Interaction: Whether you like it or not

Interaction is nothing new to the realm of art. Now interactive is a cliché, almost a requirement. In an art climate where boundaries are continually pushed, if I can't interact with your work then I'm leaving.

But it doesn't seem fair for me to judge interactivity without a standing definition of what interactive art is.

Interactive art: any visual art that acknowledges the physical presence of Lucas Spivey. Most art fits in this category. However many people have loose morals about the sanctity of art and will interact whether or not you intended it.

This is the Reece Terris' Ought Apartment at the Vancouver Art Gallery, a six-story apartment with each floor representing a decade 50's to present. This is a montage of the 80's floor; yes you can use the stair-master and I'm sure there was a thigh master just upstairs in the 90's.


Last month, for his BFA thesis Oliver Bucklin suspended a double nylon parachute from the ceiling of the CMA Gallery. The piece Join Hands was sucked and blown by the gallery's ventilation system causing a expansion and contraction of the space. Two hand panels on either side of the gallery split the fans circuit and the piece was activated each time the audience held enough hands to cross the gallery and connect the circuit. It's flu season... perhaps Wash Hands?


Nikki Lau's My 5th Birthday: interactive. It's an entire living room piñata at the Medicine Agency in San Francisco- how the hell did she do this? See the video of it's creation and destruction here.


Peter Bonde Becker Nelson wedged his 1987 Chevy Tahoe into the Gallery4Culture last October. You could hop in the truck while it played back audio; all part of Peter's Former Best Friends Forever show including a desktop computer video-chatting with you. But not all art acknowledges the physical presence of Lucas Spivey - just good stuff. Some artwork is so innocuous and heady that it offers no approach whatsoever to me.


This is Sol Hashemi's Untitled (Lucky Sculpture), a piece for grabs in Punch Gallery's all-art-raffle last October. In keeping with the aforementioned, standing definition of interactive art, Hashemi offers no relationship between me and the work - so I had to sneak a smooch for good luck in the raffle.

That's a blueberry bagel from Noah's Bagels and Isamu Noguchi's Black Sun at Volunteer Park in Seattle. I didn't feel like kissing anything in Volunteer Park; where there is far more than the flu coating most O-shapes. It's not a celestial body, it's a big wrinkly donut and you can crawl into it.

Seattle to New York: The Skinny on Paper

It's agreed that skin and paper are quite different from a functional stand-point; skins holds in our blood and paper-cuts draw out that blood - but they share an intersection of formal qualities that allow the pair to stand in for each other as visual metaphors.

On a recent trip to New York I noticed some eerie similarities to the ways Seattle and New York artists use paper and skin interchangeably. First pair: Carolee Schneeman's video piece Body Collage (currently at the Whitney) and Dan Webb's suit of armor Skin made from raw-hide (recently at Ambach and Rice). Both pieces chat about what it means to cover ourselves: is it a sign of weakness or power or a new-kind-of-Halloween? Schneeman video tapes herself brushing an adhesive onto her bare body and then rolling, frolicking and gallevanting in paper which collects on her body – then she pulls it off and does it again... and again... and again. Compare that to Dan Webb's stoic, unmoving suit of armor on a pedestal or better yet compare it to this suit of armor at the Met.

In format both paper and skin are two-dimensional media. The two-dimensional quality of a soft layer lends itself to pliability and can be formed into third dimension(s). I think that this pliability connotes a vulnerability (because you manipulate it) but not necessarily so. In Dan Webb's suit this pliability results in vulnerability but with a hard-ass-metal-suit-of-armor at the Met... no it doesn't. The metal suit is utilitarian while Dan's piece is absurd; rawhide is not a realistic stand in for steel and to cover one's skin with skin is redundant.

Enter the Trophy Collection, a series of paper-masks by Nils Ivar Theorin featured in the “Prime-time” October show at the School of Visual Art's gallery. Formed over food, drink and detergent bottles, the shadows that are created by the handles and volumes of the bottles create faces – reminiscent of masks I have seen at the Seattle Art Museum's current exhibition (name?).

Yes that is a keg on top of his head. After seeing Trophy Collection and the SAM's exhibit, I realized my latest work was not so unique - here's a paper-mache wine bottle I've been working on.

I'll be posting a-whole-nother post specifically on paper as a counter-productive camoflauge (skin) for alcohol. Stay tuned.

