Replies: 11 Comments
on Wednesday, January 17th, walt said
Dianne,
BoMA has the chance to raise Columbus-ville to the level of a real city.
on Wednesday, January 17th, dianne bowen said
I look foward to watching the development of the place. I like the paris idea, a little Toulouse Latrec, or the gathering of artists for conversation and a libation at the ceder tavern.(pardon any spelling issues, I've been up all night). Performance piece's possibly video installions... I like it. Keeping it real Walt as I know you will. Shake it up out there in Columbus Walt.
on Friday, January 12th, walt said
Dianne,
You know for everything I say on this subject there is always an exception. Quite possibly BoMA could be that exception. They are on a learning curve for sure. Even though I'm more of a mid career artist I think there are some possibilities here that I'd like to be more involved in. I am getting to show to people in Columbus who might not ever step foot inside a gallery. And these are not the ball cap wearing mullet heads that show up to most bars. They are young lawyers, and administators and professionals who do have some disposable income. They have a brain as well. I've had work up since they opened in October. We've changed it out once and will do it again in February. That show will last about two months. So by the end of March I'll have had my work up and interaction with the public for about 6 months. I think a lot more can be accomplished over such a time period. The standard 3 weeks in a commercial gallery sounds sifling to me now. And while I'm not getting everything I would like yet, I'm having a hand in influencing how they deal with the art and the artists. Besides, I do like hanging out there. So it makes business fun. This could turn out to be something like Paris before the turn of the 19th century... you know, the Moulin Rouge and other night clubs in Paris that played such a roll in the arts of that city. I think BoMA wants to be on that level.
Chris Mohler also has a studio not far so he shows up every so often as well. And one of the owners is a photographer. She is the one currently organizing the art aspect. The more I get involved with it I'm thinking I'd actually like to be more involved in selecting future shows. I'd like to see some performance art between the dinner hour and the late night club set shows up. I also think that an early evening jazz set or experimental music set could be interesting during that gap from 8 to 10 when the dinner crowd takes off and the clubbers show up. And of course I can picture the work of about a dozen different artists paintings on the walls.
But this isn't a gallery and it isn't a museum (although it could be, the building itself is grand enough) so a very careful selection of exhibits and events is important...nothing too fragile, nothing too big in terms of 3-d work, and subject matter has to fit the character and the attitude of the audience to some extent. That wouldn't mean that you couldn't show work that made people think or be challenged...but again they don't come so much for that. So knowing the audience woud be primary. Then you know what you can do.
But of course any ralationship beyond showing my work would depend on the owners and what they are looking for. I certainly know enough artists in and around Columbus and I've begun to get a sense of what it is they are trying to accomplish by showing art along with the rest of the bar. The original art director left over a difference in vision. I think I'm beginning to catch a bit of the sense of what they want as well as what they might need. You know they are kinda stuck with art as the third leg of their plan since the named it the Bar of Modern Art. Don't know how they'd get away with changing the thematic direction at this point. But the art could become a larger draw if certain things fall into place. And ultimately, since they are taking a commission, they could actually begin to make a healthy profit from something they need not invest an awful lot in. But they will have to invest some promotion and get some press. I mean art reviews. I actually believe the art could give this place more staying power than most night clubs have. 1 to 3 years is common in the business so I'm told. But I could see this place making back its investment and staying around for 10 years or longer if they do the art right. I think it could become a real fixture in Columbus. And I think it could even get regional and national recognition if only because it is such an ambitious venture.
We'll see.
on Friday, January 12th, dianne bowen said
I agree with your statement about the bar/restaurant art shows being a first place for many artists to get their work out. I myself used that stratedgy with sucess. In NYC there are places in no-lita and the meat packing district which have developed a good reputation for interesting work and have afforded some artists the ability to meet collectors on informal grounds leading them into bigger forums for their work. It is a venue which can be used positively but one must always be careful. Personally, I think "Boma", sounds like they are starting on the right foot.
on Saturday, December 30th, dianne bowen said
It's starting to get cold but chelsea is still crazy on thursday nights. I've got a place you'll love. The whole bar/restaurant show is precarious. The never ending debate. All depends on the reputation of the place and what crowd it attracts.
