How I Came To Be an Interviewer of Local Artists

When in the early 80’s I felt a sense of calling to become a serious writer – that is, to take writing seriously -- I felt impelled to read as many books on writing as I could lay my hands on, frequently adding the best of them to my personal library. (Advice I have given to many young writers over the years.) One of these was The Craft of Interviewing by John Brady.

Being naturally extroverted I’ve always enjoyed the energy that comes with meeting new people. Of course there are plenty of things one can’t ask in polite company out of concern for being rude or intrusive. On the other hand, when you’re a writer you get a lot of leeway here. There’s something of a tacit trust established that the interview is for a larger purpose of some kind.

Many of my early articles were interviews for human interest stories that ended up in newspapers. A couple that got married in their late seventies. A photographer who had a fascinating experience on Loch Ness at dusk, and captured it on film. A female weight lifter seeking to set a new record in the clean and jerk.

These early interviews showed me that people enjoy talking about their experiences and interests. And I discovered I also enjoyed the encounters. I liked finding out what makes people tick, why they do the things they do and make the decisions they make. And other people enjoy reading about it.

My first interview with a major figure was with the late Congressman James Oberstar, who during our initial encounter at Chisholm City Hall invited me to the home he grew up in where I met his mother and daughters. They kept me engaged while he called his wife who was ill in Washington, D.C. A dozen years later I had the opportunity to do phone interviews with Jonathan Winters, Ralph Steadman and Kurt Vonnegut for a feature about the screen printer Joe Petro who turned their paintings and drawings into fine art reproductions. These were the first of my artist interviews.

When I began writing articles in 1983 I had no idea that it would four years later lead to a career in advertising. In the same way when I started Ennyman's Territory in 2007 I didn’t know where it would lead either. Social media was just beginning to pick up steam around this time and I was eager to learn as much as I could about everything it offered. I soon became a fan of Twitter because it enabled me to find interesting people to interview from other parts of the world. By “interesting people” I mean artists. I found that when I reached out to artists whose work interested me they would frequently allow me to correspond so as to produce engaging content for the blog. It's always been my basic assumption that if something were interesting to me it would probably be interesting to others.

And so I began corresponding with artists in Brazil, Germany, Portugal, Spain, China, Russia, Australia and Antarctica as well as other parts of the U.S., sharing their work and their ideas on how they do what they do and why.

One of my initial aims with Ennyman’s Territory was to create an online space that was uniquely me. As both an artist and writer I decided to illustrate whatever I wrote about, often producing the paintings or drawings the evening before writing the next morning. As this wasn’t always easy to accomplish I gradually began doing five, six or seven illustrations and paintings the weekend before to use during the week ahead, the goal always being to have a blog comprised of good writing while aesthetically pleasing and original.*

All this lead to my having so much original new artwork that Internet entrepreneur Jon Thralow suggested I have an art show. The show took place at The Venue @ Mohaupt Block where I displayed 130 pieces in an exhibition called First Hand Experiences. Afterwards I began participating in numerous other shows. I quickly became impressed by how vibrant the Twin Ports art scene is.

One evening I met with Bob Boone, publisher of our local rag The Reader, to talk about the role blogging might have for his weekly. By the end of the conversation Bob asked if I might become a contributing columnist for his paper instead. This idea of having a forum to showcase local artists got me jazzed. It gave me an excuse to see more art openings and purposefully meet interesting people. For three years I produced content that also found a more permanent home online again at my blog.

What’s astounding is just how many artists we have here in the Twin Ports. When I visit group shows I’m continually surprised that even after interviewing 150-200 artists there are literally hundreds I have not yet been aware of. Again, I'm talking about local artists here.

It's not my lone interest, as regular readers will attest. Book and film reviews, poetry and Dylan are recurring themes. And who knows what will be next.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Don't be a spectator. Jump in. The water's fine.

*Eventually I found that other peoples' art would serve the same purpose and was usually more interesting.

Blue Van Gogh

"Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of color to express myself more forcefully." ~ Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo.

We remember him as somewhat of a madman. And to a certain extent his behavior warranted this. He cut off his ear, for love. A bit excessive, though it made for an interesting self-portrait afterwards. On another occasion he was determined to see the girl he loved but her parents would not let him in. To show them how intent he was on seeing her, he held the palm of his hand over the lamp flame and said he would not leave till he saw her. The smell of burnt flesh was not very convincing and ultimately he passed out from the pain.

This story reveals that he was indeed a man of intense passions, which poured out of him into his works, works now valued in the millions of dollars. During his lifetime he sold almost nothing, and died in a mental institution in his thirties by his own hand.

As for the source of his mental illness, psychiatrists by the score have studied his behavior and his work to identify its root causes, whether from schizophrenia or syphilis or some other variety of experience. What we know is the notion of "artist as eccentric" found a home in the pop psyche, a notion that treats artists as kooks and social misfits.

