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Dissecting the Impervious Image - The Work of Adam Hosmer

There's something strange, I think, about the idea that digital images will never decay.

They'll never bubble under years of humidity. The sun will never scorch away their colors. Their pigments aren't real, and as a result, they can't be destroyed.

Sure, you could always smash every hard drive ever to contain a certain photo, eliminating it from the world. But that would be a simple deletion, not a gradual decomposition. Digital images either are or they aren't. Their very existence, like the systems on which they're sustained, is binary. They'll never age, never falter, never change. They're either preserved or destroyed, in the world or out of it.

Something about that must feel wrong to us. We seek new ways of emulating the in-between, the entropic limbo between pristine information and its eventual scattering into chaos. Perhaps that is why we subscribe to services like Instagram, so we can add the illusion of decay to our immortal digital images.

Like the popular and valuable sharing app, Adam Hosmer is interested in that in-between place that's been lost in the digital renaissance. His work--a series of manipulated and drawn-on photographs--exists solely in the digital sphere. It's never seen paper. He doesn't subject it to the tangible fragility of the physical world. Instead, he splinters those untouchable images, embroidering them with strange filaments that are equal parts growth and decay. Morphed, collaged, etched, and erased, his images enter a new realm of unreality that's more than a little uncomfortable for the first-time viewer.

Most viewers are made uncomfortable by any distention or dissection of the human form. It's an innate reaction to a violation of our own sense of body; we prefer to think of ourselves as whole forms, and to be forced to relate to a mutated figure creates a perceptible unease. Hosmer's feathery grotesques prove no exception. Frayed by time, they hang in bizarre contrast to the untouched environments around them. They glitch out, snatches of photorealistic body parts blipped in between the soft fabric created by the artist's wandering hand. The drawings writhe against the clean, untouched base image. They're the decay we're denied by our exclusive consumption of digital imagery. They make us squirm because all these static, unyielding pictures have almost made us forget that we ourselves still exist in the physical realm, are still susceptible to that same decay that used to plague our information as well as our bodies. Photos are immortal now. We're not.

Urban Geodes: Beautifying Architectural Decay

Los Angeles artist highlights flaws in buildings by mimicking natural rock forms

There's a new disorder somewhere in that big book of disorders that pathologizes a continuous lack of exposure to nature. City folks have it big time, and it supposedly can lead to things like depression and anxiety. It makes sense, I suppose, that our brains and bodies would start to feel out of whack after spending too much time away from water, clean air, trees. Sidewalk greenery isn't exactly enough to make us feel like we're living as one with nature. So we city kids get nature withdrawal and there's not a whole lot most of us can do about it except move out of the city.

But we can make art about it. We can overlay natural formations on artificial landscapes. We can challenge the line between the organic and the fabricated with just a few scraps of paper.

That's what Paige Smith does, anyway. Her Urban Geode project in Los Angeles--perhaps the most nature-deprived place in the world--takes little pockets of city structures and fills them with the kind of crystals you might find in a glittering secret cave.

These pseudo-formations aren't just pretty and they're not merely tongue-in-cheek. There's a lot to consider when it comes to civilization's relationship to entropy. We do our best to impose our own forms upon the landscape, to flatten it, to thread it with power lines and to stud it with buildings, but no matter how ordered our plans may be, chaos and decay always unsettle them. Buildings require constant maintenance just to stay upright. Systems of transportation are always in need of repair. Cities may be modeled after a concept of perfect geometry, but their ideal forms exist only in our imaginations. In reality, they are flawed, crumbling entities, constantly evolving just like nature.

Smith uses her geodes to highlight the city's susceptibility to decay. She scopes out little hollows where bricks have crumbled away and fills them with brightly-colored paper crystals. Instead of ignoring the flaw, we're forced to look at it. Suddenly, it's not so much a flaw anymore. It's just another part of the natural processes of decay we're all caught within.

Cities may be reflections of humanity's battle with entropy, but it's important to recognize the ways in which our efforts fail. We're immune to neither time nor chaos. We might as well try looking at the decay as a property of a beautiful existence rather than as evidence of an ugly demise.

