John: I think it's finally gonna happen, Sarah.
Sarah: I think it's happening.
J: We're going to succeed at doing a liveshow of The Art Assignment, youtube.com/theartassignment live!
S: Hello. Hey, yo, we did it. We--oh, is it bad? Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us this evening.
J: Yeah.
S: Yeah, we are not used to scheduling livestreams in advance.
J: Yeah.
S: And I think I threw our whole system off.
J: That's why we were 30 seconds late. We're sorry.
S: Yeah.
J: We're here to celebrate Sarah's book, You Are An Artist that comes out on Tuesday. She's not gonna talk about it that much, so I'm gonna talk about it for her.
S: I am. I'm very comfortable talking about what's inside because it's good and I'm proud of it. I wanna share it.
J: I'm comfortable talking about the low, low price, the fact that it's available at your local library for free, there's ebook and audiobook editions, and also, if you can't afford to buy the book You Are An Artist, I have amazing news for you. You are currently on a YouTube channel that contains so many great art assignments.
S: Yes, yes. So during the course of making this video series, during the first three years, we gathered 60 assignments out around the country from artists and had them give you guys assignments and so there are 60 assignments out there already on our channel that you can do.
J: Yeah.
S: One of which we're gonna be doing tonight.
J: We're gonna do it tonight.
S: Yeah.
J: We're so excited. We haven't done that much prep because we don't wanna ruin the magic, but we have done a little bit of prep just to introduce you to the idea.
S: Yes.
J: So tonight, first off, let's talk about what we're drinking.
S: Okay.
J: This is a wine show, Sarah, and we are proper smart wine people.
S: I thought--well, is this a wine--we've never, we've actually never streamed on The Art Assignment channel, John, that's your ch--that's vlogbrothers.
J: I'm announcing that this is a wine channel.
S: It is Friday night.
J: Friday night.
S: You don't have to. You don't have to drink.
J: Of course. Please don't if you don't--are not comfortable dr--of course.
S: Yeah, yeah.
J: We're here to talk about our wine, not to put any expectations on you one way or the other.
S: Yeah.
J: Make good choices.
S: Cheap wine is also great. I'm a big fan of the boxed wines.
| YouTube: | https://youtube.com/watch?v=r7bBNAhYh7w |
| Previous: | The Art Assignment Live Stream |
| Next: | Creativity is Overrated |
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| Comments: | 124 |
| Duration: | 1:02:00 |
| Uploaded: | 2020-04-11 |
| Last sync: | 2024-10-17 19:15 |
Buy the book You Are an Artist: http://bit.ly/2kplj2h
You Are an Artist virtual tour: http://www.theartassignment.com/tour
Sorted Books - Nina Katchadourian - original assignment video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A24MRdNMOIA
You Are an Artist virtual tour: http://www.theartassignment.com/tour
Sorted Books - Nina Katchadourian - original assignment video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A24MRdNMOIA
(00:00) to (02:00)
(02:00) to (04:00)
J: Yeah.
S: Yeah. They're very good.
J: So.
S: So anyway. Back to this. So as I was saying, like, in the book--
J: Yeah.
S: There are 53 assignments. 40 of them were originally videos and the way they appear in the book is different than the videos and there's sort of more information in some ways. Different information in other ways, but one of them, one of my favorites, is by the artist Nina Katchadourian and it's called Sorted Books. Not 'sordid' like, like--
J: Like--
S: Like--sorTed.
J: Yeah, with a 'T'
S: With a 'T'. SorTed. She did a whole series. Here's a book called Sorted Books and some people just call this spine poetry. This is a thing that people do, but Nina's assignment, here, here, you show--
J: Well, one of my favorite, all time favorites, is the one that's on the back, "What is art? Close observation." You just line up titles of books in your library to turn them into poetry or to turn them into, in the case of this art assignment, to turn them into a kind of portrait, right?
S: Right, so in the art assignment, she--the original art assignment has you asking someone else if you can peruse their collection of books--
J: Yeah.
S: --and create a portrait of them through their own books. We can't go over to other peoples' houses, or most of us can't go over to other peoples' houses right now, so it's a great opportunity to make a self-portrait or a self--or a portrait of your roommate or your spouse.
J: Or a portrait of the person you love using your books.
S: Yeah.
J: You're allowed to expand the assignment in any way you wish.
S: Right. Right, because an assignment is just a place to start, so.
J: Right, one of the great things about the book, You Are An Artist is that after the assignment, can you find the assignment? I don't know where it is. I have to confess. You probably know exactly where it is.
S: It's ok.
J: One of the great things about the book is that after talking about the artist--
S: You've looked this up, though right. What you need?
(04:00) to (06:00)
J: and an introduction to their practice -- the sorted books?
S: Yeah, but keep. I'll, I'll...
J: There are variations that you can try--
S: Yeah
J: to expand upon the assignment because, really, like, what the assignments function as -- yeah, show it.
S: So, this is an example of one of the chapters, so this-- oh no that's the end of another one-- so this is sort of the beginning of the Sorted Books chapter and you, like, read about how Nina Katchadourian, when she was in grad school, she and some of her grad school friends went over to one of her friend's parents' houses for the weekend and challenged each other to make art with what they found there.