I've been hold up in my place working on new piece's. Good stuff coming up this year, may go on a walk about for a bit... Movin' and groovin' as always.
on Sunday, December 24th, walt said
Thanks Jose. Well if we don't talk about each others work and encourage and uplift each other who will? Chris is also involved with BoMA although in a somewhat different way...he was paid to design and build one of their bars. He is also exhibiting two rather impressive sculptures, one inside and one right out front which in some sense has begun to define the real estate itself. I've heard people say "You'll see BoMA on Broad Street-- you know the old church with the big blue sculpture out front."
As for me? So far with the exception of one small sale I'm simply a peripheral partner and expected to be entrepreneurial alongside of promoting the success of the house so I can have a shadow to work beneath. Some one suggested that I slammed BoMA in one of my responses below where I discuss the blessings and curses of showing in this kind of venue. Not really. Remember that the bar is its own business and is trying to make a profit. There is now an established tradition of charging a commission. If we as artists do not discuss this stuff then how will we be able to get the best for ourselves? NOw we cannot discuss specifics because that would be collusion and there is a law against that here in the States. But we can certainly discuss the general system and put forth ideas on how to deal with it and even sculpt it into a form that serves us as well as it does the establishment. In fact I've discussed anumber of these issues with the bar administration as well.
And Jose...Yes, one of the pitfalls of the bar/restaurant industry is that while a waiter or bartender may make some good tips it is also true that they spend much of that income in the same kind of establishments from which it came. I recently read a book called "Neo-Bohemia" by Richard Lloyd about the Milwaukee Ave. Arts District in Chicago that studies this phenomena from the inside out. Not only do many in the creative fields debut their work in these venues but because they also tend to live in the neighborhood it becomes a kind of culture/lifestile that one identifies with...call it alternative, underground whatever...
So the effect is one of an isolated village where we give our loyalties, show bias towards those who do not partake in the whole environment but simply come to taste the style, and we even establish our own economy with both part time jobs, a trading economy and our own status. Some of these villages become quite profitable after a certain period of time. Especially when the outside world comes to see it as a curiosity and so it becomes a sort of alternative tourism center. Our own Short North Arts District here in Columbus (where I met Chris)has gone through the entire cycle and is now no longer that small village but has been absorbed by the larger economy of Columbus so now the choices of galleries has diminished to one or two good ones and tons of schlock. The civilians who frequent the place don't realize that it has changed for the worse culturally. They only see that the art looks more like the kind of thing they might want to hang in their homes rather than the kind that might make them think about their lives it is now the stuff that allows them to feel justified. Of course there is the same kind of schism that occurs around college and university campuses between the students and the townies. But since the artists tend to be the townies since they are the ones who actually caused the community to exist but now it is the tourists who control the economy and the artists are being forced out.
Well I've always been drawn to these small worlds of creativity as many of us are. I do feel there is something there that has value. But one must be careful how to do it or it will surely consume us in a negative way. I don't mind being consumed by work if it will pay me back. But to be consumed by something that takes away, or takes me away from my work that's a different story. So far my connection to BoMA has been a good thing. It has both inspired a new direction in my work and gotten me out of the studio to talk with people who might not normally talk to an artist at all.
on Sunday, December 24th, josé said
Walt, I like how you introduce us to the artists and friends who's work you admire. I agree with you on the need for such places to agree to a share of the door with us artists. We may not generate the crowds J.J.Cale and musicians generally attract but we do contribute to the overall athmosphere when we hang our work - it's not like the establishment is doing us a one-way favour. I did those too, though I don't put them on the list of shows for some reason. I guess I was lucky, they worked rather well in those days and I sold, but then I was there a lot of the time and probably ended up spending much of what I earned in drinks and food. Hope everything works out fine for you at BoMA - it sounds and looks like a great project.
on Saturday, December 23rd, walt said
Andy,
Chris has created a very strong, large, and consitent body of work, while growing and devoloping over the years. He seems to reinvent himself every so often. Yet the new personas are still Chris Mohler. He's one of the more committed and original artists I know.
