Hi, Susan:

I wish we’d gotten to know each other better in the years since we first met. We had so many people in common: we were so clearly part of the same communities. Your friends and family are shattered– this loss is immeasurably sad, obscenely premature, and you are missed beyond belief. If ever there was a case of needing a copy of “When Bad Things Happen To Good People,” this is probably it, since we can’t have you back. Given your legendary optimism, I wonder what kind of pep talk you’d give us, in coping right now. It’s rattled so many of us to lose you, a much-loved peer, so early and so unfairly: we could probably benefit from a hefty dose of your sunny perspective.

I never got to tell you that 00:56-01:04 of “A Few Yards in San Jose” made me fall in love with you back in 2006. Such a hilarious, awkward, fluid moment on a strange, suburban stage. It’s funny how first memories work like this: you, crawling through that tire swing, is how I think I’ll always remember you–not because it’s indicative of the broader scope of what you did, but because it was my first impression of you, and it was so delightfully strange.

I didn’t really know you at the time that you exhibited that project at Southern Exposure, but I knew immediately that you were awesome, and that I wanted to be friends with you. Given all of the usual Bay Area excuses and obligations, we never managed to become close, but I was always glad when we did run into each other, and we were clearly part of the same extended family, which seemed to be just fine, and the next best thing.

Like everyone else hoping for some last whiff of you, I spent time lingering on your website, since this is what grieving looks like these days. I was struck by the ironic helpfulness of your blog entry regarding the passing of your mother last year:

“I googled “how to manage grief” and “am I depressed or is it grief?” to keep things on track and to make sure that this thing doesn’t spiral. I found the bullet point checklists strangely consoling. Talk to friends, exercise, write in your journal. And remember, these things take time; everyone deals with it differently; be good to yourself; it may be hard to concentrate and be focused, they say. All things I know, sometimes easier said than done.

I also look to art that snap me out of ambivalence and into some clarity. I’m reminded of the human-ness of this endeavor – the primal need to scratch something down, create something out of sorrow, joy, and suffering. The act of doing something, however simple, is transformational. I’m renewed in my belief in the process, and I can hear my mom tell me: if it takes more energy to frown than be happy, trick your brain and smile.”
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Dear Richard:
It’s clearly been a rough couple of weeks in the tattered remains of the Bay Area art community, and I’m mightily ticked off to be having to write to you, too. I’m also extremely pissed that this is what your so-called “retirement schedule” turned out to be, after so many decades as everybody’s favorite sage curmudgeon at SFAI.

You were one of my two pillars (the other of course being Carlos) when I was a young undergrad, and truly a titan at that school. You were absolutely wonderful and hilarious: everything I learned about how to balance insightfulness and irreverence in the classroom came directly from you, I’m pretty sure. Thank you for your sharp humor, your keen eye, your twisted, masterful dexterity with language, your quirky mentorship and beneath it all, your care and thoughtfulness.

I’m grateful every day that you helped shaped me as a young artist, and that you gave me so many opportunities to grow as a sculptor and a teacher over the years. While it was too little too late, I’m glad that I managed to visit you before you left: I wish I’d known sooner. I’ll miss the hell out of you.

This final segment of this piece of writing from your website hits home, and brings up these notions of ego, mortality and recognition that all of us struggle with, but artists perhaps in their own way:

A more remote memory returns in considering this question, by way of Famadou Don Moy, the percussionist with the Art Ensemble of Chicago. He performed solo at the Art Institute some years ago, he filled the stage with a an enormous array of percussion instruments, big, small, formal, informal, Chinese gongs and hubcaps, a night clerks bell and a trap drum set, among many others. He came slowly to the stage from the back of the auditorium, playing a drum in a sling that also was a rattle, bells on his feet and wrists, striking both ends of the drum with maracas, the movement of every extremity expressed in sound, and he chanted: “to all great Black musicians, known and unknown”. Known and unknown. It was an invocation to acknowledge ALL those who gave their lives in pursuit of the great human service, the service of the artist, summarizing peoples experiences in time and space, turning the sometimes unbearable discrepancy between the way things are and the way they ought to be into something that makes us want to dance.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It’s funny how these dates somehow still read like an exhibition announcement.

