Bob sure does know how to paint.

The Marketed Personality

I reject the notion that success hinges mostly on the prowess of one's ability to market well. I remember reading a book from the 50's (can't remember the name now) which warned that in the future the worth of an individual -- their creative labor, would be heavily dependent upon how willing they were to conform to the dictates of mass marketing. To me, this book was prescient. I would argue that we as a society have not only uncritically accepted mass marketing as a kind of panacea to societal ills, but that our minds have been so colonized by mass marketing that we are barely capable of thinking in terms outside of it.

As an artist I run up against this all the time. If I talk passionately about how in general, there is a lack of coverage and respect given to the arts and how this lack of coverage and respect has the very real effect of ensuring that artists are seldom paid for their efforts, inevitably someone will say to me "Why don't you try marketing." Or, "Who are you marketing to?" And it's not just the arts. I see this reflexive notion all the time. If you don't get the job you wanted people will say maybe you just didn't market yourself the right way. Increase your sales -- try marketing. Become a brand. Get out there and sell yourself. Have you tried merchandising? How about corporate sponsorships?

I have noticed over the years that it is very difficult for people to talk about "value" without talking about it in terms of marketing and the larger context of the economy. It's as if most things are reduced to the cold calculus of economic calculation. My success, according to how others perceive the value of what I do, cannot be imagined outside of the realm of economic calculation. So my economic failure as an artist becomes a failure of my ability to market myself as opposed to a societal failure in finding imaginative ways to support culture and artists. The onus of responsibility becomes perverted whereas the victims of an exploitative economy are not only the ones tasked with changing it, but are blamed for their own lack of economic success. They are granted none of the levers of power and wealth that the so called "successful" people have created and maintained for their own benefit, and when these carefully crafted and maintained disparities are pointed out, the retort is once again the panacea of marketing.

The mythos is that to be successful all you have to do is maintain a positive outlook on life and market yourself. The problem with this is that such a simplistic view of success obfuscates the larger and more systemic problems which are at the heart of an exploitative system. It masks how power and wealth actually operate. In fact it not only masks it, but worse, power and wealth become celebrated and conflated with creativity and genius. We give deference to those with wealth because our culture has taught us that to be wealthy is akin to being more capable than the rest of the underperforming masses.

Wealth is not created, it is experienced. It is visceral. The challenges of the poor are not the same as the challenges of the rich. Hunger for food is never the same as the hunger for maintaining one's privilege.

Wealth is inherently a function of vertical transference as opposed to horizontal transference. To become wealthy in our society one always has to make others more money than what their labor costs. Kim Kardashian is afforded millions because she makes the owners of the network much more than she receives back. Basketball players are given millions because they make the networks and the owners more money than they get back. Whatever wage you make is worth more than what the company you work for pays back to you. As long as money flows up to the owners as opposed to horizontally to the workers, your value is maintained. Your job is secure, unless of course someone is willing to do it for less. In such a society, competition is sacrosanct whereas the collective burden we all share is denigrated. We become lone agents whose success is determined by out-competing our neighbor. And how does one out-compete their neighbor -- by working harder, by being more intelligent, or more creative? Sometimes, but increasingly those who are being rewarded by wealth are those who are willing to conform their minds and bodies to the dictates of mass marketing. This isn’t to say that hard work is never rewarded, but should a little honesty be applied here, it’s not too difficult to see that the rewards given to the working class are not the same in measure or in deference to those rewards heaped upon the investor class.  

I have come into contact with a lot of brilliant people who are largely excluded from popular media. And yet, I am inundated with all sorts of celebrities and quasi-intellectuals who get good ratings but have little in the way of imaginative thoughts. But since they make their owners money, we are force fed a daily gruel of misinformed fantasies. I have met all sorts of amazingly creative and talented people, yet their voices are seldom heard in popular media. Talent which is not easily exploited is rarely rewarded. Not just monetarily, or in terms of respect for what they do, but in terms of allowing them to inhabit a space in our minds. And yet, so much space in our minds is readily given over to the countless messages we receive daily by the army of marketers who man the machinery of mass commercialization which dominates every conceivable niche of our society. It’s easy to escape a day without coming into contact with art, not so easy to avoid on any given day, some kind of ad.

Connectivity has become a buzzword because in our parlance it means a mode of transmission by which one gadget communicates to another gadget. Through that communicative process, data is extracted and converted through marketing, into wealth. So, what is the value of ideas in relation to the connectivity of minds absent of marketing and the economic sphere?

