Shorthand: Insight Outta Site talk with Austin Thomas at Nashville Public Library

From My iPhone Notes, With Autocorrect Turned Off Which Means I Stopped And Corrected Everything As I Typed.

  The gist of the talk was premised as "whether an art practice necessitates a studio, and whether a work or concept may have an audience outside the gallery context."

• Post studio practice. Liberating. Relational aesthetics. Perches. Indoor perches. Perspective led to open up art spaces. Sketchbook daily practice. Happy accidents.  
• **When you're an artist the same hand builds everything.****
• Placemaking new word. Code for gentrification. Plug for Sharon's [Louden's] book. 
• New space in Newark. Being a steward is important. Bushwick. Showing artists who live there. 
• Dispelling myth of lone genius. Saying yes. Plug for Art and Fear book * (I still own my copy that was recommended on the down low in grad school, so I second this.)
• Artist taking risks. World as Material. 
• Artsy. Pinterest. for keeping up to date [editor note: no. no no. ok, maybe Artsy, whatever.]
• Failing upwards. Questioning success. Casting a silhouette. 
• Concentrating on the shadow will have an impact. Rather than building a statue. 
• Jerry Saltz how to be successful. 
• Running a gallery. Family money, loans, owning real estate. Essentially listening to money. Personal Loan in exchange for having a show. [editor's note: lost me around here.] 
• As a gallerist you really wrap yourself around the artist. You create their shadow.

✍           ✍          ✍

I briefly met Austin when I was in NY a few years ago visiting with Sharon Butler. I thought of her perches this summer when I was in LA cleaning out my storage unit because she had orchestrated a project of gifting a few perches on  a cross-country drive. The story stuck with me and I, for a brief moment had been inspired to do the same. Drastically different though- she gifted 4 perches. I had about a 100 works and a plane ticket. But still, I was inspired by that act and we chatted for a few minutes after the talk. And if you're just tuning in, I destroyed my work instead of cheerfully donating it, so we also talked a little about destruction and lightness and how that related to a post studio practice.

Hearing another artist talk about not having a studio was great. I've had my studio at home for 5 years now. As much as I'd like the luxury of a going somewhere totally separate to tune out and make art, I'm siding with the the "World as Material" view currently. I also keep going back to the phrase, "casting a silhouette."

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.  
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Came home, hit send on my thesis-length residency app and fucked off by looking for MORE things to apply for since I'm on a roll. Still need to finish Meg's cut. Premiere is open, willing, and ready.