J: Right.
S: And what Nina did was go through the parental library and start this book sorting process. And she has a very specific process for doing this. Like, she goes through first-- especially if it's a big collection-- she writes down titles she really likes. And another thing you're really gonna want to look at is, like, how the typography is and how clear the title is. Like, this is nice and clear and there's only like a little author title, so you've got this, like, What was Contemporary Art? And, like, we went through our books and found the titles that we thought sort of looked good and would be very readable in a book stack.
J: Yeah
S: Um, and also might be fun to play with.
J: Yeah, so the thing about this book is that it is an introduction to how artists get ideas and kind of an encouragement to help you get ideas in the ways that other artists get ideas because you are also an artist.
S: Mmhmm
J: And I like how every chapter begins by talking about the way that this particular artist found their way to this practice. Nina Katchadourian also does lots of other weird, amazing stuff.
S: Well, she really does--
J: We'll talk about that in a second.
S: One more thing is, when we visited her for the Art Assignment channel... uh... this channel
(06:00) to (08:00)
S: she was sorting the books of William S Burroughs, the late author.
J: Yeah.
S: And he- she also says, whenever you're going through your library or someone else's library, pay attention to multiple copies. So, like, here you can see William S Burroughs had Del- Denton Welch's I Left My Grandfather's House, 3 copies of that. Um. And also 2 copies of Flashback. So, like, this one is "Only yesterday, I left my grandfather's house, flashback, I left my grandfather's house, I left my grandfather's house, flashback, flashback."
J: And that's very apropos of the writer William S Burroughs was because he used a lot of, like cut out chapters. He would, he would write sentences and then rearrange them on the floor and stuff, and so it's also reflective of his work.
S: Yeah.
J: It becomes a kind of portraiture.
S: Yeah.
J: So
S: Has anybody in the audience ever- um- ever done spine poetry? Sort of done this kind of activity before where you arrange books to form, like, little poems?
J: And, if you have, get ready to get- to be better at it. Because this is gonna be an evening of tips and tricks out the wazoo.
S: Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be great, and, um, I think-
J: Oh, Matt says "I have some copies of Turtles All the Way Down, I could make those all the way down." It's pretty good. Pretty good.
S: Yeah, I like that. Well, I did think about that when we were going through, like, some of your- some of your books.
J: Yeah.
S: Turtles All the Way Down like a nice, large stack of Turtles All the Way Down.
J: My books, yeah, one thing I really like about my publisher Julie Strauss Gabel, she's a title forward publisher. Like Paper Towns has a real good title.
S: Oh, but it's sideways.
J: Well it'd be great if my name wasn't there but there's nothing we can do about that. They insisted on it.
S: Well, but it's also- you gotta make it readable.
J: Yeah, we could do a stack. Verticle stack.
S: Like, maybe for this one you'd have one on the side. Yeah.
J: Yeah.
S: Um, and the o- So what you're gonna aim to do is create your stack.
J: Yeah.
S: And then take a photo of it.
J: Yeah.
S: And share it with us on whatever social media platform you enjoy with the hashtag YouAreAnArtist.
(08:00) to (10:00)
J: Instagram, Twitter, or Reddit. Otherwise we're not gonna see it on Facebook, let's be realistic.
S: I might.
J: Sarah might, but I won't.
S: Yeah we actually have a good Facebook group. It's called Art Assignment: Extra Credit-
J: Ok, alright, I'll take it back. I'll take it back.
S: Where peop- where you can join and show your work, and share things like this. But also, you know, share it with us on Twitter, Instagram.
J: Yeah
S: And we'll- I'd love to re-post what you've made.
J: Sarah and I are gonna start by doing two that we've pre-prepared just to give you a kind of overall vibe. Sarah pre-prepared one-
S: Oh, yeah
J: Using one of my all-time favorite middle school novels by Celia Pérez.
S: Yeah, so this one, The First Rule of Punk, this has a great spine. So, yes there is some other stuff going on, but it's pretty clearly readable. It's bright. And then I looked around and I was like 'Oh, k, The First Rule of Punk? What's the first rule of punk?'
S: And then I found this book Do What You Want. So, let's see, you gotta line it up so that you really read it in order. So... oop.
J: It's a little over exposed. Welcome to the Macbook Air webcam.
S: Yeah. (laughs) First Rule of Punk: Do What You Want. There you go. There you go. I think that's pretty good.
J: And I took M.T. Anderson's brilliant, Nation Book Award winning novel The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume One: The Pox Party, which is one of the all-time great young adult novels. And I combined it-
S: (chuckles)
J: And also, I don't know if you guys know this, but, um, there's a global pandemic. And-
S: A pox, if you will.
J: There's a pox, if you will. And I combined it with a book of essays, so that my initial spine portrait is a bit of a self portrait of how I feel right now.
S: Gotta get closer.
J: And it's The Pox Party: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.
S: (laughs) That's pretty good. That's pretty good. I like that.
