I am almost disproportionately pleased to announce that I have updated the Drawings, Studio and Projects pages on my website, with (mostly) brand-new work and built using the uber-sexy Foundation framework. Incidentally, I am still looking for tech nerds to talk about Foundation-related matters with, so if anyone is reading this and would like to compare notes, please feel free to drop me a line. Announcement number two is a bit on the late side, but I have some drawings on display at the Fridge with Crowns, a chess-themed show currated by Zoma Wallace and hosted by Words, Beats Life. The line-up of artists is superb and it's up through October 27, so please check it out if you find yourself in Eastern Market anytime soon.
(e)merge and the Debut of The Handbook
I am pleased to announce that The Unsuccessful Artist's Handbook—y'know, the thing I've been talking about creating for well over a year now—is finally printed and for sale. It costs $7, which I would like to point out, is less than most cocktails in any major metropolitan city, and contains various drawing and writing I've done last year or so, along with a bunch of art from my last exhibition. (No advice how to be an artist, unsuccessful or otherwise.) You can buy a copy on my Big Cartel site here, or at the (e)merge art fair.
Speaking of (e)merge: I will be showing with the Flashpoint Gallery in room 213, where I will transforming the bathroom into a small exhibition space, and displaying a bunch of original art that is in the Handbook. And just wait until you see what plans I have in store for the mirror over the sink.
Artist talk Q&A with essayist Tim Kreider
Last Wednesday I had an artist talk with essayist/cartoonist/person-in-the-world-expert Tim Kreider (who also very kindly helped me draw coasters to raise money for Cultural DC). The following is our email correspondence pre-interview, to give you a gist of some of what was said. TK: I once had a woman get mad at me for calling her a cartoonist when she considered herself a fine artist. You’ve been called an illustrator, which I know you feel is simply inaccurate. Your work seems to occupy an indefinite ground somewhere between cartoon, illustration, and fine art. What do you call yourself? Or do you find the whole business of categories tiresome and irrelevant?
Guess which coasters are mine and which are Tim's.DM: I do find the business of categories tiresome up to a point, but I understand the impulse to label things—it’s good to know where the art fits in the ecosystem. And I find it very interesting how often I’m pegged as an illustrator, even though I’m always the first to point out that I’m not actually illustrating anything. So it could very well be that everyone else sees a style of drawing and thinks, “illustration” whereas I see illustration as more of art with a very specific purpose. I will say that the worst art I’ve done in my life, the stuff that still makes me wince when I look at it, has been actual paid illustration work—that is, someone told me what kind of drawing they wanted, and what subject matter, and written me a check for my trouble. But I’ve done some “assignments” I’m very proud of for people who gave me one or two loose parameters and said, okay, go nuts.
If I were to be thorough, I’d describe myself as a fine artist with a background in illustration and who occasionally makes a comic or two, if the mood strikes.
TK: Do you feel like being an in-betweenish kind of artist makes career more difficult, because people like to be able to pigeonhole?
DM: Well, being an artist is hard no matter what. There is always a reason to feel aggrieved and like no one is paying attention to you or taking you seriously. I guess the taxonomy would probably be a lot easier if I was a cartoonist or illustrator, but I’m stuck drawing the way I do, so there you go.
TK: There’s an aspect of your work that looks appealingly made-up-as-you-went-along, almost like automatic drawings. Not to say that they’re sloppy or unstructured, but in a way they’re like very ambitious doodles, done without the interference of some teacher telling you to stop that right now and pay attention. What is the balance between spontaneity and planning in your work? Do you have an overall composition or design in mind when you begin? Or are you actually making it up as you go along?
DM: They are mostly made up as I go along. Composition-wise I’ve found it useful to make sure I know where the drawing ends on the paper or wall, maybe start with a loose sketch of where I want certain shapes to go, but then just plunge in and try not to overthink it. For my smaller pieces I will sometimes start with a few ink blobs, or some sort of doodle, and see what happens. I do the best work if I have an engaging audiobook to listen to and can put myself on autopilot. (All of the work in my show has an audiobook I associate with it, except for one piece in particular that I drew while binge-watching House of Cards.)
Apparently there is a psychological term called, “The Centipede’s Dilemma” which is what happens when thinking too hard about what you are doing will cause you to mess it up. [The Wikipedia definition: “when a normally automatic or unconscious activity is disrupted by consciousness of it or reflection on it.”] My drawings are the result of having a bad case of that.
TK: So talking about it is probably a bad idea.
DM: It’s more that I can’t talk about it very easily. I don’t like the word “stream of consciousness” for my process, since it sounds a bit wishy-washy, but I can’t think of a better word...eh, maybe I should just own it already. But it’s a bit terrifying—if it all comes from your subconscious, a place you don’t really understand and can’t control, it’s easy to imagine that the spigot can get turned off at any moment.
