I Despise the Sound of Breaking Glass

 So, this happened.

I shipped a piece to Europe and it arrived smashed.  I'll bet you want a forensic analysis of what I did wrong!  Well, I had a crate made and it was a good crate (wooden box packed inside a bigger wooden box).  Maybe it could have been a little bigger to accommodate more rigid foam--but I didn't think so at the time since I have received much undamaged sheet glass from Europe packed in a whole lot less.  

I shipped it using a big international shipper--not an art shipper.  Maybe not the best idea, but affordable. Again, that's how I have received sheet glass. Always unbroken, and sheet glass is much more at risk than a stained glass window which is made up of much smaller  pieces.

Upon analyzing the damage to the crate and the window, we (Myself, and experts Rick Prigg and Glenn Carter) determined the crate had fallen over and remained horizontal while traveling.  This accounted for the smashing, which was due to shock and then the clam-shelling which is what happens when the broken pieces rub against each other repeatedly.  Horizontal is always bad for stained glass and the labeling on the crate didn't result in anyone righting the crate.  (Solution: next time, add plywood wings to the bottom of the crate so it can only ride upright.  This is what the person who shipped it back to me did.)

"Isola" in all its unbroken glory

I wanted to restore the window because I feel it is one of my best ever.

Broken pieces marked with an "X".  However, the large piece under her feet is also broken but I didn't know that until later as the breaks are so clean.

I was able to claim $ for the repair from the shipping company. Yay me.  I was very surprised, actually, as I had been told entire skyscrapers in Omaha are dedicated to offices of people who's sole job it is to deny claims.  They were very nice, actually.

Here are some pictures of the first step of restoration, which is to remove the broken pieces by unsoldering them.  This is NOT easy or simple. In fact, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.  A loathsome process! It took hours and hours to remove them because it must be done very slowly and carefully to prevent further damage.  It takes two people. Two ridiculously patient people. The person you see here is Rick Prigg who is truly an expert (as well as one of my best friends!). He runs Sycamore Studio and Gallery 26 in Lansdowne and if you need  stained glass windows, newly designed or damaged ones repaired, I highly recommend him!

Below are some pictures of the de-soldering process.  Stay tuned for more posts regarding the restoration of this piece!!

Uncrating the piece

The pieces had been stabilized for return shipping with very sticky plastic sheets which needed to be removed first.

Beginning to unsolder (damn, its messy!)

 

Isola unsoldered.

 

Removed broken pieces.  The figure, the water and the sky will be totally remade.

Top: broken pieces Bottom: Broken pieces pushed together.  Since the break is so clean and the section so difficult to reproduce, this section will get hxtal-ed back together.  Hxtal is a glass glue--stronger than glass, actually.  When its complete the naked eye will not be able to detect any cracks.

AI Love You!

 



For ages in the west, people have contemplated what separates us from the animals.  Human exceptionalism is just one of many ways we have managed to divide ourselves from nature (I'm looking at you, Rene Descartes!) with the result that our flimsy self-esteem would appear to rest on feelings of superiority to nature.  It doesn't take a genius to observe that this has enabled us to exploit our own environment, ultimately setting in motion what will be our own destruction if we don't do something soon. 

 

Yay humans!  Yeah, no other animal has done that!

 

In what's left of our future; however, we may find ourselves wondering what separates us from machines. It seems obvious that the idea is that they somehow serve us and make us better humans and improve our lives. But once we outsource imagination to AI, what's left to feel good about as people?  Oiling the robots?  Oops, did we accidentally just irrelevize ourselves? Or was it on purpose?

 

I'm not here to talk about AI in general--just the slice that affects art. I am fine with AI as a tool.  I love tools. I did 3-d animation for a while, blah blah blah. But supposedly AI will be so good that we will become the tool, and then what?

For centuries, art has explained to “the masses” that it’s a-ok to outsource the labor.  If you feel slightly queasy about the authenticity of art fabricated by someone other than the artist, well, be off, you ignorant philistine!  Never mind the elitism, we artists are wearing long black coats.  So there. But what happens when we outsource the labor AND the idea coming-up-with?  For about a hundred years, we in the arts have gone on and on about the preciousness of concept, locating the value of the artwork, not to mention the prestige of the artist, firmly in the idea.  So, what happens when it’s not a human coming up with the idea? 