J: Yup
(10:00) to (12:00)
S: So the other thing about this is once you find your stack, set it aside and then really think about how you're going to photograph it. So even if this is great, if you take a bad picture of it, it's just not- you know, there's a few things you can do to like slow down, and put it on- with a nice simple background, like set it where there is good, natural light, photograph it now, maybe photograph it in the morning, see how it looks.
S: Like another tip, if you're taking a picture, even with your phone, is to take a breath in and then like hold your breath while you're taking it so you're not moving. Any photographers out there know these things, but I think that oftentimes you just like, aim your aim your camera at the phone and don't necessarily think about what's going on. It makes a big difference and you know after you've gone to the trouble of sorting your books, you want it to look good, right?
J: Yeah.
S: [laughs] Okay, so let's see I've got my What Was Contemporary Art and then I also found that I have a book What is Ccontemporary Art. So I was thinking it might be cool to like figure out what goes in between.
J: Is this gonna be a portrait of you?
S: I don't know. Like I find it-
J: Sarah is extremely uncomfortable even with making abstract, spine poetry portraits of herself.
S: Well maybe not, I dunno.
J: It feels like even that feels personal. I think that's my challenge for you, make a self-portrait and I will make a self portrait that is more revealing than The Pox Party, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again. But seriously, I don't want to do this again.
(12:00) to (14:00)
S: Yeah, I mean-
J: It's too bad that you're not on the- the woman on the right is really beautiful.
S: [laughs]
J: I agree.
S: You're on my right.
J: I know! I'm on the right! As we're sitting!
S: Yeah, I mean speaking of Corona virus, and what's happening right now,
J: Thanks Lorena.
S: Huh?
J: Oh Lorena just un-hid it. But yeah, just be polite, I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't have engaged with that stuff.
S: Yeah. But anyway, we have, sort of livestreamed on a few different channels, or on your vlogbrothers channel in the early days of this, and I feel like things have not gotten better, in fact they've gotten worse all around.
J: Oh yeah, yeah for sure.
S: Yeah, I'm finding it a little bit easier to disassociate from it, during particular periods of the day.
J: Yeah, I mean I think that's a function of privilege, I think that lots of people aren't able to do that, but we are able to do that, because if I go outside, I can, outside is about the same, honestly, you know. So that's nice. But we are certainly conscious of how difficult this is for everybody. This is the rare thing when you can just describe it as 'this' and everyone knows what you're talking about.
S: Right.
J: Where there is a 'this' so ubiquitous that all of humanity shares it, which is terrifying and overwhelming, but I also, I am heartened by the kindness that people are showing each other, even under stress, especially under stress, and that is a balm to me, I hope it is to you.
S: Yeah, and it's also-
(14:00) to (16:00)
J: There's no minimizing how much it sucks.
S: Oh, for sure and I also think this can be a kind of outlet for that, I mean I know I have a lot of anxious energy that I don't really know what to do with, and focusing it into an art assignment, or hanging out with you guys is very helpful for me, to have these moments of connection, and then to have something that I am looking forward to doing tomorrow, as simple as that is, like a little thing.
J: Even if it's something tiny like taking a bath.
S: Right.
J: I spent all day today looking forward to the bath that I took-
S: Was it great?
J: And it was as good as I had hoped.
S: John and I have actually started to fight over who gets to do the dishes.
J: I was saying that to the podcast I was talking to today that, doing the dishes used to be a chore-
S: It's like such a satisfying task!
J: But now it's something that we can finish.
S: It's finite.
J: You can listen to music while you do it, it's precious alone time.
S: Right.
J: Somebody said up there, and I thought this was a very good observation about right now, Brooke said "I keep thinking that this is the time I'm going to want to remember." Which I think is true on a lot of levels.
S: Yeah.
J: Like I think-
S: I've thought about that too.
J: Hopefully it will make us grateful for the next normal, I believe there is a next normal coming, it won't be like the normal that we just were ripped from, but there is a normal coming and it will be better than this.
S: Yeah.
J: I believe that, I might be wrong but I have to believe that. And I think it will be helpful to remember this. I was thinking about that
too Brooke, like I was thinking about, like how do I write Anthropocene Reviewed essays which are always absurd at this
like particularly absurd historical moment, when like it genuinely makes no sense to be reviewing nunchuks.
S: But it never has made sense.
J: No no it never made sense, in fact when we were in Sierra Leone I wrote an entire Anthropocene Reviewed episode, that never will see
the light of day,
(16:00) to (18:00)
J: About how if you ever want to feel like reviewing the Anthropocene as a gag is worthless. And empy work.
S: You were going to do cholera, and is that a spoiler?
J: I did it, I did it like a year and a half ago but I'm gonna expand it.
S: Oh that's right sorry. I listen to your poscast.
J: It's a huge spoiler actually about a future project, but we won't talk about that.
S: Okay anyway, John's been reading about cholera.
J: I have the cholera pandemic of 1832 in New York specifically.
S: But like when you were thinking through how to represent cholera in Anthropocene Reviewed, like there is a certain amount of distance that makes that possible.
J: Well I mean except not really right because cholera-
S: Oh, can you hand me that tote bag? I have other books.
