Oh, why not more Wordle - Obama edition

2004 DNC Keynote Address - the Audacity of Hope




2007 Presidential Campaign Announcement, Springfield, IL
 

2008 Speech on Race

Wordle - Bush's 2005 Inaugural

  

I saw on Dave(from Pave)'s blog a post on Wordle. Great stuff.
Above is Bush's 205 Inaugural address.

Below I decided to test out Joe Biden's quote,
"Rudy Giuliani - he's a noun and a verb and 9-11."

Blog Bites Back

On Monday I was tickled to hear TXT MSG mentioned on WAMU's Art Beat. Neither my name nor Mark Cameron Boyd's name was mentioned on the radio, but the venue and gist of the work was mentioned.

On line, however, a little more detail was given about the event, including names, and links to our respective blogs!

They chose to link to something I wrote in March about Four Letter Words. In there I make a bad joke about the pronunciation of the word cwms. For those who read this blog regularly, I make a lot of bad jokes. But, what is becoming more apparent to me is the level of responsibility I need to have when writing these epistles. I never know who is going to link back to them, or where they might link.

In the case of where Art Beat linked in my blog, the writing is less revealing about the work, more revealing about the process, and gives strange insights on how I look at dictionaries. But, the writing is carefree, much like the nature of Four Letter Words as a series. The Staff writer at the Washington Post touched on that by commenting on the title, ""Four Letter Words" features more than 200 paintings... of, well, four letter words, though not necessarily the kind you are thinking of." Where neither the Art Beat link nor the Post picked up (nor DCist for that matter in their recent Arts Agenda) is that even a four letter word can posses complexity. Spellings may have truncated or expanded over the years (idyl is an alternative spelling of idyll... or is it the other way around?); they may fall out of the lexicon; they were adopted into the language through colonialism and trade, and have since fallen out of use in some stretches of the globe; or they are phonetically similar to another word and misspelled as a result.

Visually, since an abundance of type faces are available on anyone's personal computer, why not use them? At least once. I take a bit of pride knowing I never repeated a font in this project. Granted, in the process of painting, Times Regular and Times Bold may look similar, but each is a different font from the same family. The relationship between font and word is arbitrary, assigned methodically and randomly throughout the work. This can avoid any stereotyping... like when a greenhorn graphic design student chooses to use Fortune Cookie to design the menu of a Chinese Restaurant. It's a nice bit of variety to impose on a work. Besides, I'm tired of text made from stencils in art works.

But I digressed. This epistle is supposed to be about my responsibility with my blog writing.

If I write what I'd really like to write, will it come back to haunt me? It depends on how I write it, I suppose. Today's discovery on WAMU is a lesson to be mindful of that. I have no knowledge of who reads this. And, after my post about the Chinatown bus, I learned it could be anyone.

What I question more is, if I do carefully craft the commentary I care to publish, and it is done so in a manner that is objective, polite but critical, and with a gear toward insight, is it a path for alienation, a path that pushes discussion and debate, or simply something floating in the abyss like so much flotsam on the Internet?

In DC? Pick up the Onion.

A couple of weeks ago I received an e-mail from Maura Judkis, freelance writer for The Onion A/V Club (and a whole bunch of other periodicals too), saying she wanted to interview me about my work at Transformer, Moment of Zen. Two weeks later, it is on the newsstands in DC. Unlike the video, the article/interview is light and fun - a good read. It'll be

TXT MSG Podcast

Prior to the opening of TXT MSG, Mark Cameron Boyd and I recorded a podcast with Twig Murray who (essentially*) runs the space. For those interested in taking a listen, this is the URL and link to the podcast: http://www.artsdc.com/txtmsgpodcast.html

To address on a couple of things that may shock or surprise people:
I imply that the body of work came about while playing Scrabbulous - the online version of Scrabble that was recently shut down. Specifically, the series related to currency came about from playing Scrabbulous, not the whole body of work (Four Letter Words). The whole body of work came about in part due to...

