On August 30, 2006 I had the privilege of interviewing artist Doug Kornfeld of Cambridge, MA for Artwala Road on the subject of public art. Doug has fulfilled many public art commissions as well as making other forms of art. He has fascinating things to say about the process of commissioning public art.

CB—Hi, Doug. Nice to see you. Let’s start by saying something about you. You’re a public artist.

DK—I do public art. I show things in galleries, I show things in museums, I put my artwork on the web. Public art is just one of my areas where I create.

CB—I admire the piece of public art you made in front of the courthouse in St Petersburg, Florida. It’s called Face the Jury. People can check it out in more detail on your website. Can you tell us how that came to be?

Face the Jury by Doug Kornfeld

DK—It was commissioned by the city of St Petersburg. It’s next to a courthouse and across the street from city hall. It was inspired by the courthouse. They wanted a piece of art that was specific to St Petersburg and that place. It was also inspired by the fact that I was on a jury two years ago and I sat for thirteen days and, contrary to what most people think about juries, I loved every minute of it. What inspired me the most was that everyone on that jury had a very distinct opinion, which in many cases was very different than mine. We all heard the same information, all sat together and yet when it came to the vote that I was almost shocked at how they’d come to a conclusion when my conclusion was very different. So when I came to do this piece I wanted to respond to that. What I came up with was thirteen chairs. Twelve of them are different and represent the twelve different personalities that I recalled from our jury. There’s an additional chair that is generic that is designed to be where you sit. The piece is called Facing the Jury. You are meant to sit in this chair and face the other chairs, which are monumental.

CB—How did you apply for this commission, what is the process?

DK—Every day I get emails from various public art associations, from various sources all over the country announcing these things. I put myself on these mailing lists.
What most of them ask you do to send them a letter of interest and from six to twenty images, which you can now, thankfully, send on CD. You also send a paper with information about these images and a resume.

The second step is there is a public art administrator which all of this goes to and they project the images to a jury. During the course of that viewing they say yes, no, yes and whittle it down to three to five finalists. Those finalists are then contacted. They give you a very small stipend which is not enough to pay you for your time but with that money you are supposed to create a very distinct proposal that shows the piece, that gives a budget, that describes the piece and tells how you are going to install it and demonstrates that, indeed, you are capable of creating this and installing this within a budget. You are given a budget from day one. You have to stay within the budget, if you go over the budget you have to come up with that money. If you go under, that’s your profit.

CB—Do you get to look at the site before you design for it?

DK—Sometimes you can get to the site but they always send you a packet with photos and information abut it.

CB—What is the average budget?

DK—There is no average. It can go from $5,000 to $1,000,000.

CB—I think you and I both agree that a lot of public art is not very provocative, or even thoughtful or beautiful. What do you think might be the reasons for that? Is it because of the people who are commissioning the work? I was thinking, in history, when we look back to the nineteenth century and before public art was focused on monuments honoring great leaders or battles, like Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square in London. In the twentieth century that has changed and we don’t get behind that kind of thinking any more. We have more ambivalence about the kinds of things that were commemorated back then.

DK—There’s a lot of bad public art. In the past public art was commissioned by the government which was either the church or the state, or the church and state. They had the money and they chose the subject. The church would choose religious subject matter. Look at the beautiful churches and their statuary; I consider that public art. Then in a country ruled by a king you’d see monuments to the king or royal family, or in certain cases like Trafalgar Square you’d see a monument to a great military victory or personage. And rarely to anything else. Once in a while in France you might see a monument to a great philosopher. That’s what we had in the past. In certain countries that might still be the case. In America we have a separation of church and state. ,Public money is unlikely to go to religious themes. So what is the subject matter for public art? What are they commissioning?

CB—Good question.

DK—One of the reasons so much public art is so terrible is because of the process by which it’s chosen. Citizens who are interested are invited to be on juries by public arts organizations. The qualifications for these jurors vary considerably. They are often just community people. Many times there are other artists or curators. In one case for my work there was the janitor and groundskeeper for the building. Their vote counted as much as the curator or other artist. Then there are the artists who are chosen. Are they artists who have done work that has been exhibited in museums or galleries? Well, maybe. In many cases the artists on these juries are just someone who took a photography class. I’m not denigrating that but they are not experts. So you have a huge disparity in juries.

CB—Is that the only problem?