Ghost Truck

During my residency at YMCA Camp Colman there was never a dull moment. Dullness was like peanut butter - somebody was bound to be allergic to it and so we banned it. We kept occupied with art projects like wax anti-carrots, paint-dodge-ball, smashing old food to paint on audience members, tie-dying cookstaff aprons and of course the now infamous paper-mache truck dubbed the "Ghost Truck" in the Slog.


After the summer was over I had to bring all the projects back to Seattle for the Y in your eYe show at the Ver(a)rt Gallery Oct 6th. I knew that even the biggest project would have to fit in my truck. That's how the idea came in the first place: let them paper-mache the moving apparatus.


So we coated the truck with vegetable oil and seran-wrapped it and then began layering it with reclaimed out-dated dot-matrix printer paper rolls. The kids loved it and we listened to a lot of Michael Jackson in the driveway. I began to wonder what would happen if I drove the canvas at highway speeds.


So I chopped some holes for the radiator for it to breathe and carved out the lights and turn signals to function legally. Screwing the license plates over the paper helped secure it in place but as soon as I hit 40 MPH the roof ripped in half. Then I was pulled over by Officer Edwards for obstruction of vision.


Turns out I had expired tabs and expired insurance... three tickets later I finished driving to the emissions testing station. Yes my pipes are clean and I not only have the documentation from the state of Washington I also have the "Clean Award" from aLIVe (a Low-Impact Vehicle exhibition) to prove it. The truck was also in The Critical Eye show at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery curated by Robert Yoder.


Come to the Y in your eYe show at the Ver(a)rt Gallery in the Vera Project. The reception on October 6th is mostly for family and friends, but the show will be up through October 27th.

Creationism in Art: Make It Up as We Go Along?

I can sum up my family's mentality on conceptual art by paraphrasing Garrison Keillor, "Performance artists in New York say the world is going to end and this makes sense considering the shared trait of all performance artists is raging narcissism" adding that the best cure for raging narcissism is to have children. His quote posits that in lieu of a real meaning in life (i.e. children) we sometimes invent meaning and I think this describes much of the conceptual art world - in lieu of actual meaning in our work we invent a meaning for our work.

It's embarrassing to witness such an artist talk about their work when you suddenly realize they're coming up with answers to questions they never asked themselves. Some of us have been to that artist talk.

Audience member asks "Why did you use choose to use 2 by 4s?"

Artist lies "To reference the abuse of nature."

...instead of admitting it was a cheap alternative to brushed steel.

How dishonest to our viewers to come up with our inspirations and choices after the work is done and complete? And sometimes this dishonesty is noticeable in the work itself. I think of Frankenstein's monster when he learns that his creator had never thought to give him purpose before creating him. It makes me want to swaddle the art in my arms while it softly weeps.

An artist creates things beyond what they understand but an artist is responsible for the choices they make. To me, an example of responsible art is the work of my friend Ali Luis. Her materials carry specific meaning(s).

Here is a baby blanket and outfit made from Toys"R"Us bags - complete with a crocheted bonnet and booties. The piece is poignant because its materials are relevant to its concept - Ali chose her materials before she set to work. From here many interpretations can be explored; the appropriation of consumer-culture as an art material, the influence of media on our children, the impossibility of such a garment, the splayed out dismemberment in the image, etc.

Light Comes with Darkness

Last Thursday evening outside of the Scott Fife show at Platform Gallery I bumped into Shaun Kardinal wearing an open-faced sandwich board and holding strips of black and white. He asked if I was interested in the light. I know Shaun well enough to know that he isn't completely insane but I'm sure parents were pulling their children out of his reach when he started waving what looked like paint color samples to the crowd for $5.00. I asked Shaun what he was talking about.

He explained to me that he had been in a wonderful mood recently because he had reached a level of balance, fullness and acceptance (my words not his - I didn't write this all down). In short he was feeling really really good. But as much as he tried to hold onto this balance, fullness and acceptance it just slowly inevitably slipped away and he felt despair (my word not his).

So why sticks of black and white? He said he realized that darkness comes with light. And so he asked if I'd like to purchase some light for $5.00 and that he would throw in the darkness for free. I get it - the rose comes with the thorns. And when he charged $5.00 he wasn't just asking for cash he was expanding the connecting concept further - everybody wanted what he had but nobody wanted to pay for it.

Light = cool strips of black and white
Darkness = negative five US dollars

I took neither (because I'm unemployed) but others took the deal. Great job Shaun.