 

Secondly why would we even want to outsource our imaginations to a non-human system in the first place? Isn’t that the fun part? Most artists I know really enjoy the brainstorming part of creativity (also known as “Divergent thinking”).  But when people talk about AI affecting art, they are usually not worried about the artists (which is why no one really cares if “AI takes our jobs”), but the art consumers.  We can always round up those silly artists who love thinking up their own ideas for art and retrain them to oil robots.  We already did that with craftspersons! This leaves the question of will AI make better art than people?*

 

But before I tackle that one, there is something else pernicious at work here that pertains to the matters at hand (pun intended). AI is obviously able and vastly more efficient at generating a kajillion possibilities than a human.  It doesn’t appear to cost very much or at least its easily available.  Avoiding the inevitable tide of technology has never worked, has it?  So why not just close our eyes and think of England?

 

I read somewhere that humans are biologically engineered to avoid any extra effort.  To escape the gravitational pull of easy and available shortcuts is almost impossible.  Most people, even art students just aren’t passionate or, perhaps, crazy enough.  As a long time teacher I know that temptations that save time and (appear to) cost little can be too much to resist.  For example, in the past 15 years or so, the following scenario has happened at least once per semester, sometimes more often.  I would see the student using their telephones as tiny light tables being used to copy pictures found on google image search (the more enterprising ones actually print them out).  When I asked why they weren’t drawing it themselves instead of tracing, they would say “I can’t draw”.  To which I would reply, “And sadly, you will never learn”.  (Never mind how crazy it is that this is happening in an ART SCHOOL!  For god’s sakes people, get a grip!)

 

But I do have sympathy.  The learning curve for drawing (and creating, for that matter) isn’t as steep as it may look, but it does extend basically forEVER into the future.  Ditto for using your own imagination. It’s not as simple as pushing a button or opening a door and there this glorious thing is, voila!  Right there on your eyelids waiting to be transcribed. No, coaxing imagination into being is more challenging than that.

 

There was a critical juncture when I was in art school, when our painting professor said those infamous words: “From now on you can paint what you want!” and we all cheered and celebrated and then fell into a huge existential crisis.  We had NO IDEA what to do.  I remember thinking I wanted to work from my imagination—and I had the impression that would be super easy, because, hey! I had been doing it my whole life right up until a year and a half ago when my art professors demanded I paint observationally from models and still life set ups.  In a mere year and half, access to my imagination had been eradicated!  Or maybe more accurately, it had been overwritten.  And when I tried to work from it now, it seemed idiotic, like trivial teenage album-cover-art surrealism.  EW!  I had to reinvent it from scratch and that, dear reader, is what I have been working on for the past 40 years.  It hasn’t been easy or simple, I can tell you that.  It’s so easy to coopt someone else’s imagination.  I have done that many times and was convinced it was my own until I realized, oopsy, it’s not.

But why bother?  Why not let AI do it for me? Or you.

 

For a while I have had a hunch that to express one’s actual individual imagination is a radical (and political) act. Mainly because that’s what authoritarianism and conformism really doesn’t want you to do.  It must be done with great belief that it imagination has some intrinsic value. 

 

Alongside imagination, there is also handwork.

I spent years defending Craft at the now defunct University of the Arts.  Two main arguments arose as a response to industrialization. They feel old as the hills and have obviously not changed anyone’s mind. The first was Ruskin’s moral defense which basically said that handwork is good for the soul of the individual as well as society at large.  Second is Walter Benjamin’s essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” which described "aura" as the unique presence and authenticity of a work of art.  The first argument makes me want to get dressed up in a historic milkmaid costume and lug water buckets with a shoulder yoke. The second makes me want to consult crystals.  We need to do better, people!  I will say, although many agree with those reasons for preserving handwork, no one will actually do what it takes to ensure its preservation or value. Bummer.

 

I think a good question to ask is: what purpose does art serve that demands a human presence (as maker, as viewer)?  Maybe ask Marina Abramovic!  Imagine “The Artist is Present” without the artist present!

 

If we go to art to feel connection, to feel understood etc--what does it mean when we are willing to experience that with something that is a simulation?  it reminds me of the emerging artificial intelligence applications that allow people to interact with a digital representation of a deceased person.