DK—Then there’s the process by which the work is viewed. You have a group of people who have a wide range of understanding of what is art, which is a whole other area we could debate and discuss. They sit in a dark room and have literally thousands of images flashed in front of their eyes. I’ve been in a situation like this and your brain turns to cotton. Who could keep track of them, remember them, process them, understand the nuances of the artwork that’s being shown? Especially people who don’t have a big art background. So things are picked very capriciously. I think you have a better chance of having your art picked if you’re at the beginning of the process because their minds are fresh.

CB—And that’s just random.

DK—I don’t even want to know. There are just a lot of things involved that could lead to choices that are not necessarily good art.

CB—We were talking the other day about the piece in Chicago by Amish Kapoor. It’s fantastic.

Cloud Gate by Amish Kapoor

Picasso

DK—The Picasso is forty or fifty feet high, it’s a steel structure that appears to be an abstracted lion. It’s stunning. And it was done by Picasso. There was a great artist, a great mind working on it. However it was not chosen in the public art process; it was chosen by the developer of the space. The public had no say in it and, quite interestingly, when it was put into place it was almost universally hated. Forty years later, fifty years later, it’s considered a treasured part of the city.

CB—That’s something that happens a lot with great art. It challenges us in a way that we’re uncomfortable with until it becomes part of our consciousness.

DK—Exactly. Now, would it have been commissioned if there was a public art jury like we have now? I very much doubt it.

CB—Interesting.

DK—It’s even challenging now. What is it? You’re not even sure. You can’t say—it’s a lion. You can’t even say it’s an animal.

CB—But it’s a very striking, monumental form. It’s very beautifully composed and has a strength about it. It speaks to us in those less literal terms as well.

DK—Yes. And I just think it’s fun!

CB—Yeah!

DK—It’s just pleasurable in my eyes to look at. I like it for its lightheartedness.

CB—It’s imaginative, it’s soaring and you really feel the artists is extremely confident and knows what he’s doing.

DK—And it really fits well in terms of scale in the space. It does everything.

CB—But it brings up a question. A lot of juries have people who are less informed or less sensitive to art and they’re always looking for what is it?

DK—Exactly. And I don’t blame them. If you’re looking at something you don’t understand, what are you going to choose? You’re going to choose something that makes sense to you, something that your frame of reference can understand. Sometimes what you are familiar with is not good art.

CB—Right. So who should be on those juries? If it’s just people who resonate with stuff that’s very literal or easily explained aren’t we missing the opportunity to have a Picasso or an Amish Kapoor? There are levels of perception in terms of art that you experience as an artist and as someone who views art. It takes practice.

DK—It takes education. The first time we all took a sip of wine we probably didn’t like the taste. Now, if we’re still drinking wine and trying to find enjoyment in it, you can taste differences. You know what’s good. You’re no longer drinking wine that’s sweet, now as you get older, more mature, you understand it in a different way. The same with art. When you first look at art it’s very mysterious, especially contemporary art. There are different concepts and feelings and thoughts that the artist is concentrating on that may not be literally understandable at first glance. And to learn how to decode contemporary art you need to have looked at a lot of art, to have thought about art, to have talked about art. For public art in a city—remember the mayor or people who run the city are going to have very strong feelings about what an artist is doing. If you put up a piece that is received poorly it reflects on them. They have to go out and get votes. They do not want something that’s controversial. Many times great art offends or is not understood. It’s unlikely that an elected official is going to allow something like that if they have power over it.

CB—Yet we have the Chicago example to offer us hope.

DK—The mayor, thank goodness, did not have power over it so we got that Picasso.

CB—How might the process then be improved?

DK—I want the people who are on public art juries to have a background, to either be artists or curators or people who have experienced a lot of art, who has really spent time and energy and emotion in looking at art, in going to museums, in going to galleries, in thinking about art and wanting to understand it. That’s number one. It’s public art and the public has to look at it. There should also be concerned citizens. Should they have the deciding vote? No, but they should be there to express their feelings. Should there be the groundskeeper or the janitor on a jury? Absolutely not. They should be seated there to answer questions of maintenance or safety. Their opinions should be taken into account. Should they have a vote? Absolutely not.

CB—So what would you do?