As to BoMA...I like the place and have become very involved with it. In fact I'm going down this afternoon to hang some paintings in their dining area while waiting for the main salon to become availible again. But I'll tell you the truth...until the artists get a share of the door like a good band the arrangement is biased against the artist. A good band brings in a crowd to buy drinks benefitting the house. The house pays the band from the door take since we become thr floor show.
Generally I'm not in favor of showing in bars and restaurants unless one has a very specific purpose. While in NY for a short 3 months I made a lot of friends at the bar across the street from my studio. I showed the work I did while there because I wanted my friends to see what I'd been up to. In most cases the bar or restaurant really doesn't have a clue how to sell art yet they want the same commission that a gallery gets. A gallery does, or should do, a lot more for their commission. They should be investing in their artists to help move their careers, and therefore their values, forward.
And while I am careful these days about showing in bars and restaurants I always remember that my first serious one man show happened in a night club in Tulsa Oklahoma in the early 70's. The club was where studio musicians from Leon Russell's recording studio's in Tulsa would come to jam and hangout. I met JJ Cale there. JJ is now suffering a comeback with the new album he and Eric Clapton just released. I never sold anything in that show and later lost the entire body of work in a fire in a storage space where they kept everything after they closed. I was 19 and basically living on the street and had never come to pick up the work because I had no place to store it at the time. And of course I haven't seen JJ Cale since then and doubt that he would even remember who I am. But having the show there gave me a sense of what I had to do and that I could do it. And here I am today nearly 30 years later.
Wave of the future? If so we need to be good business people and make it work for us. If it works for us it'll work for the house.
on Saturday, December 23rd, Andrew said
The work spans a lot, and yet retains its authorship throughout. There is very little making it look derivative of any other artist I know of. And, the idea of BOMA is something that appeals to me, as it mixes art with other things we love to do. That's a good way to involve people who may have gotten turned off to art due to a non discriminative support culture that seems to have developed during the last fifty years. Could be the way of the future!
on Friday, December 22nd, walt said
Good to hear from you Dianne. Wish I was in New York. BoMA is a great place. It puts two of my favorite pursuits together in one place...Art and bar. Hope you're doing well. Maybe I'll make it up this spring or in the summer. Oh by the way, I think Chris will appreciate the dimensional sighting comment.
on Thursday, December 21st, dianne bowen said
hey walt, "sighting mechanism" brings Kurt Vonagut's slaughter house five to mind for me.
This would be the contraption for seeing another dimention. I find myself feeling as though I could climb up to it to peek through and the ladder would appear as something else only if one gazes through the piece. intersting work.
checked out the BOMA, looks like a great space and the menu was definitly NYC. Wish them good luck. Nice idea.
Chris Mohler and I go back a ways. I remember the first time I ever became aware of his work here in Columbus. It was back in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I was driving down High Street through the Short North Art District when to my left I saw an open lot, maybe an acre altogether full of monstrous welded steel sculpture. The largest was a piece called The Ark (see on left), a gigantic form that at first glance seemed like it could be the carriage for a huge armored chariot without wheels or war sled. I’d never seen anything quite like it before. It was Teutonic in scale about 12’ wide, 20’ deep and maybe 10’ high. From one view it looked like a giant bronze covered by ancient runes and commanded its space much like a Sherman Tank. That got my attention. 
Somali Warrior
Untitled
Shrine to the Grand Iron God
Blue diamonds