TK: There are these little recurring figures and images in your work—bathtubs, chessmen, stairs and balustrades, fish with scarves. I have similar little figments that infest my own drawing, too, mostly much dumber and more embarrassing than yours—Dracula, the starship Enterprise, etc. Where does that stuff come from? Do you think it’s like dream imagery, symbols for something you’re preoccupied or obsessed with, or is it just the clutter and junk left lying around in your head?
Finally getting to the bottom of what's up with all the fish wearing scarves.DM: I wouldn’t call it clutter, exactly, just the images that I can always fall back on because I never get tired of drawing them. I’m not sure where the chess pieces come from, but I love how each one has a distinctive personality, and sometimes have loaded symbolism that I can trot out if needed. Like, you see a chess piece or a chess game, and it’s an automatic story. Even if the pieces are just sitting there and no one’s around, there’s a narrative injected into the image somehow.
The bathtubs I began drawing when I saw an illustration of one in a newspaper (a review of some old-timey children’s book), with the little fish-like character in it. It had some funny nonsense name, like the Sploo. The image stuck in my mind and I began drawing it incessantly. What’s great about drawing claw-footed bathtubs is that they are always imperfect--one side is wonky, or the feet aren’t curved quite right, or whatever. I don’t think I’ve ever done a bathtub I’ve completely nailed. Which means I feel as though I need to draw bathtub after bathtub after bathtub to get to the perfect one.
If I were to play dimestore psychologist I could translate my little, “when in doubt, draw a fish wearing a scarf” manifesto to a shorthand for, ‘when it doubt, do something you’re reasonably good at, is kind of silly, and that you can do over and over again without getting bored.’
TK: Maybe this is a good prescription for life in general.
DM: I can think of worse ones.
TK: I guess part of the reason your drawings feel cartoonish is that there’s a humor to them—those little characters with their big noses, the smug-looking cats. But there’s also a sadness to them that reminds me of cartoonists like Michael Leunig. All these morose-looking figures isolated from one another in their cramped bare apartments. It reminds me of the experience of living in New York City—these sprawling ramshackle tenement-like structures, cutaway views of these lonesome people all living on top of one another, separated only by thin walls. Are you conscious of this sadness in your work—is it something you’re deliberately trying to express? Or does it just come out that way? Or am I projecting it all? Is it me who’s sad?
DM: One of the themes in this show is how we are all pretending--to be more competent, less desperate, better people in general, as though we are all very certain of ourselves. On one hand it’s important that we all do this--the social order would probably all fall apart if we all got to act how we really felt at any given time, but it’s also exhausting. And yes, it’s only once we’re alone in our tiny cramped apartments that we do get to be honest with ourselves. And even the honesty can be a confusing mess.
I see them as sad in the same way that I see Edward Gorey drawings as creepy and disturbing—that is to say, I don’t, really. The characters might all look as though they’ve had better days, but I always thought the silliness and absurdity of the drawings prevents viewers from taking it too seriously. You can read an Edward Gorey book about children dying and you will chuckle with amusement, not say, “oh God, that’s terrible.” But that’s my own take on my work. I do realize with my stuff there’s no obvious punchline or gag the way there is with an artist like Gorey, so maybe the viewer is left with a sad feeling. One of the best parts about having all this work out there is that it’s completely out of my hands.
TK: You’re right, and I partially retract my previous question. People always used to call my own cartons dark, sick, cynical, bitter, and I could see what they meant but I also felt like they were missing out on the fact of the cartoons themselves, which were hilarious and fun, acts of joy. There’s a difference between how you perceive the world to be and the way you choose to react to it.
DM: That’s a very good point. It sounds counter-intuitive, but drawing horrible things can actually be a damn good time.
Why I Am Not An Illustrator
One of my non-illustrations currently on display at the Flashpoint.Now that my show's up and running at Flashpoint, and people occasionally write about it, I've noticed that I'm usually referred to as an illustrator but never a fine artist. Which isn't something I take offense at, of course, but is not a description that seems entirely accurate.
Yes, I am being pedantic. I have a degree in illustration after all, have taken on the odd illustration job in the past, and most of my favorite artists tend to be illustrators or cartoonists. But for the small subset of people who do care about such distinctions, here is why I am still not an illustrator:
This is what happens when I try to draw a bicycle.Illustration is a blanket term that implies that the work in question is depicting a specific idea. The best definition of it I ever heard actually came from the cartoonist Dash Shaw, at a reading at Atomic Books: "An illustration tells you what a thing is, and how you should feel about that thing." Fine artists can get away with saying something like, "This piece is about space and light" and no one will ask any follow up questions. An illustration, on the other hand, needs to have some semblance of specificity—the work needs to be about something, not just its form. My drawings may be cartoonish and representational, but it is never 100% obvious as to what they are about in the first place, which to my mind, disqualifies them from being illustrations.
Fine art also means you don’t have to answer to art directors, which is why I chose it, or rather, it chose me. But it was never that I didn’t want to be an illustrator. I would love to be the type of artist who can read an editorial and create a piece that wordlessly captures its point of view, and I am wholeheartedly jealous of anyone who has that ability. It’s just that I realized having to draw something in particular was my equivalent of artistic cyanide. The only way I know how to draw anything good is to be as unspecific about its meaning as possible.
