We make art in strange places and blog about it.
The artists have to work for it here and the audience gets nothing it ever wished for. I’ve never been to an art event as unexpected as this. Motels are the antidote to austere white germ-free galleries. Instead of aged wine, we’re talkin’ tequila that got your mom’s whorish sister pregnant from behind the frat house. No one owns this. No one controls this and the taste police? No jurisdiction at NadaDada.
The participants wear T shirts that say “You say disorganized like it’s a bad thing!” The nature of the motel industry does not allow for predictable. We think this match is appropriate because predictable art sucks. Wanna’ shot?
Reno’s the place for something like this. It’s really in keeping with the mood of culture these days. There permeates a dismantling of highbrow and exclusivity. Reno can be an environment of broken dreams. People gasp when discovering there’s a thriving art community here behind the broken neon tubes. I almost feel sorry for the towns trying to follow our lead.
Crackheads? Drunks? We got ‘em. I never thought “crack for sale” sung to a gospel chord could move me so much till I heard it echoing, 2am between brick buildings on 4th street.
Frank Sinatra? LBJ? We got stories linking them to the places that we room. Today you might find porn under the mattress, a bible in the drawer and cigarette burns divetting your carpet. Check out time is 11.
We’re not trying to clean up with Gambler’s Anonymous. No one thinks sex offenders will change at the sight of chiaroscuro. Peter Paul Rubens? Not usually a popular subject around these coke machines. If a marble bust clashes with your macramé lamp shades, your room will be talked about.
I wasn’t joking about the porn mattresses and cigarette burns.
Sorghisattva image created by Trelaine
Point taken: If I like NadaDada as a leaderless entity, I should step back and make it clear that I’m just another among the ranks–it’s a Tao thang. Well, that is what I am, just another artist. It’s just that I have trouble not being a connector. I suppose I think of myself as an artist’s bodhisattva. Note to self: write that one down–in fact, it’s not a bad title for this essay…
I’m told that I should just get a room and promote what I’m doing. It’s the same for all of us. My secret weapon? I have a blog–yeah, it’s the one you’re reading right now.
So maybe I’ve already told you but I’m writing a book. It’s well underway and each month it gets better. I’m becoming a better writer. I’ve even put painting on hold to a certain extent. All my concentration has gone to the writing of this book. At this point, though, I need some help. It’s great when I can read from it to someone. My girlfriend is getting sick of the job.
For NadaDada this year, I’m going to be doing some readings. I’ll ask if I can read to them and then I will read a passage and then thank them profusely. Hopefully they’ll have some kind of reaction I’ll be able to gauge from.
I’ve always tried to apply the wisdom that each job should be regarded as an education. Each art show should be treated in this way as well. Like Saturday Night Live, NadaDada is not yet ready for prime time. If the art I show is unfinished, what’s wrong with that? The rule book never said we can’t use NadaDada for our own selfish needs.
I need an audience to help me edit this book. I think it’s going to be titled “The Never Ending Fishbowler Excursion”. Maybe someone will talk me out of that title. I dunno. Maybe it will have a chapter called “An Artist’s Bodhisattva“. I dunno.
NadaDada is June 13th thru 16th, 2013 in various motels around Reno.
Years ago, our gallery Blue Lyon hosted a show called “We’re So Punk” which, open for interpretation, was–in my mind–mostly a sarcastic title, making fun of all the posers tryin’ so hard to defy.
NadaDada has had its share of artists of that ilk–so eager to be left of left bank and outside of outsiders, “art for art’s sake” & all of that. We’ve gotten ourselves un-invited to a few venues. A bit of a rowdy reputation has chained itself to our collective neck in years past. But that brings up a strong point: we’ve never been a collective. We quit taking votes on anything back in ’09 when we decided 3rd weekend of June henceforth. So besides a bunch of independent artists, what are we?
Our Noble Instigator, El Jefe, instilled in us the lasting mindset of a group presenting workable anarchy. This is sexy and this is note worthy but is this the truth? They ask. C’mon, no hierarchy? No leadership? I hear their tone. Well that’s the thing: leadership can belong to the many and that’s what we had always encouraged. Let’s all lead.
As you may know I, myself, have logged more man hours than anyone else to keep this party goin’ year after year and I’ve had to fight off the punks goin’ “Sorg, you’re not the boss, maaaan! This is ‘sposta’ be Anarchy!”
Way back when, I had curated a Dada Motel show in a Vegas museum and I was strict. One observer said “That’s not Dada–more like Nada!” The name(s) stuck. Dada Motel became Nada Motel which became NadaDada Motel.
