Salon 73 // Counterpoint

We're good. Hello and welcome to Salon 73. It's August 3, 2023, and we've had a change in our meetings, in case you haven't heard, we're meeting on the first Thursday of every month. Expressionist salons are a time and place in cyberspace where artists gather to hang out, share their work and discuss matters relating to art, philosophy and technology.

After finishing today's recording, we will have an after party. If you care to attend, we always discuss what we hope to have for a theme. And Michael will have a few remarks as well at the end of the session. Michael will have a few remarks as well at the end of this particular recording. The theme today is counterpoint and some people are presenting today. If you are, would you please go down to reactions at the bottom in the menu and pick the hand so that I know if you're going to be presenting.

Karen LaFleur

And I'll try to pick you in the order in which you would like to be presented. Raise your hand. Okay. There will be a time limit. There's always five minutes per presentation. At four minutes, I will apologize right now that I will remind you, you only have a minute left. Also, today we're going to experiment with Lee Schnaiberg's suggestion that at the end of each presentation, you can unmute. And for 15 minutes, you can unmute. And for 15 or 25 seconds, if you would like to say something. I know a lot of times we see it in the chat.

Karen LaFleur

And unfortunately, some of the presenters don't see the chat and miss, you know, the comments. So we're going to try that today. If you're uncomfortable with reacting verbally for the 15, 25 seconds, feel free to go to the chat and put your comments there. Okay. I'm going to begin because I want to make people comfortable with the concept of counterpoint. So I'll start now by sharing.

Karen LaFleur

Can you see it? Yes. Thank you. Yep. There we go. Okay. Counterpoint involves tension, contradiction, contrast, and tinnitus. It's a form of synthesis or dissonance in relation to artistic themes, colors, shapes, or music within one piece of artwork or a series. Using two opposing ideas, working in harmony is what counterpoint is about.

Karen LaFleur

George Brock in his piece Bottles and Fishes in 1910 used horizontal and the vertical to create counterpoint. So it's pretty much open to much of what we do as artists. Let me start with a couple of pieces that I began with to create backgrounds for pieces in which I was using counterpoint. And as you can see on the left, if you go to the right, you'll see a couple of pieces. I began using different color and also blending out some of the texture. And what you'll see coming up are a series that I've created based on starting with these two pieces.

Karen LaFleur

Here's the first in which we have a line intersecting a circle. And of course, I'm retaining the contrast. Here, the circle becomes more prominent. And I very much enjoy that cross. And then I'm going to add a little crack that points down to the texture. Here, I actually introduced another piece and blended it in. And again, retaining some of the elements you saw in the earlier pieces.

Karen LaFleur

This I had fun with, dipping into the texture with a circle. Here, the circle is still prominent. And the black of the earlier piece, I continued to add. And I'm going to continue to present in the image here using lots of texture also. And finally, the last piece is very different from all the others and is, I think, a great deal of contrast to the others and within itself by having these squared off shapes working around the top and sides. But again, I retain the texture.

Karen LaFleur

Thank you for listening and looking. Okay. So we're ready then for the

Next presenter, who is Stephen Paré. Did I say that correctly, Steven? Yes. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and start. Yeah, pretty good. Great. Sound just like my mother. Okay. Let's see. I'm going to share a screen here. So you get to see a little bit of a look behind the curtain for my software I'm using to assemble.

Stephen Paré

I'll read and show a little bit from one of my books. I think. Maybe. Maybe the primary counterpoint technique that I use is something that I call startling juxtaposition. And that's you'll see true in the story as well as in the images. I'll just. I'll just begin. The Circus of the Moon. Two of the guards took all of the visas into the control building to be inspected by their captain.

Stephen Paré

Back in those tense days, travelers were as carefully scrutinized crossing over the border in both directions. No one spoke to him as he stood there with the guards in front of him. There were 12 of them. And he thought of the 12 apostles, then criticized immediately his two vivid images. But he had a clear imagination. The guards did not speak to one another either. And they held their submachine guns in both hands at the ready. Though pointing at the ground in front of them. Nicola lit a cigarette as much to fill the social void as anything. In his mind, he compared the awkward, unnatural situation in his tense state and with a sort of dark amusement to visits in happier times at his brother-in-law's. It was a long time ago. The smoke billowed out of his mouth into the frigid gusty morning air.

Stephen Paré

Getting a lot of background noise. Thank you. The smoke billowed out of his mouth into the frigid gusty morning air, climbing up the yellow cone of the streetlamps light as though captured. He thought of the incense, the pale bespectacled priest swinging the thurible in the St. Nicholas Church when he was a child, watching it rise.

Stephen Paré

Through the eight lobed chandelier hung from the top of the dome seemingly as though dangling on God's little finger. Ringed with glass nuggets. That seized flickers of candlelight. Trembling with the Beso intonation of the priest. Then disappearing, melting into the descending radiance above. He offered cigarettes to the guards without stepping toward them. He knew that they would certainly that would certainly be a precious gift for them. But the red faced men only stared at him. Fortunately, without raising their weapons or shouting at him. Though this was in some respect disturbing, it had the peculiar effect of resolving any ambiguity in the situation.

