This has been a busy lecture preparation season for me.  Most of the summer was spent preparing for talks given at the Savannah College of Art and Design in early October 2008. The school is wonderful, and the professors could not have been more welcoming and open to discussion on a variety of topics. However in meeting with students, some intriguing ideas were exchanged in our conversations. 

Students at Savannah, and any other art school, are in the processing of finding their own niche, staking claim to their personal voice in artistic expression. In their experimentation, they may stumble upon an art material or industrial fabrication that works to meet their needs. It might be a type of paint that they modify to perform a certain way or a substrate that acts to their liking. After investing a lot of time in working with these “out of the mainstream” materials, they attend one of my lectures. I tend to scare them with stories and pictures of what can happen when artists don’t think through the long-term problems and issues regarding inherent vice.

I define "inherent vice" as elements within the physical makeup of a material that will cause it to change in appearance, fail to maintain long-term integrity or compromise the existence of an object. As art objects age, the potential for degradation of any materials rises.This is especially true as new, industrial materials and/or combinations of commercial and artists’ materials and experiments with mixing various formulations enter the art realm. 

The vast array of products found at a home improvement store can be used to make art, but will they hold together for a reasonable amount of time and sustain the visual appearance an artist intended when the piece was fabricated? Some of my conservator colleagues will say, let artists make whatever they want, however they want, out of whatever artists want. My counter argument to that is as follows. If you don’t do a bit of “homework” and think through the fabrication process, the mixing of potentially disparate or incompatible materials and how they will become integrated as an art object, you might doom them to a premature death. I am not a firm believer in the notion of trusting artists to use whatever they want, however they want for one main reason. In talking to artists I find that in many cases they select materials impulsively, without thought as to how they will work together or hold up to the effects of aging. Mature artists may have very sound reasons for selecting materials and wishing to exploit the effects of the interaction between disparate products. They may even select a material for its symbolic meaning. I respect that notion and applaud it. However, lots of artist will take shortcuts and skip basic research into what would be best to use to achieve an effect and maintain the look and feel for an appreciable length of time.  Experiment all you want, but don’t expect your potential buyers to support the brunt of your cutting edge work as the piece you create melts or crumbles before their eyes. To use a color related analogy, we would not want the folks who apply the highly technical paint application to the car we buy to “go creative” one day and add something strange to the coating mixture because they thought it would look really cool. That might be fine if you want to give away the car, but if I am paying for it, I expect the paint to perform over a long period of time without failing.

Let’s go back to the world of art students starting out with building their portfolios and satisfying their class assignments. I see so many of them work with materials that they have no idea as to how they will perform over time. Some even pick paints or substrates that are made with products that are known to be incompatible with paints or adhesives they are using. However, they like the way the stuff looks. They did not pick a clear sheet of acrylic glazing material from the hardware store because it symbolized the death of natural products in what is an endless sea of artificial, chemical confusion. They selected it because it was on sale and rubber cement mixed with plastic beads they spread about the surface of the acrylic sheet looks good. Using materials that we know will change in appearance fairly quickly will have a dramatic impact on how their artwork will be viewed and interpreted. Their artists' statements should anticipate the acrylic changing as the solvents interact with the plastic. They should preemptively comment on the brown appearance of the rubber cement even though at the time the art was created the adhesive was clear and colorless. A few better-planned choices made with some thought could have saved them from the inevitable changes that would take place by using materials that change so drastically in a short period of time. Many artists however continue to struggle to attempt to perform the equivalent of the mentalist Kreskin and bend spoons before our eyes. You can try to defy physics, but in the end, physics always wins.

I was passing by an office building under construction and suddenly an idea came to mind that relates to making works of art. When a building is under construction, do you think the architect and the construction company gather together to figure out the minimal amount of effort and poorest quality materials that will be needed to assemble a building? Construction firms could build a structure, with the thought that after they finish the project, someone else can be hired to fix the deficiencies in the quality of the materials used and the poor techniques they employed to assemble the components. Just get it to look right and hope it holds together long enough for the checks to clear the bank. Fortunately, a sense of integrity, reputation, compliance to building codes, as well as a healthy fear of legal action, govern the construction of most of the commercial buildings erected in the United States today.

Why is it that many artists ignore the notion of integrity, reputation, and fear of legal action? I skipped the building codes because they don’t apply, but perhaps that would not be a bad idea.  Many art schools today impart no sense of the need for “building codes” for works of art. Some schools don’t even make it an academic challenge by confronting students with the exercise of creating works of art that appear to use materials with inherent vice but are really very sound and stable. 

Suppose you were fixated on making an artistic statement where the focus of your work was the typical American hamburger and its potential ill effects on the health and well being of the population. A painted image of a hamburger just wouldn't be enough. You would want it to appear to be a real and tangible object that exudes the essence of hamburger on a bun with all the extras. The simple, short-term answer would be to obtain a real hamburger and mount it, as appropriate, to your artwork. The long-term outcome is easy to figure out. The fresh, glistening, juicy hamburger will, in short order, be reduced to a blue-green, furry biohazard. This could be your intention, but you are likely to encourage the wrath of anyone who has to deal with your artwork professionally——from the gallery director who will have to cope with the byproducts of the deterioration process to the hazmat team that will be called in at some point to deal with the new life form that has established itself on your artwork. Nobody will be happy. Either way, your artwork will be delivered to a “suitable” exhibition space if you find that a garbage dumpster is an appealing alternate art gallery. Unless you are as rich as Warren Buffett and/or have a valued reputation as an artist, nobody is going to put up with your deteriorating hamburger nonsense.