Keeping myself in this central position has garnered me more press than anyone because the media wants to talk to the guy in the middle of it all. So for my time, I’ve been paid in publicity. Last year I didn’t really help organize or publicize and for once I had the money and energy to actually get a room of my own. Not sure about this year. I’m not really complaining… much.
Folks, I gotta’ tell ya’, I just want a good party. I care deeply about art and I care extensively about community. Truly non-hierarchical efforts must proliferate at the hands of many and to the benefit of many. NadaDada is about art-in-motel rooms, but alas, Wildflower is full and Midtown doesn’t seem to have any more willing weeklies at our disposal. 8 rooms at the Best Bet just might be our only bet in Midtown, but those rooms are already filled too. I might end up getting a room in an “un-sanctioned” motel.. not even mention NadaDada to the management.
But friends, here’s the great news: All the merchants want NadaDada in Midtown. Here’s my proposal to you…. you wanna’ show your art for NadaDada this June, you march your ass down to Midtown Reno and you talk to some locations yourself. Work it out with a shop owner and see if they’ll let you hang art or present your performance on their premises during our event June 13 thru 16, 2013.
We’re bringing them attention. We’re bringing them potential business; why would they say no? Go get yourself some attention! We’re not punks, this is a different kind of anarchy.
Our neighbor Mark is the nicest guy. His arms are covered in super faded tattoos and he seems to be missing some fingers. I see sorrow in his eyes. His wife was in a coma and is now recovering. The pass that leads into our valley–Ad calls it Death Hill– causes an inordinate amount of car accidents and neighbor lady, Mark’s wife, almost died there.
Mark lent me this huge roto-tiller to use on our yard today. He says he rents it twice a year to plow under the goat heads–those little bastards that stick to feet and annoy the skin. There is a huge section of our back yard that I’d like to be our garden some day. I focused mostly on that section but also on a few other sections in need of some leveling. I like the idea that this yard will become nicer and nicer thanks to my continual efforts to maintain it. I’ve been adding nice soil, we compost and I planted a new bush the other day. My new rake and shovel have been getting alot of use.
While tilling this dirt today there’s been this thing on my mind. For two days I’ve been dealing with some regret, some guilt over a thing I did while drunk. It wasn’t violent but it was abusive, this thing I did on Facebook. To say it was a mistake would sort of miss the point. I’m not a big self-hater but the way I tried to embarrass someone online is un-forgivable. I just can’t stop thinking about it. It’s easy to beat myself up. About once a year I do something out of control while indulging on alcohol. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s time to quit.
It makes me think of my friend, we’ll call him Raul. Raul goes on these nasty binges for a few days or more and insults those around him. He seems to think that, in his heavily intoxicated state, his harsh criticism is needed. As if it’s Raul’s job to tell them “what they need to hear”.
They say honesty without compassion is brutality and alcohol seems to completely take away the compassion some times. Drinking is about defiance. Looking back I keep thinking I was trying to end a friendship on purpose. Why would I do that?
In the yard, my head was lost in guilt all day, churning up dirt. I’ve got four new scratches that made my hands a bloody mess and a new blister on each hand from using that beast of a roto-tiller.
I wonder if Mark was ever a drinker. I wonder if he’s got his shit together now because the insufferable blunders made in his life were related to alcohol. There’s a magical healing power in generosity. That whole God thing with AA is about giving up control. Getting outside of yourself seems to be an important point. I really want to make this a nice yard for the little family.
I’d like to tell that story right here, right now. I’ll even give you the two word thesis of this essay, in case you don’t have time to read all of this:
TALK VALUE.
This was early spring of 2009. I got an email or three and then a phone call from the reporter, Patty Leigh Brown, saying “I want to come to Reno to be a fly on the wall during NadaDada.” I was silently jumping up and down. She had explained to me that she saw the announcement for “Greetings From NadaDada” in Via magazine (the magazine for travel club AAA). Ann Tracy was the artist/publicist that got us listed there. It was the first year I curated this show in Vegas’ Marjorie Barrick Museum on the UNLV campus. I had been curator/preparator for the Nevada Arts Council’s traveling shows and built a relationship with the museum’s director Aurora Giget in that way. She had invited NadaDada to show there.