Stephen Paré

Now I'm not able to. Sorry. There. It worked. He started it all over again. That's how it was then. Being friendly and menschlich wasn't going to help him. Very well then. He felt settled, calm. He trod the butt underfoot, calmly looking away from them, as if alone, on a morning stroll in springtime by the river, crushing it thoroughly, twisting it under his boot, more emphatic than it needed. Then he foretold. Tweezers to get any of the tobacco that was left on the ground. He thought perversely how the manure on his soles had come from the elephants, whose feed he'd been seeing to that morning, who never ever needed much. Gentle, reliable performers, and they loved when he sang to them. For a wistful moment, he envied the elephants. Then again, they must hate the cold. Excuse me, you have a minute.

Stephen Paré

A minute. Okay. Absolutely. Okay. The sky began to lighten in the east. He considered one more cigarette, but there was no use provoking them. Revenge never gets you anywhere, does it? The sun came up and shone brightly on the church tower, steeply neo-gothic like the south tower of the church, though smaller than that, a recollection of a once prosperous town. At first settling on its narrow iron peak, then gliding down like a huge steady fingertip, drawing through old accumulated dust on a neglected table. The border. A border town. What a sad little place. And so it went on. A frigid hour passed. Silently, they all waited. The wind was biting, suddenly gusting. Now and again, it picked up a loose handful of snow and flung it into the air, unwilling to endure the gloom and yet unable to change it.

Stephen Paré

A nondescript door to the building opened, revealing inside a blaze of light, and the portly captain, unhurried, severe, mustachioed, balding, bespectacled, expressionless, with a tall, thin, sniffling adjutant in tow, advancing steadily on the dreary scene, steaming breath, looking left nor right, coming at last to rest two meters away from him. This was unsettling, as though the captain suspected that he might become unruly.

Stephen Paré

His entire ambition that morning was to be dismissed as only a harmless, unpolitical, un-political, un-political, un-political, un-political, artist. The captain stood for a long moment, appraising, light glinting on and off his spectacles. The wind died to nothing. At last, he began to speak. Are you, he looked down at the paper the adjutant had handed him, Nicola Voda, proprietor of the Circus of the Moon?

Stephen Paré

I am. I must have run out of time at this point. You have, Stephen. It's delightful to listen to this and the amount of counterpoint both in language and in your pieces. If everyone would like to unmute and make a comment or comment in the chat, please feel free. I wanted to ask Stephen if it was possible to see the second illustration blown up big. Maybe you could like I don't know if you can do it in the moment, but maybe we can look at it at some point. The one with the cathedral with the chandelier.

Stephen Paré

Oh. Hold on. Go back. I think I can. Well, at least I can enlarge the whole thing. OK. Is that working? Excuse me, I'm sorry. There's a lot of detail. Yeah. Yeah, it's a technique that started developing some years ago and I really haven't got tired of it. It's a sort of. Set of systems, so I have a name for it, actually.

Stephen Paré

And the certain pieces that are. Based on it. I took the name Synchro System from an odd place from. In the back some years ago, I was enthusiastic about African pop music and. One of the groups I followed was. King Sonny Ade and his African beats and like a 20 piece band, a lot of counterpoint. And he called his. His.

Stephen Paré

His way of making music synchro system. So. I thought I would borrow that for this kind of method of creating these vertical systems that interact. I do it horizontally sometimes, but it's. The best results are usually like this, where there's. A series of vertical systems and sort of embedded in them as an image.

Thank you, Stephen. I think we'll move on in the interest of time to Susan Detroy. Oh, OK. I wasn't expecting to be next, but great. Is that for me to present or to just speak? To present. OK. OK, great. I'm. I'm a little bit nervous. Let me get my notes here. I. As usual. Thought about the topic and yesterday evening.

Susan Detroy

Was looking through my photos and. Came upon an idea that I think fits the topic. Well, which is. I'm going to screen share. So. I'm going to see if I can get it to work. But I'm going to start with the first one. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. Pandemic, I was out and about quite a bit. And the work that I did, to me, has a sense of loneliness and emptiness in the places where I was going. There were no people. I was using my bicycle. And that's when I started pretty much avidly riding my bike almost every day. The impediment to riding a bike, the impediments were very low. There was almost no traffic. It was, at the same time, a wonderful time for me and a terrifying time.

Susan Detroy

And I was looking back through the pieces that I created, and I'm just going to start going through them. And I'm not sure for others that the images relay that feeling that I was having. And I wasn't aware of that feeling at the time. But now when I look back at the work, it feels that it feels as though the pieces, the imagery, capture that feeling. It captures the duality and the opposition of a certain beauty and orderliness. But at the same time, I'm actually kind of getting a chill right now looking at the images. There was a void of human existence and otherworldliness feeling. And I biked. My town has a lot of alleys downtown. And now in regular, sort of regular times, those alleys have cars coming and going, people walking in them. And there was none of that. And I used the Hipstamatic camera, which is one of my favorite still image generators on my iPhone.

Susan Detroy

So these are the alley pieces. And I would take the same picture over and over, which is part of what I do. This is one of my favorite walls near my house. And occasionally I would go walking and I love it. Way that this the color of this wall and the ominous both ominous and beautiful way that the images speak to me. This was also an alleyway. I loved loved the windows on this building how they reflected on in from the sky and this kind of scary feeling that they have to me now.

