Blog Therapy for the Working Artist

Today, I’m introducing a new series on Artist Empathy entitled “Around the Block”. Each column will feature a working artist and their motivations and inspirations to keep in the studio, especially during times when the creativity is not so freely flowing.  Though a diverse range of artists from varying disciplines will be represented - from music and dance to visual art and writing - the universality of the artistic experience will hopefully provide a source we can draw on, again and again, when we need it.  I remember when I was a child, my mother had me make a “Rainy Day List” of things to do when my sister and I could not play outside.  Instead of tears and tantrums when the clouds blew in, we had ideas that could still thrill us, as we set up play restaurants, built a computer out of box, and sat in the cold in front of the heater for the blast of hot air at 15 minute intervals that served as a hairdryer for a little toy horse that shall remain nameless (let’s just say the “small horse” had long tresses to style). Perhaps this shall be the metaphorical adult equivalent. Eventually, the column will be weekly, but for now, look for the next interview in early January.

The first featured artist is visual artist Ellen Priest who is based in the Philadelphia area.  I was attracted to her work because of its relationship to jazz music.  Priest sets down her visualization of jazz music with brush on paper, with layers of paper giving varying physical depth to her abstract works.  As a jazz composer, I primarily hear and feel my compositions; Priest intrigues me with the ideas of what sound looks like.  Her impressive resume includes grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, solo exhibitions such as her “Jazz: The Brubeck Series” which hung to accompany a concert by none other than Dave Brubeck himself on piano, and group exhibitions at several galleries from Philadelphia to Connecticut.  Her works can be found in private collections in the States, including the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, as well as Paris and Italy.

Read more about Ellen Priest at her website.

The two photos of works featured below are from her ‘Venezuelan Suite’ Series drawing on the work of jazz pianist/composer Edward Simon. If you’d like, you can listen to excepts from the music that inspired the art by going to Edward Simon’s website and scrolling down the right hand side of the page to the heading “Downloads”.

AE: What does the word “empathy” mean to you as an artist?

EP: I tend to think of empathy in political and social contexts, either broad or individual, rather than in relation to my painting.  I think of it often when I’m teaching, for example – climbing inside my students minds/eyes to find their goals artistically and see the hurdles they’re encountering.  It’s instantaneous – that, to me, is empathy…that split-second, intuitive climbing-inside-someone-else’s-skin, sensing the common experience, using it to try to comprehend the critical, specific differences.

As a painter, I don’t think about empathy by name.  I view art as giving form to feeling. That concept is taken directly from philosopher Suzanne Langer’s Feeling and Form.  (Read it in graduate school, it has shaped my approach in my own studio for these 30 years.  It’s a classic about how the performing and visual arts do what they do as symbolic form.)  “Feeling” for Langer includes not only emotions, but a broad range of intangible experiences.

To the extent that a painting of mine embodies the experience of others as well as my own, viewers become engaged, experiencing or remembering a wide range of emotions, memories, ideas.  At that moment, the painting has succeeded in coming to life as symbolic form. Indirectly, that might be empathy at work.

We as humans must need tangible symbolic form, since we’ve been painting, dancing, making music, etc as far back as we can trace the artifacts.  The cave paintings in Australia go back 40-60,000 years, and clearly that wasn’t the beginning.  Maybe it’s wired into the structure of our consciousness.  Interesting that the Bible talks about our being made in God’s image.

Most rewarding for me as an artist in all this, my paintings seem to continue to function as lively symbolic form over and over.  People live with them for many years and tell me they remain fresh.

ELLEN PRIEST Jazz: Edward Simon’s ‘Venezuelan Suite’ #1 © 2006, Oil and flashe on collaged paper, 42” x 42"

AE: Describe a defining moment in your life where you first identified yourself as an artist or knew that you would pursue your art, despite the difficulties of a such a career.
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I sit nestled on a bench in my favourite coffee house, carefully brewing some sencha tea. I’m doing that delicate of dances in my seat required whenever one dares to drink hot liquid near a computer flanked on both sides by other people with beverages - and even babies, with their arms and legs akimbo.  While at home the sound of a solitary hammer from construction nearby my studio rings in my head like an evil metronome, for some reason in a crowded cafe the background music, heated conversations, yelling of the baristas, accidental kicks from customers at nearby tables and the general mayhem that ensues when there is a ready supply of cupcakes, doesn’t bother me.  I can get so involved in my thoughts that my little table gets sucked into a beam of light (maybe from my glowing monitor?) and all outside noise becomes a whirl, the room a blur, and time ceases to exist.  Like one of those cliched alien beams of green light, without the alien.  Okay, so maybe today there is an alien, as the little human baby periodically sticks it little arms into my table space and wails it’s tiny other-worldly wail.