There’s plenty of evidence these AI models are really good at handling our big feelings and making us feel all smooshy with simulated empathy.  But since when is connection a one way street? Our sense of feeling understood, connected, loved is often predicated on being able to return the favor.  In art as well.   We feel a work of art speaks for us, maybe in a deeply personal way, and we love it back and maybe pay it forward.   And we can love AI generated art too.  But what does it mean if AI doesn’t care about our love?

 

Another thing we go to art for is that undefinable, ephemeral thing called “inspiration”.  We want our art to be inspired so it can inspire us.  Inspire of course means “breath of life” or even “breath of the divine”. Unless we define AI as a life-form it cannot bequeath a breath of life.

I am convinced that compared to cost effectiveness and efficiency, this reason will also get a lot of nods, but little action.

 

So, here’s my ace in the hole. Warning: it’s probably pathetic

 

AI doesn’t suffer.   

Because of that it involves no risk. 

 

AI offers a type of perfection and what could be drearier than that? Perfection demands admiration not empathy. Yawn.  Maybe it can convince us it is showing us empathy, but if we empathize back it is meaningless.  MEANINGLESS.

 

In  these days of positive psychology, the stereotype of the suffering artist is no longer considered some kind of romantic ideal.  And for good reason, who wants to inculcate someone’s suffering (other than certain religions)? But there’s suffering and then there’s suffering. External circumstances like war and internal situations like major depression have a very negative effect on creativity, that needs to be made clear. But there are also little everyday types of suffering.

 

As a long-time college art instructor, I have seen the suffering of my students. I have repeatedly witnessed them being willing to risk embarrassment by or even worse, indifference to, a project they have poured their heart and souls into. They are willing to risk that a gambit might utterly flop, that it might be a stupid idea that they have sunk their last dollar and the entire semester into. They suffer the pain of making hard choices, for example “killing your darlings” .  I'm sure I could come up with more, but I am little pressed for time.

 

The problem of devaluing everything but the idea, (thanks Descartes!) is so utterly entrenched in the art of the 20th and 21tt c. that it makes it really hard to rehabilitate the value in anything else.  I really do think its time to stop demeaning the idea of labor and skill in art.  And to at least have a vague sense that maybe it doesn't matter exactly who the fabricator and what their skill level  is, but these things have a tremendous influence on the outcome: i.e. what you are looking at and relating to (or not).  Its time to remember that inspiration exists at the nexus of our physical bodies and our consciousness, they are beautiful inter-dependencies.  (The sooner we can prove that, neurologists, the better!)

 

Spending of time is worth something unto itself.  Maybe it represents a sacrifice of precious resources, a willingness to be inconvenienced to create something.  A way of showing love?  A way of showing UP.

While I don’t want to condone suffering, willingness to do so may be the secret sauce to what makes this all important empathic connection happen in art. How can I feel understood by something that has never suffered? Where is the value in that? The suffering, that is the willingness to do it, sometimes the hardest way possible, that turns it into a sacrifice.

 

But you might say “don’t sacrifice on my behalf, that just makes me feel guilty!! Who asked you?” But it’s not a major sacrifice. It’s not major suffering. It’s just a little stuff and stuff that shows that you’re willing to go that extra mile that you care enough to do that imperfection as a sign of that struggle is important.  This is the stuff that makes us proud to be human—that we can show up for each other and care.  So hey, let’s not outsource that, OK?

 

 *And remember, people, Soylent Green is people so there’s at least one use for us! 

 

Many thanks to Anjan Chatterjee for his thoughts on AI (Here)

Tattoo Flash

Scroll down to read terms!

Click to enlarge

I get lots of requests for tattoos. I love that! Dang, people want a permanent imprint, that is the ultimate compliment! Thank you! I love those that I have seen.

I am guessing since my work is out there, there’s some tattoos of my artwork I don’t know about. I would love to see pictures!

I have been asked on a regular basis for custom designs. Here’s the deal: no. But here are some things you might find work for you.

1. People can also use pictures of my work posted on the internet, pictures you took at a show, books, articles, wherever you encounter my work.

2. The drawings included in this post might be easier to translate than glass pieces and seem more “tattoo-like” to me. I prepared them with the intention of making tattoo flash. Also, people have been asking a lot for specifically for these botanical images.

