Jenny MC

The visiting artist today, Jenny McCoy, shook me a little. And I do mean that in a good way. I was shaken up because I didn't take in her and her husbands work begrudgingly or end up totally despising it as I had prepared for. I have not participated in viewing too many of these talks that Mason Gross holds but the few I have seen have not exactly made me excited to be an artist - minus, of course, Damian Catera's talk. As you know, I would marry Damian were we gay and it were legal. I remember one artist, whose name escapes me, did nothing for an hour but gush about the marvels of social networking over the internet, such as Twitter and blogs. The entire class I was with left that talk wanting to change our majors. I hear that was not a great example of what the visiting artist series usually offers but I feel she represents a disturbingly large group of emerging artists that put too much value in the invisible constructs of web based communities. It's bad enough that the popularity contest in art still exists and it's a game of who you know that we must all play, but now it's been accelerated with these digital dormitories of the hot figures in art which come and go with no warning.
So, obviously, you can imagine that it was quite a relief to hear from Jenny and, eventually, her husband about their work. While the ever present question of "why?" was still in the back of my head, I found myself uncharacteristically accepting of the work that they showed. Had I been exposed to it on my own I might look at their efforts as wasted time; an idea so simple expanded for our benefit seemingly to add fake complexity, but in reality it wasn't so simple. What helped my heart grow like so many Grinches was Jenny herself, and to a lesser extend her husband. It was nice to hear from an artist that didn't seem full of herself or her work and dealt with nagging existential questions on the importance of her/their art with breezy humor.
The art itself wasn't impressive on it's own. And when I say that I only mean that in my warped sense of value that art and the materials that go into making it have. It took some nudging but I let myself get persuaded that their media work was worth it and to be honest I'm glad I did. There was a uniqueness and personality that seems lacking in so many others work that was penetrated into my brain with Jenny's help. "448 is Enough" would have been something I might have dismissed had I walked past it in a gallery, but in taking the time to explain what each component of the piece was let me pause and appreciate it. I am still confused as to the point of this exercise in cutting up an episode of Eight is Enough, and why it is worthy to be displayed as a work of art aside from the fact that its creators are artists. Something like that, today, would not take too long to organize especially if you decide to forgo the three dimensional, hands-on approach and build a virtual space for it - which, as we know, is the hot thing to do nowadays - but that just leads me to believe that it's value is directly proportional to the headache it produced putting it together and the physical space it occupies. If this is what constitutes art then trying to put together a desk from Ikea without any pieces missing is the Mona Lisa.
I have to be harsh, it is my nature, but I don't wish to be. I honestly did enjoy the work of the McCoy's and am glad that some level headed people are in the game. And God bless them for putting those odd DVD players with the tiny screens to some good use. Speaking of which, I appreciate the subtle humor of using a show like Starsky and Hutch as a component of their work. I think humor is a great thing to add to your art when done right. And what they did was not "art humor" either, which is a big distinction to make. They split up a, in all definite terms, awful show from an awful time in television history into its key components and that makes for a very visual representation of the show itself, in all its complexity and noncomplexity, and a way for the public to engage in it that isn't the way television asks - you become a conductor instead of an unquestioning consumer. And that is what art should be. Ah I don't know. It doesn't matter what I think.