J: -or it continues to be a huge human health problem and like most health problems it is really an outgrowth of injustice. It's like a- cholera is driven by social injustice. So yeah, and that's why I find it so sad that it's still part of the human story, because we could have gotten rid of it a hundred fifty years ago. That's a good one.
S: That's a good title, really clear typography, Good Talk.
J: Yeah I'm gonna start to look here at my books.
S: And here's one I thought it would be good, The Art of Relevance, nice and clear.
J: I liked this one, I liked this quick- this little poem, it includes one of my favorite Jenny Diski novels: "There is no dog, only human."
S: Oh yeah, wait, you gotta line 'em up
J: You gotta line it up properly, I'm sorry, I'm not going to line them up Sarah
S: Because that's one of the ways that you can sort of like, visually forget about the names, and sort of see that as by a line like- left aligning the titles. Nina does that, and you don't have to, but yeah, if that- (laughs) That's good. I like that. I thought you might be able to use this one, John. I contain multitudes.
(18:00) to (20:00)
S: I thought you might be able to use this one John, I Contain Multitudes. That might be good.
J: Oh yeah, that's good, I can use that.
S: Yeah. I also-
J: How about I Contain Multitudes paired with The Giant Canada Goose.
S: [laughs]
J: I also have a book about the giant canada goose.
S: Yeah. I thought this would be good to use, too: What Do Pictures Want? Which is like a really interesting premise for a book. Um, I read this in graduate school and haven't read it since, but I liked it then. I wonder how it holds up in the interim. Do you guys have any ideas, like, just off the top of your head, for book titles you think would be fun to work with?
J: We probably don't have it.
S: We probably don't have them, but I just think like, think about, you know—Turtles All the Way Down would be very funny to use.
J: I don't have it.
S: Also, like, single words, I think are helpful. Like here a couple I have.
J: Hunger.
S: Hunger, Sharp.
J: Both really good books, by the way.
S: Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay, I'm getting closer here. So far, I have, this is not a self portrait, I'm just—I will work on that, though.
J: Okay.
S: I have What is Contemporary Art, Independent People, People Knitting, Art Parks. What do you think?
J: It's good!
S: [laughs]
J: It's good. It's mostly independent people, knitting, and art parks.
S: Independent People—I like the repetition, like, people people. Don't you think? Oh yeah, here are some good ones. The Narrow Road to the Deep North. A Tale of Two Cities. Curmudgeon-- curmudgeon could be a nice single title.
J: Yeah. Yes.
S: Like a single book portrait. Single book self-portrait. Curmudgeon, yeah. An Absolutely Remarkabel Thing! Yes, definitelly! Educated, yep. A conguring of light.
J: Educated also has a great spine for it.
S: Surging, feed, beloved, Skippy dies.
(20:00) to (22:00)
J: [mumbles off screen]
S: Their Eyes Were Watching God,
J: [offscreen] Mm, that would be-
S: -yeah,
J: [offscreen]-unfortunately the spine of Their Eyes Were Watching God isn't great copy at least our copy.
S: Right
J: but that would be a great one.
S: Yeah, for sure. So I think I am not done with this yet, but I think, I think it has promise. I mean, I think in the actual assignment, I think Nina specifies like, three or four books to keep it short, but I like a big tall stack, 'cause, y'know, you can make a complicated poem. What's happening over there? {20:31)
J: I'm making uh, I'm trying to make the best one I can make with You Are an Artist.
S: Okay.
J: You Are an Artist, give me a second.
S: Okay, I think I'm getting somewhere.
J: Wait a second I've made a huge amount of progress just in the last five seconds.
S: Okay I think I've got a conclusion to this one. So I've got What is Contemporary Art? Independent People, People Kitting, Art Parks, The Art of Relevance, and then it's hard to see that one, Gone Tomorrow. Cuz a lot of contemporary art is temporary.
J: All contemporary art is temporary.
S: Well all art is temporary.
J: All human endeavour.
S: So I like that one, or maybe I'd end it with Good Talk.
J: Somebody pointed out that I shouldn't drink on Good Friday.
S: Oh, was it my mother?
J: It might've been your mother. Hi, Connie, sorry. You're right I shouldn't, but pandemic, you know? Oh this pox party is a supposedly fun thing I would never do again. I hope I'll never do it again.
S: Little Fires Everywhere.
J: That's a good one.
S: I lent that book out, unfortunately.
J: Ok I have one, I have a dupe, I have a second copy of it so it's downstairs.
S: Okay.
J: So this is my portrait of making art in the time of a pandemic.
S: Okay, You Are an Artist.
(22:00) to (24:00)
Magic and Loss, I can't read backwards..
John: An Island to Oneself, I Am Still Alive.
Sarah: I like that. I think you're pretty good at this. I think that's very good.
John: Can I just tell you about two of these books real quick? I know that's not the point of the assignment.
Sarah: But it can be. It's a good way to rediscover books that you love.