DK—In the ideal world, if I were a public arts administrator, I would bring all of the images together. I would then pick a tiny jury of learned people—curators, artists, a small group of three or four to jury those pictures on a first pass and throw out all the stuff that is junk in their opinion. Then I’d bring in a larger jury that included concerned citizens, politicians, and show them a select group of the work with a seminar about what the artists are trying to do, what they’re thinking about. Inform this larger jury about what they might want to think about as they view the work. Not just does it look nice but to think about the ideas. And then present a small group of final artists to the jury, maybe ten or twenty, an amount that the jury can go through and focus on. It should be done slowly and people should ask questions and comment. Then reduce those ten or twenty artists to a finalist group of three to five. At that point the jury can reconvene and those artists can make their final proposals. The curators and artists on the jury should try to control the discussion, not direct it, but not let something extraneous get in the way. There are certain criteria but they’re hard to define without being limiting.

CB—One might be that the work feels original. A lot of public art feels second-hand.

DK—You’re right. I see a lot of art that looks like other art or it looks like abstract art by great artists. And again the jury picks something that they’re familiar with. It’s very tricky. I don’t necessarily think that my idea for a jury would guarantee that only good work would be selected but I think more control over the selection process is going to make better art. They’re going to pick better artists.

CB—That’s it for now, Doug. Thanks so much.

To see more of Doug Kornfeld’s art please visit—

www.awaka-inc.com

So, if in learning to draw or teaching a drawing class, we begin by simply scribbling on a large piece of paper, what next? First, let me emphasize that the paper should be large—we need space in which to explore and to let ourselves go. So much of being an artist is breaking through social and mental constraints. Right away we’re going to give ourselves space to do whatever we want.

Now we’ve covered a few pieces of paper with scribbles let’s hang them on the wall to look at them. This is where a class is invaluable; this is something that you can’t do alone in quite the same way. When the drawings are on the wall let’s look to see what’s actually there. The fantastic thing is that no two people’s drawings will be alike. Even in such a simple exercise we each have our own way of scribbling.

But, in looking at the drawings, we get an opportunity to see the infinite possibilities of line and expression. Looking at other work gives us ideas. One drawing has heavy dark lines, another has lines that swirl upwards. One has short stabbing jabs that dance across the page. One has dark smudges on the outer edges, another confines the lines to the center of the page. In one the lines fly off the page, in another the lines are organized in a quiet, stately line.

It’s important to see what each of these things might express—the dark smudge, the short jab, the swirl. What feelings are evoked? Ultimately we want to include all manner of mood and mark in our own drawing lexicon. We need the whole language in order to make art. So after we’ve done one exercise with scribbling; it’s good to do another and another. It’s essential to experiment with some part of the language we haven’t yet played with in order to learn what it can do.

So, back to scribbling with a little consciousness thrown in.

Well, you can get satisfaction and a lot more if you go to see The Rolling Stones in concert. They kicked off their Bigger Bang tour here in Boston a couple of days ago and it did, in fact, start with a bang that included a burst of fireworks and the band playing Paint It, Black.

I won’t try to describe the show but Sympathy for the Devil with Mick in crushed red velvet coat and hat was fantastic, so was Jumping Jack Flash when the band had moved into the center of the arena onto a small stage. They’re still tight, still full of spirit and still worth whatever it takes to go see them. I thought that this would be the last time we’d go; they’re getting up there now. But if they come around again we’ll come around too, whatever it takes. We got such a hit of energy that very first moment that, if we’d heard nothing else, it would have been enough. They’re that great.

And Mick. Mick is, simply, amazing. He defies age. He looks after himself, is beyond fit, has energy and stamina. It’s pure inspiration to see him move and sing. The Stones give it their all. They’re still creative, still letting the spirit move them, still working hard, still expanding. And still after all these years moving us beyond our complacent selves into the place of infinite possibility. And making it fun. FUN. Now, to expand my world. I’ll keep that vision of Mick flying across the stage and do a thousand more sit-ups.

We went to a Rolling Stones concert last night at Gillette Stadium, which is a forty-five minute ride from Boston. This was the first night of their Bigger Bang tour here in the U.S. More on that amazing concert tomorrow, but first this. We found ourselves in the back row of the lower level next to a young African-American woman sitting on her own. She was one of the few people of color we saw. Despite the fact that the Stones drew their original inspiration from Muddy Waters, one of the greatest black performers of all time, it looks like few blacks are into either the Stones or Muddy. In Muddy’s later years his audience was almost exclusively white.