...the "atrocious" writing of my students. I actually say something to this affect in the podcast; it is a gross generalization intended for a punchline, and as all instructors in post secondary education are aware, a stereotype that exists for a reason: student writing is generally bad. In truth, a lot of writing is generally bad. There are people who get paid to write (copy editors, journalists, etc.) and their writing is filled with mixed modifiers, disagreeing subjects and verbs, disagreeing tenses, and so forth. Most classes I teach are visual classes, yet I spend more time reviewing written work in an effort to curb some of the pitfalls of student writing.

For instance, there are actually high school teachers who claim that "they" and "them" are appropriate pronouns for SINGULAR subjects. (Go back and re-read that with the voice of Lewis Black.) Their students matriculate with the expectation that this is universally understood. For this I have a joke, "What's black and white and red all over?"

I have had some talented writers pass through my courses, as well as many cogent written communicators. However, the scales weigh heavily toward those who have less talent expressing themselves with pen or keyboard. Every professor I know talks about bad student writing. Every professor I know has a story about bad papers, and we talk about them in an effort to out-do the other professor in his/her tale of woe. We console and support each other about the poor writing of students, as though we were members of a 12 step program. Coffee and hugs only adds to the atmosphere.


There are things I didn't talk about in the podcast. Frankly, there is no need to mention Ed Ruscha, Robert Indiana, Joseph Kosuth, or John Baldessari, but these are artists with whom people might quickly associate the work. I have mild interest in each artist. But to associate this work with the work of those artists, simply because they used text and writing, is flawed. No doubt, though, their work gives future artists the permission to use the word as a subject, as a still life, and as a figure.

I was once a graphic designer... but now I am found. I have a love of words and a love of language. I find the cornucopia of font families intriguing. But, I have a strong distaste for working with clients.

After working on this series I began to feel like a scribe. There is a certain amount of patience and diligence that is necessary when making this work. There were times I found myself meditating on each letter (no televisions were harmed in the making of this project). I began to think of those monks who labored over transcriptions of the Bible in the centuries predating Guttenberg's printing press.

*Admittedly I don't recall Twig's title. But, if you want to propose a show at the Athenaeum, she is the person to contact.

Opening at Alexandria's Athenaeum

Yesterday TXT MSG opened at the Athenaeum on Prince Street in Alexandria, VA. The event had fairly good attendance and I was happy to sell 25% of my work. The options are to buy individual squares for $20 each, or to purchase a whole series and get a bit of a discount on the work. For instance, a series of 24 sounds would sell for $400, or a series of 64 homonyms sell for $1100.

The images included are Homonyms (top), Homophones (below), and Uncommon (bottom).The show runs through Sept 21.

And, yes (Pave), some of the Homonyms are heteronyms.



Mark Cameron Boyd's Song for Europe was well interpreted by many. Though hardly anyone could address the Greek board, the Latin and French boards received heavy traffic and his English board is nearly completed!

I hate carpeting

Not the actual material, mind you, because it dampens sounds, is soft under foot, and gives off that cozy sensation. Carpeting: v. the act of laying or placing carpet in a room or space.

In the last week the crew I have managed has turned one of the experimental galleries at Arlington Arts Center into a giant black box. Today we took one step closer to completion by laying black carpet. It looks gorgeous, for the most part, and it will look better once vacuumed. Too bad we'll just heap a ton of dirt on top of it on Wednesday or Thursday (literally... one ton of fresh top soil).

In other news, the final touches have been put on the series of 64 homophones and 64 homonyms. For a time, I had a few of my homophones and homonyms mixed up. Granted, most homonyms are homophones by their/there very/vary nature.

Homonyms - words that are spelled alike but have different meanings.
Think pike: It is either a pole with a pointy end, or a fish up in Canada

Homophones - words that sound alike but may be spelled differently.
read and reed. Or read and red.

Until I started working on this project there were some words I was not aware existed, let alone knew they were homonyms or homophones. For instance... I think I was unaware of the word mete. I may have heard someone say "meted out," which would simply be "dividing," but I don't say it; it is not in my lexicon. Outta sight, outta mind... or something like that. For the sake of argument, let's say I didn't know it.