Dorothea Brande, in her outstanding volume Becoming A Writer (1934), assaults this notion head on. "The picture of the artist as a monster made up of one part vain child, one part suffering martyr and one part boulevardier is a legacy to us from the last century, and a remarkably embarrassing inheritance. There is an earlier and healthier idea of the artist than that, the idea of the genius as a man more versatile, more sympathetic, more studious than his fellows, more catholic in his tastes, less at the mercy of the ideas of the crowd."

OK, so Salvador Dali comes along and portrays this vain child-madman to the extreme and makes a fortune doing it. No comment. Brande went on to explain that there really is "an artist temperament" and it is not the same as the accounting mindset. The book goes into detail about left brain/right brain thinking, a concept which became excessively popular in the 1980's and has filtered its way into business books, consulting, education and psychology. The notions have been with us a much longer time than many folks realize.

What Brande argues is that you do not have to be mentally unstable to be creative. In this instance she is speaking to young writers, but the same applies to creative souls in the visual arts or music as well.

Vincent Van Gogh once said, "A good picture is equivalent to a good deed." I'm hoping that if you are in Duluth this month you will stop by The Venue @ Mohaupt, 2024 West Superior Street, to check out my show, First Hand Experiences. Of the more than 130 works, I am hoping you will find at least one "good deed" among them.

The picture at the top of this page is titled Blue Van Gogh.

Hanging Out at the Venue

“The most important tool the artist fashions through constant practice is faith in his ability to produce miracles when they are needed. Pictures must be miraculous.” ~ Mark Rothko

It’s official. My work is now hanging on the walls and in the halls of The Venue @ Mohaupt, in Duluth’s West End. The show is titled First Hand Experiences and for the next couple weeks, till the opening July 21, I will attempt to explain (from time to time here on my blog) some of the sources, stories and meanings behind a few of these paintings and drawings. First off, I will comment on the naming of the show.

Naming can be one of the most enjoyable or challenging parts of any creative endeavor. Several discarded names for the show preceded this one, but when it hit there was a sticktuitive quality which inspired me.

First Hand Experiences not only speaks of the process of creation in which every work is a first hand experience of the artist… but it also points to the interactive first hand experience of the viewer who participates in the piece as he engages its features and forms.

My artistic influences include Dali, Matisse, Duchamp, Picasso, Magritte, Rivers and Rauschenburg among others. The other day I mentioned several personal influences and would like to add to that list Mr. Sebes, my high school art teacher at Bridgewater-Raritan West in New Jersey. During two years of art tutelage I gained exposure to a wide range of creative expression. I also learned a few techniques with regard to my painting. As for my drawing, it developed on its own up in my room after my homework was done.

Possibly my strongest influence at that time was a painting by medieval Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch, a peer of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bosch’s tryptich The Garden of Earthly Delights had a profound impact on me with its depictions of the Garden of Eden, the earthly delights and of the darkness of Hell. The latter appeared on an early Deep Purple album called Tetragrammaton, a reference to the unpronounceable name of God.

As my imagination entered into the Bosch depictions on this album, they were translated into my own striking pen and ink drawings. What I lacked in skill was made up for in imagination at this time.

There is possibly no greater joy than the act of creation.

As for the show, consider yourself invited!

First Hand Experiences

"The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths." ~ Bruce Nauman

It's official. Last night after work and much of today I have been hanging my paintings at drawings at a place in the West End called The Venue @ Mohaupt. The title of the show is First Hand Experiences: A Retrospective with Glimpses of Things to Come.

A couple weeks ago, when I was first asked to consider it, I felt a little overwhelmed at how much work there would be to get things ready. Then, I did an inventory of what I have already framed, and learned a technique for displaying my painted masonite panels. In short, things came together quickly and we're underway.

First Hand Experiences is primarily a presentation of my recent works, but I have also assembled representative pieces from my earlier days including a pen and ink illustration that won a contest and was published as cover art. The $25 was nice, too.

Preparing the show has brought back a few other memories. The first is how my grandmother used to say I never scribbled when I was little, that from my earliest I used to draw. I can't say whether this is fact or fiction (that I never scribbled) but I do remember at a very early age that I loved to trace things. I remember getting fascinated by drawing faces, then cutting out the eyes and putting different backgrounds behind the face to see how the various colors and patterns would change the expression. I must have been about five years old at that time.

At some point when I was five or six my parents enrolled me in some classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art. I still remember a couple of those lessons. In one instance we were shown a room with images from the medieval era and we were shown lettering that was all embellished with leafy vines and swirly curlicues. Each of us was instructed to draw our own initial in this same embellished fashion. I, of course, did the letter "E".

A couple years later I used to watch this artist on television who showed you how to draw perspective and create three dimensional depth on a two dimensional surface. This kind of thing was utterly fascinating for me and still fascinates.

The open house, to which the public is invited, will be on July 21 from 6 - 9 p.m. The Venue is located at 2024 West Superior Street in Duluth's West End.