Pics: Artist In LaBussoBox July, '07, Reno

Artist in LaBussaBox

I stayed at each place for at least one week and as long as four weeks. LaBussola was an art boutique in Reno. I drew the whole time and tried to communicate thru the glass. I only got one request for a strip show.

Vid: A Morning, early @ Cyber Infusion before they opened up. Mmm Coffee

Vid: Fishbowl moment on Sunset, @Living Room

It's art because I let myself obsess with it. Social Media is my art.
It's a fishbowl because online all the time means constant transparency and reflection. ~AFB

TOMORROW NITE! Feb. 8th, and free. Come have a beer, hear me talk about this art project. We're gonna watch some YouTube videos from it too. I live in public spaces and blog about it. I also clean windows.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=189430621080968

Some NadaDada Ranting

NadaDada Motel brings to light the transient nature of art making. We invite the public in and ask that an audience witnesses actions taken by the artists and observers as well. The art is all of us.

The days of movements in which adherents take to artmaking in a similar vain, even in the case of the Dada movement, artists were in agreement about how the work they made looked, or at least how it encountered the world around it.

There were statements circulated like the much revered "art for art's sake" in which public was asked, in the form of suspension of disbelief ideals shaped by the idea that Art is pure and of-itself. Nothing from the world outside of the Artworld was to intrude on the content of art made. Art wanted to stand on its own and did. It was more and more treated as something to be revered, believed, admired, admonished, but something that we were to believe meant something in its own right. It sat to be thought of and thought about–worshiped.

PostModernism came after that. Artists were exercising their right to do nothing–nada. Artists have been showing over and over, time and again that Art just doesn't matter, admonishing that we need to lower-case the word: art.

closer to outsiders, nomads, gypsies–or ask to be seen this way at least. Each artist is one's own island, in PostModern style, we alienate ourselves much more than they used to. The isolation, the despondent artist, a type most rehashed. Nihilism is the draw for many, rabid individualism is the order of the day as far as artists in their style and mindset, still chasing the undone, the never-seen before. But artists following tides will inevitably make what they're doing mostly into nothing. These are the times.

We enjoy our celabate styles and philosophies, but a parody often times of what we 'want' to do. I should say 'we'. Some artists parody other artists on purpose, replicating things already done, maybe with a twist, maybe no twist at all, reproductions in their own medium. recyclists I guess.

In the case of these historical groups of artists, such as Picasso and his residence at Bateau-lavoir, living and partying together, these artists created a lot and today we take over hotels and motels. We live together for a week. The experience is perpetuated thru art.

Collaboration becomes more and more frequent until we're all insanely intertwined in our work, this is work that weaves in and out of different modes of making and taking. There will be differences.

Chad Sorg's Artist Bio

(photo by Lauren Elizabeth Randalph)

"Artists were the original self-promoters." Chad Sorg uses this line to inspire. Focus on marketing in the artworld has allowed him to assist artists with their self-promotion as so many creatives shy away from that area.

 Sorg has practiced art in the areas of painting, drawing, photography, video and performance, however community involvement through authoring, curation, design and publicity has played a very big part in his rise to notoriety. SorgSorg.org

One of Sorg's major projects was assuming the role of owner/director of BlueLyon Gallery, an exhibition space that shaped the current face of Reno's art scene. While there, he helped introduce hundreds of artists to the practice of gallery involvement and exposure. XXXPosed was the gallery's longest running show (5 years) and it featured adult entertainers who modeled for artists. The name had been changed to Bleulion Gallery by the time it was laid to rest in 2005.

NadaDada Motel was brought to life in 2007 when Sorg and 5 other artists co-founded the event. The DIY (do it yourself) event, with it's motto "Get a Room, Make a Show" has attracted involvement from over 300 artists and performers of all disciplines. Artists from five states have exhibited. Thousands of visitors have attended these multi-exhibition events in motel rooms. The New York Times came to Reno to write a feature story about the event in June of 2009, "Shag Carpet".

Another of Sorg's artistic projects commencing that same year was Artist Fishbowl. Since 2007, the artist has been living in display windows or public places across the country from one to four weeks. During his stay, he blogs and creates art. Live streaming and videos are the focus of his audience involved activities. Interviewing other artists and promoting them through social media was carried out in return for lunch, beer and conversation. The artist says it was a "return to the basics of barter and capitalism" and calls the first 4 years Chapter 1. Social Media became his artform and the blog itself is becoming more focused on artists of all kinds. ArtistFishbowl.com

Sorg has been painting mixed media abstractions and portraiture since 1993 and doesn't plan to abandon his first love. With national notoriety under his belt and with his work in many private and public collections, Chad Sorg is poised for a lasting and multi-faceted career in the artworld. Community and audience are one to Sorg. His message is "Promoting others is the best way to promote yourself.