Mete: v. to allot.
Mete: n. boundary.

Where I may or may not have known the first definition (archaic, according to Websters), I certainly didn't know the second. Or, maybe I didn't think I knew it. For all I know, I thought it was meet, which is a verb. If fishing in The Boundary Waters, are they located where Ontario meets (joins) Minnesota, or where Ontario metes Minnesota? Granted, if I am in that situation I'm thinking about catching meat to pair with wild rice.

Seldom is it that this stuff keeps me up at nights (post will be around 1:00 am; this is an exception). But, occasionally I get that student paper where their/there is confused, and I'm haunted into the wee hours/ours wishing I had the hair/hare to pull out.

I'm a dork.

A Season In Hell and America's Grave at AAC

On July 29th, I once again begin grave digging with Randall Packer - this time at The Arlington Arts Center, where the piece America's Grave will be included Picturing Politics - an exhibition curated by Rex Weil.

With each incarnation, the work expands. The solitary grave, first exhibited in American University's Katzen Museum in January 2006, expanded into a grave and cosmology in the autumn of 2006, down in Athens, GA. Last spring, the work was "exhibited on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol Building", safe within the confines of Provisions Library. This time, the work finally expands into the story boards for the multimedia opera Randall has been composing steadily since 2001. While the final edit of the work has not been completed, elements of the score will be imposed in the grave, along with the various regions of hell, as transcribed from Dante's Inferno.

This is also the first time that the work will be resented in perfect isolation from other work. In the next two weeks I prepare lighting, arrange for carpeting, collect the necessary materials to build a wall, and once again prepare the skeleton of The Grave. Instead of being an "object" of art, as in previous incarnations where the work could be viewed as sculpture, the work is positioned into a theatrical environment.

Installation begins July 29 and runs through Aug. 14 - plenty of time to lay 600 square feet of carpet, build 320 square feet of wall, install 20 lights, and unload half a tone of dirt onto a raised platform.

The exhibition runs Aug. 15 - Sept. 27.

I've Got Blister's on My Fingers!

The quote from John Lennon seems most appropriate. Pictured are 200 stretched 8"x8" canvases for an upcoming exhibition (with Mark Cameron Boyd) at the Athenaeum in mid August. I stretched 1/4 of them this evening.

I know! There are machines that can do that. Like Vader, am I more machine now, than man? Maybe. But, there is aback story to this that has stretched my patience (as well as caused me to stretch a bunch of canvas). Initially I ordered approximately 300 pre-stretched canvases from Art Supply Warehouse in mid April. When they had not arrived by late May I gave them a call.
It seems my canvases were on backorder and would not reach the warehouse until mid July.

"Where are they on backorder from? China?" I said, incredulously.
"Yes sir," the operator replied. "It takes a while for the barge to cross the Pacific."

I ordered pre-stretched canvases because I calculated (rather liberally by some estimates) that it would take 24 hours to assemble 1200 stretcher bars, cut 300 canvas squares and stretch 300 canvases. This does not also account for placing 600 D-rings on the backs. So, I guess by virtue of the associative property, I'm more Chinese now, than man - or, something like that - because my studio definitely felt like a sweat shop this evening a I stretched 50 canvases in two hours (to the tunes of ( ) by Sigur Ros and l'Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio).

Sadly, when I had to default to stretcher bars and canvases I couldn't complete the full order. 6 boxes of stretcher bars are on back order - from China. Does it mean I have no soul if I state for the record that I hope they aren't coming from the Sichuan province?

Balducci's Might Be Run By Morons

This afternoon I went to Balducci's to use a deli coupon to buy a couple of sandwiches and quickly learned that I cannot do that, which confused me. I naturally assumed from my experiences getting sandwiches at delis at several grocery stores in the Midwest and New England that this was common: ya' want a sandwich? Go to the deli! In fact, if I recall from living in Brooklyn, if I wanted to get, say, a Rueben, I could walk to a neighborhood deli and order a Rueben. Not a grocery store, mind you. An actual business called a d-e-l-i wherein they make s-a-n-d-w-i-c-h-e-s.