John: This book, An Island to Oneself, has been out of print for, like, 20 years or 30 years. It never sold well. It is the weirdest book I've ever read. Like, I can't unambiguously recommend it. For one thing, it has a naked man on the cover. But it's about a man named Tom Neal(?~22:38)
Sarah: Oh, no, he's wearing a kind of thong that ...?(?~22:41)
John: He's wearing a thong. It's about a man named Tom Neal (?~22:41), who lived for 30 years alone on an island and wrote a memoir about it that is, like, very, very weird
Sarah: Yeah
John: He tied himself to palm trees during hurricanes, and then the palm trees would bend and not break, because that's how it works, and he would just ride out the hurricane tied to a palm tree
Sarah: God,
John: And this book...
Sarah: Is that the end of that review?
John: Yeah
Sarah: hahaha
John: This book by Kate Alice Marshall(?~23:08), I Am Still Alive, is, like, The Revenant? You know that movie where Leonardo DiCaprio...
Sarah: Oh yeah, oh I remember The Revenant.
John: It's like that
Sarah: Yeah
John: But it's like Catch It(?~23:19), but it's for teens and it's incr.. it's the last book I read where I actually stayed up all night. I loved it.
Sarah: Hmmm
John: "Is a thong better than nakedness, a discussion" myeh
Sarah: Yeah. I mean, if you're alone on an island, I don't... I don't know if you need it
John: What's the over-under on how many days you would survive alone on Tom Neal's(?~23:43) island? Like, there were coconuts, there were some books, there was the small structure, there were a bunch of pigs.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that you or I would do very well.
John: I think I'd make it a month. I think I'd make it a month. You don't think I could make it a month?
Sarah: What about me?
(24:00) to (26:00)
John: [tsk] 40 days.
Sarah: Oh, I'd make it, like, a little bit longer?
John: You're tenacious.
Sarah: But..
John: You have a level of persistence that I don't have.
Sarah: But that's not very different. 30 or 40, you know? A month or 40 days.
John: Yeah, but those last 10 days are gonna require a lot of tenacity
Sarah: Are gonna be real bad
John: Are gonna be some dark and difficult times.
Sarah: So this is, so we showed this one before, but this is from the artist who came up with this assignment, Nina Katchadourian, Kinds of Love, Ecstacy, Sensation, Distemper, and, you know, this is also something that you could do, obviously not during this time, but you could go to a library and this is something where you don't wanna, like, pull eighteen thousand books because your librarian will hate you, but you could sort of write down the titles. So, what Nina did, for example, when she was going through William S. Burrows' personal library is sort of take a notebook, or you could sort of dictate it into your phone
John: [blows nose off screen]
Sarah: or whatever, and the titles that she thought were good prospects for this, she would sort of break them down. And then you could even, like, snip them onto cards and rearrange them, and then once you've figure out what you want, then go back and pull the books. And also, gotta write down where they are, where you've gotten them. So, there's ways to do it if you don't keep a lot of books, I know a lot of people will, like, only have a few books, return them to the library, or get rid of, you know, get rid of them. If you move a lot it's hard to have a lot of books. John and I have a stupid number of books.
John: No, that's not true
Sarah: It is!
John: We have fewer books than we've had in almost any time in our entire marriage.
Sarah: Well, and Nina did do a variation on this, where she was, um, working with the books of a historic collection, and used the covers. So there are different variations of this that you should definitely explore.
(26:00) to (28:00)
John: I think you should feel free to use all these books, Sarah, and that it's time for your
Sarah: What?
John: It's time for your self-portrait. I'm very interested in your self-portrait.
Sarah: But I'm not that interested in myself.
John: I know I can you don't want to do it
Sarah: Yeah
John: Which is part of what I find
Sarah: All right
John: so interesting about it.
Sarah: Are you, like, evicting me from this?
John: No. I mean, no, you're welcome to stay. I made a
Sarah: Okay, I gotta think about this
John: I made a
Sarah: Speaking of book reviews, have you ever read Rachel Kushner's The Flame Throwers?
John: Ah, it's the best book about art. It's the best book about art I've ever read
Sarah: So good! I'm, like, hyper-critical about the ways that artists are depicted in books,
John: True
Sarah: And hyper- , I really mean too critical
John: Yes
Sarah: every time somebody works in a character who's an artist and they're, like, a little exaggerated, or they're not like a regular person, this is a great depiction of an artist. And very readable. High recommend.
John: I put an artist in Turtles All the Way Down, only very briefly, and I had to get a lot of sign-off to have even that character.
Sarah: Yeah, but you did a great job
John: I mean, I made fun of them a little bit,
Sarah: that's okay
John: like I had them wear black. But to be fair, you are literally wearing all black.
Sarah: I'm wearing jeans!
John: Yeah, but they're dark jeans. But you can't help yourself. It's okay.
Sarah: This is actually dark grey
John: *laughs* degrees of grey in phillipsburgh(?~27:31). Um, that's a poem that has my favourite first line of all time.
Sarah: Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna work on
John: Sarah's gonna work on this. I'm gonna show you a portrait of my friend Paige(?~27:44), the, um... hmm. This is, or, I guess it's.. maybe it's a portrait of my friend Kaba(?~27:52)
Sarah: Paige Glass?(?~27:54)
John: Some poet that I know. Maybe it's a portrait of both of them. There. It's... it's hard to make it out. We'll make it angle right. There we go.
(28:00) to (30:00)
there we go. Understanding Poetry, What do Pictures Want, Volatile Bodies, At Night We Walk in Circles.