Susan Detroy

I was alone a lot. This was a road that I went out on that usually has a lot of traffic. It's called Prairie Road and I could bike in the middle of the road and then I created this piece. Which is kind of more like my melted pieces. I also biked the bike paths along the river. There were a few other people biking but no these paths usually unless you're early in the morning or at night there's people in the summertime on these paths everywhere.

Susan Detroy

And I noticed after I was gathering the images that there's also a lot of people on these paths. And I noticed after I was gathering the images that there's a lot of people on these paths. And I noticed after I was gathering the images that there's also a few there's a lot of disappearing of path into the distance perspective.

Susan Detroy

And each of these to me continues to have that feeling of excuse me you have one minute. Thank you. Glad to be told. I'm just going to keep going through these. Some of the river and parks. No people. No people. No people. And then I'm coming towards the end of the images where I became quite fascinated by the sky. When it would clear up. This is a favorite bridge of mine. Peter DeFazio bridge over the Willamette to Alton Baker Park. I love the shape and the structure of the bridge and just still ominous. I mean I could use another word but I'm still going to keep going. But I began looking up quite a bit. This is a final image. This is a the parking lot of a very large shopping mall. And I had never seen it without cars. This was there's like there's no cars. So that's my take on the topic.

Susan Detroy

Let's see. Let me get back to unshare. Stop broadcasting. Really dealing with counterpoint in terms of feelings. Yes. Yes. I sense as you said the beauty and also this awesome feeling of desolation or fear or what have you. And I think you're very successful in that. Again feel free to unmute. Briefly say something. Just a quick comment Susan. I really appreciated your reflection on bringing these photos up after you had shot them. It had been a while. And having these feelings come up that they do convey as I look at them. And having done a lot of photography in the news world and other worlds. I remembered sort of taking a position when I was shooting that didn't allow much feeling.

Susan Detroy

And when you brought it up it just had me reflecting on that whole process. And what we were talking about is that we had to take the phone with us. We had to take the camera with us. We do is visual people sometimes capturing the moment. So a lot of ideas came up when you started talking about that and they were really striking images. Thank you for sharing.

Susan Detroy

That's your comment. I'd like to say a little something. I really enjoyed your work, Susan. My feeling was that the pieces that had more of a colorized look to them, they looked mostly black and white with a little bit of color like in the distance. Those to me were the most effective, but I really liked all of them. And I would also point out that there was a person there. I felt the presence. Yeah, so that was a counterpoint right there. Yeah, thanks for the reminder.

Susan Detroy

I'd like to say something, Susan. I thought they were very strong photographs. I really liked the one point perspective. I felt that really pulled the viewer in and it made me feel like I was right there with you. And the colors were wonderful. And yes, it did give a feeling of loneliness. I definitely felt it. So I thought they were beautiful. And I have one question. You have very interesting edges.

Susan Detroy

And I want to know about that. Tell us about the edges. And do you print these and a little bit more about it? Those edges are generated in apps that I'm using in the Hipstamatic app. And they are reflective of work I've done for many years. I often border my pieces. And when I was working in hard copy, I would deck all the edges of my pieces and hang them like they were specimens and float mount them. So I'm quite attracted to that. And I'm always paying attention to the edging. I don't always like things that just don't have a border. And I have not printed. I haven't been printing anything for quite a while. But thanks for asking about the printing.

Susan Detroy

I also have a comment, Susan. These are really striking to me because I guess I'm sort of thinking about your self-reflective work that you've shared. And now for me, you're showing yourself by showing the world. And I really like that perspective. And I think these images are very strong. So, yeah, thanks.

Susan Detroy

I appreciate all the comments. It's really great to share here and hear comments. Absolutely. I'm glad that we're doing that. Thank you. Make sure you check the chat, Susan. Okay. Okay, we're going to move on to the next question. We're going to move on. Judy? Yes.

Hi. Let's see. Lower my hand. All righty. So counterpoint was a little hard for me to think of because I think that most of my work is counterpoint. But this group I'm going to show is a counterpoint basically to the work that I've done almost all my life. I was always a counterpoint. I was always a straight photographer, a printer.

Judith Jacobs

And so when I stopped doing darkroom work, I mean, I was always concentrating on how sharp things could be, how, you know, what the grain was, line. They were almost all abstractions. And when I stopped doing darkroom work and went into digital, I stopped printing for years and just worked. You know, within my iPads and computer.

Judith Jacobs

And recently I've started printing again. But now I'm not printing in a darkroom. I'm learning to print, you know, with rather inexpensive equipment by comparison. So these prints are what I'm doing now. Let's see here. Share screen. Huh. Come on. It worked when we were trying it out today. Let's see. Share.

Judith Jacobs

Install. It was. Starting. Okay. It should. Huh. It looks like it is. Why isn't it doing it? Oh, here. Let's do this. Sorry for the delay there. It should. Yes, there it is. Okay. It takes, everything takes a while. I have very limited broadband here. Huh. Well. Okay. Good. Okay. That's about as good as we're going to get, I'm afraid.

Judith Jacobs

So what I've been doing is, is photographing as I always have botanical materials. And, and then I've also been doing some monoprints of them and I've been layering these things, rephotographing them and doing layering more and more and more, you know, just one after another. So I'm going to show you a little bit of a picture of this. So there's one.