Through these turns of event, Patty learned that we’d be showing art in rundown hotel rooms of the historic El Cortez in Reno, which she was familiar with and anxious to write about (the hotel). It was all turned over to freelance publicist, Rachel Kingham at that point, whom I’d met on Twitter and whose drive had impressed me. She is 100% professional and presented Patty and her photographer Jim Wilson with a perfect tour of every room of our hotel (El Cortez) and motel (Townhouse) show that year. Rachel upped our ante by really making NadaDada look organized. (We fooled ‘em didn’t we Rach!?!) Rachel went to get hired doing publicity for the Nevada Museum of Art, so her gamble to help our cause worked out well.
As NadaDadans, we ALL got what we wanted, you see. The reporter was interested in writing about a hotel that was once special where Frank Sinatra and Marilynn Monroe had stayed, but was now roach infested with cigarette burns but with artists creating. We brought them to it. It was the talk value that got us that attention. Patty and Jim were able to tell a good national interest little story. It was just the kind of artists-bring-attention-to-Reno’s-unique-history anecdotal display that was needed.
This is about objectively looking at what we have to work with. This is why we’re not interested in being just another craft fair or arts festival. Soon the stories will be talking about how we built a national network of artists showing in motels WITHOUT any board of directors needed.
Here’s the article, please share:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/us/22reno.html?_r=0
burger I illustrated in design sollege
It’s like spiritual. If we grasp so tightly to the idea of dollar amounts for our art and business this and business that, the art–it goes away.. it no longer carries the aura of art.
The most blessed ones, the gifted ones, the perfrectly at ease ones.. the ones that end up in the history books, they’re able to control their desires to make money and forget about it and just make FUCKING ART! It’s art! make art!
Don’t be a lost art baby, swimming around after a few canvases going “where’s the money? Why am I not making money? Why does no one see my genius?” Just fucking paint. Just fucking shoot. Treat them like materials, since this is a material world and make them stand out items of material. Make them into stunning presentations of “things” and then, just maybe THEN, someone will pay attention to your things. But until then, you’re just another monkey smearing paint in a sea of millions of paint smearing monkeys.
Don’t take it for granted what the professionals have done with their time. They’ve studied art history and they’ve studied the art market and they know what’s happening. They’re not trying to re-invent the wheel.
Keep your head about you. Stay objective.
Remember: there’s art for art’s sake, the kind of art that is NOT “sell out” and then there’s art for the sake of something else. If that something else is $$$$.. well, sorry, that’s just not fucking interesting, but if that something else that your art is in the service of, make it something beautiful. Art in the name of community, or art in the name of synarchy. Make art for the sake of humanity but MEAN IT! Art can serve whatever end you’d like it to.
photo by Alanna McDaniel at Living Room on Sunset Blvd.
Ego is the cause of our success in endeavors and the source of our motivation to outdo the competition. Ego can offer a reason to “help” others and do “good”. We want to look good; we want to be righteous. When someone else succeeds instead of me and there’s an emotional reaction within me, that’s ego.
We should pay close attention to our emotions when any of these things happen and we must face the harsh truth about our own ego. After a success or a righteous action, we must refocus our attention to something not about our self.
But we have ego working us and lurking under our movements just like everybody else does. Just like everybody else, our ego gets us to our goals, yes, but ego is deceptive and ego distorts harmony as if it’s the only. Ego is not our friend. Ego is the only friend a self has: ego is selfishness itself.
Ego is the source of the anger that makes us lash out at others. Ego is defensive. The ego fights to defend itself at all times.
To say that someone has a “big ego” is a misinterpretation of the word. We should say he has a “damaged ego” or an “imperfect ego”. But don’t we all?
“Honesty without compassion is brutality” -unknown
Since defeat is the only thing ego cannot handle, I kind of think we should invite our ego to be defeated as a kind of training. Maybe then it will start to behave and we can enjoy successes together.
My comfortable chilled glass of beer sits with me at this North window of St. Mary’s Art Center. Our art retreat started a couple hours ago. Adrianne & I have settled in to room 15. We weren’t the first to get here; Others have a photo shoot going 3 floors down. The director and caretaker are both around doing their thing, seeing to our needs.
This is my favorite spot. I’m on a church pew by the window at the end of the 3rd floor hallway. No blinds needed here because the sun never hits these windows directly. I sit surrounded by art books, feeling good, being an artist.
If I had a brush I couldn’t paint the shadows that massage the graveyard’s contours on the next ridge over. White headstones and crosses tick in and out of notice. There must be a forest fire somewhere in the region because a slight blue grey lightens more distant hills. Leonardo rendered this natural phenomenon painters call sfumato. The atmosphere helps our eyes to recognize a field of depth.
shots by Adrianne, my honey
The town above us jingles with sounds and this old building eats them up. A former hospital, St. Mary’s is 4 stories of brick construction. Carpeted throughout inside and with fabrics hanging as curtains and upholstery lining furniture. It makes for a dense and sturdy stay for the weekend.