Now let’s go back to something more realistic and equally applicable. Why should artists be afforded the luxury to make objects without thought as to their longevity, leaving the difficult task of maintaining the artist's intent to a future generation of conservators? Conservators will have enough gainful employment treating the fairly stable, natural deterioration of materials found in works of art, without having the challenge of holding together a totally ill-planned nightmare.

As I often find now, it is all a matter of economics. Will a poorly made work of art be worth the money needed to keep it looking the way an artist intended? No standard answer exists. However, unless you, as an artist, have a devoted following, your “brilliant” idea to paint with dry pigment mixed with vegetable shortening may not make it to a museum wall, when a curator and acquisition committee looks at how much it will cost to preserve a painting that is currently “wet” and will NEVER dry.

It seems I am always in the process of getting myself into projects that consume a huge amount of time. I am drawn to them like moths to a candle. It doesn't mean that I am not thinking about art and art materials. Those thoughts are always with me. It’s just a matter of sitting down and writing them out. Currently I'm trying to figure out how to use the combined 80 minutes that I sit on a commuter train each day of the workweek to get these thoughts out. 

So let’s catch up on what is going on right now. Within the last year I became the chairman of the subcommittee of the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) D01.57 group on Artists’ Materials.This is the group that creates standards for art materials and whose claim to fame is the mandatory standard D2436 that is found on almost every art and craft material around. I even saw it recently on a kit for coloring Easter eggs! I will comment from time to time on relevant issues related to the important work this subcommittee performs. We are headed for a meeting in Reno, NV and the National Art Materials Trade Association show late in April.

For those of you who are dedicated readers of The Artist's Magazine, I provide entries for the “Ask the Experts” column. Some days I really question that “Expert” word in the title. The more I learn about the art materials world, the more I realize that I have no clue as to what is happening. (Keep this a secret.  Don’t let my editor know about this!  Actually, all the editors involved with the writing I do work very hard to keep me looking good. My thanks go out to them.) The questions posed by The Artist's Magazine's readers are challenging, especially one that I'll address shortly in an upcoming issue on the use of zinc in oil paints. That answer will spark some interesting discussions.

That would be enough stuff to keep anyone busy but, as a glutton for punishment, I have the truly thankless job of serving as treasurer and board member of the Mid-Atlantic Plein Air Painters Association. It’s a great organization and the opportunities are only limited by the imagination and hard work that its committee coordinators can produce. I can only wonder what we might do if we had unlimited time to put toward running the organization. 

I have had a passion for prints ever since I went to undergraduate and graduate school and had nearly free reign to open drawers of the print collections of the university art galleries that I volunteered for during my days as a student. Luscious velvety black mezzotints, the fine lines and subtle plate tones of drypoint, and engraved images were all intriguing. Right now I am pouring through articles, books and websites in the hopes of learning how to make some of these beautiful images. I am so serious that I even bought an etching press and nearly killed myself lugging it into my house. How could something so small weigh so much?  I have yet to pull a print but I might share one of my disasters with you in the future.

That about brings you up to date. Spring is coming soon and the trees are showing their characteristic red tinge. Soon it will be both prime allergy and plein air painting season. I will be ready to charge outside as soon as I see the first robin in the yard. 

Part of my absence in July has been my attention to many projects at work.  Plans for a series of lectures and a demonstration in October at the Savannah College of Art and Design have taken up large parts of my workday. Another exciting opportunity to contribute to the art world has developed over the last month.

Mark Gottsegen has become more involved in his venture to provide lectures and educational opportunity for the art community through his organization AMIEN; he asked me to take over his previous position as Chair of the American Society for Testing and Materials for Artists’ Materials (ASTM).

This will be a great personal challenge for me. In recent years, participation by manufacturer members has been slipping. While this may be a part of a natural cycle of interest in ASTM as the Artists’ Materials group moves from creating standards for some of the high visibility, large volume art materials to the smaller-revenue generators in a manufacturer’s product line. Regardless, a lot of work will need to be done to bring back some of the old familiar participants and attract a new generation of enthusiastic manufacturers. Exciting new products are coming into the marketplace, and both the consumer and manufacturer stand to benefit from participation in ASTM.

Education of the public is lacking. Many artists I contact do not know the work of ASTM. Others see it as “that group that does the health and safety thing.”  This “health and safety thing” is more commonly referred to in ASTM parlance as D4236.  This standard was a major undertaking by both ASTM and the Congress of the United States when they decided that art materials needed to have some point of official contact so that— if by some reason an art material was ingested or came into accidental contact with sensitive parts of the human body—a source of authority on the composition of the product could communicate with health care professionals to provide vital information on the composition and toxicity of the material in question. Other standards familiar to artists relate to the lightfastness of art materials. ASTM has provided manufacturers with a forum to come together to evaluate the durability of pigments. While many pigments remain unchanged when exposed to light over long periods of time, other pigments fade and pose problems for the artist. ASTM provided the means to test and evaluate the major pigments used for making art materials, and ASTM came up with a rating system that’s easy for an artist to understand.

My task, and the task of those who wish to help, will be to educate artists as to the importance of ASTM and how their involvement as smart consumers can influence the art materials industry. If the public desired new standards, ASTM could provide them.  This would forge a partnership—between the consumer who wants quality art materials and the manufacturer who could provide them.  In my time as an observer of the art materials industry, I’ve impressed overall with the genuine care and concern that manufacturers have toward their customers. I believe they want to sell good materials because it makes good business sense, and it’s the right thing to do.  Many manufacturers are artists as well; they accordingly feel a sense of responsibility to produce good quality art materials.