Judith Jacobs

So, again, this was plant material. Probably. Rock photographs, things like that, textures. Again, same sort of thing. These, this is a whole series of just this technique that I'm working on this summer. And I'm going to show you a little bit of a picture of this. But what I liked about doing this is that nothing is, nothing is truly in focus.

Judith Jacobs

And after a lifetime of just working on getting things in focus, it's a relief. So just layers and layers and layers. Okay. So I'm going to show you a little bit of a picture of this. Yeah. It's like a stick. You have one minute. Wow. Yeah. That's it. So that's, that's my project for the summer. That's what I'm really working on. Is to learn to print this type of image.

Judith Jacobs

Thank you. Thank you, Judy. Feel free to unmute for a brief comment or make a comment in the chat. Hi. Quite beautiful. I do really enjoy, personally enjoy, using the leaves and the grass. I was particularly drawn to the pieces that had a kind of orangish tint to them. In the palette with the leaf shapes.

Judith Jacobs

They were very beautiful to me. And I enjoy the, what you call the not in focus part. I don't know if I would use that word. It feels like it's representational and very soft representation of plant material that I enjoy. Thank you. Thank you. I particularly enjoyed the one in which you layered the actual plant over the image. And I thought it gave quite a bit of depth and the juxtaposition and again counterpoint of the living plant over your image I thought was very successful.

Judith Jacobs

Thank you, Cindy. Any other comments before I move on to the next presenter? Okay. Thank you. Karen, are you still presenting today? Have you decided to? You're muted. See, I'm off to a flying start. I can present something, I guess. I'm not super prepared, but I was playing with something, so I'll show that as a creative project.

Judith Jacobs

That's fine. I don't want to pressure you. If you'd rather wait until another time, that's fine as well. That's okay. You just have to bear with me a little today. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. Can you see my screen that says counterpoint? Yes. Yes. So I was trying to think of this subject when Cynthia brought it up, and I was kind of like, you know, it sounds really easy, but then it's not easy, but then it's everything I do anyway. So it was in a way kind of difficult to get my head around.

Judith Jacobs

And so, you know, I'll start with, you know, sort of my premise. It speaks to the resiliency of the human heart to survive in ever-shifting landscapes. And I do this by kind of counterpointing the interior and exterior of worlds, be that a person or a landscape. And so I started to pull out some of my older ideas. I started to work on my older illustrative work. And I began to realize that, you know, nothing is straightforward, even if it's supposed to be straightforward. I always throw something in to sort of off balance people to sort of draw them into the piece.

Judith Jacobs

And in my early text image pieces, I was also working with a lot of counterpoint between text, timing, between ancient civilizations and contemporary, etc., etc. In these pieces. So in the piece you just saw, the first thing that I go for is the eye because it really attracts, biologically we are attracted to the eye very quickly. And it draws you into the piece. And the second thing I really start to do with my text image pieces is start to throw the reader off visually when they see that beast picture. They say, oh, a fairy tale character. But if you read the text, it's actually a contemporary character that's been transformed into an ancient fairy tale. So it kind of flips everything on its head. And I do this visually also by doing blank spaces, like the fingertips not quite touching the shoulder.

Judith Jacobs

So we end up with a tension in the space that should be something but isn't something but could be something. And so I'm always trying to sort of counterpoint things in my work to create these layers and layers of balances. This is a piece called Grace. The one on the left is actually her great grandmother to the figure on the right. They're both looking out the same window in different time periods. But they also have two first loves going to see that they will lose. And so there's this connection between time and grace. Time, distance and generations.

Judith Jacobs

And sometimes I just do it between figures and nonhuman figures. So basically it ends up a whole bunch of characters that I've always worked in. And so that's my basis for my abstract works. And I also work with positioning counter balancing the positions, the conversations. And. And now when I get to my abstract work.

Judith Jacobs

All my abstract work is based in these characters. So this is the behind the scenes thinking of this particular character that I'm spinning off of pride of presence in the abstraction and also in the character on the left individualism. The moment of taking off or movement or flight. Entanglement. Be it love, be it a forest scene.

Judith Jacobs

Joy. Surprise, excitement. Music. Singing. So always when I'm doing these abstractions, even if they don't seem like they're in a story, they're part of a story in my head. This one is be like conversation and a lifetime of partnership and love. Versus. Loss. And then. How can I put this? Loss in a mournful way that's respectful of the partnership that still exists.

Judith Jacobs

And that's with music by Nancy Tucker. The silver piece that you saw spinning in the center was actually built by my husband, who was a sculptor who passed away. So this is a homage piece to him. And sometimes we just dream. Excuse me, you have a minute. Okay, I'm almost done. And we can always discover.

Judith Jacobs

And so even in my animations, when I'm doing these things, They're all based in these scenarios in my head. So it was an interesting subject. I'm glad you brought it up, Cindy, because, you know, you do it all the time, but it's nice to sort of sit back and bring all the parts and pieces together. You work with to create a single piece.

Judith Jacobs

So these are stories and animations and sketchbooks. And that's it. Well, thank you, Karen. You certainly have touched upon counterpoint in your themes, in your approach as an artist, as an animator. Your use of emotion and counterpointing emotion within the pieces is so evident. I thank you for showing this.