Sarah: Oooh! That's nice.
John: Is that okay?
Sarah: That's really good!
John: Aw, thanks, man!
Sarah: You're so much better at this than I am!
John: Aw, you're just being nice.
Sarah: No I'm not!
John: But that's really nice, thank you. This book, by the way, At Night We Walk in Circles, by Daniel Alacrón, who I went to high school with, Sarah also went to high school with him, is an amazing book.
Sarah: Yeah
John: It's so weird to me that I went to high school with Daniel because he's like, a
Sarah: He's an amazing writer
John: Like, an actually genius.
Sarah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I find, this is a very good one. And this is my high school edition of Understanding Poetry. I wrote my last name on there.
John: Sarah has two high school books of poetry, and I love both of them.
Sarah: I don't think there are any embarrassing notations in there.
John: No, the other one has a lot of marginalia that's not embarrassing. It's really interesting.
Sarah: Yeah. Oh, that reminds me of another artist who created an assignment in the book, Molly Springfield(?~29:14).
John: Oh yeah
Sarah: So this book not only has a good spine for titles, for sorting books, but also, so
John: Really good. It's also good content. So you should get it just for the spine
Sarah: Right
John: but what's inside the book is amazing.
Sarah: But Molly Springfield(?~29:30) makes these really outstanding graphite drawings. You should look her up. But she came up with this assignment that's called Copy a Copy a Copy, where you select a page of a book, or a note, and then you find a photocopier, which might be hard, or a scanner. You could do it with a scanner, but it's more fun with the photocopier. So, not to bring up things we can't do during this time, but, so you make a copy of it
(30:00) to (32:00)
Sarah: Then you take that copy and you make a copy of it and then you take that copy and you make a copy of it,(?~30:05) as many times as it takes to transform the image into something new. And, um, Molly -- that she makes copies but then makes drawings of the copies that have all the sort of, like, dust and noise that comes with a, um, a photocopy that she draws into it. And she pays a lot of special attention to marginalia.
John: Yeah --(?~30:28)
Sarah: That was a long rant about that.
John: Yeah -- While you're doing --
Sarah: Yeah --
John: -- while you're doing your self portrait that you're still going to have to do --
Sarah: (laughing) Okay.(?~30:35)
John: You would think that, I mean, you would think that you'd been asked to, like, commit a murder. So one of my favorite things about the book and, by the way, there's a link in the dooblydoo if you want to order the book. It comes out(?~30:46) in four days. It's gonna come to your house, it's gonna be a great experience. There's a lot of art historical context that kind of gets at, um, how, you know, art is not being made in a vacuum and that, and that people have been playing with these ideas and, and figuring out how to express deeply complicated stuff visually for a long time. And this is a famous Josef Albers painting that I didn't know about until(?~31:12) I, I read the book --
Sarah: Well, it wasn't a painting, actually. It was an illustration
John: It's not a painting.
Sarah: It's an illustration in -- and I'm not delaying. I've actually made some progress over here. (?~31:23)In Josef Albers' Interaction of Color, um, um, a book that's really good -- another really good book -- that's sort of about color theory and what happens when you take a color and put it in a new context.
John: So now(?~31:36) I'll explain the rest.
Sarah: So -- but this is beautiful, this is like "the inner, smaller violets are factually alike, but the upper one appears to refer to the outer, lighter violet at the bottom."(?~31:48)
John: So it's like, Josef Albers wrote a little poem about this picture -- I will explain it while you're finishing that -- you're really keen on not letting me explain it, but I want to. This purple(?~32:00)
(32:00) to (34:00)
and that purple are the same colour. And so they are factually alike, but because they are presented in different contexts they look very very different. In fact, like this purple looks like this purple even though it isn't.
And to believe this, when I was reading like the proofs of Sarah's book I was like "I think that you guys got this wrong". And I had to with my finger make a tiny little pinhole, you know, and then look through it and be like "oh my god, they are the same colour!" But yes, context makes the same thing look different which is like an extremely important idea when you're thinking about visual art but also of course an extremely important idea when you're thinking about everything else. That like, everything is context dependant and your context is hyper-specific and if you pretend otherwise you're lying.
S: Okay, are you ready?
J: Alright, I'm ready
S: Self Portrait, alright. Under Blue Cup, The Flamethrowers, I Contain Multitudes.
J: It's good.
S: Or I was debating, I also liked...
J: It's a little abstract which I like
S: Under Blue Cup, Sharp, I Contain Multitudes. Which is sort of related, to me. Anyway.
J: Yeah, well this is a common, well...
S: You're like uuuhhhhhh....
J: Well I like it but I was just thinking about the word Sharp. Because the word sharp, and it's pointed out in this book that like the word sharp is used as a kind of double-edged sword when talking about smart women or especially women critics or art critics...
S: like it's a compliment but also means that you're hard to take, so, yeah....
J: Right, or that like, you're not everybody's cup of tea.
S: Emily says "I may be too much of an engineer to follow the poem" [laughs] I think that's fine. I don't know if I understand it.