Article: Goldwell Open Air Museum (originally published on NVtoday.com)

Most ghost towns cannot guarantee that you’ll see any actual ghosts, but if you were at the site of Rhyolite Nevada, you could hang out with more than a dozen of them, oh yeah–there’s also a giant nude woman!

Situated at the upper end of the Mojave Desert, overlooking the stunning Amargosa Valley, you’ll find the Goldwell Open Air Museum. It’s next to Rhyolite, a heavily photographed ghost town with a population of zero and just a few miles from Beatty, a town of 1000 and known as “Nevada’s Gateway to Death Valley”. This lonely art destination is itself unpopulated, but that might change very soon.

The inanimate occupants, ghostly or nude, belong to Goldwell’s collection of seven outdoor public sculptures, with more to come. Surrounded by the sculptures, a small house is being used as a visitor’s center. These and a more distantly placed red barn occupy 15 acres of desolate land that most viewers would find hard to believe constitute a museum. The unassuming red barn is the key to Goldwell’s future; the sculpture park is its link to the past.

More than twenty years ago, a Polish-born Belgian artist named Albert Szukalski, who died in 2000, created The Last Supper, on location in Rhyolite. The ghostly 3 dimensional figures render Leonardo DaVinci’s fresco of the same name in thick, white, hollowed, fiberglass form. The life-sized ghosts of Jesus and his disciples aligned on a long platform now greet visitors. Backdrop to the ghosts is a beautiful expanse of open desert, eventually dropping down past sea level into Death Valley. If a traveler times it right, he can witness the sunset over the valley of death and stand in the shadow of Jesus.

Other sculptures on view are composed of rust-covered steel, aging wood, chrome car bumpers, bicycles, granite and cinderblocks; the last material making up Lady Desert, the previously mentioned nude woman, which stands 25 feet tall. All sculpture present was created by Belgian artist friends of Szukalski, except for one piece, created by Beatty resident and ornamental stone artisan David Spicer.

Through funding and donations, private and public, this 501(c)3 non-profit organization has been able to preserve and restore these works but a central mission for the group has been to build itself into a site that will house art studios, allowing visiting artists to create in isolation.

The barn, or at least the spot it’s on, will eventually become an artist residency program, which means that artists will soon be living in this inspiring location on a very part time basis. Residencies will range from a couple weeks to several months.

“Artist communities function as research and development labs for the arts,” said Museum president, Charles Morgan. “They provide artists with the opportunity to focus on creating new work by providing dedicated time and space for making art and the opportunity to interact with other artists.”

Programs similar nationally are the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sonoma County, the Bemis Center in Omaha, and Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts in Tennessee.

Of Goldwell’s isolation, the museum’s secretary-treasurer, Suzanne Hackett-Morgan explains, “we feel it’s a content rich environment; 15 miles away is Death Valley as well as the Amargosa Dune.”

Hackett-Morgan, who’s husband is Goldwell president Charles Morgan, is happy to be walking away from her six-figure day job in June for a more full-time position serving the museum. “$1-3million is our projected goal needed to carry out our 3 phase plan, which includes 3-5 open studio spaces with residencies attached and a more permanent, ADA compliant, visitors center. Also in the works, but sooner, we plan to have Goldwell operating as a wireless hotspot, so visitors can pull up and download video podcasts explaining some details.” Says Hacket-Morgan, “It’s not just another roadside attraction!”

Destination Art, a guide to 200 art sites is a book published last December featuring some of the world’s most interesting places to view art. Included in the book is Goldwell as well as Michael Heizer's Double Negative and James Turrell's Roden Crater. Purchase of the book through Goldwell’s website will benefit the organization.

Travelers are always free to check out Goldwell at anytime of the day or year but are encouraged to go to http://www.goldwellmuseum.org/ to make sure the visitor’s center will be open. A video about the making of The Last Supper is available on the site as well.