Jonah Lehrer's Imagine: How Creativity Works

Lehrer takes an etheral idea like creativity, and provides new insight with real life evidence and research.

Jon ah Lehrer, author, blogger, and radio/podcast personality (podnality?) is out with a new book titled Imagine: How Creativity Works. The book tackles one of the more opaque and incomprehensible faculties of the human mind; as Lehrer describes it, “our most important talent: the ability to imagine what has never eisted.” However, as with Lehrer’s other books, he attempts to marry the abstract and cloud-level ideas about creativity with the tangible reality “on the ground”, taking examples of real-world creative events, picking apart their strands, and weaving those together to form a coherent and thought-provoking exploration on the idea of imagination.

One of the first things that Lehrer attempts to do is disassociate creativity and imagination with a total “freedom of the mind”. Compiling empirical evidence from studies and psychoanalytical research, Lehrer attempts to break down these types of misconceptions. In an interview with Barnes and Noble Review, he refutes the idea that creativity is constrained by constructive criticism and other external factors. He also discredits the idea that creativity is an innate trait that one either has, or doesn’t.

One of the more interesting parts in Imagine is the emphasis on what Lehrer describes as “creative collisions”. Lehrer makes the point that creativity is many things, it’s a bit of “grit” (the hard-working, often repetitious work that we do to specialize in something) surrounded by opportunities to synthesize other, less quantifiable ideas. That synthesis happens within these collisions, when what you know meets up with what you don’t in a way that sparks something truly unique. Lehrer makes the point that as the internet began to open up our ability to communicate, people thought that the need for physical office spaces would begin to dissolve; that as we were able to produce and accomplish more in the digital space there would be no need for a brick and mortar one. Obviously, that hasn’t happened; people continue to commute to the office, we continue to specialize and to be isolated or cordoned off in our own little areas. Lehrer even shares with BNR the fact that since Skype was introduced, attendance at business conferences has actually doubled.

This intensifies the need for these creative collisions, for people from disparate areas, or even related ones, to come together to reignite the creative process. Steve Jobs seemed to understand this and began to rearrange his building so that the various writers, designers, and programmers that all went to work in their own insulated wing would be forced to run into one another. He started by creating a central atrium, and then moved their mailboxes to the atrium. He added a cafeteria, coffee station, and then even the bathrooms….the only bathrooms. Although employees complained initially, (even to the point where Jobs was eventually forced to add another set of bathrooms), it paid off in the long run. As Lehrer writes, “Now lots of people have their bathroom breakthrough story, describing how some errant conversation while washing their hands led to an insight.”

Imagine is a great handbook for anyone in the creative class that feels they need a “creative collision”.

Are you a real artist or are you faking it?

In a world of imposters, what is Art?

Everyone calls themselves an artist these days, when many are simply creators, entertainers, or, sadly, just thieves, copycats and destroyers.

I've seen everything from graffiti to tattoos to rap classified as "art," when many of these things are not reflective, insightful or refined enough to be true art -- although in the right hands, they can be.

Everything beautiful or creative is not art.

To put it in frank terms, art is the deft dramatization of an idea or concept.

If there is not a central idea or theme, there is no art.

If there is no drama, there is no art.

If you have no unique perspective worth dramatizing, then there is no art.

Drama can be in all the fine touches and micro-complexities that make the art beautiful, shocking, original and powerful.

Art should make us look at beliefs differently because it says something bold about some truth.

I'm not saying an artist should always be conscious of the underlying theme; that would make art too deliberate and less inspired. However, theme should be there even if on the subconscious level acting as a propeller.

The angle of a flower in a painting conveys something. The riddle in lyrics should convey some subtext. The cacophony of a rock music composition should be a non-verbal exclamation of something! Even some sculpture made with Play-doh can convey something. Otherwise, all this so-called art is just empty pretense.

Once I was at an urban gallery where teens were displaying "art" pieces. I asked one "artist" about the genesis of his work. He couldn't explain it. He said the colors were cool and design was cool.

It was pathetic to listen to. This was no artist. Only sharp, reflective minds are capable of creating art because art, by virtue of being conceptual, is a product of the higher mind, the emotions, and the psyche.