This is not the case at Balducci's on New Mexico Avenue in Washington, DC. In the deli department you can get your "deli sliced meats." The deli department does not make sandwiches; those are made by the sandwich department which may or may not be in the prepared foods department. I'm going out on a limb here, but I have a feeling the sandwich department gets its meat from the deli department.

The objects I most wanted to purchase from the deli are pictured on the right of the coupon. Pictured: Sandwiches! However, sandwiches are not "sold by the deli," as I was informed by the clerk. "They are sold by the sandwich department." Therefore, the sandwiches I wanted to buy, the sandwiches pictured on the coupon, were not valid purchase items.

Apparently there is a glitch in their system - or departments just don't talk to one another. For example, if I were to buy a sandwich it might get rung up under prepared foods. If I were to buy cream it would go to the dairy. If I purchased a hunk of Fontina cheese, it goes to the cheese department (yes... I know... that's a dairy product, but not a product sold by the diary department). So, when the graphics people in the marketing department make the coupons that go to John Q. Public (or, in this case, John J. Anderson), they don't know the ins and outs of sales. So, if there is going to be a special in the deli, why not represent that deli transaction with a sandwich? After all... IT JUST MAKES SENSE!

That is, of course, unless you are handling the sales, which is run by Major Major from Catch-22.

Maj. Major Major Major: Sergeant, from now on, I don't want anyone to come in and see me while I'm in my office. Is that clear?
First Sgt. Towser: Yes, sir? What do I say to people who want to come in and see you while you're gone?
Maj. Major Major Major: Tell them I'm in and ask them to wait.
First Sgt. Towser: For how long?
Maj. Major Major Major: Until I've left.
First Sgt. Towser: And then what do I do with them?
Maj. Major Major Major: I don't care.
First Sgt. Towser: May I send people in to see you after you've left?
Maj. Major Major Major: Yes.
First Sgt. Towser: You won't be here then, will you?
Maj. Major Major Major: No.
First Sgt. Towser: I see, sir. Will that be all?
Maj. Major Major Major: Also, Sergeant, I don't want you coming in while I'm in my office asking me if there's anything you can do for me. Is that clear?
First Sgt. Towser: Yes, sir. When should I come in your office and ask if there's anything I can do for you?
Maj. Major Major Major: When I'm not there.
First Sgt. Towser: What do I do then?
Maj. Major Major Major: Whatever has to be done.
First Sgt. Towser: Yes, sir.

Graffiti Research Lab: Art Happens

Though the adult in me finds Borf to be a nuisance for the defacement of property, the artist in me has always found his "tags" - on a graphic level - to be very compelling (even if his stuff is a tad derivative of Banksy and Fairy). And there is something in me that wishes I had the chutzpah to do the street art that might be deemed as "destructive." For instance, with the plethora of exhausted fire hydrants in DC I wouldn't see a problem if several of these tripping posts could be adorned with gold leaf (like the icons of city mismanagement that they are). Unfortunately, I think the po-po would find my amused interest otherwise. To this date, apart from the occasional moving violation, I don't have a record... I'd like to keep it that way.

So, we have the Graffiti Research Lab, empowering persons of various persuasions to post non-destructive marks of creative interest on whatever surface they so desire. After all, they can be easily removed and have no permanent effect (or defect) to the surfaces they adorn. They are made with projections, or magnets stuck to metal. In the case of Mark Jenkins - tape.

A philosophy of mine is that "Art Happens." This has two meanings, and both happen outside the gallery environment, which are warehouses of art that has already happened. The first is a transformative experience that occurs when an individual stumbles upon something "out of the ordinary." Typically, the out-of-the-ordinary physical object placed in the environment that forces a person to pause and reflect. Graffiti does this, whether it is classically painted onto a surface (Borf, Basquiat, Banksy or anyone else whose name starts with B) or whether it is a sculpture of tape.