Judith Jacobs

Any other comments, either for the chat or... Hi, Karen. Yeah. I'm just so enthralled by your work. And I was really happy to be part of the show at the beginning of the year with you. Your work reminds me of what illuminated manuscripts would be like today. And there is just this... The illustrations are powerful. The text is powerful.

Judith Jacobs

And yes, there's a counterpoint, but there's a synthesis to that counterpoint. And I really respect that in your work. So thanks for sharing today. Thanks so much. That's kind of the balance I'm going for is off balance balance. Thank you. As always, Karen, your work is stunning. And I really enjoyed the presentation. For the way that you mixed still works with animated works. And I particularly liked how you illustrated the themes or the concepts with a real image against the abstract work. You've talked about your process with me quite a bit. And that was a really wonderful visual exposition of it. So thanks. Thanks for putting that together. Good to see you here. Thank you. I thought, Cindy, it was a great chance to go back and look at early work and see where I was using counterpoint and bring that forward and counterpoint it against the new work.

Judith Jacobs

So thank you. Yeah, I think we forget that counterpoint is in our work. And we talk about it in other ways, perhaps, but it's there and it's nice to see what everyone what everyone has come up with. Are there any other individuals who would like to present? I mean, if you just wanna show your work, what you're working on presently, you can leave it to us to mention the counterpoint if you'd like.

Judith Jacobs

Is anyone feeling comfortable enough to share? Yes, no, maybe. I'm waiting. I'm trying to connect on my phone actually so what I'd love to do is take you downstairs to an installation that I just put in of Clive Holden. Here at the Kingsborough Art Museum. So let me just see if I could get this text up maybe somebody else can go first and then I'll be ready in two minutes.

Judith Jacobs

All right. Is there anyone else who wants to share.

I might like to show a little bit of my work. I'm new to the group so I'd really like to see if I, if I measure up. If I fit in. Kristen, it's wonderful to see you here I'm, I'm the one who welcomed you to text preciousness. Thank you. And I'm so thrilled that you shown up please share your work. Thank you. Let's see, I can show.

Kristen Doner

I'll just show a few pieces. Yeah, that'll give Tommy time to see if he can put his piece together. See, I'll bring this over here. Now I'm not sure how to share a screen. Okay at the bottom. Are you on a computer or laptop. I'm on a laptop. Okay at the bottom you should see a menu if you touch the screen with mouse or finger, and you should see a green rectangle says sure. Sure. Okay.

Kristen Doner

Okay. And once you hit that. Are you sharing something on the computer. Yes. Okay, you should see a box that allows you to share you have it. Yes, that there yet. It is okay. This is not the right folder this is a lot more than I intended to share. Let's see. Let's go back. You slideshow. Does anybody know offhand how to do the slide.

Kristen Doner

I don't but if you wanted to show the individual jpegs by clicking on them one at a time. That's fine. Okay. You figured out. Wonderful. So this, this is all work based on my method of digital gesture capture. Basically I'm scanning a gesture. And in this case, I've made the gesture into a couple of different forms that I call ferns. They're, they're not a literal representation it's more just an impression of a bird. And I'm going to show you a picture of what I had of what I had a bit on a particular day. And so I turned these shapes into objects, and then the objects become part of a composition, and the composition gets more and more complex and layered. And sometimes I even layer the compositions on top of each other and result in something completely different. So that's really all I had to share today.

Kristen Doner

And let me see. Now how do I stop this. I'll go down to the bottom again. Wonderful. I would love feedback. You're definitely belong here, Kristen. Thank you. Your work is lovely on your, your gestures work so well with the theme of counterpoint. You have some things that are, you know, horizontal.

Kristen Doner

You have different textures that are going there. And of course layers. I think they're wonderful. Thank you. Anyone else want to comment or add to the chat. Feel free. Okay, I guess we're all set. Karen, did you want to say something. Just a quick question. When you say their gestures. Are you using sort of free form gesture on a tablet or bringing in drawings or paintings or. No, I'm literally using a scanner, so I take my hands and make a gesture on a scanner. And then I lift different shapes from the scan. Cool. Thank you for clarifying.

Kristen Doner

That's very interesting. That's because I don't know about this. You just take it for fun. This is what I'm used to Tony, how are you doing? You're muted.

Looks like you're, yeah, there he is. Yes, sorry, and I was rotation locked too. So here we are, hopefully. Do we have a horizontal view going on? Yes. I want to walk away a little bit, give everybody a sense of perspective of where we are. So we're in the Arts and Sciences Building at Kingsborough Community College. Welcome. Welcome.

Tommy Mintz

This is the Kingsborough Art Museum, which is a wonderful large space that right now has a piece. I might just switch my camera here just to do this a better view. Let's see. Can I just switch camera? Yeah, there we go. So we see this. Okay. So this is Clive Holden work, Un-American, Unfamous, which I think actually is a wonderful counterpoint in it, you know, visually. What he's doing is he gathered images that were taken by people here in Brooklyn of sort of faces that Clive thought were the right face to include in this idea of un-American, unfamous. And he has this whole statement. Here that we put up. So the idea is, here it goes again. There's a repeating set of images in a never the same way. The images are iterated through a series of overlays, scratchings, paintings, and other sort of interruptions, if you will, the way it's displayed here is we have three short throw projectors going on to this 45 foot by five foot piece of rear projection material.

