Unseen magic

One of my favorite interview questions of all time was about magic. The interviewer said that some tricks have a completely hidden and wild set up that is equally as fantastic as the visible part of the performance. But those pieces are unseen, and only for the magician to know. They wanted to know if my art making was the same way. Are there parts of the process that, if unveiled, might both contaminate and broaden the experience? The answer is yes.

Ate the last one & broke the dish, in iridescent papers and archival spray paint, 37.5” x 48” x 1”

Art critic Jerry Saltz wrote that at a gallery opening you can always tell the critics apart from the artists. The critics stand contrapposto, one hand on a hip and the other over their mouth. The artists stand two inches from the piece. They are trying to see how it’s done. They are gleaning technique, stealing knowledge.

I hesitate to share too much process, but I assume, since you do subscribe to this newsletter, that perhaps you want to be two inches away, and if so, read on.

If you would rather keep the wonder and walk away, that’s cool too. I’ll see you next newsletter. Treat yourself to something 20 percent off at Eight Emperors on your way outta here with the code NOSPOILERS.

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OK, now it’s just us. Let’s talk inside baseball, but first: beloved rapper billy woods is about to put out another album. woods has been on a run that is back to back to back incredible, dense albums. One of the things I love about him is his cadence—it feels like he’s got one hand on your shoulder and he’s leaning in, whispering in your ear. No one else is going to tell you this, but look here. That’s me right now—I’ve got your elbow and I’m shaking it.

I’ve been making vessels for a few months. The series started as away to make 3D work for my upcoming show in Traverse City (opening June 20). I have a ton of wall work, but I didn’t want dead space in the middle of the 2500-square-foot gallery. I envisioned a handful of the vessels . . . and they’ve become something else entirely. They’ve become really big. Like, taking over the studio big.

Medium sized, if you can believe it.

The smaller ones are easy to assemble at this point. I have a system and know how to make them; in fact, I taught my brilliant editor/friend Amy’s kid, Vi (13), how to make one and they knocked it out in no time. The medium ones are a struggle, but the system holds. The larger ones are frankly a pain. I need a second set of hands to glue them, and as I fold them the glue tabs rip. I came about making them in an absurd roundabout way, so it figures I need to keep things weird. This week, I devised a plan that involved both magnets and 36-inch balloons and IT TOTALLY WORKED.

The magnets held the glue tabs where my arms couldn’t reach, and the balloons created an internal support system. This is my final piece, headed to the Dennos Museum, and it felt great to end on a win.

The closest way to describe the feeling of “this definitely won’t be possible, but might be possible if . . .” is this video of a man solving an absurd sudoku. Do yourself a favor and set aside half an hour (trust me, it’s worth it) to watch this.

When he got the 3s, I lost my mind. I was screaming. I am not a sudoku nerd, I just love believing in a process and trusting it to work, while also knowing logically it should not work (but also it just might work). That’s the difference between belief and knowledge; you cannot know something and believe in it. You can only believe in something you don’t know to be true.

And that is the point of all of this investigation. I believe it. I believe in the absurd idea becoming reality. I believe in creating interesting problems and then finding interesting solutions for them. At his artist talk last fall, Ben Teague said that, “The quality of the work is directly proportional to the quality of the questions being asked.” Dedicating a life to such questions and having others find value in them is the point.

When I sent the photos of the balloons and magnets to my artist friends, they all texted back, “WHAT?! YES!” They understood the absurdity and the joy in discovery. Sometimes the solution is unexpected, but as my eleven year old once famously said, “The thing you’re looking for, that you don’t know you’re looking for, will be in a place you don’t expect it.”

See you up north in June.

xo
m

P.S. Please don’t email me after reading this, instead leave a comment below. You all write beautiful long messages, but I’d rather other people see them as well. (Plus I think it helps with whatever algorithms do.)