The other way art happens is when we project meaning onto an otherwise mundane object or event. Think: the videos of the floating bag from the movie American Beauty. In either event, if we allow it, Art forces us to engage our perspective of our surroundings: physical, social, aesthetic, etc. It allows us to assess everything between our known knowns and our unknown unknowns.

USDAT activities on Boing Boing

The one downside to working for a fictitious government entity is knowing (or not knowing) if there are others out there silently plodding away on their own agendas. While I can only assume Billy Kluver, Under Secretary for the Bureau of Reality, is probing the after life for ways of making technological bridges back to our world, most activities of the US Department of Art & Technology, to the best of my understanding, are only being concocted within a few blocks of my apartment.

But today I learned of (Trade) Mark Gunderson and his Artistic License. (Here is a permanent link to his enterprise.) Neither of us are listed as staff in the Department, so I have no clue what his role is. But, it's entertaining, just the same.

I blogged too soon: grant award from DCCAH

Tuesday afternoon the fat letter from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities arrived, awarding me with my second (and final) Young Artist Project grant award. (Rejection letters are typically thin because they do not have all the additional tax paper work that needs to be filed upon acceptance).

The proposal was to create visually interesting work (for the bulk of us) that was also aesthetically interesting to the visually impaired.

The project proposal stems from a student I interviewed at American University (Paul) who is blind. The intention of that interview was to create a sort of video documentary/profile to gain some understanding - as a sighted individual - about how the world is perceived when blind. However, what I was learning in the course of the interview became far more interesting than a video piece. I knew, going into the interview, that Paul played saxophone in a jazz group, and was also a very talented classical pianist, so he did have some appreciation for the arts. But, part of what interested me was when he told me about experiencing the Torqued Ellipses and other serpentine sculptures of Richard Serra.

Every time I go to the National Gallery I marvel at Serra's steel sculpture that, if installed improperly, will kill the preparator. It's a piece that really cannot be felt like one of his Torqued Ellipse (at least, I'm not brave enough to touch it). You can walk through the ellipse and it will affect how you hear the space. If you are prodding through it with a white cane, it will also affect the dimensions of your boundaries - for example the wall might meet the floor over there, but every time I walk there I bump my head.

Think of how many other works of fine art can be experienced like that? Pieces that are heard and touched - as well as seen. My grant from DCCAH will fund a few pieces that should affect at least three of our five senses.

Read the Fine Print

After completing another application for a Small Project grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities I found the one line that may explain my last few project proposals getting rejected. "Priority will be given to applications who have not received grant funds from the DC Arts Commission within the past five years."


Of course... maybe it has something to do with my last few proposals funding the Graviton - my project which will pull the moon out of its orbit, closer to the earth.

Who knows?

When it rains it pours.

Confirmed today - August is going to be a busy month of exhibiting.

• Moment of Zen will play in the Transformer window.
• The latest incarnation of America's Grave, my ongoing collaboration with Randall Packer's A Season in Hell project, will be installed at Arlington Arts Center with its most recent
• Mark Cameron Boyd invited me to exhibit new text-based work at The Athenaeum in Alexandria, VA. I am currently painting approximately 400 words: 1 word/canvas for the show.

Future posts will depict images of the Virginia work.

Dumb Pondering

I don't pay attention to NCAA basketball. Or sports much, for that matter (it's been 14 years since the '94 MLB strike, so I should stop blaming it). And I don't have a TV.

I noticed that American University and George Mason University were in one bracket (are they called brackets?) of the Road to the Final Four, and that Georgetown University and University Maryland Baltimore County are in a different bracket. I thought, "well that's odd... I drive past Georgetown on my commute between American University and George Mason University. Why aren't they in the same bracket?"

Four Letter Words

One of the previously mentioned "upcoming projects," from a few posts back, is entitled Four Letter Words. The project is a bit more intelligent than it sounds, but before venturing in depth with content I have to post a few rules regarding the project. Rule No. 1 is don't talk about fight club. Rule No. 2...