Over the last few days, I’ve been contemplating writing about practicing, and the relationship an artist has with whatever “studio” you work in (loosely defined - in my case, the small room that has the only door in the house apart from the bathroom).  I know there are artists who are able to get to their work at every opportunity, and who can spend countless hours in their creative space, to whom their studio is their haven, the default place they are found, a place they need to be extracted from for such mundane activities as eating or sleeping. I am not one of those artists. [Read more →]

While I was trying to fall asleep last night, I pondered the ups and downs of the artistic life and the image of a seesaw popped into my head along with the question, “Why can’t I just stay balanced in the middle?”  Art can be such a serious pursuit, so in the interest of some levity I thought I’d explore the metaphor a bit more. While I’m typing this, “The Doctor” (see blog header) is bent on licking the blinds of the window right in front of my computer for no apparent reason, providing some humor on his own except for the fact that every time I pull him away and set him down on the floor, he hops back up again.  Come on kitty, have some dignity!  Sheesh.

Anyway, while thinking of seesaws, I was reminded that when I was a child and frequently visited the playground, I was afraid of them.  My dad or some other adult, two or three times my weight, would inevitably be sitting on the other end and so I was hoisted all the way up into the air with the sense I might not ever be allowed to come down. (Note to parents:  are those exclamations from your kids at the playground squeals of delight, or squeals of terror?  Don’t always assume the former). The boards that made up the seesaw were always painted some bright color like blue or green or orange, but were weathered and faded like an old wooden boat.   They inspired as much confidence in the safety of the seesaw as the swing sets whose feeble metal poles rose out of the ground a few inches when you pumped your legs really hard and jerked on the chains.

The business of art and music is very much like hanging out at a creepy playground at dusk.  You know, the kind of playground you see in movies where death is represented by the empty swing, moving back and forth in an eerie breeze.  The kind of playground where an old newspaper blows up against your leg, significantly, and you realize it’s a paper from fifty years ago, when the park first opened.  You hear the sounds of children playing all around you, but when you look, no one is there.  The bells of an ice cream truck ring out, but when you cross the lawn to the vehicle on the corner you realize it’s just an unmarked white van, and the bell sound came from a crow pecking at some garbage. That sort of playground. [Read more →]

A quick google of the word audacity immediately pops up “audacity of hope” in the most common search terms, referring to President Elect Barack Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Vintage). In a society where pessimism - or in the online world, “snarkiness” - sells newspapers and keeps eyes glued to television or computer screen, hope and positivity aren’t popular and can border on the outrageous.  Who hasn’t found a moment to scorn the latest self-help book, or heard about a new age guru who is so cheery we want to smack him and tell him what life is really like.  Just witness the hidden personal tragedies of the motivational speaker as portrayed in the movie Little Miss Sunshine. As viewers, we revel in the irony of the broken man behind such a sunny facade.

Artists can be snarky too; in fact, how many of us feel we have a pessimistic world view?  We often see ourselves as public Eeyores with an eye for sharp social commentary, but I think that in reality being an artist is an act full of hope and optimism. We may not paint pretty pictures or write music that is calming or even pleasing to most ears, but even our representations of the utmost ugliness are a kind of transformation. Sometimes our work draws attention to the beauty in sadness or anger, and other times our depictions of all that is wrong in the world is jarring enough to inspire people to change themselves or the world around them. We persevere through all sorts of conditions to create these works, and believe we have something to say. Is that not also extremely audacious?

With the election of Barack Obama, the United States has turned away from the darkness of the last eight years - a darkness we have all experienced as Americans, regardless of political party. This isn’t a political blog, but there is no denying that politics affects the artist. To see so many people inspired by Obama’s positive message and call for individuals to take responsibility for making the world a better place is possibly the most significant event I have witnessed in my lifetime. [Read more →]

It’s coming time for the holidays again.  For many people, that means a gathering of relatives and friends that you may only see once a year, if that.  These are the folks that saw you first beating on the furniture when you were six, later followed by you beating on the drums in high school marching band, and who shared stories of their own experiences with music lessons.  These same relatives might have dutifully filed into the school musical when you were going to be a movie star, laughing politely at poorly written jokes in the script and trying not to laugh at the sometimes abysmal acting.  While I was growing up, they were the patient listeners to my passionate teenage saxophone wailing which was often accompanied by the family dog’s howling - a greater delight for the crowd, I suspect, than hearing me play.