Tommy Mintz

And yeah, viewers get to walk around it, actually. And when we're walking, let's see if you can see this. When we're walking, we sort of counterpoint maybe with it, you know, physically. Let me see if I could find where my shirt is. The shadow is again here, physically. So there's an interesting, that's, that's, those are my legs sort of interrupting this projector here. And it's, it's path to this screen. So thank you for allowing me to finagle this to work. I appreciate everybody's patience in getting my iPad connected and, and the Wi-Fi took longer than I expected. I hope it was worth getting to see this live installation that you know, exists only in this singular time and place, which is, I think, a fun thing. Tommy, thank you for sharing that. Tell me, is it all black and white or is there any color involved?

Tommy Mintz

So there's color images in the group here. Absolutely. So there's, I think there's 19 pictures and of them, many of them are older, but some of them, and we have this selection here, there's this exterior facing wall and you can see, some of the pictures that are being intermixed are indeed color. So we have this series of posters that we generated as well to accompany the exhibition that have, I think it's, it says three times, this is 15 different ones. You can see that most of them are black and white. Oh, here's a color one. Just because they're older and then some of them are newer. He chose, you know, sort of very digital camera feeling.

Tommy Mintz

Sort of image as well. So here's the second part of the installation on the outer wall here. So we have a sculpture garden. Think about that. Okay, so I'll come back to the main piece. Any other questions about this? Thanks. I mean, I don't mean to sort of monopolize time or the conversation, but I did want to share this. So thank you. Tommy?

Tommy Mintz

Yeah, Michael, hi. Good to see Clive's work. I love Clive's work. I love the sense of his algorithmic use of time and the never repeating. What I'm really curious about, because I'm only seeing this, you know, from your screen's perspective, what's the scale like? How does that make you feel in terms of interacting with the work?

Tommy Mintz

Okay. So, Sorry, I was muted on that. So it's really big, right? And actually, Clive told me that he drove a bus, you know, and this is the length of a bus. So if you want to think about that sort of as a, you know, context, you know, they can sort of, you know, physically sort of think of a situate yourself and it's the size of a bus, one of those Greyhound buses long of images. So yeah, it's larger than life.

Tommy Mintz

So yeah, it's larger than life. I'm going to start with the first one. That's awesome. I'm not sure. Tommy, did you get a chance to show us? I haven't seen me standing there, but I hope so. Tommy. Hi Renata. Hi. Good to see you. Are you, have your students seen the work? And if so, what was their response and how's the reaction been from your, your faculty colleagues there?

Tommy Mintz

Oh, it's, it's really positive. Everybody's, it's an impressive work. I mean, as Michael just said, it's hard to get a sense of the scale and the awe that it sort of creates, but it's a, you know, it's this thing that when you come upon it, there's a magic to it, you know, that I think is, is really, you know, you get a sense of it maybe from this size. This is the whole of the space.

Tommy Mintz

But yeah, it's been very positive. The students, I had students that worked on the, gathering of the images and choice of the images. Clive worked with my students and the archive, the library has an archive and we gathered images from the archive. Maybe not this one. This is a colleague who photographed this. And yeah, it's been very positively, people, people have responded very positively to it, who attended the, the opening reception last week. And I think there's a critic coming at 430. So that's why I'm here today for this meeting. But, you know, I'm glad that, I mean, I was going to be home for the Zoom. But yeah, no, it's fun to share this, right? I mean, I'm glad, I'm really glad that I could share this with you guys also because, and I should, I was waiting to talk about this after the recording ends.

Tommy Mintz

We have a, this space for an expressionism show next summer that I intend to install this piece again. And then situate the rest of the show on all this wall space that is currently empty. And I'll, I'll secure this kind of, you know, projector situation. I'll harden that so people could walk all around it. But this is a giant beautiful space that, and I think everybody who's on this Zoom live is, you know, more than welcome to consider, you know, what work you'd want to have considered to be put in to expressionism. In this space. Brooklyn, 2024. So this is 42 feet, I think, long, each wall. And normally there's a lot of sunlight coming in, but we have it blocked off. I think we'll keep it dark for tech specialism, 24, same light. So thank you for sharing again, Tommy.

Tommy Mintz

It's phenomenal. I can only imagine being there in person, what it must be like. This tech specialism, 24, you're talking about, is there a way to contact you if people are interested in being a part of it? Yeah. So what I'm doing right now is I'm working on, you're welcome to come in. Yeah, it's open. You can walk close to it if you want. Sorry, there's a cool kid here.

Tommy Mintz

I'm working with curators right now. Sort of gathering sort of names off the tech specialism website, you know? And yeah, if anybody's interested, you know, email me at this point. I mean, we're going to send out sort of an announcement, a more formal announcement, hopefully later this month. I'm just done with this. I'm just getting my head around next year. But yeah, later this month, you can expect me to post something, you know, more formal to the tech specialism.

