A brief conversation about art ideas.

Unlicensed Therapist consisted of creating a venue dedicated to conversation.

In 2001, my collaborator and I produced a website that explained how unlicensed therapy differed from licensed therapy. Our philosophy and services were also detailed on the website. In addition to the website, we created an office space in San Francisco’s Mission district. We were operating with paying clients until we received a letter from the Board of Behavioral Sciences informing us that we were not allowed to practice unlicensed therapy without having a license.

This past spring I was asked to revive Unlicensded Therapist as part of an exhibition called Amateurs at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. A small office was constructed in the gallery. During the opening I conducted sessions of varying lengths. I also held open hours for drop-in sessions and took appointments.

Unlicensed Therapist Office, 2008. Installation view.

Letter From Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2001.

An exhibition created during a six-week residency at the Arizona State University Art Museum.

I was invited to do an exhibition and residency at the ASU Art Museum as part of their “Social Studies” initiative. I was given a 2200 square foot museum gallery, some money and support. The exhibition began with an empty gallery that was open to the public. Over the course of my six-week stay I did a variety of projects, several of which can be found below.

Gallery Decoration As Suggested By My Wife

On my first day in the gallery I set up a small office – a desk and some chairs- on an 8 x 8 foot platform on wheels. As I was settling in I noticed that museum goers would peer into the gallery, see me at my desk, and then walk away. There really was no indication – no walltext, no artwork- that they should enter the space. As a solution to this problem, I decorated a portion of the gallery. I contacted my wife, via Gmail Chat, and asked her to provide me with some decorating suggestions. I heeded her advice adding, paint, a mirror, two wind-chimes, a fish, some plants, a rug, and two chairs. I printed an enlarged version of our Gmail Chat and hung it alongside the suggested decor.

Jessie Smith in the ASU Art Museum’s Permanent Collection

Jessie Smith’s Selections From The Permanent Collection (installation view)

While I was Gmail-chatting with my wife a couple named Alastair and Jessie Smith approached my desk and told me that they were in Arizona for three weeks as part of a senior citizens tour from Canada. I briefly explained to them that my wife was giving me suggestions as to how to decorate a portion of the gallery. Jessie Smith suggested adding some paintings so I invited her to return in a few days’ time and choose some works from the museum’s permanent collection.

John Spiak, the museum’s curator, and I took Jessie through the permanent collection as she chose a selection of paintings and sculptures. We hung the work salon style, according to Jessie’s specifications. In addition, there was walltext with a paragraph of Jessie’s writing, as well as my own. We had a small opening for her show for her senior-citizens tour group. Several weeks later I added a video that showed Jessie going through the collection.

Docent

Docent

I enlisted the services of a mascot to act as a docent for my show. Disney-trained, my docent toured people through the exhibition using gestures and lots of physical contact – but no actual talking- to explain my work.

Stills from Other Artists’ Videos

I made myself available as an actor in other artists’ videos. My only stipulations were that I not have any aesthetic involvement and that I be able to show the videos as part of a larger collection of videos in which I appear.

ASU Art Museum Curator, John Spiak’s Office

In an effort to deal with certain pressures to “engage” and “interact” with museum visitors, I relocated the curator’s office into the exhibition space. Prior to moving John Spiak’s office, I photographed it incrementally in about 150 images. Along with the museum preparators, I used the photographs to recreate the space with near perfect accuracy. John worked in his office in the gallery for the duration of the exhibition (about eight weeks).

I am currently working on traveling John and his office to another institution. The long-term goal is to sell the entire office and its contents with the stipulation that whenever it is exhibited, John spends some period of time working out of the space.

Service-Works provided a monthly project grant. The amount of each month’s grant was determined by how much money I earned as a waiter (on a specific night) in a fine-dining restaurant in San Francisco.

Please click here to visit the Service-Works website

The Bay Area Leisure Foundation provides grants to people living and working in the Bay Area.

In response to an exhibition about leisure I created a foundation that awards $500 leisure grants to people living and working in the Bay Area. I created a website, posters and postcards to publicize the grants. The application process consisted of a short narrative of one’s leisure proposal and an itemized budget. A panel of independent leisure experts selected the grantees from a pool of 85 applicants. Giant checks were presented to the grant recipients at a public reception.