I think it's wonderful for people to be as creative as possible, but just because you're crafty doesn't mean you're an artist.

Rapid-Share Art

How the blogosphere has changed the way we view work

Sometimes I just want to grab myself by my own face and force my eyes to look at a single piece of artwork for five whole minutes. I look at art every single day, but the more images I look at, the less time I devote to considering any one of them. Maybe that's not such a good thing, but so the internet has made me.

We're living in an era where more people are exposed to the visual arts than ever. It's never been trendier to consider yourself a creative type. All you need to do to subject yourself to a steady flow of artwork is to sign up for a Tumblr and follow a few online curators and self-publishing artists. You can browse through hundreds, maybe thousands of images every day if you're so inclined.

Generally, the most popular art blogs on the internet are the ones that update incessantly. There's rarely any kind of thematic organization to the images they publish; their operators load up their feeds with work that catches their eye, then set their blogs to update automatically throughout the day. Given that almost every follower will view each image in a different context--sandwiched between whatever else happens chronologically on their feed--there's little need to structure the flow of posts. You simply publish what you like and hope that maybe it draws a little traffic.

Viral distribution now has the power to make an artist's career if one of their images catches enough attention from the online masses. But are we all really looking at their art the right way?

There's no doubt that the internet and its various artistic outposts have changed the ways young artists create work. Given that the majority of their audience will view their art on a computer screen, there's no need to give any thought to scale. It doesn't matter if you create an image that's the side of a stamp or the size of a wall; it'll probably be rendered at approximately 600 by 800 pixels either way. Everything has been recast in one size, and it's all being devoured all too quickly.

The amount of time the average viewer spends looking at a single work of art has diminished astonishingly in this age of everything all of the time. Young artists no longer seem to be concerned with drawing in their viewers for a second look, pulling them down into multiple layers of an image. If you can't hit your audience with the full impact of your work in about half a second, you're not likely to gain much of a following. As a result, we've all become less thoughtful viewers, concerned mostly with the surface aesthetics of a piece and not with how it evolves in the eye over time.

Of course, artists who make work aimed toward the gallery space may still expect traditional consideration time from their viewers. But that's neither the quick nor the easy way to gather a fan base. It seems more and more artists churn out quick images that cluster self-declared creatives like magnets, but do little to challenge the eye. It's a frightening trend for the future of art--the fast and easily digestible work. But manic distribution methods seem to make it inevitable. I anticipate the next generation of truly challenging work will engage with this phenomenon, grappling with our rapidly mutating perception of time and how we apply it to our viewing experience.

Nike Schroeder's Embroidered Snapshots

Textile artist crafts her own memories

Sourcing personal memories for fine art always carries its own danger. How might the artist transform instances from her individual narrative into something that transcends timelines, that resonates with people who don't share those memories? There's a reason we don't consider snapshots themselves to be art. They mean little to those who don't recognize the people and the moments captured within. But translate those snapshots to a vastly different medium from film or digital images and suddenly they're curiosities worthy of a more general attention.

Nike Schroeder works with thread. She painstakingly embroiders images onto different colored canvases, recreating the impromptu photos she takes of her friends at parties. In one sense, they're portraits of the people whose likenesses she captures with her needle. In another, they have very little to do with the individuals whose presence originally inspired the photographs. They're a copy of a copy of a person, with most of the detail left behind in favor of textured shapes.

One could read Schroeder's work as a commentary on the endless process of self-replication our culture has now become. We don't just experience events anymore. We document them as they occur, making sure never to witness anything important without also recording it through the lens we carry constantly in our cell phone. Every single major occurrence inspires a hundred, a thousand different accounts, all published in real time as events unfold. We live now through instantaneous duplication, through copies of copies of copies.

But Schroeder's canvases aren't instant copies. They're lovingly, painstakingly replicated with real craft and effort. They trace the edges of a moment without giving away the whole thing, allowing the bulk of the original image to remain implied. In a way, they're immensely private works, hinting at the memories of parties we'll never get to attend, giving us glimpses at friendships with people we'll never know.