The designs are free for your personal use. If you like my work, it would be lovely if you pointed people in the direction of one of my social media accounts (@judithschaechter) and please, please send me pictures, but that is the only payment I want.

The reason I want you to use pre-existing artwork is that I do not want to come up with fresh, new custom art. It is time consuming. It’s impossible for me to make a drawing without completely getting wound around that axle, overthinking it in 360 time-sucking directions. Perfectionism creeps in, and before you know it, I either get overwhelmed or it takes focus away from my actual studio projects or both. Even retrofitting existing artwork is distracting. When people say: “Don’t put too much work into it, just whip something up”, that’s impossible for me. So, I am not going to make something special just for you. Not even for money. Not even if I love you lots.

SO: Regarding the images posted here (or anywhere, actually), it is A-OK by me to have someone alter them to your specific specifications, specifically. Just don’t ask me to do that! Your tattoo artist may have some ideas about what would work best with your body, etc. That’s important.

Some of the drawings are black and white, go ahead and color them—or have your tattoo person color them or whatever, just don’t make more work for me.

Here are my terms—copyright is presumed, and it remains with ME. I own the designs. I am not licensing them to anyone. I am sharing for your personal use. I would object if someone went into the “Judith Schaechter Tattoo Business”. I am fine with sharing, but I want to be the one doing the sharing! I don’t want this to be stolen out from under me for someone else to profit from.

I am also not licensing the work. Again: sharing for your personal use.

I am basically OK with “use without permission” (it feeds my ego and means I am popular, BLAH BAH BLAH) but again I would probably object if someone went into the “Judith Schaechter Tattoo Business”.

As for modifying the designs, it’s also fine by me to just use a section of a drawing rather than the whole thing. These are drawings I made for stained glass projects, so they tend to be complicated.

Phake Photo Show!

 Covid taught me how to walk.  Before that, I rode a bike everywhere and my hip flexors tightened into the kind of rubber bands you associate with orthodontia.  During covid, something happened to my eyesight which turned out to be this.  I stopped riding my bike because my depth perception was crap and I started walking.  Soon my hip flexors sorted themselves out and the unthinkable happened.  I fell in love with walking!  

Second piece of contextual info: before UArts imploded, I was an adjunct professor of "Interdisciplinary Fine Art" (they had folded their renowned and fantastic Crafts Program in 2019, apparently the first of a series of giant heartbreaks associated with UArts, where I was employed for 30 years).  I was teaching a class called "Projects" and because it was a core class in Fine Arts, this included Photography students.  I had the great honor of co-teaching with such great artists and educators as Anne Massoni, David Graham, Shawn Theodore and Juliana Foster.

And anything I thought I knew about photography was eradicated during this time!  I felt a little out of my depths teaching photo students, but it is one of my fondest memories--looking at their works in Lightroom and considering what it means to make a decent photo. 

All of this to say, I have NO CLUE what I am doing as a photographer and I make no real artistic claims here.  Its just a "hobby" for me.  Here is a curated set of my favorite pics I have taken on my "covid walks" (and other things I have encountered doing goodness knows what).  They are things that caught my eye and seemed worthy of making a photo of.

 There are two other "photo essays" (i.e. pics that must be seen as a series because they don't really stand alone.  Ladies of the Pandemic and Philly Bouquets

CLICK TO EMBIGGEN!

Untitled

Smoking Kills

Nicotine Fiend

November 1

River

Fake De Saedeleer Painting

Urban Jellyfish

Untitled

Ridiculously Elegant Leaves

Jan 2

The Saddest Little Garden Ever

Arrangement in Grey and Green No. 1

Yorick Faculty Meeting

Bathtub Swirl

Covid Emergency

Charlie Brown

Stool

Philly Bouquet

Better Living Through Anthropomorphism

Magritte Facade

Last Man

Untitled

Cat Lady

Untitled

Snowy

Dead Baby Squirrel

Our Valued Passengers

Face Plant

Hospital Driveway

Symbiosis

Hail Satin

SuperFactual

 

Dear Readers: in the interest of posting anything at all I am declaring a stoppage on editing the text of this post.  Lets just say, it was kinda getting away from me and the words felt wordy etc.  So here it is, just like it was last time I opened the document, for better or worse.

