My Certain Fate,
a group show I've put together for Pharmaka, opens May 14, 2009. This is the third in a continuing series of posts that focuses on the exhibition.
KALX FM DJ and blogger Heidi De Vries, whose writing and record spinning I really enjoy, contributed this essay for the catalog:
Perhaps it was my destiny that I would fall deeply in love with both art and music. After all, the first piece of art that ever made an impression on me was Picasso’s wonderful Three Musicians, a reproduction of which hung over our small piano in my childhood home in Orange, California. The painting shows one man playing a clarinet, the next a guitar, and the third holding a sheet of music. When I got tired of practicing my piano scales I would run my fingers over the keys and gaze up at the print, attempting to accompany the cheerful song I could imagine those fellows playing.
It was during my teenage years though that my current obsessions would really take hold. That was when, after seven years at a private Lutheran school, my transfer to a public junior high triggered the realization for me that there was a vast musical life outside of Contemporary Christian Music. Bands like Camper Van Beethoven and the Pixies were getting extensive radio play even in Orange, and KROQ quickly filled in some major gaps in my education. It was also about this time that I started making regular trips to the Getty Villa in Malibu to visit Van Gogh’s Irises and the museum’s amazing collection of classical statues, as well as their special exhibitions of photography by André Kertész and Man Ray. The more I looked, the more I wanted to see.
And then I started making mix tapes. The first one was for a crush, of course, a boy to whom I found myself unable to speak due to a crippling case of shyness. However, I was convinced I would be successful in winning his heart if I just let other people’s lyrics do the talking for me. To this day such lust has inspired some of my best work, but whether I'm making a mix for a friend or stringing together tracks for an unknown audience at my DJ gig the real motivation remains my passion for the music. In this way a mix is often intensely personal, a way of sharing myself.
I put a lot of thought into my mixes and like to experiment with combining very different genres into a (hopefully) cohesive flow. I notice when a curator takes a similar approach in an exhibition, and I get a thrill when he or she flaunts expectations to put pieces in a sequence that then causes the works to speak to each other in a new way. Inevitably I bring my own history to my interpretations too. Just as a mix tape is going to say something different to each person who hears it no matter what the intention of the creator, so it is with art.
It can be hard to articulate exactly why a certain song, a particular work of art can suddenly reach out and grab me, but I certainly know what it feels like when it does. Sometimes I can point to that connection back to a childhood memory or an old love that creates an immediate frisson. Other times it takes a few tries before something starts to grow on me. Above all I keep my eyes and ears open, and then make sure I pass along the good stuff.