Maybe they're not for us. Maybe that's the point; we all can glance at the edges of each other's lives through our incessant self-publication, but the core experience remains hidden deep within personal memory as something that can't be broadcasted. The tangibility of the medium--the ragged threads wafting down the canvas, loose, exposed, unfinished--hints at the intangibility of the moments contained within. We can see and touch the needlework, but the image it silhouettes eludes us.

Despite the frustration inherent with trying to get at a moment that's sealed off to us, there's a warmth inherent in Schroeder's work. Maybe it's the echo of needlepoint kitsch, or maybe the artist's fondness for these reconstructed memories really does seep through. Either way, it makes her pieces lovely just to look at.

The Tormented Artist Archetype (RIP Whitney Houston)

"There are few voices that rise to the level of an instrument. Her vocals were truly expressions of artistry."

Tonight as I absorb the loss of Whitney Houston, who died this evening, after years of suffering from various self-confessed addictions, such as cocaine addiction, I am haunted by how much true artistry often dovetails with emotional trauma.

I know the archetype of the crazed or melancholic artist is cliché, but there is some truth in it. I'm not even sure one who is lacking in emotional damage can fully reach the threshold of an artist.

From Van Gogh to Elvis to Kurt Cobain to Michael Jackson to Whitney, we have seen in history and in modern times the parallel existence of tormented minds and artistic genius. The two feed one another.

The word artist is bandied about too liberally these days for people who are mere entertainers. Entertainers don't need pain; they need only hype and spectacle. They need handlers who teach them how to be cool and how to market their images.

The true artist feels deeply. Their emotions are hauntingly deep and it is that depth that allows such rich creations as they translate their inner sentiments into songs, paintings, sculpture or other artistic forms. Their soul is the spectacle and they often wear it publicly, vulnerably.

I wish Whitney could have been healed from her obvious suffering as we watched her shrink to a skeleton, enroll in addiction recovery and divorce from enabler and fellow drug user Bobby Brown. However, perhaps her voice would not have been the powerhouse instrument it was had her soul be perfectly normal and at ease.

There are few voices that rise to the level of an instrument. Her vocals were truly expressions of artistry.

Here's my favorite performance ever. It's of Whitney Houston opening up the American Music Awards in 1992. She sang four live songs with perfect and masterful delivery. She did not need to lip sync or have a backing track. It's just pure vocal art. And it remains the most powerful live performance I've ever heard.

Sleepiness and Drunkeness Improve Creative Thought

Yeah, really.

A recent article featured on Wired.com and written by eminently entertaining contributer Jonah Lehrer (one half of WNYC’s excellent radio show and podcast series, Radio Lab), caught my eye. The article, entitled Why Being Sleepy and Drunk Are Great For Creativity, examines why certain creative problems seem to be more easily solved by individuals that are sleepy or drunk and less able to edit their thought process the way we do when we’re “sharp”. It also explains why so many writers, musicians, and artists swear by the creative benefits of alcohol or sleep deprivation.

Cognitive flexibility, or the ability to think “outside the box”, so to speak, is one of the defining characteristics of creativity. It seems that a mental state in which we may feel less “sharp” are actually enabling us to exhibit some cognitive flexibility, making it more difficult for us to edit our thoughts and focus attention in a prescribed way.

One study in which this concept was explored recently took place at Albion College. Researcher surveyed 428 students’ sleep cycles (known as circadian cycles, or rhythms), asking whether they were more alert and productive in the morning or at night. Students answered overwhelmingly “at night”, preferring to steer away from 9 am classes. The researchers then gave the students a number of insight puzzles and then standard arithmetic problems. Here are a couple examples Lehrer provided a couple of insight puzzles included in the study:

A man has married twenty women in a small town. All of the women are still alive and none of them are divorced. The man has broken no laws. Who is the man?

Marsha and Marjorie were born on the same day of the same month of the same year to the same mother and the same father, but they are not twins. How is this possible?

These kinds of problems ask the respondent to think abstractly about their answers, directing their thought process in a way that would follow a logical progression. In other words, not being able to pay attention and not being likely to double-think your choices, actually improves creative thought. The study showed that students looking over these types of questions prior to 8:30 AM (still groggy from sleep) and after 5:00 PM (tired form the day) performed better on insight puzzles than others in the middle of the day.