That stated, of the 3900 words I pulled from a Scrabble word list, I have been sorting through them with a 1994 copy of the Merriam Webster Dictionary (MWD) - one of those cheap pocket garden variety that every would-be-student gets for high school graduation, or prior to matriculation. Needless to say, not all 3900 words accepted by Scrabble were accepted by the MWD (and fewer still accepted by the genius that is Microsoft Office); it is not a massive volume. It is also not up-to-date and does not include such hip new words, like w00t. (w00t is typed with zeros and I am ashamed that Google spell check isn't giving it the red line.)

Dictionaries can be rather frightening objects. I've seen some as thick as a toddler is tall, and that was usually just the first volume of a three book series. But, those ridiculous monstrosities typically engage the etymology and evolution of a word. They require a spotter to lift onto a sturdy oak table that is buttressed. And while particular rules regarding my project began eliminating some of the words typically found as associates in the dictionary (plurals, past tense, etc), some of the words I came across I had to raise an eye-brow.

"Cwms" is a word. I kid you not. It is Welsh for "valley" and pronounced cooms (as in Sean Puffy). It's also drunk-typing for "cwms."

...and now a word from James Agee

A while back Bill Christenberry told me to read Now Let Us Praise Famous Men. Bit by bit I get through it, struggling to find the time to complete it in a succession of sittings. I wanted to share this stretch on page 126 (of my copy, anyway):

...the work is done by half-skilled, half-paid men under no need to do well... and this is what comes of it: Most naive, most massive symmetry and simpleness. Enough lines, enough off-true, that this symmetry is strongly, yet most subtly sprained against its centers, into something more powerful than either full symmetry or deliberate breaking and balancing of 'monotonies' can ever hope to be. A look of being most earnestly hand-made, as a child's drawing, a thing created out of need, love, patience, and strained skill in the innocence of a race. Nowhere one ounce or inch spent with ornament, not one trace of relief or of disguise: a matchless monotony, and in it a matchless variety, and this again throughout restrained, held rigid...

A part of me thinks he looks upon that "powerful" nature as beautiful and poetic. Another part of me thinks he looks upon that "powerful" nature as desperate and hopeless. Not to miss the point of Agee's text, but I always find it interesting to be able to walk away with art lessons from unexpected places and at unexpected moments.

Nay Sayin' - Kehinde Wiley

During a conversation Thursday with Mark Cameron Boyd, he mentioned that Kehinde Wiley has his paintings made in China. The statement stopped me dead in my tracks and I felt like Steve Martin in The Jerk when he learned he was adopted.

After seeing Recognize at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a bland tribute to hip-hop culture (if you call a tribute bad graffiti and photos of rappers with microphones to their mouths a tribute), it was easy to walk away from it mesmerized by the saccharine colors and fluorescence of Wiley's work. As an artist mired in the drivel of Post Post Post Post Post Modernist critique, it becomes easy to prattle off the questions related to the form of portrait painting and the history associated with it, as well as ponder his brilliance with words like recontextualize, appropriate, and juxtapose. These were things I pondered with my wife over dinner the night after seeing the show. She looked at me a little bored and said, "you are thinking way too much into this."

Wiley's work is painted in China by Chinese laborers and artisans. Scour a Google search of "Kehinde Wiley China." Some critics will call it his studio. One called it an atelier, which is the fancy word for studio. I think it is safe to label it what it is: manufacturing. And, apparently, Wiley intends to open "ateliers" in several other emerging markets to outsource the manufacturing of "his" paintings. (This is in step with some current Chinese business practices - China is doing this now with several products because the cost for Chinese labor is not as cheap as it used to be.)

With the new revelation, the idea becomes much more interesting: outsourcing the labor of a painting. It isn't new. Warhol, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, and Thomas Kinkade all do/did it. Three of the four are found in museums across the globe, with Kinkade found mostly in shopping malls. But, would any self-respecting artist really want to be lumped into that category? I suppose if work is selling for five, six, seven and eight figures, the integrity of the label "artist" can be bought out for "entrepreneur." It is an interesting business plan, for sure, and possibly outweighs the b.s. about the 'appropriation from multiple cultures juxtaposed with the borrowed works of Western history to create a portrait painting that both follows and questions the craft of portraiture.' (yawn.)