Susan O’Malley, 1976 – February 25, 2015
Richard Berger , Dec 5, 1944 – March 3, 2015

We had group critiques of recent projects in one of my studio classes the other day. One student, whose project turned out extremely well, was nonetheless weirdly apologetic about it. He expressed frustration that he had needed to take the work through multiple differing drafts, and couldn’t get it quite right, ultimately changing his composition considerably to accommodate and resolve the situation.

I joked (sort of) that this was, in fact, exactly what he was supposed to do, not what he had failed to do: proper R&D, trial and error, problem-solve, alternate versions, abandon some/many. That this IS the creative process, not an indicator of failure. It’s messy work; there is no Ctrl+Z (not always, anyway). He was probably the first student I’d had in a while that actually took his work through this full process, and it paid off in really strong, well-thought-out work.

I love teaching: the newness and energy that students bring to art is always a pleasure to work around. I will say, though, that in recent years, across the board, my students have become increasingly reluctant to go through the drafting process, or even just to keep journals just for the sheer joy/practice of it. It seems too abstract/unfamiliar to them, and they get frustrated by the uncertainty or the lack of fruition when the direction they chose for a project doesn’t comply and fall immediately into place.

Part of me wonders is this is the ADHD nature of  American culture in 2015 (I don’t see this in my international students nearly as much), and/or Millenial impatience, and/or peoples’ ever-growing addictions to mobile devices/internet/social media corrupting any ability to focus. While I have to address it with students, there’s also no denying that I’ve found this sliding for myself…for most of the same possible reasons.

I used to putter and muddle through ideas for ages, just exploring and meandering. Once my exhibition career began in earnest, there were long streaks of creative practice that necessitated a very quick, no-room-for-error, deadline-based decision-making process. Working increasingly in the digital realm reshaped certain habits of mind and of studio. This, combined with inconsistent studio access at times (not to mention my procrastinatory tendencies) turned my practice into one that was often site-specific, portable, and improvisatory. Often this was fine; sometimes it was…not. But I’d basically accepted that the nature of some work is speedy, and since I was reasonably good at this (and these skills were useful in my commercial illustration/design work), the practice continued, even at times where this turned out to be counter-productive.

When Eliza and I got our studio space a year ago, I very deliberately set aside time to just noodle and explore ideas slowly, rather than to crank out quick work. It’s been uncertain and frustrating at times, but it’s also felt like a welcome return to a different kind of quality to my practice. With a show coming up this summer, I’m finding myself moving back into production mode, but it feels different/familiar. The ideas and drafts have had more time to stretch and unfurl; my understanding of technique and approach has shifted and grown.

Last week, I started a smallish painting that I was excited about. Had been collecting reference images for a while; had done a few drafts in my journals. I had an agenda, and enthusiasm and what seemed like clarity for the direction I wanted to go. Spent big chunks of the weekend working on it. Day 1: excited but uncertain. Day 2: some doubts- battled some color issues, but couldn’t resolve composition. Day 3: hated it. Day 4: nuked it, and painted the whole thing over. Day 5: started again.  Days 6 and 7: less certain, but definitely glad that it’s where it is. As part of this recent change in studio strategy, I’ve started a second painting, much larger, in conversation with this first, to see how they might inform one another, since they’re destined for the same exhibition.

The realizations about drafts here are perfectly obvious to any artist with a disciplined practice. For me, this is a written reminder for the next time I’m bone-headed and impatient (either in my studio or with my students): while I don’t necessarily think that time and struggle make for inherently better, more virtuous work, I do think that it’s nice to be back in touch with this kind of rigor, exploration and play in my projects.

 

 

Rebuilding this site and updating various documents recently got me thinking about a line I’d incorporated into my artist statement:

“This creative logic is shaped by years of international and intercultural experience with a mixed Filipino/American family, a childhood in Hong Kong, the UAE and Malaysia, and adulthood as an educator in the diversity of California.”

I was daydreaming about travel, as is pretty typical for me when I start to get fidgety this time of year, so I started idly counting up the various weeks, months and years that I’ve been elsewhere than the Bay Area. In doing so, I realized that I’d lived or traveled in Europe much longer in a cumulative capacity than I’d thought, which might bear inclusion in my statement at some point.

