Catching up with the NYC artworld from a beach bungalow in Thailand – discussions with artists via Jerry Saltz [art critic] on Facebook, and Edward Winkleman’s blog [gallerist]

Ten years ago as I finished my last year of art school, I realized that to ‘make it’ as an artist, whatever that meant, I had to move to New York City.  And a few years later, I did, though I’d never even visited before.

I did a few things right once I got there: worked with artists and photographers in the gallery-filled Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea, went to museums and openings all over town, lived in the hipster neighborhood of South Williamsburg in Brooklyn.

And I did a lot wrong: didn’t make an effort to meet other artists, didn’t make any memorable work in the claustrophobic apartment I shared with two tense roommates, a place we’d rented sight unseen, where bars sliced up the view from our bedroom windows and fat cockroaches wandered our halls.

But really, I wanted to be somewhere else. Not back in the midwest with my family, but somewhere different, somewhere outside the Americas. I’d studied and worked in Europe and wanted to go back there for more. I dreamed of going to Morocco. Was intrigued by Asia.

But New York was where I was supposed to be. That was the only place to make it, went the refrain in my head. Then I lost my job in Chelsea after two planes hit two buildings downtown, and along with thousands of others I walked down Manhattan over the Williamsburg bridge to my home, which I now knew could never be home again.

I knew my future lay elsewhere, was finally able to admit that I’d never really been interested in climbing the Artworld Ladder. It’s a rat-race like any other, starting with University –> to Group shows –> to Solo shows –> to Gallery representation –> to Museum shows and Retrospectives and if you’re lucky, a spot in the art history books.

There are a lot of rules and assumptions along the way, and the most fundamental is that you live where the biggest art scenes are.  Right now, that’s London, Berlin, New York and Beijing.  But I’m not interested in following rules if they don’t match my priorities, and don’t plan to live full-time in any of those places.

So where’s my future? Eventually it’ll be in many places, but for now it’s on the internet, where I can talk to artists in New York and Melbourne and Shanghai, artists I might never meet otherwise. Best of all, thanks to Google Translate, I can communicate with people in dozens of languages that I can’t even speak – yet.  It’s the next-best thing to Esperanto.

And best of all, it lets me work from different studios, anywhere in the world.

[Click to see photos of past studios here]

Gouache, Acrylic and Ink on handmade paper

Last week my sister and I were distracted by a TV ad as we rode the skytrain back to our hotel. Our car was cool and we relaxed after a hot afternoon visiting Bangkok’s Old City. We shared seats with locals from all over Thailand, in a range of sizes, shapes and shades: a few Isaan girls from the Northeast, wearing miniskirts and spaghetti string tanktops on their way to work in girlie bars; southerners who showed South Asian traces in their features; and Chinese-Thais from the city’s merchant class.

The TVs held everyone’s attention; no one in the car spoke as an ad extolled the virtues of an expensive whitening cream. On a half-dozen screens light radiated from the fingertip of a Eurasian model who leaned leggily against a heavenly background.

“Why do all the people on TV here look the same?” my sister asked, “when there are so many different kinds of Thais?”

Whitening creams are everywhere in Southeast Asia- there are even whitening deodorants.

But the TV ad we saw was nothing compared to one I saw the next day. It shows you how to get an engagement ring in a single week: use Pond’s Flawless White[ning] Cream, work as a painter’s model, and you’ll seduce a guy as he mixes in more and more white with your flesh tones.

Watch the ad Here.

Entry to The Artists Place, the studio where I’m currently working in Bangkok

Cynthia Morris at Original Impulse recently interviewed me about how I manage to live this crazy creative life that I do. We talk about paper, people, places, and more.  ”Take a tea break,” she says, “and join the conversation below”.

You can listen to the audio interview here.

Holiday Hangover, cyanotype photogram on velvet from the Workaholics series. Click image to see more.

Two weeks ago I hopped in a car for the 12-hour drive from Sydney to Brisbane,

spent a day at the Asia Pacific Triennial in Queensland,

flew up to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

caught a train to the seedy town of Hat Yai, Thailand,

then another to Bangkok for meetings with my editor and creative friends,

and for the past week I’ve been offline to take my sister to our first and last Full Moon party ever, on the infamous Thai island of Koh Phangan.