Panel #6 of 7 is done! :)

PART I

 I now have a name for the dome: "Super/Natural"*.

*subject to change.

I'm sure you already know that the most disliked word in English is "Moist". The second most must be "spirituality", amirite?

I know someone who used the word spirituality in her artist's statement in college and her professor said she would fail her for the course unless she changed it.  I believe she kept it in.  Willing to die on that hill—I admire that!  But I understand the professor who was picturing some new age hellscape replete with the purplest of purple crystals.

 I was raised by two materialist atheists. My dad was a scientist. Not just any type of science mind you, but a microbiologist.  I have heard it said that physicists scan skew towards the mystical, but not biologists!  All that goo really reinforces the material side of reality! But wait!  There’s more….My mother was the director of a school for severely autistic children—the type that make any thought of a just and loving god, or even a practical one, near impossible. So, they abandoned the religions of their upbringings, along with all other religions as well as any notions of spirituality.  Fair enough!

 

 As a teenager I wanted nothing more than to rebel against them somehow…. They are lucky I didn’t run off with a doomsday cult. Suffice it to say, having atheism presented as the only reasonable option for structuring one’s thinking had its downside. Recently, I was participating in a discussion with friends about matters spiritual.  No surprise, most came down on the secular side. And some were very staunchly materialistic, characterizing spirituality as superstition or belief in the supernatural (as did my parents).  And I always end up wondering if science and spirituality completely incompatible (cue Einstein quote.) Why does spirituality necessarily imply an anthropomorphic deity? Can’t one believe in the divine without Sky Jesus or some such? Am I being obtuse here?

 

 For a long time, I have thought that art always wants to ally itself to the truth of its times.  Back in the day in Europe, that meant the Christian church. It must be interesting to live in a time when science, religion and art are all serving the same seamless “truth”.  I can barely imagine what that’s like.  Is it nice?  Limiting?  It certainly couldn’t work now.

 

 Around 1500 CE, along comes a burgeoning humanism and an increasing trend towards separation of church and state (and a separation of the individual person from a “source”, I imagine it like a big bang-like expanding universe, ever traveling away from the center) ...and it all seems to make room for science.  So gradually art became interested in science, or at least allying itself with science in the name of TRUTH.  This is not good news for stained glass, which has always been “spiritual”.  And that is because… because…….because…because why? Well, I am guessing because radiant colored light coming into an Official Sacred Space makes believers jiggy and feels like what we might imagine divine inspiration feels like.  Warm! Beautiful! Incandescent! Lucid! Ethereal! Or something like that. Where’s the good Abbot Suger (“stained glass is enlightenment embodied”) when you need him?

 I think setting up a dichotomy between a scientific truthand a mythologic truth is to miss something important.  For one thing, I really, really, REALLY don’t want to have to pick between the two.  But hey: at least in equating spirituality with the supernatural, materialists acknowledge spirituality is both super and natural!  Super-duper!

 

   The problem for me arises when you must pick between science and mythos for The Truth. Because any sensible person will choose moon landings and vaccines for the win every time, including me. I very much believe in the facts of science but is it The Truth?  Consciousness being what it is, The Truth is always going to be a human construct. As such, it’s on par with subjective reality. (I feel really brave for saying that out loud because I can already hear my parents screaming at me at how idiotic that is!) And yet but still, part of me is waiting to find out reality is all in my head. Maybe I read too much sci-fi as a kid, but as long as reality is mediated by our brains and senses, there’s room for doubt. After all, how can one study that which is extraneous to our own minds without employing our mediated, reality constructing brains to do it?

 

 One of many ginormous problems I had with Trump was the whole “alternative facts” thing. It forced people to side with science facts or his lies. But alternative realities are my bread and butter in the studio. I mean, what in the heck is art if not big honking displays of alternative facts? Especially art that derives from the imagination, like the flowers and birds in my dome. I didn’t appreciate their sudden demotion to the irrelevancy department. In the end I want to believe that The Truth is not knowable, therefore the best we might manage is a reunion between subjective and objective…or mind and body. IF. YOU. WILL.