Tommy Mintz

Yeah. So I'm going to be doing a lot of the chat on Instagram that we have going and ask people to just contact me. I'll have a contact, you know, specifically, I think, for the show that I'll put together. But yeah, I'm happy to correspond with anybody, you know, if you have ideas about this. You know, and I think this show has been, here's a scale. We just pushed some, you know, sort of plinths to the corner. You get a sense of how tall our walls are. I think 14 feet. So we could have nice vertical pieces here. I have now 3.5. I have two projectors. Actually, I have four projectors. I have a couple screens that are going to be freestanding. I'd like to think about sculpture as well, because it is a big space.

Tommy Mintz

So anyway, I'm sorry to, once again, I don't mean to apologize. No apologies. I didn't mean to take over at the end of the meeting, but I'm really excited by this piece and I'm glad to share. Yeah, post your email address in the chat. Okay, I will. Sounds great. All right, we still have time left. And we could... If someone's changed his or her mind and would like to present, please say so.

Tommy Mintz

If not, if you have any questions for any of the presenters today, we can entertain that for a bit. Does anyone have any questions to pose? Or comments, additional comments? Because we didn't have an awful lot of time between presentations. So if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them in the chat. Ooh, the uncomfortable silence.

Tommy Mintz

Yeah, I had a question for Stephen. And, you know, I guess I'm kind of curious, is, you know, if there's like a chicken and egg story to the book, whether the art preceded or whether it was... Yeah. You know, you talked about the story and then you did illustrations. And I'm kind of like with what Renata was asking about in terms of kind of misseeing the work a little bit larger to get a little more detail. But putting that aside, I was just kind of curious where the art and the story kind of play with each other.

Tommy Mintz

I like to think... Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a little bit unique in that respect. The art always comes first. Let's say virtually always. And the story begins to emerge as the artwork comes together. And thank you for wanting to see it larger. Have you published any of the stories, Stephen? I think the best answer is no at this point. Imminent.

Tommy Mintz

So I have seven books worth. They're all about 135 pages each. And perhaps I'm too obsessed with perfection. Yeah. Well, hopefully that won't make you stop the publication soon. No, thank you for that. Yes. Is that a hand up, Karen? Or is that your mouse? Okay. All right. Any other comments, questions?

Tommy Mintz

I guess I'm thinking a little bit about what Tommy said about the show in 2024. And... When we did the show in Southampton, I know that a lot of the artists who weren't in the U.S. Sent work that was on a screen, that there was a kind of film put together of animated work and still work. So are you considering doing that again?

Tommy Mintz

Yes. So what Renato and I'm hoping to do is on this side wall here, there's a freestand. And it's a kind of a standing wall that right now has the artist statement. That'll have four screens together, you know, four panels tiled that we could have work go across or be, you know, sort of arrayed in a grid on. And maybe both, actually, and have some sort of loop that would incorporate animation, still work, you know, in different relationships, maybe algorithmically placed. I don't know if we have AI curation yet.

Tommy Mintz

But yeah, that's where I'm planning on having a big screen panel for exactly that. But also I'm having, I'm planning on having some tables or places to sit with screens and keyboards for people who have interact or mice or whatever kind of, I'm going to talk to artists, you know, what's needed. But, you know, we can talk about it. You know, do you want to have some sort of interface?

Tommy Mintz

Great. You know, it could be on screen, though, absolutely. Just an animation or a... Yeah. A still image that's digital, just pure digital, for sure. Yeah, let it, you know, we have plenty of time for this to percolate, come up with ideas. So. Thank you. Thanks a lot. You're welcome. Yeah, what an opportunity.

Tommy Mintz

Any other comments or questions? I guess not. Well, I have something I wanted to talk about, and I know Michael does as well. Yeah. So, first of all, if you're not aware, there is a virtual co-working workshop, if you will, on Zoom every Tuesday at noon Eastern Standard Time. We've had three sessions already, and I think they've proved to be very, very helpful. I know for me and others I've spoken to. It allows us to focus on the work that we're doing. It allows us to work on what we want to work on. It allows us to connect with one another in a way that we can't as well in a large group.

Tommy Mintz

It's very often a global experience. The last session we had, we had someone from Argentina come that we had, I don't think has come here at all to our Zoom. And we also find that sometimes we become inspired by the work of others. Yeah. So, we want to make sure that we're getting as much information as we can and at the same time have that opportunity to help people go out of their power room to work on work that they want to do. So, we want to make sure that we're getting as much information as we can and at the same time have that opportunity to help people go out of their power room to work on work that they want to do. So, we want to make sure that we're getting as much information as we can and at the same time have that opportunity to help people go out of their power room to work on work that they want to do.

Tommy Mintz

So, we want to make sure that we're getting as much information as we can and at the same time have that opportunity to help people go out of their power room to work on work that they want to do. Done. And that can either be done verbally, or if you want to share your screen and show us what you're working on. So it's proved to be, I think, a very, very productive session.

Tommy Mintz

And I can't say enough about it. And many thanks to Cynthia Beth Rubin, who mentioned the idea and asked me if I would join her in running it. And so we are doing it and enjoying it. So if you have any questions about the co-working, and you don't have to be there every week, it's just what works for you. Any questions or comments about the co-working? Is there a Zoom link, a different link or something in order to attend? Pretty much, Cynthia sends out, Cynthia Beth Rubin sends out a link to register.