I, as an artist, convey an idea to the viewer by means of visual transmission. In my absence, yet through my creative labor, my art, as an object which embodies not just ideas, but also an ideal(s), gives freely to those who stand in relation to it. Anyone can venture into a gallery and freely partake in the transmission of ideas. Great artists, by which I mean those who have truly mastered their art form and are somewhat unique in their perspective, ought to be celebrated for their amazing contributions to our society and our culture. It is to the detriment of the whole that this free transference of ideas is not taken seriously unless the art and the artist is selling well, that is, making the gallery or an auction house considerable money. The voices of all but the highest paid artists are largely ignored by mass media. And even when these artists are heard, their message is often lost amidst the perverse fascination we have with how much some rich collector paid for their last painting. Was it eighty million dollars or one hundred million dollars? It’s almost as if the sole arbiter of greatness can be measured in terms of a number on a spreadsheet. In truth, most artists are ignored and yet told that being ignored is largely a product of their own failings. It is true, that within that small sphere which some call the art world (a world apart from all the others?) great value is placed on what artists do, but unfortunately, it is all too easily drowned out by the flatulent cacophony and endless prattle of our consumer culture. To be an artist is akin to practicing semaphore in a hurricane. Before you convey a single message, the gale force winds rip off your arms.  

And yet, so much attention and money is paid out to those who yes, are savvy marketers, but have little in the way of new ideas. Donald Trump comes to mind. He has been handsomely rewarded by our culture not because he creates masterpieces, solves societal ills, has great physical abilities, or a towering intellect, but simply because he caters to those like him, that is, the rich. Slathering everything with giant gold letters which bares your name is great branding, but is it good for our society? And in order to be "successful" should I as an artist do the same? Is it even a fair assumption that I am capable of the same?

No. I do not possess the same levers of wealth and power, that people like Trump possess and maintain. I do not have a staff working for me. I do not have excess dollars to spend on marketing. I am barely staying afloat, treading water in an economy that is leaving more and more people behind. I am not granted free airtime because I am rich or ridiculous in ways that matter (reality T.V. I am thinking of you here). I have no access to the endless hours and money spent on sports, reruns, commercials, infomercials, home shopping, reality T.V., and the thousands of other modes of transmission which have little to do with the arts. I do not stand in opposition to such programming, this is not an argument for either/or, but instead, an argument for both/and. I am not expecting parity or to be given equal footing with the endless parade of clichéd ideas. Entertainment is a powerful tool wielded by the rich and powerful in order to maintain our passivity. No, I do not believe there is a cabal whose goal is to keep us passive. Passivity is merely a function of not being a direct participant in what is being created. The beauty of art however, is that to fully comprehend its message, one has to become engaged with it. One has to actively seek out its meaning. The surface beauty of a work of art is merely a reaction. A knee jerk reaction which states one's aesthetic taste. Saying you like or dislike something, however, is not the same as understanding it. Being a passive viewer of entertainment is not the same as being an active member in the creation of culture.

This is why I feel people struggle with artistic endeavors. It's easy to sit back and enjoy a show or watch a game. The drama of a game or the entertainment value of a show is based on the enjoyment we receive from being a passive participant in what we are watching. Entertainment is immediate gratification, tends towards simplicity, and generally, reinforces our already established beliefs about the world. Most of what we consume is self-serving. It's easier to market, by way of commercials, to the masses when we willing give up our minds and our bodies to our television sets, cell-phones, computers, tablets, etc. Our minds are constantly invaded by brands, catchy slogans, talking points, tired ideas, commercials – just to name a few.

It’s rare that anyone ever asks, but nonetheless, as an artist, I give freely my ideas. My work embodies within its creation, a way of not only seeing which is different, but through its creation, a different way of being in the world. A mode of being which creates without asking first, what is it worth? My ideas, my labor, the pain of my body as I toil, my love, my passion, my sweat, my dollars, coalesce before your eyes and become manifest in an object which, should you come to a gallery opening, you will be free to engage with without having to pay a cent. Should not such endeavors be valued, not just in some form of monetary enumeration, but in respect? Is it too much to ask that a space be carved out of our consumer driven culture, a space which allows for culture to flourish, free from economic swindling? Is it too much to ask that we try at times, to be active participants in the exchange of ideas as opposed to blind passive automatons chasing after the next self-gratifying program?

I wholly reject the notion that it is my responsibility to bear the burden of changing our culture. I do my part, I create. I talk endlessly and passionately about what I believe in. I work and work and work, to master my art. I am always learning and experimenting with new techniques. My labor, my money, even my sanity at times, is lost to my artwork. And should I raise the banner for a brief moment and exclaim to the world that to the robbers go the spoils, people's response tends to be either one of outright denial, or to castigate the messenger. Give the voiceless and the powerless a voice and power, and should we fail to convince, then by all means eviscerate our ideals. I will gladly offer you my gut for the cutting.