Occasionally you will hear illustration used as a derogatory term, i.e., the whole, "That's not art, it's illustration" sniff, if a piece in question appears too commercial or heavy-handed. There are some heartbreaking pictures that do look as though they were manufactured by a machine in a factory, but I still bristle when I hear that slam, as it's generally a lazy shorthand for, "This is why you don't have to care about it." Illustration and fine art are different beasts, and there are lots of blurry lines between the two, but to say one is superior or more important than the other is just plain wrong.
At any rate, dwelling on definitions gets tedious pretty quickly, and the more interesting conversations tend to be about the art itself, not what taxonomy it falls under. And as a former English professor once said, when students were explaining the differences between Painting and GFA majors: "Whatever. It's all pictures."
If We Could All Agree Not to Care, We Wouldn't Have to Do This: the Recap
My married friends may not agree, but I have always likened gallery shows to weddings: immense preparation is involved, you are nervous despite it being, technically, a joyful occasion, and at the actual party you wind up talking to roughly a bazillion people in short bursts. But it was a good opening, thank you. I saw friends I haven't seen in ages and afterwards hit the bars with some of my favorite people. A few photos below:
Collin, who I met in art school back in the day (in seersucker), and his lovely girlfriend Elizabeth.
Kitty! (Photo by Jenny McConnell Frederick, Director of Performing Arts at the Flashpoint, and mother of this adorable little guy.)
Says my friend Anthony: "That is the most self-satisfied-looking cat ever." Well, yeah.
Detail shot of Everyone, which sold to my friend Yeon-Woo. "When I saw it, I didn't want anyone else to have it," she said, which literally made me hug her.
Installation in progress
Here are a few work-in-progress shots of If We Could All Agree Not to Care, We Wouldn't Have to Do This, which opens on Friday at the Flashpoint Gallery:
Overall, the installation has been incredibly pleasant. Applying huge swaths of black ink onto a white wall feels rich and satisfying. While I work I listen to the new Robert Galbraith J.K. Rowling crime novel, and The Love Affairs of Nathanial P., both of which are excellent. There is a Shake Shack down the street and art supply stores in easy biking distance. The hours fly by.
I've also printed promotional coasters for the show, which you may see in local bars:
Anyhow, show details again below, and also on the event page. I will be downright thrilled if you can make it.
Dana Jeri Maier: If We Could All Agree Not to Care, We Wouldn’t Have to Do This Opening Reception: Friday, August 9, 6-8pm Exhibition Dates: August 9 – September 14, 2013 Flashpoint Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12-6pm or by appointment
The Art of the Wedding
As it turns out, 2013 is The Year that All of My Friends Are Getting Married, which is happening pretty much on schedule. And one unexpected perk is that I've been finding myself contributing art to their nuptials in various ways. The map of DC I drew in April will be used for an invitation (minus the sea monsters), and in January, I was commissioned to draw an engagement-themed piece that was used as part of a marriage proposal. Most recently I created a Ketubah for my friends Agnes and Max. It's my first Ketubah, and hopefully not my last—I had a lot of fun with this one:
If We Could All Agree Not to Care, We Wouldn't Have to Do This
Oh yes. Solo show is opening Friday, August 9th at the Flashpoint Gallery, and I will basically be using the space as a giant sketchbook, which I assure you, you do not want to miss. A few work-in-progress shots below. And you can read the full press release here.
Dana Jeri Maier: If We Could All Agree Not to Care, We Wouldn't Have to Do This Opening Reception: Friday, August 9, 6-8pm Exhibition Dates: August 9 – September 14, 2013 Flashpoint Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12-6pm or by appointment
The topic that never gets old
There is one topic that never seems to get old among us creative types, and that is how difficult it is to do creative work in the first place. Oh yes, you think. Please tell me just how hard this wholly optional activity is. Let's talk about other fellow artists who have spent the day procrastinating and feeling like failures for not working, or throwing out entire days worth of drawings, or hours trying to squeeze out a single sentence that doesn't sound dumb. And the solidarity is easy to find, along with motivational posters encouraging you to struggle through the hard parts, or reassurance that getting stuck does not necessarily mean that your painting is doomed. Then of course, you realize—horrified—that you have just spent forty minutes searching for words of encouragement on the Internet instead of getting anything done, and the cycle of shame repeats itself.*
I've spent the better part of the weekend working for an upcoming show I have in August—details to come soon—which involved the usual mixture of artistic highs and lows. I did, sadly, have to scrap an entire 24x24'' panel because its composition was unsalvageable, but it felt like the right thing to do. As I drew, a Saul Steinberg quote constantly repeated itself in my head, on a loop: “What you respond to in any work of art is the artist's struggle against his or her limitations.” Which seemed to be everywhere.
* For my money, you are not going to get a better description of this trauma than David Rakoff's essay, "Isn't it Romantic." It is one of those essays you wish you could shove in people's hands and say, "read this now."