over the horizon, flying without fear he enjoys today, his kind knows tomorrow having survived countless yesterdays in the barren landscape many forsake, hope is found by those who look, who see

 

Tomorrow will come as stars fall from a blue sky, be not like the coyote who waits at the crossroads for his dinner, fly with the raven who is master in this land

 

Wear hope like the meteor whose copper green beacon fills the sky

 

Falling stars have marked time since the beginning of everything

 

 The Raven sees meteors when no one else is looking

 

See more of Jakes work at Jacob Eubank Photography Seattle Washington.

 

Jacob Eubank and the Raven

http://jacobeubankphotography.com/

 

 

Filed under: Art, Art News, Art Prints, Culture Economey, Environment, How to survive as a Working Artists, Journalism, Media, On Art, Photography, Uncategorized , Change, Death Valley, Photo essay, Poetry