Please take a little time to visit my website at: www,jonahjacobs.com

Salted and Breaded, but Never Baked

                Several years ago I began to make the transition away from paper based collage work to more dimensional work that has an organic feel to it. One of the first upcycled materials I began to experiment with were toilet paper and paper towel tubes.  I quickly learned what materials could be applied to the outside of the tube in order to give it a crusty textural look. I also learned what materials could be stuffed in the tubes in order to make them look as if various types of growth were sprouting out of their tops.

                People often praise the use of color in my work. Though I am not certain, I feel the vibrancy and natural feel of the color is derived from the various dyes I use as opposed to paint. Acrylic paint, when applied to many surfaces other than canvas, tends to have a plastic and somewhat fake feel to it. Paint is bright, smooth, and its luminosity at times can be harsh. Dyes on the other hand, readily soak into natural materials whereas paints tend to coat. In essence, dyes leave the textural qualities of work like mine in tact whereas paint would destroy it by smothering such materials in a thin coating of colored latex. The crusty, dye infused coatings on my work allow the light to bounce off at irregular angles creating a diffuse warmer hue. The challenge for me then, while experimenting with dyes as an external color choice, was to find a material that was cheap enough to cover large sections of artwork and could soak up either dyed water or sprinkled dye sprayed with water. My first choice was salt.

                At first I began to experiment with regular table salt. It was an excellent medium for soaking up color, but its granules were so small that the textural element I was looking for was lacking. I even did some experiments, with varying degrees of success, in growing dye infused salt crystals. Unfortunately, the crystals remained small and the process was too involved for large scale application.

                Quickly I began to think of larger types of salts which would give my work a more pronounced textural element. I experimented with road salt, or de-icing salt. This type of salt was too large and often too dirty for use. I tried breaking it up into smaller granules but found the process to not be worth the time and effort. The only good thing about de-icing salt was the fact that it is so cheap, still though, it proved to be unworthy of the task at hand. The next salt I began to use was Epsom salt. Its granules were medium size; it soaked up water well, was relatively cheap, and easy to apply. For the next few years I used Epsom salt as my main material for producing texture on my work. Some days I would chuckle inside as I bought four large containers of Epsom salt, thousands of cotton swabs, and lighter fluid from a grocery store, all of which were supplies for my artwork. I can only imagine what the cashier thought – maybe she thought I had some kind of alien skin rash?

                I later learned that the major downside to Epsom salt was at times it tended to get brittle and turn into a powdery white substance. Sometimes it did this despite the coats of acrylic spray and matte medium I used to ensure the Epsom salt remained stable.  Most of it did not get brittle but even in small amounts I felt the look detracted from the overall beauty of my work. The salt was originally used on my first Polyp pieces, a little bit on my first Accretion piece, on my first Termitaria install, and a little on my first Peridium piece.

Polyp #1

Accretion #1 (Yellow middle part -- salted, all other pieces are breaded.)

Peridium #1 (A mix of salt and oatmeal mostly on the sides of individual pieces.)

Termitaria Collinasia (All pieces have been breaded.)

                While using Epsom salt I began to experiment with oatmeal. It was a little more expensive than salt and a bit chunkier, two qualities I was not thrilled about. It did however have a strength that salt did not possess, that is it did not break down and turn white in some instances like salt did. Still though, it took me a year or more after some of my initial experiments to come around to oatmeal. The real change of heart came when I got a small mechanical grinder that allowed me to crush the oatmeal into rough flour. Now I had a material that was relatively cheap, easily applied, could readily soak up water, and did not degrade as easily as salt did.

                So yes, at first my art was salted and now it is breaded. And no, you shouldn’t try and eat it for the outside is always coated with acrylic sprays, and either matte medium or polycrylic. Recently, in order to increase the subtleness of color variations on the surface of my material, I have also been applying various amounts and types of colored sand. Soon I hope to begin experiments on how to dye my own sand. I am doing this because the variety of colored sand you can buy at craft stores leaves out many colors I wish I had access to. I will also be looking into how various other grains work when crushed up, and I have even given some thought about experimenting with sawdust. This will have to wait though for I do not currently have access to a steady flow of sawdust by which to do experiments with.

                As you can see, I am always trying out new textural elements, materials, and colors which I feel are more natural and pleasing to the eye than paint could ever be.            

Peridium #1

Peridium #1

 

  

Peridium #1

2015

30" in diameter  with a depth of approximately 32"

Materials used: Up-cycled egg cartons, paint, dye, salt, sand, plaster, and model railroad gravel.