I think the critics might also be excited because he is young, possibly hip, and Black. Draw what parallels you will to Basquiat, but Wiley won't O.D. However, the market might O.D. from Wiley's paintings as it did with the flood of Basquiat forgeries that filled the market shortly following Basquiat's death. That begs an interesting point: if Basquiat's works are devalued because they are discovered forgeries, what happens to the work of a painter that hardly paints his own work? Whatever. As Chuck D once wrote, "Don't believe the hype."

If there is anything to Recognize, it's that Kehinde Wiley can't "keep it real." But, he's more a pawn than a player - his celebrity is the act of a market, fueled by curators and critics, to pull Chinese rayon over our eyes. And, it's only fitting. Everything else we own is made in China. The backbone of our credit card economy is made in China. So, why not also our art. After all, when it comes to a knowledge of art history and art appreciation, we in the United States are a dim sum.

WPA Auction 2008 - Katzen

Note: I didn't apply to be in it, I'm not bidding, I'm not attending, and I'm not covering the attendance/process.

The hall outside the Katzen Museum, in the Katzen Arts Center at American University, is lined with many framed works (and a couple sculptures, too) all prepared for auction to help support the Washington Project for the Arts (WPA).

When Alice Denney first started the WPA in the mid 1970's, like most things Alice was involved with throughout her tenure as DC Art Provocateur, the WPA began with a whim and a prayer, a shoestring budget, and the hope that artists would rally behind the idea to make the thing thrive. And thrive it did. But part of what made it thrive was the novel idea that she would show virtually unknown (or at least unrepresented) artists and keep the price of the work affordable for anyone to collect. Right now it feels (and looks) like the WPA has strayed off course a bit.

Why the quip? Some of the work at auction for the WPA is of established artists and outside the price range of young collectors. This is important to note. Granted, as was heard on Kojo Nnamdi's show recently, most people don't know how or where to begin collecting, get sticker shock, and would rather pay $200 to frame a lousy print of a Post Impressionist that they know than they wold to buy a real work of art for $700, or $1000, or $3000. But, since so many of us live in homes furnished by Ikea, maybe it is only appropriate that the crappy work on the wall match the crappy furniture. But I digress.

Lenny Campello (one of Kojo's guests on that show) has been writing bits on his blog lately about "art collection," and in some of those instances it is really about art investment. To paraphrase, "buy this person's work now before it's too late!" Should that be the motivation?

With that it is necessary to distinguish between collectors and investors.

Collectors are people who buy work based on a personal connection with the work. It isn't motivated by the prospect of investment. It is motivated by the jaw-dropping awe of inspiration and epiphany; by the upturned mouth at a clever execution or proposition; by the ah-hah!; by the integrity of the object or concept or both.

Investors look for names. They get on a list for the next Jasper Johns. The namesake of the building hosting this year's WPA event was an investor - he collected blue-chip-name art investments: work that inspires at best a sigh - but at least it is a Picasso!

Buying art work should be like that silly saying: dance like no one is watching, sing like no one is listening. It doesn't matter what your friends think of the work - you are the one who lives with it in the end. People probably laughed at Castelli's clients in 1958 for buying the pieces of trash glued together that Leo Castelli was passing off as art. At one point in time Bob Rauschenberg was a nobody. The people who bought Rauschenberg's combines out of Castelli's bathtub for a couple hundred clams had the last laugh.

Hey! Artists create work, but it doesn't always mean they want to live with it for eternity. I'd happily trade some pieces for a bagel* if I knew the person "purchasing" the piece was passionate about it and felt a connection to it. Studio spaces need to remain studio spaces, and not become storage spaces (like Raoul Middleman's).

*bagels must be toasted with lox. bagels may vary.