Bay Area Leisure Foundation Homepage

Bay Area Leisure Foundation postcard

I wrote to Sophie Called and asked to borrow her bed to help me through the break-up process. . .

I sent this letter to Sophie Calle shortly after my girlfriend broke up with me. Approximately one month later I received a full size bed. mattress, frame, linens, pillows, and comforter sent to me by Sophie Calle. I slept in Sophie’s bed for the next six months and corresponded with her via e.mail regarding my emotions and experiences in her bed.

Letter to Sophie Calle

Excerpts from e-mail messages to Sophie Calle, with image of her bed in my apartment

I read an entire edition of the New York Times (August 6, 2009) without stopping.

I began reading at 10:00 a.m. and finished the following day at 12:50 a.m. Over the course of nearly 15 hours I read every printed word in the paper: articles, advertisements, advertisement disclaimers, photo credits, headlines, bylines and all other fine print. During this reading period I did not take breaks and avoided speaking with people.

Front Page 10:00 – 17:23
Business Day 17:23 – 19:37
Sports Thursday 19:37 – 21:14
The Arts 21:14 – 23:06
Home 23:06 – 23:57
Thursday Styles 23:57 – 00:50

The reading took place in a large empty studio with a door that opens onto the backyard and the forest. In this reductive environment, my focus sharpened and I was able to concentrate and ingest and retain information in a manner wholly different than in my normal everyday life. Throughout the day and night I felt quite calm with the exception of one small period, shortly after I finished the front-page section. Having spent over five hours making my way through the first of six sections, I became concerned that I would not be able to complete the task at hand. I feared fatigue and imagined failing. My anxieties subsided a few hours later after the next section, business, only took a little over two hours to read. Since I read every printed word, different types of content became useful in varying ways. After reading a lengthy article about a suburban New York housewife and mother who killed two of her children and all of her brother’s children while driving drunk, a full page advertisement listing (in fine print) various vacation specials provided a reprieve. And conversely, having tackled a half page, micro-print summary explaining all the potential hazards of the drug Toprol-xl, I was thrilled to then read an article detailing a psychological panel’s conclusion that gay people cannot change and become heterosexual.

People would pass by the door of the studio periodically, but I could not really see them as my gaze was steadily fixed on the paper. One time about four hours into my reading, a colleague approached the door and started talking to me. Surely I could hear him, I even remember what he said, “wow, so arty.” But it was as if we were in two separate worlds and I could not make the leap from the space between my eyes and the newspaper and the reality beyond. This was a special moment for me. Maybe it was akin to being really high on some sort of drug

An audio project in a forest near a Baroque castle in Stuttgart, Germany.

This project involved placing small wood boxes on trees. The boxes contained mp3 players that people were free to take with them while they enjoyed the forest and the surrounding area. The content on the mp3 players spanned 56 minutes and was a mix between my own writing and contributions from other artists and writers. The tracks included my own confessional audio journal about my quest to become a runner and my life as a child thief, a piece of short fiction, astrology, hypnosis, a philosophical dialogue about one’s place, a biography of a forgotten composer, journal entries from a man who claimed to be able to control the weather, a conversation with my stepfather about what it was like to stare into people’s mouths for 30 years (he was an orthodontist) and more. All of the pieces were in German and read by German actors. Contributors include Trentor Smith, Jon Rubin, Asha Schechter, Benjamin Lauterbach, Jantine Winjnja, and Jonathan Garfinkel + Jenny Zhang.

A collaboration with my wife which involved hiring Danish actors to play us in a video.

For a recent exhibition in Copenhagen, my wife, Renée Gertler, and I made a video that takes collaboration as its subject. As a married couple nearly every aspect of our lives are fused. But despite the fact that we are both artists, the work that we each do is distinctly separate and our own.

That’s My Side is a dramatization of various conversations Renée and I had surrounding the challenge of how we might work together to produce an exhibition. The video was shot and edited entirely in Copenhagen over the course of four days. It features Danish actors, Penille Albæk Andersen and Jakob Knudsen from the Statens Teater Skole playing the roles of Renée and I. The video is in Danish with English subtitles.

Below are some stills from the video.