Tell me about yourself, where you live and your background/lifestyle.
I never felt as if I fit the mold of the typical "artist." Of course, I've
come to realize that there is no such thing as a typical artist. I received
my MFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1971.
At that time the "Hairy Who" and Chicago Imagists were a powerful movement
and influence on young artists in Chicago. I loved the imagist paintings,
Jim Nutt and Ed Paschke and Ray Yoshida... but my own work was the direct
opposite. I didn't fit in real well at the Art Institute. I did big white
paintings that I developed with the aid of Xerox machines. They were very
stark and sterile... very antiseptic looking, very controlled and
intellectual... a far cry from the sloppy, let it all hang out, emotional
imagist stuff.
I also worked as an art supervisor in a suburban school district, managing
the art program in 10 schools and directing 4 other art teachers while I
was getting my MFA. So, while my fellow art students came to class in
tattered, paint-splattered jeans, and wore long, stringy hair (Lots of
bright, purple hair, some green hair... it was the rage in Chicago to look
"different"), I would come to class with a tie and conservative haircut. (I
didn't want to frighten the youngsters in my art classes.) So, in reality,
my classmates, who wanted to look different, really all looked pretty
typically "art-studentish" and I was the one who was different.
Anyway, I never got off on the "starving artist" thing, either. I worked as
a painter for two years after graduating. My wife had a teaching job. I had
quit mine by then because I drew a big number in the draft lottery. I sold
a few paintings, but, being the consumer and capitalist that I am, I
eventually took a job as an art director in a fledgling video publishing
company. This was in the days before video cassettes and VCRs. The
company's products were sold on open reel videotape... ancient technology.
I rode the wave of video technology for the last 25 years, (having my own
production company for the last 20 years).
I didn't do much painting during that time, but I got my artistic kicks
producing videos and television programs, including a library of about 40
independently produced programs that I now own and market nationally. I
produce a video much like I make a painting, layer by layer, using sound,
movement, time as my brushes.
My production business has been relatively successful, feeding my family
and providing us with a big, comfortable house in Saugatuck, Michigan, a
beautiful resort town on the coast of Lake Michigan. It's sometimes
referred to as the Cape Cod of the Midwest. Lots of artists live here. Lots
of galleries. Lots of support for the arts in West Michigan.
I also have a 30-foot cruising sailboat which has become an important part
of my life. I love sailing and I spend a good part of each summer sailing
on Lake Michigan, cruising north along the sandy coast and exploring all
the quaint towns and harbors along the coast.
Who first influenced you artistically?
As a kid, I was a scholarship student at the Junior School of the Art
Institute of Chicago. I would ride the elevated train from my home on the
Southwest side of Chicago to the Art Institute every Saturday. At that time
I was most impressed by the Surrealists, Dali, Ernst, DeChirico. Later I
fell in love with the Dadaists, especially DuChamp. The intellectual
content of their work appealed to me.
In undergrad at the University of Illinois (Champaign) I was most impressed
by the head of the art department, a professor Dolittle. I liked to visit
his home and his studio. We shared a love of technology. He invited me to
his house when he saw that I was making robots and moving sculptures. He
also made moving machines that were quite intricate and involved. But he
seldom exhibited his machines. He only exhibited his paintings, which were
also quite beautiful, but more conventional and abstract in nature.
But here's what I learned from Professor Doolittle. He had a family which
he dearly loved. A wife, two daughters. He worked as a professor, teaching,
so that he could provide for his family. He told me that he would sometimes
regret the direction his life had taken. He wondered if he should have gone
to New York to pursue his art instead of going to the cornfields of central
Illinois. He told me that to be an artist was an extremely selfish
commitment. To do it, to be succesful at it, you had to devote your life to
it. Your art had to be first at all time. Family, home, relationships had
to come second. To be an artist, you had to be a driven individual. There
was no room for anything else.
Then he would look around at his home, his little studio building in his
back yard, the white picket fence around his property, at his wife in the
house cooking dinner, and he would admit that he didn't have the selfish
commitment that he needed to be successful. He loved his family too much.
He couldn't put them through the poverty and the single-minded obsession
that it would take to really make it big... to be a success.
To me, Professor Doolittle was the most successful artist I knew.
What first attracted you to the Internet?
I've always been attracted by new technology. My first website was created
to promote a TV series I produced. It was called "Painting on Location with
Bob Fagan" Its still on the air. Bob shot 13 episodes on Sanibel/Captiva
Islands that are now airing on various PBS stations around the country. I
produced the first 26 episodes, then got out of it. Anyway, a colleague of
mine was installing servers and he offered me free space for a web site. I
took him up on it and designed an extensive site, hoping it would generate
some income and help sell some of the products related to the TV series.