Artists have been showing up at various times. It’s now our second day and activity has been relaxed and fairly productive. Artists talk of plans, ideas and the future. I think we’re all in love with this place. Connections and inspirations blow through open minds like the winds that seed these junipers and pinyon pines across the Comstock.
I hadn’t planned on poetry. You should be here.
We could host a square dance on this porch, it’s so big. The sun is setting over the peak and I’m listening to the last of the dirt bikes, packing it in for the night. There was a big race today and most of them are staying in nice campers parked all over.
We’ll be reminiscing about the continual chainsaw hamster buzz tonight over our pasta feast together. If it goes like last night there will be rowdy conversation amongst creative accomplices.
If NadaDada were a business, this weekend would be a tax write off. The event will be a great one this June. Good relaxed energy abounds throughout our clan.
Good night Unite Retreat, bonne nuit!
Day 3. It’s Sunday. Check out time is at some point this afternoon or so. Breakfast was our final chance to see each other and it’s a blessing getting to know your friends more deeply. Each of us is on his own path toward some kind of enlightenment and as artists, we don’t have more answers but more practice to get us there. But granted, there is no there. Trying to nail down any kind of destination or relay your roadmap to “there” would be an exercise in futility. And at the end of the day exercise in futility exactly describes what art is.
As these thoughts circle my head, winds swish in my window and dirt bikes race the hills and Virginia City streets around this building. Why do they do it?
I’m told yesterday’s race was 5 hours long. I can not imagine the headspace the riders were in at the day’s end. Did they ever lose sight of their reason for being there? A broken arm or collar bone, a collapsed lung or ruptured spleen, I’m sure, shot those riders into a different kind of understanding in this world. No mind needed when there’s love. They’re doing it for the love.
My mind goes to the image of the whirling Dervishes, the mystical Islamic sect who pray on their feet, spinning gracefully in place. It is said that to let one’s body be moved in space to the rhythms carrying it releases one from the worldly forces holding us back. Letting go, truly journeying with your bliss will, it seems, set you free.
The whirling dervish chainsaw hamsters shift gears to climb a grade and just once maybe they engage the perfect harmony and I would think, I can relate with them to that instance of ecstasy.
Photos courtesy of The Traveling Miracle Show
There’s an idea that you put a million monkeys on pianos in a room for a thousand years and you will get a Beethov-ian masterpiece. My assumption is that this is the idea behind Matthew Couper’s “performance”. A painting monkey! It’s a miracle! What are you Matt, an Atheist!? Couper wore a monkey suit and worked on a painting in his signature style. Since Matthew Couper is pretty much my favorite Vegas artist I recognized this monkey’s style immediately.
After looking at Promethian Jock Strap’s ass twice, consciously I shifted gaze to monkey man painting Coupier-ian style (framed and on metal with cut-out looped video of bile and Matt’s face behind.) He was sitting at the front entrance, at the easel, and I can’t imagine the amount of annoyance this performing monkey had to endure between curious art audience members and the shovel-dragging Jock.
Couper paints in a style recognizable if you’re familiar with Mexican folk art-or so. Meaning and anecdote are heavily laden, high on imagination, and representational accuracy is forgiving. Sins, taboos and black bile–such as in this particular painting–are rendered in moral-story fashion. You’ve heard of leeching to release Mediaeval suffering: An excess of black bile was once thought to cause evilness. DRAIN THAT SHIT genius monkey shaman from the 15th century!
Dave Hickey is a wonderful art & culture critic that sometimes writes for Art in America and other international art publications. The author used to live in Vegas and he became the subject of my quick conversation in a doorway at RAW with Couper. I love that writer’s perspective as it cuts to the chase and doesn’t pander to “The Theatre of The Fine Art World.” The guy’s a big gambler and boozer, I guess. His daddy was a blues man. Matt & I talked about Vegas’ loss of this critic, which Matt didn’t think seems to make any difference for the city’s art scene. Hickey didn’t advance Vegas artists, except for a few, none of which are painting monkeys.
See I really wanna’ connect Reno artists and Vegas artists so when I saw that J.K. Russ saw this Traveling Miracle Show at Reno Art Works as a “bridge building” endeavor, I was hooked. Some of these folks are involved in Momas & Dadas, which is a new performance and art space in Vegas. I’ve been curious about them.. wondering if they might like to make NadaDada happen in motels down there. If it’s gonna’ belong to their city some locals are gonna’ have to bring the noise–I’ll keep plugging it.