J: It was
(34:00) to (36:00)
J: it was pretty abstract, but I dig that. But yeah, I can see how people- I don't think that you're sharp-
S: -I'm sharp!
J:-I mean I think that you're very sharp in terms of being like incredibly incisive and bright, but I've never found you to be like, hard elbows. But it's true, but it's true that women are judged on a whole different scale.
S: Oh There There, I brought that!
J: Oh we have that!
S: Yeah, I brought that.
J: Such a good book.
S: So that's a really good book spine for this. Yeah.
J: And it's also, it's also like the title itself in the book. It's like a mix of reassuring and dismissing? Like, "there, there."
S: Yeah.
J: I've always thought it to be-
S: -"But there is no there there."
J: Yeah and then there's the famous Getrude Stein quote about how there's no there there.
S: Wasn't that about a person?
J: I thought it was about California.
S: Oh yeah.
J: And the book is set in California so that makes sense. "The problem with California is there is no there there."
S: "There is no there there." Yeah. But there is. There's a lot of great things about California.
J: But it's a great line. Like, Gertrude Stein was the master of lines that like maybe weren't totally true but were so good that you bought them.
S: Yeah.
J: Yeah.
S: Marie says being a science person trying to understand abstraction is geniunely hard.
J: Yes, that's really real though.
S: Yeah, I mean, but I guess in science I feel like the arts and sciences are more closely related than people imagine them to be? Or assume them to be?
J: Yeah but in the sciences, I think, there's sort of the abstract ways of working and then there are the concrete ways of working, right? So I think it's I think that's what-
S: I think that you do have to be comfortable with a degree of discomfort, if that makes sense?
J: Yeah, you have to like not-
S: But scientists are comfortable with a lot of discomfort because you make a hypothesis and then you try to prove it-
J: Yeah.
S: -but you have to be totally prepared for it not to work-
(36:00) to (38:00)
S: you have to be totally prepared for it not to work, and then to then use that knowledge of it not working to then go like
J: yeah
S: so it's still constructive
J: but you've go to um, yeah I think that I agree with you that there is a lot of abstraction in science, there's also a lot of concretions in writing or in visual art.
S: yeah.
J: Ultimately, most visual arts
S: depends on the type of art
J: even abstract visual art often has concrete elements like there's something you can look at, like those paintings are not, well they actually, they actually are not abstractions but like, there's something you can look at.
S: they're paintings of the sky
J: They're painting of the sky, but like you can look at them and make a conclusion about what they are.
S: Stan was speaking of Oakland. Yes
J: It's very true, it's actually less true of Okaland than it is of much of California. so that makes sense though because that's(?~36:50). It's this book [ name: "there there"] which I think won the Pulitzer prize. It was definitely the best, one of the best books I've read in the last ten years.
S: yeah, I recommend it. um, so you did your, you did you're still alive?
J: I'm still alive
S: yeah, you're still alive.
J: I got a one
S: how could we use "good talk"?
J: um, we good use "good talk" [name of a book] with like uh
S: "Good talk".
J: "Good talk" would be a funny response to somebody.
S: or you could like add it on to a lot of things like "the first rule of punk", "do what you want", "good talk" you know
J: The one that I didn't find a use for so far that I really love is this book, it's called "don't Get Above Your Raisin'" and it's the story of um this uh; it's the story of like southern, white southern music in the 1930s and 40s and that's
S: Oh yeah that's a good idea, "what is contemporary art", "Good talk"
J: hahaha, that's the one, that the one! "good talk" is the end of everything
S: I can see that(?~38:08) [ showing the two books], "What is contemporary art", S &
J: "Good talk". J: That's real good, that's real good
NewSection (38:17)
(40:00) to (42:00)
J: If you can't buy it, it's available.
S: Totally fine. You can also when your library is functioning again or if your library has, like-
J: You can get an e-book copy.
S: You can get an e-book copy but you can also ask your library to carry it if they're not carrying it.
J: Yeah. Or ask them to get the audiobook so you can listen to the audiobook for free.
S: So Kieran asks "Do you take much consideration into what the book is about or focus specifically on the title?" I like to focus specifically on the title-
J: Yeah.
S: -because like what you're really aiming for is like a very clearly articulated poem.
J: Yeah, to the audience.
S: To the audience, yeah.
J: Like, so you're imagining- I think you are imagining someone- showing this to someone.
S: Yeah.
J: Like saying like "I made this portrait of you" or "I made this portrait of Gertrude Stein-"
S: Yeah
J: -or "I made this portrait of myself" and showing this to someone somehow.
S: Yeah. J. That's usually how I think about it.
S: Right. And what I like about how specific this art assignment is is that, like, I think this is- and I'm releasing a video on Tuesday about this, that like, I don't think you need to necessarily be inspired to make art. I think that sometimes, sometimes for various reasons like it's almost like meditation. It's almost like something you practice or you do.
It's like you sit down and you give yourself a kind of challenge to do something, and I think when it's something as concrete as making a stack of books that, that personify you or somebody else-
J: Or just tells a story that you're interested in.
S: -or just tells a story is like such like an escape from the world but it's an escape from the world that eventually like brings you back into it and can potentially bring you back into connection with other people. So, you know, I think that during this time especially...like, I have...so I have a lot of responsiblities all at the same time as a parent in my job.