Back to blogging and all the rest in a few days….

Yesterday I thumbed through pages of vintage photos from China, taken by the Australian traveler/writer/photographer G.E. Morrison, hoping to find photos of people making paper. There were no papermakers among his travel photos and the pictures of his servants, whose names were simply written “Boy 1″ and “Boy 2″ – though he was fluent in Chinese – but I did discover these blue kids on the streets of Beijing:

with a simple inscription on the back:

This print was a test on thin, uncoated paper. It was made with a glass negative, and the image had an amazing clarity impossible to duplicate with digital prints. I held it between my fingers and wondered how many other photos of these street kids went into the bin. The photographer would have selected the best print to reproduce in much more expensive black-and-white.

For that photographer this print was just testing skin tones of local street urchins, but for me, a century later on another continent, it was an inspiration.

Cyanotype Photogram of antacids on velvet from the Workaholics series

Here are some Alka-Seltzers and aspirin to take away any lingering effects from this weekend. For many it was  jam-packed with celebrations for Lunar New Year and Valentines day.

Today is yet another big holiday celebrated around the world: Mardi Gras. For Catholics, Mardi Gras is the last chance to live it up before the privations of Lent.  Spare a thought today – or another donation – for the survivors in Haiti who have had to cancel their biggest party of the year, the Mardi Gras festival Kanaval.

Scimitar earrings from Hanoi, handmade by a 5th-generation family of silversmiths

“Freedom” from the Workaholics series, Cyanotype Photogram on bamboo velvet, 2007

Post something political. Or intimate. Or threatening.

Birth control is all of these, to some people.

See that white rectangle with a bunch of dark circles inside? Yeah, the one that looks like an Alka-Seltzer tablet floating up in a glass with bubbles trailing off. Most modern women have had a stash of these in their medicine cabinets.  Once or twice.

I posted a link to this photogram on Twitter and pissed off some “followers”. They probably wouldn’t have cared for this Patpong Weekend either.

Original Photo: New Orleans 2002, Printed 2003. Cyanotype on cold press paper
Light filters through an apothecary’s window display of abandoned medical panaceas

There are few sensations as exhilarating as a clean slate. Beginnings are fumbles in the dark, full of possibilities and pitfalls. Whether we’re a middle-aged man falling for an ingenue, a traveler landing in a brand new city, or a woman besotted with babies, we’re all attracted to the same thing: a fresh start.

Artists fall for new materials in the same way.

While sorting through boxes from the past, I rediscovered my first cyanotypes from 2003, made shortly before I moved to Asia. As I sifted through these prints on French, English and Indian cotton papers, memories come flooding back:

* Late nights printing with halogen and other lights, experimenting with angles and distance, melting negatives, reversing others, and overexposing most of the prints that made it that far.

* Entire afternoons spent at Kinko’s making transparent negatives: enlarging, inverting and adjusting contrast on their copy machines.

* Days devoted to printing in Boston’s feeble spring sunlight.

The images are from my travels through the UK, Cuba, Haiti, Morocco and more. Most of my experiments I destroyed, and some sold to casual collectors.

Click here to see the few early cyanotypes that made the final cut.

A brand new bridge at the Trang An caves, Vietnam

August 2008, Ninh Binh:

It’s my first time in Vietnam and I’m on a mission to talk to as many artists and galleries as I can for the website Gallery Cyclo [still a work in progress]. But I’m tired. I’ve been hassled in Saigon, hustled in Hoi An, and had a moto driver try to mug me on a beautiful night in the ex-DMZ city of Danang. My knees and palms are still covered in scabs from jumping off his motorbike to keep my camera – and everything else – out of his hands.

Looking for a respite from the big cities, I take a few days off from artists and focus on a new photo series. I climb limestone karsts and pant my way into pagodas at the top. Visit a Chinese-style Catholic cathedral made famous by one of my favorite writers. A hotel receptionist hands me a map and says, “You should see these caves at Trang An, they’re not in the Lonely Planet.” Always a recommendation to follow.

My guide and I hop into a rickety wooden boat and are soon dodging stalactites in a massive inland lagoon. The caves are truly spectacular, and are unlike anywhere else I’ve been before or since.

More photos and descriptions over at ThingsAsian.