 

 

 

Colony 

Imagine walking down your average city street in America. Especially in an area hard hit by economic collapse. Storefronts lie vacant, the streets are barren, paint peels off weather worn walls, and signs which once advertised booming businesses rust and droop from caving in facades. Tired, the city sighs the sullen exhalation of years of neglect. On such streets, nature waits patiently, longing for the day of its verdant return. In broken sidewalks, sprouting up amidst the cracks, grass springs up in tufts of green spray. The roots of trees, with herculean effort, push up concrete slabs as if trying to free themselves of their shackles. Animals scurry at night, leery of headlights and the thunderous whir of spinning wheels on the tired pavement.

                Now imagine, for a moment at least, that this gray world, sprouted forth from its own refuse, an organic landscape vibrant with color, texture, and alive in flowing form.  In windows, storefronts, across buckling walls, bursting out of floors and ceilings – a coral like mass of alien like life forms transforming space into scenes of beauty and grace. This is my vision. This is COLONY.

                The first in a series of unique organic looking installs that transform under-utilized and abandoned space into flowing organic looking sculptural landscapes. Like an invasive species out competing its rivals, these colonies will spread. Anywhere there is ruin, a Colony may take seed. So, as you walk, numbed by worry or transfixed by the soft light of technical gadgetry, please remember to take notice of the life around you – for in some forgotten recess or a crack in a crumbling wall, you may just stumble upon a new world. A world filled with strange life forms -- a colony that no other eyes have seen before. Now go forth and explore.

The above is a picture of the finished install. 

My original idea for the Colony install was to create a flowing organic sculptural piece which covered all four walls of the room in which I was installing in. However, several problems proved too much to overcome. For one, the walls in this room were in bad shape with the plaster cracking in places and in one spot missing entirely. I was worried that the weight of the piece would not be supported by the plaster of the walls. I was also worried that since I was going to have to use hundreds of nails, that more plaster would crack and fall off the walls further endangering my install. Originally I had thought to glue most of the pieces onto the wall, but being that I wanted to get all of my pieces back, and that the glue would be close to impossible to pry off the wall, I decided against the wall install and went with the floor instead.

Before I decided however, to abandon the wall install, I began laying all of my pieces out on the floor. The following pictures show this series of events. 

The above three pictures constituted the totality of the amount of material I had at the beginning of the Colony install. The original layout was haphazardly created. I was trying to gauge how much space the material would take up and whether or not I was going to be able to cover all the walls in the time allotted to me.

The above picture represents how much material I had after a little more than a month of work.

After another month or so of work the above is how much material I had completed. Creating my work is a painstaking process which takes months of intricate work. 

With a few weeks to go before the deadline I decided to do away with the flowing design and instead switch to a circular design with an inner and outer circle which consisted of different materials. 

After nearly five months of work the Colony install was finally finished. The following pictures represent the piece from a multitude of vantage points. 

 The above two pictures capture the sweep of the circle's arc going separate directions.

The following pictures are of the inner circle. 

The Following two pictures are of the finished install.

Materials used: Cardboard tubes of various sizes, paint, dye, various salts, oatmeal, cotton swabs, various yarns and fabrics, plaster, styrofoam, cardboard, various sands, and plaster. This is not a comprehensive list of materials but does represent the most common types used. Spring to summer 2013. 

   

     

Mimesis Art Show at Survival Kit Gallery

Mimesis: Sculptural Works by Jonah Jacobs and Rebecca Cross

The above show was on view from Sept. 16th to Nov 18th 2011 at Survival Kit gallery in Cleveland Ohio. 

Using distinctly different materials, Rebecca Cross and Jonah Jacobs both draw upon nature to create organic, whimsical sculpture that evokes forest, flower, and sea life. Both artists create a tension between weird and familiar, raw and delicate, creating a visual experience that feels oddly natural.

For more info concerning the art seen above, please go to the following websites:

www.jonahjacobs.com

www.facebook.com/Jonahsart

www.survivalkitgallery.com

www.rebeccastextiles.com

Mimesis: Sculptural Works by Jonah Jacobs and Rebecca Cross

Currently on view at Survival Kit gallery. http://survivalkitgallery.com

The following are some selections of Rebecca Cross' art which was also on display alongside my artwork.

On view at Survival Kit, Friday Sept.16th through Nov. 18th:
MIMESIS: SCULPTURAL WORKS BY JONAH JACOBS + REBECCA CROSS

Using distinctly different materials, Rebecca Cross and Jonah Jacobs both draw upon nature to create organic, whimsical sculpture that evokes forest, flower, and sea life. Both artists create a tension between weird and familiar, raw and delicate, creating a visual experience that feels oddly natural.

OPENING NIGHT IS FROM 5PM-11PM

For more information concerning the art of Rebecca Cross please click on the following link: http://www.rebeccastextiles.com/