Some of the stated intentions for the dome are underscoring the intersection of art and science.  But maybe…just maybe, part of this project is to “attempt” a reunion of science and spiritual via art.  Not that this is the only recent attempt—in fact, I think it happens all the time. I think maybe that’s the whole project of art all the time. But the last time we all agreed on that in Western culture was around 1499! 

In my original proposal I said this:

“Spirituality is not typically the realm of science (and from my personal experience, it is absolutely taboo in academia in general unless one is in a Religious Studies program). As such, I am assuming biophilic spaces are studied from a practical and material point of view. But I think, without getting too mystical about it, biophilic spaces offer an opportunity to reconcile a human consciousness with an environmental context. They can demonstrate that what appears to be a mind/body split, or a mental classification of interior vs exterior (self vs “not-self”) is a perceptual illusion and while it may have an important practical heuristic function, it also ensures a sense of a sense of loneliness and enables eco disasters, etc. Therefore, I conclude that if reuniting these seemingly separate things is not the essence of “spirituality” then nothing is. I would say that from a neurological or psychological perspective, this has some value.” 

 

 Fancy proposal language for: If I am gonna build a little mini-church, it’s going to have to reference spirituality. Or, shall I say, that aspect of consciousness that connects us to life, reconciles our mind and body and feels meaningful and inspiring? I may not believe in anything supernatural or any type of god, but I certainly believe things can be super and natural...sometimes even simultaneously! 

 

My choice to make a little church comes from the fact that ever since I became a stained glass artist, the CHURCH THING has loomed large. Enlightenment indeed—who doesn’t want a smidge of that in their art?  Being an official atheist, I think making a window for a religious space, be it a church, synagogue, mosque, or something else, would be weird for me. Plus, none of those places have never asked me. But I can relate to the idea of a space dedicated to sacred contemplation and felt a real urge, a real big urge, actually, to make one.  

 

One thing that differs about my dome is that stained glass in churches is that is all about a group experience and the buildings tend to be really large and therefore the windows are seen from a long distance.  My dome will be intimate.  Really intimate—maybe a wee bit claustrophobic, even. My art, my idea of spiritual experience is that its best one-on-one.

 

PART II

When I was a not-so-rebellious teenager, my dad was reallyinto mushrooms.  (No, not that kind!)

He collected old books—some as old at the 1700’s.  I remember being struck by the beauty of their hand-colored print illustrations.  Flash forward to now.  For some years I have been really getting into botanical and various natural history prints., perhaps inspired by this early exposure.

 

I remember reading a Dover (remember them?) reprint of a Medieval Bestiary.  I bought it for the images—but one day checked out the text.  I will include some examples. 

A Spicy Example

  

They were unintentionally hilarious.  For one thing, it seemed that the descriptions were not based on much in the way of observable reality. And this really got me—imagine that!! It was stunning to me to think that they could be understood as somehow a reflection of reality. And yet, they were. That was a first inkling that one needn’t always prioritize observable, external reality as real. Surely the imagination is also real.

 

 From a pernicious tendency towards anthropomorphism to an insistence on arranging them in mise-en-scenes to flat-out-decorative arrangements, old “science” illustrations manage to distort and manipulate “reality” in wild and crazy ways.  Even Audubon’s work seems hyper real rather than real-real.  Of course, the invention of the photograph co-opted our understanding of the observable, and now only photos seem real to us, which is a whole weird thing unto itself.  Photos never look even remotely real to me.

 

Really, these old illustrations could ultimately be seen as images of the artist’s brain, as self-portraits.  Pardon me, but your subjectivity is showing. Obviously, they lack a certain amount of what you might call scientific objectivity.  I found this rather amusing until I remembered that there was no such thing as “science” as we understand it now back then.

 

 Which got me on a long trip wherein I reveled at the doomed nature of attempts at “objective truth”.  She scienced me with blindness, indeed.

It seemed to me that the more the artist tried to depict something ocularly objective, the more they only managed to depict their own conception of it.  As it turns out there’s a whole book on this which I read.  I am highly recommending “Objectivity” by Lorraine Daston if this topic intrigues you like it does me.  She is a far better person at explaining all the paradoxes and twists and turns it takes to make a stab at objectivity.

 

 As an artist, I refuse to choose between objective and subjective truth.  I think “spiritual truth” could be a place where they become one.  And that is how I am defining the “super/natural”. At least today I am.