Has Twitter found you?

I knew twittering would get me into trouble.

Since I'm paranoid enough as it is, I think its weird how easily people can find you and interact with you via these new ways of networking and passive communication. I mean, good weird, but still you find all kinds of things. Old high school buddies, which happened to me on facebook (no surprise there), and the random articles posted by friends on twitter, like the one I found on gawker in early August. It was about this organization called "Gen Art" which I personally have never participated with, but knew a little about because I would see their flyers for events.

More specifically when I was in school in Austin, they threw an event at the Austin Music Hall with Scion. This made suspicious of an organization that would team up with major corporations in the name of exposing them to contemporary art. In my mind this was more of a party for the people who'd never seen or put effort towards seeking out contemporary art to put their guilt at ease for not doing so or to make them feel hip or cool for attending. This to me is grossly abusing art for professional gain.

I'm also not really sure what they do for artists. I'm an artist. Give me some money and a party. But do I want the clientele they appeal to at my show? Would they even really want to be there? I guess the larger question is what are everyone's intentions in this kind of corporate/artist/public relationship? What is everyone looking to gain and who is benefitting the most?

Anyway, the dude who is like vp wrote me a PERSONAL email! Which kind of creeped me out, but I also thought was nice that he cares so much about his organization. See for yourself:

Hi Jenny

I saw your post on Twitter expressing distrust towards our organization.

It's unfortunate that a disgruntled individual posted that item on Gawker which was unfortunately filled with misinformation and flat out lies - presumedly just to ruffle feathers.

I've been with Gen Art for 14 years. the first 5 of which were as a volunteer and the last nine as an employee.

It's been quite an interesting ride to watch the company grow - and in the process to have to suffer the consequences of occasional disdain in the face of our growth.

We are mostly funded by corporate partners and their marketing dollars - which means we don't get to play by the same games/rules as other arts organizations. We occasionally have to produce events that are slightly off mission but they help fund the events that we (and other organizations) otherwise would never be able to pull off. + we are able to create unique opportunities for our artists to flirt with working with the commercial sector and in the process get stipends and tremendously more exposure.

And yes there is a huge social element to what Gen Art does. why? because it's a marketing tool. It allows us to pull in a very sought after audience who is good for spreading word of mouth for both our sponsors and our artists. they like to play while consuming culture. That may give us the outward appearance of being a party organization and having our priorities messed up but the reality is, it is very controlled and intended - we do it for the moments for when that stressed out lawyer who just blew off steam with a movie and a couple beers comes up to me and/or the filmmaker and says "how do I become a producer?" we do it for the moments when a fashion designer is crying backstage after a show because she never thought she'd get her designs on a runway - let alone in front of 1000 people and designers she grew up admiring and wearing judging HER designs. And yes - we do it for the advertisers who get super excited when their idea to have an artist design a special edition shoe or a filmmaker make a short film that has their product in mind - comes to fruition.

I suspect that your suspicion has simply rested in the realm of just not understanding what it is we do. And that is fair enough - because it is very hard to communicate the big picture to audiences.

But if we didn't have our priorities straight - we wouldn't have been around for 15 years. and our brush with going under was the result of bad management only in the sense that we grew too fast and didn't save up enough cash for a rainy day. (and the past year has been full of them)

wow. so sorry to rant but that Gawker article put me in a really bad mood today. I haven't invested so much of my life into this organization and the filmmakers I've supported to have one frustrated (most likely recently laid-off employee) creating controversy.

I hope you don't mind me emailing you but I saw your tweet and felt compelled.

should you find yourself in one of our cities I'd be happy to take care of you at one of our events so you can see what we do first hand.

best regards.

Jeff

--
Jeffrey Abramson
Vice President - Film
Gen Art
3710 S. Robertson Blvd., Suite 219
Culver City, CA 90232
P. 323 782 9367 | F. 310 845 9360
www.genart.org/filmfestival

So of course I'm going to do my homework and not be a passive communicator and write this guy back. From what I know currently, I do see the need for something like this. Corporations need to get rid of money to avoid taxes and who better to dump them off on then to an organization that facilitates relationships to the arts? Makes sense, I just don't know how much this benefits the visual arts communities. For fashion and film, it makes tons of sense, but those are already socially acceptable and profitable art forms. We'll see how I feel after some investigation.

Burnout Paradise

I went to California this past week for the College Arts Association Annual Conference in Los Angeles. I rented a ford mustang convertible which smelled like the beach and cigarettes. I drove it around once with the top down just to get my money's worth. I felt like I was playing Burnout Paradise and wanted to smash through billboards off sweet jumps of ended highways. But I used to hate California and I enjoyed it this past time. It's like a giant Houston with palm trees and hills. I digress though, since this entry is about the CAA conference itself.