Tommy Mintz

And that's usually on Facebook, on Instagram, or if you're not on the email list of the people who first came to the co-working, we could add you, Michael, if you'd like that. So yes, the idea is to register first, and then you'll get the link. And it's pretty much going to be the same link. It's going to be, I guess, a repeating meeting. So that would be the same link, wouldn't it, Michael? Yeah, I would guess so. Yeah. So...

Tommy Mintz

Look out for it on Facebook or Instagram. Any other questions about it? I have a question. I very much enjoyed being part of the group. And I'm about to put it up, what I did on Venmo, as Cynthia Beth Rubin suggested. Do I, and I didn't want it exposed to the public, so I can put it on private. But do I... Right to her. And then she'll notify the people who were involved? Is that how it's going to work? Yes, I think that probably would work best. Yeah. Okay. Great. I'm going to do that today. Yeah, looking forward to see what you worked on. I think you're working in stop motion? Yeah, I was doing a stop motion and blue screen.

Tommy Mintz

Yeah. Looking forward to seeing it. Okay. Thank you for sharing. I have a comment. For Michael, I missed the first notice that came in from Cynthia, because the subject is Zoom. It just comes in on my email, just Zoom. That's it. And it wasn't until I realized, oh, it's you guys sending me that stuff. It ended up in my junk folder. So watch for just Zoom, Michael. It comes in. Yes. Yeah, that's a good advice. I regularly check, junk mail.

Tommy Mintz

Unfortunately, things go there and you miss out. Any other questions about the virtual co-working? We certainly hope to see some of you there. And that'll be another great session, I hope. Michael, would you like to speak next? Sure. And I may also ask Granada to speak as well. Sure. But next, Michael, I'm going to ask you to speak. Okay. We're going to see we're going to see this month. The September salon meeting.

Tommy Mintz

We're going to probably split it into two halves. I'm not sure if the time will be exactly in half. But Renata and I had spoken a couple months ago about letting the group in some sense take stock of where we are today. But we're going to things are going to get better. To look at how we've evolved during the initial stages of the pandemic when this kind of took took root two years ago or so now and where we might want to go forward are there things that we haven't tried yet are there are there needs in the group that we haven't maybe talked about yet and so I think we wanted to give the group a chance to look at where we're at where we could be going and maybe look at how we might integrate things that we haven't done yet moving forward so I my feeling was I wanted to tap the collective creativity of this group you know we're still here and the things that have fed us to want to keep coming I'm hoping is still there but maybe there are things that have been percolating underneath the surface that there might be new things we could try and what that might be I don't know and so and so I think this is kind of a call to the group to say think about think about what expressionism can mean moving forward build on the things that we have all been really tapped into and that we found nourishment from as creative artists and what might that look like moving forward and I and since Renata was kind of the right way to see this was in this team as this new key into this process that we're actually with these questions is this really good idea that we're working on this because we're never really those things have been real there's no keep going he's going to know what's going on with this right there's no better way to see this or this is what's going to come out of this but we're going to see what's going to come out of this we're going to see what's going to come out of this we're going to see what's going to come out of this we're going to see what's going to come out of this we're going to see what's going to come out of this we're going to see what's going to come out of this we're going to see what's going to come out of this we're going to see what's going to come out of this We don't want to dominate this, have discussion dominate.

Tommy Mintz

Sorry, I have somebody cutting wood outside my window. Maybe I better mute myself. And I think Michael said it really well. No, you're fine. You're fine. We're not hearing that. Okay, great. We don't hear. Okay. Okay, so to have open mic is simply what we do when we offer time for people to share their work without a specific theme.

Tommy Mintz

And taking stock, as Michael said, is where are we at now and where could we be going? Particularly for me, it was with the mind of exhibition opportunities. I feel that most visual artists really want. To exhibit. They really want to be seen. They really want their work to reach a wider audience. And it's very exciting to hear about Tommy's project for 2024.

Tommy Mintz

So that's the kind of thing that we can brainstorm at the meeting. Because I really do believe that artists are looking for venues, are looking for opportunities. And we're very strong as a group to help each other. People are very. Very inclusive here. And I just hope that you can all make it. September 7th is a Thursday at 12 noon Eastern time.

Tommy Mintz

Thank you, Renata and Michael. One other thing I wanted to mention is art on the Internet, AOL, which is on Twitter, Twitter, or shall we call it X, had posted a master class recording of a collaboration between Martin Grasser, who is a generative artist, and Vera Molnar, who's the trailblazer of generative generative art, and she's certainly a computer art pioneer.

Tommy Mintz

They did a collaboration together and involving text, in particular, the letters N, F, and T. And Molnar signed the book that was made from this collaboration, and it was auctioned. It was a Dutch auction. Sotheby's the book sold out the starting bid was 20 eth for one book and it sold out immediately and I posted right now in the chat the YouTube link to the talk and mostly of course unfortunately vera is not there but martin grasser is there and he will talk about and show you the work that they came up with together it's a wonderful video to see so that is my final comment we're at 125 michael yep yep do we want to end the recording and begin the after party probably fine you want to do it that way that's fine anyone who doesn't understand the after party it's where we get together as colin says to talk about Techspressionism where we're going come up with a theme and if we don't come up with a theme to go with taking stock we certainly can have that theme for us in october so having said that I think michael we're ready to conclude the recording all right sounds good five four three two and one