(42:00) to (44:00)
S: you know, making sure our house doesn't fall apart. And I share all these things with John over here.
J: Yeah, but it's a lot.
S: But, like, I don't technically have time to do art assignments but whenever I do I also like try to make it part of time with the kids, too. They don't always- the thing about our children and I think a lot of children is that they don't necessarily want to do what you want them to do, so...
J: But you can just be in a space with them-
S: Yeah! Right.
J: -where they're making the art they want to make and maybe it starts with an art assignment like in the back of the book there are like a list of art assignments that are good to do with friends and family or art assignments that are good to do with kids or art assignments that involve writing or sound or photography or even-
S: -Yeah or there's even like "with a friend" which I know seems a cruel right now when you can't be together with many friends, but a lot these are things that you could do-
J: Virtually.
S: -virtually or decide on an assignment together and like do it-
J: -Yeah.
S: -on your own time and then plan a time to show each other what you've made and talk about it.
J: Yeah, so, I mean for me right now it's about finding points of connection but also it's about holding on, I mean for me it's about holding on to my sanity: what makes me feel like a person, what makes me feel like life is valuable, and making stuff is a big part of that for me. Sarah's video on Tuesday is about, kind of about how creativity is overrated-
S: It's kind of about that? It's titled that. (Laughing.)
J: Yeah, and I, but I just, well it's not entirely about that but that is the title.
S: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
J: And I just think creativity I mean really is overrated. In the end like you make stuff by making it. You make stuff, you know, you make stuff by looking at the books in your house differently. Or you make stuff by taking pictures differently.
S: Right.
J: This one I just wanted to talk about real quick-
S: -Okay. Yeah.
S: -by Lenka Clayton is called- there's an art assignment in the book called "Lost Childhood Objects" which is to me like the perfect one to do-
(44:00) to (46:00)
S: -Like, with a friend, and that's one where there is an art assignment video, also...
J: Yeah, so just describe what the book... what the-
S: -Oh I thought you were going to keep it open-
J: -No, no, no.
S: -so I could reference it.
J: No, no, no. You know what it's about. You wrote the book.
S: Yeah, "Lost Childhood Object" is you and somebody you know describe to each other an object you had when you were a child that you lost, that you no longer have for whatever reason. So you describe it them, you say, you know, how heavy was it? What did it feel like? What was it made of?
You know, what size was it compared to a wine glass? And then you sort of switch places and the other person descibes their lost object and then you part ways and you make the object for them. You remake it out of just stuff you have around.
Like it doesn't even have to be sort of convincingly so, you could make a teddy bear out of like plastic grocery sacks or something like that. And then you come up, you come up with your object and you exchange it. And then you can either take a picture or you can mail it to them.
Or you can take a picture and share it and then like after this is over you can give it to them in-person.
J: Yeah.
S: I just think it's a great way to like...find a way to intersect with somebody, like a lot of these assignments that we've done, like "Scramble Scrabble Dinner" is another great one where you can make an artful meal have been like some of my most memorable fun times.
J: Yeah, like some of the best times of my life.
S: Yeah.
J: By the way I think that Michael Bell is in comments, like our high school friend Michael.
S: I think there are probably a lot of Michael Bells.
J: Based on his jokes I think it might be our friend from high school.
S: No, really?
J: I do.
S: Okay.
J: It would be great. But if it's not you're very funny regardless. Whether we went to high school with you or not.
S: Did we go to high school with you, Michael Bell?
J: Are John and Hank brothers? Yes.
S: Yes, John and Hank are brothers.
J: Are John and Sarah married? Yes.
(46:00) to (48:00)
J: Have we been married the whole time? Yes. We've been married for a long time. Very long time.
S: Yes.
J: I feel like we should answer all the other questions-
S Yeah!
J: that we get a lot. So feel free to leave us some questions and we'll answer your questions here at the last part of the show. A lot of people have been saying that it's hard to make stuff right now and it is.
S: It is and that's okay! No pressure. Yeah.
J: And also don't put pressure on yourself to make stuff. Like, our job is to get through this and to get to the other side. And I've been putting pressure on myself to try to get stuff done and it's just not realistic sometimes. Like that's the great thing about you know doing something relatively simple like poetry made out of book titles.
S: Well the other thing about this and like about watching assignment videos or reading the book is that it kind of plants the seed for an idea. So like we're showing you sorted- this sorted books activity and maybe you don't feel like doing it right now. But maybe in six months? I don't know how long. You're in a friend's house and like harbor yourself away and ask permission to go through their books and make a sorted book stack portrait of them. Or, you know, maybe you don't feel like doing it now but maybe in a couple weeks you decide "hey, why not?" So like a lot of these things because I commisioned them all from different artists. How it worked is like I got in touch with artists who I knew or I knew through other artists or artists would recommend other artists to me, and, you know, they would come up, they would devise these assignments these are not all my ideas. They are like based on the way all these artists make art either directly or sort of tangentally. But a lot of these when we were gathering them I didn't do them all right away because I had a full-time job and was a, you know, working parent and had a busy life