Its still online, although it hasn't been updated for a couple of years.
Its at : http://www.sapien.net/bobfagan/
The audience for the TV series is mostly an older audience, many retired
people just taking up the art of watercolor painting, so the internet
didn't turn out to be a big market for us, although we have sold products
consistintly over the last couple of years. The most interesting internet
client for the "Painting on Location" products came from Japan. A Japanese
gentleman has now placed three orders with us, and he now owns the complete
library of Bob Fagan Watercolor videos... 42 videos in all. He loves them.
Anyway, this first effort was a marketing thing. My own website is
something else. Although I'd like to market my work on the internet, I look
at the website as a medium in itself. So, I'm experimenting with using it
for artistic expression... using it as an artistic medium.
So far, I feel pretty frustrated by the results. I don't feel as if I've
attracted a very big audience with my efforts. I also don't feel as if I
understand the internet as an artistic medium. I don't understand how to
use it yet. Lately I haven't had the time to work on my web site. It hasn't
been updated for several weeks. But I have in mind a new approach when I
get back to it. Right now it illustrates my frustrations with the
technology of media. And it focuses on the artwork I exhibited in my last
one-man show "I've Got the Tek-NO-Logical Blues"
You can see the website at http://www.lebenart.com/
My next venture into the site will combine my life as a video artist with
my life as a painter and sculptor. I want to have lots of sound and moving
images on the site.
Does the Internet allow you to show your work as you would like: How
could it be improved to suit you?
I have spent my entire media career struggling with resolution. When I
first started working with video, the resolution of video images was nasty,
nasty, nasty. It's steadily improved over the years as technology as
evolved. When I started doing graphics for the video programs I produced,
back in the late 70's, computers were only capable of very low resolution
images... very frustrating and very difficult to get those computer images
onto videotape, anyway. In those days, we produced all graphics on film and
transferred them to videotape. Computers were not good enough. I was
constantly buying better equipment and using better cameras to get the
resolution of my video images up to high quality.
When CD-ROM and CDi techology started catching on I was terribly
dissapointed in the resolution of the video images that you could put on a
CD-ROM. The picture was tiny and the frame rate was jumpy. Here I was, a
video artist who would bend over backwards and spend tons of money to get
images on videotape that would be clean and technically pure. Putting those
pristine moving pictures on that nasty CD broke my heart. I stayed away
from it. I stuck with video.
I'm haviung the same problem with the internet. Resolution is so nasty.
Refresh rate is so slow. It's a tough one for me. Why can't we all have
fibre-optic lines into our homes or at least cable modems.
Anyway, I guess I'm expecting the technology to steadily improve and
eventually provide me with the resolution and high speed playback that I
crave for my work.
What kind of artwork do you expect to be doing in the next 12 months or so?
Several things:
1. I'm working on chapter 21 of my novel: "Alien Artifact." The first 7
chapters of this novel are on line on my web site. I'm working on several
illustrations that are taken from images I describe in the book.
2. I have a one-man show opening in Saugatuck this summer. I'm working on
several pieces for that show. I've got several large format line drawings
I'm doing. These drawings have images of balloons, mushrooms, umbrellas,
cityscapes, floating slabs, bald-headed men in trench coats and massive
crowds of people trying to subdue unruly slabs.
3. I have several scupltures that will be part of this show. The slab
images in my work are these cement-like rectangular, massive, nasty things
that float in the sky. I'm working on one sculpture that has a slab trying
to fly away, but is being subdued by chains. I'll be welding the chains
together so they are quite stiff and look as if the slab is pulling themn
taut.
4. I'm building a performance piece that I'm really excited about. This
piece includes a grid-like cage where a man sits. It's a work-station of
sorts. There are all kinds of devices and keyboards and such around this
worker. He is on a turntable and he keeps trying to work... he keeps trying
to make something happen. He is constantly frustrated but he keeps trying,
because that's his job. Above him in the cage is a big, nasty slab,
suspended over his head, He has to kind of duck as he works to avoid the
dangling wires hanging off of it. This performance piece will be presented
at the opening of the show. It will also be the subject of a video. The
video will use the central image of the worker but be enhanced with other
images and multiple exposures and overlapping imagery. Music and sound
effects will be rampant.
5. Web site redesign including video and sound. The piece described above
being one of them.