Jo Russ and Matthew Couper are real Kiwis–meaning unlike Jenessa Kenway, they are from New Zealand. They are the couple that got her talking like that and she’s a fine girl the way she is–The two should not be forgiven for that.
*Ya’ know, I should know better. I just read the Dalai Lama saying we should not pay attention to the things that make us different but to the things that make us the same. We are artists and we are a certain kind of weird. No matter how we talk, we should stick together. Fine. I’m sorry for teasing you so much, Jenessa.
Now I’ve gathered some things from Facebook pages and I see that J.K. Russ is “an artist” that claims the identity of a fifth person I saw acting at the Miracle Show. A petite female in black lycra (even over the face) and sporting flowers up the arms wore a saffron top and guided us to sit at a circle of wood-pulp mulch lined with pieces of golden ginger roots. Is this all she does?
We sat tightly around this brown black bed, four feet in diameter, with lemons, more garlic (NOT gold) and a fifth of Jaegermeister in the middle around a camping stove–ready to get lit (haha). I didn’t have to look hard, I love all these items and instantly recognized the bottle of Jaeger, as this used to be my drink of choice; It was a long time ago, don’t ask. I was even able to put it together that we were about to ingest a concoction of the elixir.
Gandhi subsisted for months on a similar brew (minus the alcohol). And I forgot to mention the honey. After the quiet cooking ritual (aside from the clanking of the dragged shovel punctuating silence for 1 minute every 2 minutes) we drank from tripled tiny plastic cups. The bare foot Asian-ish (Philippino?) cook/shaman, shrouded in a silver blanket served us all generously. After receiving this mellowing brew, we understood it was time to get up and mingle onward.
Jevijoe Vitug was the artist. I was interested enough to pull him aside after the ritual and ask him about Gandhi’s influence as well as Joseph Beuys’, who in the 60′s acted out art performances, reminiscent, but under shrouds of felt and animal fat. Also, if I remember correctly, there were elements of gold-leaf in Beuy’s performances which had to do with that artists’ legendary story of survival during a war.
Of the night, I’d say I liked Jevi’s performance the most. Maybe it was the Jaeger, but I’d choose to think that it was more about his eyes lighting up when I mentioned Beuys & Gandhi. They were both shamanistic in their own ways. It’s all about the miracle show!
The Vegas artists got a grant to make this show happen because otherwise it WOULD have been a miracle to see them here. People don’t always realize it’s an 8 hour drive between Vegas and Reno. I’m thankful that the Nevada Arts Council and Reno Art Works were able to bring these folks up north in lieu of a high speed shuttle train.
Still shot from of Kenway’s beer video courtesy of The Travelling Miracle Show
Jenessa Kenway spoke with a vaguely New Zealander (Kiwi) accent. Adrianne and I had been informed that there’s an exhibition in “the back room” and that the artist would be happy to tell us all about it. She was…
We ventured into the dark room and saw looped video projected of a bottle of Miller High Life, slowly overflowing into a brass spittoon that was real and shelved down near the floor “catching” the overflow. OK.
The title of this piece was “Fountain of Youth”. OK, cool–Slacker generation’s version of Bill Viola, OK.
But she did wanna’ talk about it (it was obvious she writes art reviews) and I know I’m comin’ off snarky, but I gotta’ say, Jen, I got it. So to punctuate the art talk about continually spilling beer, I asked about her accent.
The New Zealand accent–I’m happy to report–is like a mix of the owwwowww wuwwlllghhh sound of the Aussies and the cocky matter-of-fact sound of the Americans. No Mary Poppins-tight lip–uppity pithy Britishness about it. Kiwis, I’m surmising, are the funnest people on the planet to drink with.
Kenway was selling bottles of Miller High Life with her signature on them. Price was akin to most bars playing pulmonary inducing music.
I did not buy a bottle of her John Hancock’d High Life.
What I did find out was that Jen writes art reviews for a weekly in Vegas. We have that in common (though I write elsewhere) and quickly the conversation went to giving “harsh” reviews and the backlash we sometimes have to suffer for the things we say in print. She’s gonna’ be jealous when she sees how freely I’m able to write for my own blog. Scott Dickensheets? Brian Burghart?–fuck those guys, Chad Sorg is my editor.
By the way, Jenessa Kenway is American. A couple of the artists in The Traveling Miracle Show are New Zealanders. She only picked up the lingual affectation by road tripping with this artistic snake-oil clan.
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