Author: Chad Sorg

Oh Wow, This Guy Lives in A Display Window

I have to admit, this pisses me off. Not sure if you remember, but there's a science museum in Chicago that ran a contest to see who would live in their museum for one month. They paid $10,000. As it turns out, I never received word that I did not win. Contacting them, I found out that my proposal video and application paperwork had been misplaced; what can I do? Should I mope over the fact that I may have won that 10,000 for a job which I've got more experience than anyone else does in the country?

So here we are again, this guy is being sponsored by Downey to live in a display window. Great. I chose to do it all for free, infact, I subsisted on nothing. Why do I beat myself up?

Illustration by Sorg

NadaDada Freakin Bloody Fantastic

The Story of the Sucker Fish (relayed by my GF Darshan)

Sucker fishes,

all clinging, clinging to the rocks

the river would rush by, and they would just hold on tighter.

One sucker fish wanted to know why they always cling to the rocks; it is so tiring and so mundane.

Why can't they just let go?

The elder sucker fish said "we can't let go, we will be beat against the rocks and pounded to death."

"how do you know?" said the little sucker fish.

"We don't know, we just have always been this way."

One day the little sucker fish was so tired of clinging that he gave up and let go of the rock and he got bounced around and swept away by the river, but eventually the river widened out and became calm, and the little sucker fish met all sort of other fish and made great friends, and sometimes he would stay, and when he felt like it, he would let the river take him away on a new adventure. He would meet other sucker fishes clinging to rocks, and they would be afraid for his life, begging him to cling onto the rocks with them lest he be killed by the wild river but the little sucker fish had to be true to himself.

(from the preface to Richard Bach's "Illusions").

A Personal Story: Artistic Ambitions

I've always been an artist and in the beginning, intelligent adults all steered me away from being the kind of artist that Picasso and vanGogh were because it's almost impossible to make a living this way. I knew that to be a 'fine artist' was to be able to do just exactly as you want–on canvas–and that sounded like the greatest achievement a person could ever attain. A big lesson for me that took nearly 3 decades to start understanding was that to be a Fine Artist was an honor bestowed upon you. The people give you this honor; you don't just claim it.

There's much more to a career than the stuff that you make and I learned that it's all the other stuff that gets you to a position like Fine Artist. I've been told that those doing what I wanna' do spend only 20% of their time making art and the rest is the schmoozing, networking and hustling.

Picasso and vanGogh are two excellent examples of artist to contrast between because one became wealthy very early in his life and the other shot himself, penniless, missing an ear and residing in a mental institution. I can't say which life story I love more because I've always been a fan of high drama.

Yes, times have changed, as they always do, and these days it's a different job to sell your art than it was in Picasso's time or in vanGogh's. Both life stories certainly featured high drama, but the pattern of my life more closely resembles Picasso's. I'm happy about that.

One of the many soundbites I've adapted into my life is this one: It's not impossible to make a living as an artist, it's just very difficult.

This image is of a painting I made 3 days after Tyson bit off Holyfield's ear. I made the painting in hopes to sell Tshirts of it, but I didn't know how to raise the money to make the shirts to make the money. I still have the canvas.

I Can't Escape Worry, Even In My Dreams

So, this morning, I woke up from this dream where I was apparently doing some kind of painting job for this rich lady. I remember talking to her and I had gotten there late, I think, and I was asking her for Qtips(!!) haha..

But she was obviously, not happy with me, even though I'm sure I was doing good art, I just lulled too much for her.

Yeah, that's the kind of dreams I usually have. They reflect my real life. They're ones about not fulfilling my obligations to others' expectations and then losing their respect over it–just like real life.

My waking dream is of the day when they're beating MY door down and are happy to wait for me based on the quality of art I can produce for them.

NadaDada Motel needs Bloggers

Bloggers!!!! Talk us up please! - suggested talking points:

•Our transparent style of organization (online)
•New York Times article and its focus on the historical building(s) in Reno
•No central organizational body, non-profit or otherwise •'No Judge, No Jury'
•Anarchy or 'chaos' if you prefer
•Personal anecdotes from the event
•Over 300 creatives participating so far and over 4000 visitors, so far
•Moon Pies

Goggle NadaDada Motel to see the New York Times article (Shag Carpet) and extensive coverage in other media as well. Our blog network features many videos and content too.

Photos, Random Slideshow from NadaDadaDingDong.net

NadaDada is 3rd weekend of June (from NadaDadaDingDong.net) These photos are from blog network where artists and participants are encouraged to upload various art and info concerning the show. Go to the blog network, have a look around, Join if you want.
Find more photos like this on NadaDadaDingDong.net