Another study at the University of Illinois tested students that had imbibed alcohol (to the level of .075% blood alcohol level), and then submitted the students to word problems. The students that had been drinking scored significantly higher on creative word puzzles than students that had imbibed northing.

What does all of this mean for creative people? Work when you wake, drink before noon, and stay up late. As Lehrer so articulately explains, “The stupor of alcohol, like the haze of the early morning, makes it harder for us to ignore those unlikely thoughts and remote associations that are such important elements of the imagination.”

(SPOILER: the answers to the problems above were “priest” and “triplets”, respectively.)

R.I.P. Mike Kelley

Legendary artist dead at 57

Mike Kelley, perhaps one of the most influential American artists of the past half-century, died Tuesday evening at the age of 57.

Kelley's work contained the sort of imagery that might creep into the periphery of your subconscious even if you weren't particularly up to date on the workings of the contemporary art world. You might recognize his work from the cover of the Sonic Youth album Dirty, which features one of Kelley's photographic collages. The collage juxtaposes low quality photographs of discarded stuffed toys with Kelley's own high school senior portrait. The almost overbearing metaphor hangs bare in its simplicity, yet reverberates with a pathos unique to the entirety of Kelley's work.

Mike Kelley created one of my favorite pieces ever to grace a canvas. You might call it a collage, although I suppose some would consider it more of a sculptural piece. It's a collection of found stuffed toys taken apart and stitched together with baby blankets across a large canvas. It's entitled "More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid". If the title alone doesn't stir some part of you deep in the bottom of your spine, I have my doubts that you're fully human. It's a poem in one phrase, and the content of the work itself further compounds the unbearable pathos.

It was Kelley's fascination with the cast-off material of the world that drove his work into those deep and ethereally sad places. What happens to the objects we love once we grow older, move out, die? What remains of us in the junk matter we shed like old skins? What kinds of memory can we contain within objects, and what do we lose when we lose those objects?

The loss of Kelley will be felt deeply throughout the entire art world. I can't think of another artist who transformed the junk of the world into palpable objects of emotion quite in the same way that he did. The self-effacement present in much of his work becomes an effacement of humanity itself, and yet it's ultimately empowering rather than degrading. We are human, maybe, because of all the things we love and have to lose. We're human and maybe it isn't much, but it's all we've got for now. It's terrifying in its way, but that sense of loss could be one of the rawest strains of emotion I've ever found in visual art.

I'll miss that soft, sad lens through which Mike Kelley saw the world.

Steven Tyler’s National Anthem was Artistic – not offensive

I don’t understand the angry reaction to Aerosmith rocker Steve Tyler singing the U.S. natiional anthem during last weekend’s NFC championship game.

I’ve heard other singers over-dramatize the anthem, making it some gospel tune or even a sensual ballad (think Marvin Gaye). Yet, they were extolled.

Steve Tyler is a rocker. He sang the song the way a rock musician would –complete with the screeching at the end.

The least you can say is that Tyler’s version was not like anyone else’s. Most renditions of this national song are forgettable. But Steve Tyler’s will be etched in our minds for months -- maybe longer.

He took a risk.

He stylized it according to his personality.

He didn’t try to do a copycat phrasing that we’ve heard so many times before.

Isn’t that what we ultimately want from artists? To be individualists? Anyone with an Aerosmith song in their computer library will know that Steve was only being himself. It’s not like he tried to mock America or adulterate the anthem the way Roseanne Barr did when she actually spit on the ground and grasped her crotch like a heathen after her squawking of the anthem.

In fact, I think the audience’s behavior was more anti-American than Steve. If you listen to the audio clip you can detect a series of “boos.” Now, that’s just poor etiquette. No matter what, audience members should respect the national anthem as a salute to this country.

Steve is a rock icon with a penchant for lyrics and chaotic self-expression. Unlike a lot of the fabricated modern artists being churned out by image managers and trainers, he’s a true musician and an original. I’ll take a screeching anthem from him any day.

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