Of course it was a very academic exercise and since I've been reading "Hop on Pop" and saying "bye-bye" to bath toys, it was nice to sit and listen to adult conversation. Surprisingly there were lots of lectures about the online community and how it fits in the art world, whether it was making art online in second life or how to use facebook for promotion of your artwork. This "technoart" discussion is really funny to me. People are still desperately trying to define and figure out this thing called "the internet" and still having difficulty navigating it physically and mentally. To me, its like any medium or tool, use it to further an idea. I feel like grandiose expectations are just that, grandiose, and since it is such a collective endeavor and god let's hope it stays that way, let it exist and change and write its own history. And the fact that some artists haven't figured out the ability to use it for promotional means leaves me baffled.

I also attended a seminar for a friend that wasn't able to make it. The seminars were pricey, $45 a piece, while the lectures were included in your ticket purchase. The woman leading the seminar had some good things to say in terms of grant writing, but most of it was common sense I my opinion. Some of the websites she thought well of were The Foundation Center and Creative Capital organization. I was a participant here in Houston with the Creative Capital workshop a few years back and it never fails to prove to be one of the most useful experiences of learning towards my art career. If one ever gets the chance to do anything with this organization, DO IT.

Some other highlights were lectures based on artist collaborations with their children (ie Sally Mann), which was really uncomfortable and fascinating to me. I learned about haptic art in the digital realm and kitsch in the 1960's, and saw some interesting presentations under the subject of "Stealth Art" which lead to a great discussion on commercial value of art and art making.

So I had fun even though people looked at me funny when I said I was there but not interviewing for a position with a university. I thought it was a good little break from mommying and got me pretty energized about academic viewpoints in art, which I normally detest. I highly recommend it to anyone but go ahead and skip the convertible since next year is in Chicago.

For Seth

I saw this at a war print show at the MFAH and thought of you. The rest of the show was a little boring.

Too Legit

I'm way way busier than I imagined I would be before getting into this whole grad school thing, so my posting has dropped on the 'ol line chart to zero. However, I thought I'd share my biggest revelation since moving out to California: nobody that I've met gives a shit about what is going on in Texas.  Nobody has ever heard of Trenton Doyle Hancock, Okay Mountain or the Texas Biennial.  This shocked me.  I tell everyone to go to Texas and discover these things they are missing. They usually just blink and say something like "Huh. Sounds cool. Going to the Hammer opening this weekend?" I suppose the point of this relates to a post I read on Glasstire (too lazy to look for the link) about focusing on our own yards and not being so concerned that the Los Angeles' and New Yorks next door notice. They don't. I don't think they care. At all. Be happy with what you've got and build on it even more. You're doing a good job.

Disturbance of Distance video

Here's a video of Eleanor Williams, curator of the exhibition "Disturbance of Distance," talking about the artists and how the show was put together. It's all on location at Box 13 Artspace in Houston, TX. Box 13 is a great space and is really invigorating Houston with quality shows and it's all artist run!

Yes We Did

Weekly art thoughts 2

So we only got around to seeing one show this week. It was an exhibition by an artist from Texas who was living in New York and I believe is living in Houston again, Susie Rosmarin at Texas Gallery (go to their website for images). I don't have much to say about Susie's paintings except it makes my eyes hurt but is technically quite a feat in the op art way. She also has a bunch of photography of sunsets, which was jarring against the super tightly painted semi-grided canvases. The only correlation I could come up with was color studies? Whatever. She's a big deal in the painting world, and rightly so, for these things look crazy labor intensive. For me however, they are really formal and kinda boring.

However, since I didn't get to see a lot of art I do want to talk about the gallery a bit. Now, Texas gallery is a little different than most galleries because of its weird location in a ritzy River Oaks shopping center but quietly tucked in the back so you have to know it to find it. I think galleries are really indentified here in Houston by location, but come to think of it, most cities function that way. Anyway, it is totally old school and very involved with art types like Robert Rauschenburg and Dave Hickey which gives them major cred. Fredericka Hunter, the part owner/director with Ian Glennie, also does an amazing DVD series called ArtPixthat if you've never seen or heard of before, shame. The space is a shot gun with an entrance gallery, one larger main exhibition, and a room with offices and rotating stock in back. The shows are always well considered and nicely edited for viewing. Its a little like a New York gallery where if they don't know you or are on the phone, they ignore you, but hey, that's why there's a buzzer on the front door, to make you feel like you just got let into an exclusive club. Its nice, and I very much respect Fredericka and Ian for being great trail-blazers and influences in this city.