For many family gatherings over the years, keen interest in your artistic pursuits continues.  Who doesn’t say admiringly, “my cousin plays a mean saxophone”, or “little Susie sure has gotten good at playing those bongos!”.  Remember when you sold Girl Scout Cookies or wrapping paper in elementary school and it didn’t seem too tough to make a sale?  These are the same folks that are the first to buy your debut album, or your painting no one else likes, or to get tickets to a show.  Your relatives and friends become your first fans, and their encouragement helps you buckle down and pursue your art.

Except, one day, it isn’t cute anymore.  You’ve finished school, or you can’t get away with describing yourself as a “twenty something”, or all your friends have settled down into a life of steady jobs - maybe even with babies in tow.  But there you are, still doing your art.   You might be known in your field, having had a few showings at choice galleries, or some reviews in national magazines, or even had your name on the Grammy ballot.  But you weren’t nominated, not yet, and that piece of art you sold for a couple thousand, once, didn’t get you into a nicer apartment, or pay off your student loans.  Not famous, not rich, not even “comfortable”.  What are you? [Read more →]

Today is a grey, rainy day, that already has hints of - dare I say it - November - at its edges, though it is still relatively warm.  My two cats seem to have the right idea, huddling together atop a too small bed and snoozing away the afternoon.  (Note to the acute observer - “the doctor” has a sister with whom he spends much time when not in the office).  While I’m not snoozing away like them, I haven’t been especially productive and it seemed a good time to wrestle with the whole 9-5 American work ethic versus how the creative brain works.

Arguably, the standard American job is not really 9-5 with an hour paid lunch anymore - if it ever was.  Lunch usually isn’t paid, and many people put in more hours than forty at the office.  This is without factoring in commute times, or night shifts. I’ve worked a number of day jobs in my life, and even though as a self-employed artist my time is more or less my own to schedule, I find it really hard to shake that traditional work ethic.

When I first ditched the day job, I tried to schedule every minute of my workday.  Meditate, follow-up on music business emails for one half hour while eating breakfast.  Practice.  Take short “calisthenics” break for walk around neighborhood.  Long music business session.  Lunch hour.  Practice.  Music business session…you get the idea.  What ended up happening was that I kept getting behind schedule. Not because I was loafing, so much as I didn’t factor in all the things that one does that aren’t specifically productive into the schedule.  Things like washing my saxophone mouthpiece, finding the perfect reed, or brewing a cup of tea to drink while I practiced long tones.  If I was in an office job, there would be no question that those things would be included in my paid workday.  It’s not like you clock out every time you cast your melancholy gaze out the window (if you’re lucky enough to have one), wondering why it is still two hours until lunchtime, or when you spend fifteen minutes looking for your pencil. [Read more →]

It’s been about two weeks now since I last played a show with my band. Since I chose to live in the woods and not in NYC, the expected locale of just about every jazz musician serious about their art (something with which I strongly disagree, and will write about in the future), it’s inevitable that I see the band less often than many musicians see their peers, and thus I often feel like an outsider in my own career.

For many of the people I perform with, life as a sideperson is just part of a regular workday where set breaks in a show mean snack time and free time in the tour schedule allows for napping. Alas, as a bandleader who doesn’t really work unless I do my own booking, publicity, management and production, I’m a bit more involved in the logistics than I would like. Instead of thinking naps and food at set breaks, I’m wondering where the players disappeared to so quickly and if they’ll make it back in time for the next set, or how to negotiate (and by that, I mean not lose my temper) with the club owner who has just told me that for some strange reason, they can’t pay me tonight, can I wait a few days?

In short, when the band leaves, I can feel quite alone, aware that I’m solely responsible for making sure I can perform again soon. Does a saxophonist and composer living in the woods without a band to bring her music to life exist? Are my inquiries through cyberspace planning future performances or grant applications sent furtively in the dead of night from the automated postage machine at the P.O. going to a person who will read them, or simply evaporating? I am absolutely certain my neighbors can hear me practicing, so I guess that’s something! But many a day the phone may not ring and my email inbox may not make its happy whoosh noise announcing new mail (instead, making that, cold, tinny, bumping noise, like someone beating their head against the wall). Who am I then?

This is why a telephone booth is so important. Like Superman, artists need a proverbial place to transform from struggling everyday souls into creative beings who, if not saving the world exactly, can bring beauty to the world, or challenge people to do something about the world’s ugliness. I’m not sayin’ I’m seeking a blue spangled silly suit in my future or anything, but the booth, itself, I could live with. That way each day when I wake in between shows, Sarah the questionably productive citizen (in a strictly capitalistic sense) could be transformed into Sarah the Saxophonist, fighting adversity with an ear-opening hodge-podge of shockingly dissonant chords and mildly pleasing melodies.

Do you have a telephone booth? Please feel free to share yours in comments. I’m still looking for mine…