The back row was empty save for the three of us and once the band finally started, with a bang, I have to say, we were up on out feet dancing. The whole stadium was up dancing. And our companion was singing all the words. But after the second number this young woman looked at her watch and said she had to go; the last train back to Boston was leaving in a half hour and she had to catch a cab to get it. I said—but you can’t go, they’re just starting. She looked so disappointed. We immediately offered her a ride home; she immediately accepted.

For a second I wondered, should we have? Crazy, but in this crazy world we have crazy thoughts. Like should you offer a total stranger a ride, even a lovely young woman with a beautiful smile. All the stereoptypes of race reared their unpleasant heads. She was eyeing us too. Which is so interesting considering that the Stones were and are about nothing if not breaking through stereotypes to the freedom of who we all truly are.

Outside we were stuck in the snaking line of slow-moving traffic, our new friend, Sam, in the back seat, my husband and I up front. Then, just to push our awareness further, a young man came to the window and asked my husband if we could give him and a friend a ride to Boston. He had an Australian accent and said he thought there’d be buses but there weren’t any. There was no sign of his friend but when we hesitated, he pointed her out, a girl, waiting on the sidewalk.

Still, for a moment, we all hesitated, even Sam. That’s how deep our mstrust is now. But when he asked again, patiently, politely, we said yes and the young man hailed the girl on the sidewalk who was trembling with anxiety of her own. She was also, it turned out, from Australia. They are both exchange students at Boston College and we immediately saw they were good folks and apologized for our hesitation. This is life now—how suspicious we all are. They said they were so grateful; they’d been scared they’d be stranded there in the dark surrounded by dark, hulking used car dealerships and empty, swampy fields, or that they might get in a car with people who’d been drinking or worse.

The traffic was so horrendous it took us two hours to get back to the city, small wonder with no buses. We talked about The Stones, Australia, travel and trusting others. They were all impressed when I said I saw The Stones way back when Stevie Wonder was opening up for them. I had to wonder as we drove up that dark highway what brought these three lovely young people to us but it felt fitting, just what might have happened back in the sixties when the Stones were just starting. When they rebelled with every fiber of their being against the status quo of the staid and proper England of restraint they’d been born into.

We dropped the Australians off first. They held the door open while they repeated mantras of gratitude. By the time we dropped Sam off it was two in the morning. She asked if she might give us some gas money; we said no, of course not. She said this night had been such a great adventure, so incredible in so many ways; she didn’t know how to thank us. We said no thanks were necessary, it had been a great night for us too. She said there was nothing she could do; she’d have to pay her gratitude forward.

That was art on the planet. Thank you, Sam. For giving us the opportunity to make our own Stone rebellion against suspicion and mistrust. To come out for love. And fun. More on The Stones tomorrow.

I don’t know when art became such a serious thing—there’s occasionally humor in literature but it’s harder to find in art these days, it seems. Picasso had a wonderful sense of playfulness; he turned a bicycle seat and handlebars into a bull’s head. I don’t imagine many people care much about bulls. But what that image tells us is that we can play—that we’re here to play. That’s a pretty radical concept! That image of the bull’s head is so surprising, so confident and fun. It awakens our own desire. So when I teach drawing I really want to teach playfulness.

Right away that means we need to get to the understanding that when we draw it doesn’t have to look a certain way. Beginning students are trying to hone their abilities, which is fitting, of course. They need to get to the point where what they draw looks like what they intend to draw. That takes time, and practice. But often in the process of advancing skill all ability to play and experiment is lost. We get tight and uptight. Our muscles contract along with our minds.

So we’ll begin with scribbling. A big pad of newsprint, some crayons and some good music. Just feel the music and go. Let the hand go where it will. Use black to start. Make long swooping strokes, short jabs, dots, black marks, softer grey ones. Press hard, hardly press at all. Keep the hand moving and watch.

Watching is such an integral part of playing. It brings us into the here and now which is where we need to be when we make art. Totally here now. It’s quite Buddhist. We have one pointed focus—our hand, the crayon, the paper and whatever emerges. It’s magic, really. And every single person will do something unique. I’ve done this experiment and it’s amazing how interesting these abstract drawings are. No two scribbles look even remotely alike.

That’s the first part of every class—loosening up, feeling and seeing the unique beauty of our own hand. Fun.

I’ll be teaching a class in drawing this fall and am thinking what I can teach.

