['Thought folks might enjoy a reprieve from all the chatter about Twitter, Swine Flu, and Legislature Budget Cuts. So here's an artistic diversion of sorts.]
At the healthy age of 41 I’m aged enough to have some opinions about what does and does not constitute art, but I would hardly classify myself as a “patron”. I’ve been to my fair share of museums, shows, and concerts, and purchased a handful of paintings in my travels, but I’ve never commissioned anything; that always seemed a bit beyond my level of enthusiasm. But that’s changed – I recently asked noted bicycle artist, Taliah Lempert, to do a painting for me.
I won’t go into the why’s and wherfore’s; suffice it to say it’s been a lot of fun. But one problem that came up was this:
How does an artist in New York effectively communicate the artistic process to someone in Oregon?
Fortunately communication wasn’t an issue the first time Taliah and I discussed this commission. I periodically travel to Manhattan, where my office is a short 20-minute bike ride from her Brooklyn studio. And as luck would have it, I already had the fixed-gear bike I built in Manhattan as well, so I simply hied myself and my bike over to her studio one evening, where we chatted about art and cycling in general, and the painting of my bike in particular. As with any tele-commuting arrangement, this initial, up-front meeting set an important foundation for the emails and phone calls that followed.
But art is more than the simple arrangement of paint on canvas, and obviously communicating effectively was important to making sure we were happy with the final outcome. Moreover, as I pondered what I wanted to come away from this commission with, I realized it wasn’t enough to simply hand my bike over and then return home to Oregon, where a finished painting would show up some months later; I wanted to experience some of the artistic process that went into the painting as well. Not only is Ms. Lempert a gifted artist, she also shares that same irrational enthusiasm for bicycles that avid cyclists have. I knew this would be a more rewarding experience if I could follow along as she created this painting.
Now, as an engineer I’m used to the telecommuting routine: video calls, weekly or daily status meetings, and whatnot. But this seemed grossly inappropriate here – artists are… well… artists. This was not a project to be managed with status updates, but more a process to be observed.
Fortunately Taliah has a “Studio” section on her website where she posts pictures of her works in progress on a daily(ish) basis. Whether this is to humor clients like myself, or because it helps draw traffic, or is just “what she does” I don’t really know. But it’s provided a great fly-on-the-wall experience. I can check in periodically to see the progress she’s made, without bothering her, and occasionally toss her an encouraging email.
This is perhaps an obvious solution, but what is really neat about this, the real icing as it were, are what I guess us techies would call the “User Treats“. Not only has Taliah posted pictures of the actual painting she’s doing, but also the preliminary sketches and drawings. Many of which include spontaneous little comments about what she’s doing or thinking. Most artists aren’t in the habit of putting this sort of content on their sites but Ms. Lempert does, and the result is a fine-grained insight into her process that I’ve found quite rewarding. So much so, in fact, that my excitement at taking delivery of the finished painting will be tinged with a hint of regret, knowing that this little journey is over.
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