My life has been shaped by motion and travel, but I’d never been too exact about this. I decided to try to quantify this on a spreadsheet (now that I know how to use Excel for actual math, not just for making pretty colored boxes. Hah!) and discovered that, beyond the biggest chunk of time that is the Bay Area, I’ve lived, traveled or undertaken art projects in

• Asia-Pacific (including Hawaii): 10 yrs 1 month
• Middle East: 2 years 6 months
• Europe: 3 years 3 months
• Mexico: 2 months 3 weeks
• Louisiana: 3 months 1 week
• North Carolina: 3 months
• Continental US (not including CA, LA or NC): 6 months 1 week

So, while yes, I’m still primarily a Pacific Rim product, this data was a good reminder that other forces have shaped me, too. It also explains why, to this day, I really, really like wiping out the sink in the airplane lavatory. It’s something I’ve done to entertain myself on long-distance flights since I was small.

Over a month into 2015 already: damn, January went fast. Between relaunching this website, teaching winter Intersession, starting the new spring term, and being involved in 2 major performances, the month has been a bit of a blur (if a productive one).

Glamorgeddon, curated by Johanna Poethig, Angelica Muro and Dio Mendoza, opened and closed with a bang: live performances and campy photo-ops abounded.

For Glamorgeddon’s Opening Spectacle in early January, Herb and I performed our new song, “Summer Furs,” a nostalgic disco-tinged tune remembering a pre-global warming SF, when it was de rigueur to pile on the insulated layers in July. Johanna coined the term a couple of years ago when we were all wearing heavy coats for a June outdoor party, so we thought it was time to turn her observation into a song. Official recording and music video forthcoming.

The weather this January has been ominously toasty, prompting discussing that we may yet need to write a song called “Winter Sandos” (“sando”= Tagalog slang for sleeveless undershirt) as a book-end.

For the Closing Spectacle, the Manananggoogle executive team conducted an employee training for the “Limo Lectures” program, wherein 5 different 30-minute lectures were given in the back of a rolling, pink, stretch Hummer limousine.

We crammed 18 new hires into what we re-branded the Manananggooglemobile and indoctrinated them accordingly. (More on that in the “MOB Projects” section of this site soon.)

Post-Limo Lecture and back in the Somarts Main Gallery, the executive team had photos taken with illustrious senior members of our imaginary advisory board:

We also reenacted one of our own images.

Our CEO, R. Immaculata Estrada, tore her meniscus last week, and was forced to take to a knee brace and crutches 2 days before our Limo Lecture. The crutches were incorporated into the evening’s events with great enthusiasm, however.

Performance, in a truly live, scripted-rehearsed-but-also-improvised, capacity is something that I do every day in my classroom or in my studio, but actually haven’t done with great regularity in an “on stage” capacity since I was younger. Both performances demanded both practice and the flexibility to just wing it, which got me thinking about a good quote in a design textbook I recently taught from:

“Chance favors the prepared mind.”

By Louis Pasteur, of all people.

There are several similar Pasteur quotes in this vein that I like, and they each do a pretty nifty job of identifying that inspiration and practice are symbiotic, not contradictory. Every time I hear an artist (often a student) say something like “I just work intuitively,” it drives me a little crazy. It’s not that intuition, spontaneity and improvisation aren’t part of the creative process: of course they are. It’s that it does a tremendous disservice to the other part of successful work, which is about practice, repetition, research, rehearsal. It sells an artist short to not acknowledge or respect these aspects of the magic of making things.

I’m still more comfortable with how this plays out in my studio, making paintings and drawings. I’m having to re-learn how to do this in performance work, but it’s been a hell of a lot of fun doing so this past month.

Just finished teaching a 3-week “Drawing for Non-Majors” winter intensive at USF: an assignment that I sometimes give students is to do a plein air charcoal drawing of some corner of campus, and to then bring this back in to the studio to heighten with ink and other media.

My class was tiny this term, so I had a little bit more down-time to actually take on the assignment myself. This, a fairly quick 19 x 24 study of the corner of Fromm Hall, as seen from the cafe tables in the main plaza:

Since I was still on duty as instructor, I didn’t have a huge amount of time to spend on it, but it was still good fun: the problem with getting too set in one’s way as an artist, or to feel constantly obligated to one’s agenda or artist statement, is that it’s surprisingly easy to forget the simple joy of just sitting down to do a dumb observational drawing. Big reminder to just draw for sheer pleasure. Hello.