Drawing is a way of seeing. By drawing what you see in front of you, what is usually called life drawing, you get to observe more carefully, to notice. You become a better observer and I think that observation probably extends beyond the sensory details of whatever is in front of you. There is detachment in observing and drawing and that practice of detachment is like the Buddhist practice—simply looking and watching. A very useful practice—in art and life.

But I’m most interested in drawing another way. In my own art life I rarely draw what I see in front of me. Instead I draw what comes to me through intuition. And it comes to me because I see art as a way to express my spirit. And that we’re all here to do that in one form or another.

As I never went to art school I taught myself to draw by studying the drawings of other artists, by seeing what was achieved in the ways they drew. I drew every day for hours for many, many years. This is how I found my way of drawing, the way that facilitates what I am here to express. And, not so curiously, I got paid to do this.

We each have our own way of drawing. We can refine this way of drawing but it does not change that much. We can always spot a David Hockney even when he draws in different ‘styles’. The same with other artists. But what does change with experience is the facility with which we’re able to make art that has assurance, art in which intention is clear.

So gaining facility is certainly part of what an art class is about. And most classes do this by having students make observational drawings. But what we are here to express in art is spirit and insight. And what I will try to teach is how to go beyond observation into the place where spirit and insight come together in image.

More next time.

There is something unnerving in discovering a brilliant writer whose name has never before passed before your eyes—that he exists in the same time frame as you do and on the same planet. Where have I been? Well, at least, he doesn’t come from the same country. His name is James Kelman and he comes from Scotland.

The book is How Late It Is, How Late. It was published twelve years ago and won the Booker prize but even after more than a dozen books Kelman is not a well-known name here. I confess a love for British and Irish writers; perhaps my Canadian background makes their cultural concerns more familiar than American ones. Scotland shares a colonial link to England but Kelman writes here of a punishing poverty and an even more punishing social bureacracy that is less familiar. This is a particularly apt book for Americans, I think. So many of the desperately poor here seem to have no voice or have no way to have their voice heard.

In this story Sammy Samuels, one of Glasgow’s working poor, a petty criminal and a man who has served time for those crimes, loses a Saturday to a bender so monumental he doesn’t remember a thing about it. And so monumental that he’s picked up by the police and given a beating that leaves him blind. When they’ve done with him they turf him out and he finds himself on the streets of Glasgow with no money and no way home. He fumbles his way back to the flat he shares with Helen, the woman he loves, to discover that she’s not there. And we discover that the bender had something to do with an argument he’d had with Helen, with his confessing to her the truth about his life, as he understands it, the crimes he’s committed and his desire to leave all that behind now that he’s with her. We don’t know why she’s taken off or where she is or if anything’s happened to her.

What’s remarkable is that Sammy, alone, blind, never reaches out for help. Never calls a friend. Or his son, whom he’d had fifteen years before with a woman he now doesn’t speak to or who won’t speak to him. He doesn’t trust anyone. He’s loathe even to accept small offers of help from a neighbor. He goes through the motions, in time, of applying to see a doctor, a process so labyrinthine and unconsoling as to be useless. And he hooks up with a scalper who offers to ‘rep’ him if he applies for disability benefits—his take ‘only’ thirty-three percent.

But he’s wiley, our Sammy. He’s not fooled; he sees things as they are—as so messed up that you can be robbed of your dignity and even hope in an instant. He doesn’t expect anything of people. He doesn’t expect love or even decency and yet he sees the good in folks. Old Boab down the hall is not a bad sort, he helped him paint a stick white to use when he went out. Helen was probably just off seeing her kids who’d been taken away from her; you couldn’t blame her. Even the police; he wouldn’t come out and say the loss of his sight was their fault. Hadn’t he played a part in it? Hadn’t he landed the first blow? No, he couldn’t blame them.

All the while we’re in Sammy’s head. It’s the kind of head if we’d seen it on the street, dirty, unshaven, hair matted to the scalp, we’d have turned away, we know. But inside it, with all his wild, repetitive language, with his stoic acceptance, with his lack of demands, with his bravery, with the moments when he collapses—it’s a surprisingly fine place to be.
And somehow familiar, not so different from our own place, after all.

Sammy can’t see where’s he’s going; he doesn’t have a clearly thought out plan for his life—like a lot of us. But somehow, with every conceivable stroke against him, he is putting one foot in front of the other even in shoes a size too small. Thank you, Mr. Kelman. Nice job of cracking the heart open to the real experience of powerlessness and to the power of love, even transcendence, that pokes through where we least expect it.