Interview, Part II: Behind the Scenes

December 16th, 2008 at 05:19pm Christopher Jagers

Interview by Christopher Jagers (CEO, SlideRoom) with Jay Sullivan, Professor of Sculpture and Chair, Division of Art: Meadows School of the Arts. This is the second of two parts: 1)In the Public Eye and 2) Behind the scenes.

Part II, Behind the Scenes

CJ: In regard to education, is there much communication between Public Art agencies and the Universities?

There is not much. If there is, it usually comes from the University making an initiative. Sometimes we propose to do something.  For instance, I have taught an installation class that uses abandoned buildings as a site.  At times I have thought about trying to get a truly public site where students simply respond to the site as a site. There are some really interesting possibilities for public spaces (perhaps public schools) where people don’t really feel like they have control over their environment.  It would be very powerful to get artists working with people in the community as a facilitator to change this.  The artists would not do the work themselves, but provide the circumstances so the community could do the work themselves. And so, at the very least, you help portions of the community realize that their environment is shape-able.  I think that could be very powerful.

CJ: You seem to be describing a situation of controlled experiment in Public, which is quite different from all the planning that goes in to major public projects?

There are some artists who have actually framed their working habits around public art projects as they already exist. They already know what kinds of materials are acceptable, they know where the boundaries are. Well, that is not really going to help public become really excited about the possibilities—it is usually quite easy to ignore such works. This is a big challenge, getting the public to recognize the worth of it all, because in many cases they don’t notice the project. When you go to the airports, you see the artwork that has been put up by some very good artists, but the pieces are reduced to enhancements like other kinds of finishes that we might already expect within architecture. So it doesn’t do something that clearly identifies “worth” effectively.  There are not many places where this actually happens, I think I am describing an ideal.  But one worth pursuing, so we should try to find practitioners that can operate at this very high level, and spaces for them to work with.

CJ: What variables do accomplished artists look for in a public art opportunity? What role does the budget play?

As long as artists are able to really think creatively within an open field, and also pay their bills, they will be interested.  It is not like artists are wanting an obscene amount of money. They are craving a good situation.  The restriction of the budget is usually a restriction of thought in conceiving the project.  Instead, the artist should be able to say “this space requires a project of this extent.”  Of course this doesn’t exist.

We may have this situation because we don’t look at artists as professionals who actually have concrete knowledge about space, time, sensory experience, imaginative experience, desire, hope … that they actually have training in creating these things. Artists are professionals at manipulating these variables to specific purposes.  Very few are this good, but when you are talking about a “good artist,” this is what you are talking about. And then you should get out of the way and let them think and see what happens.  You can always respond later.

CJ: On the email List-Serve there has been a controversial debate about charging artists application fees as a way of diffusing administrative costs.  What is your position on this?

That is a tough one.  In general, I don’t think a fee would be a deterrent, but it places a larger premium on the projects being serious opportunities that are worth serious thought.

However, there is a much larger issue here. In many cases the artist is developing an idea for free, donating that time and getting no economic benefit from it. I can’t donate my time as an artist and write it off my taxes. Now, in serious competitions, artists are paid for their time to produce a model or proposal.  But I am thinking about how we value (economically) the time of artists.  Currently, an artist’s time has no economic value until something tangible is produced and sold.  But I think if a serious artist is working on project or proposal, and there is not money to pay them, they should be able to write their time off, just like a lawyer can. The ability to do this would be a public validation of the process, and expression that artists are valued and supported. So, there are other solutions for all this.

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