Let’s Talk about BUSINESS: Breanne Trammell

MONEY/TIME/VALUE/BUSINESS. BUSINESSLADYTIME(TM)INC.
an ongoing series of interviews and discussions about art and business. how do they balance out? how do we make this stuff real?

Breanne Trammell

Breanne’s interview was a casual porch-interview, over some quality glasses of water. We talked about her blossoming Nail School project, which is leading towards a Nails Across America tour next summer in a canned-ham trailer re-purposed as a nail salon, trading manicures for stories, art, things, stuff, meeting people and making the world happy through fancy nails. Breanne is currently a lecturer in art + design at SUNY Purchase and adjunct professor in graphic design at Ramapo College in New Jersey, in addition to going to Nail School four nights a week. She holds an MFA from RISD and a BFA from the University of Texas, Arlington.

Breanne talked about how it’s a strange line between her art, business as art, and art as business. she’d love to be able to sustain herself through the future by doing nails. But that requires having people pay traditional fees and she is interested in using barter systems to engage with people in the salon. can that fit into actually having it as a profitable business at the same time? Can the piece be an interactive profitable business AND art piece?

Breanne is currently writing and sending out grant applications to help fund the purchase of the trailer, the tour itself, and other related supplies and design work for the project. She also currently needs 4 new tires on her car, which she drives approximately 500 miles per week to travel to Nail School and to her professor jobs. She recently purchased a portable nail salon table.

Follow up things:

• similar-ish nail salon art piece? hanns eisler nail salon.  not clear on the details.
• similar projects: jen ‘n outlaws fish fry truck and crawfish boil (past wassaic project residents)

WHATSZ UP.

HEY DUDESZ.

what are you doing upstate at wasszzieacyockk?? what is an art residency anyway? you’re a doctor? you’re a student? you’re not a student but you’re in school, right? where do you live now?

one of my projects is to write up a brochure called, “So, your friend/family member/lover wants to go to an artist residency?” or “Artist Residencies for not-dummies” or “Artist Residencies, a Guide”. But I might not get to that so here’s my best explanation so far: Artist residencies create an environment, a support, a community that wants you (the artist-in-residence) to “win” at being an artist. maybe that means supporting you financially. maybe that means supporting you with a line of cheerleaders. maybe that means supporting you with cheesecake. maybe that means supporting you with friends. maybe that means supporting you with free time. whatever. they want you to win, succeed, triumph, get lots of trophies, and do that from doing your work, your best work, critically examined, challenged, pushed. The artists in residence are treated like people who have something to say and contribute, not like someone who should/is/has to struggle to make rent or buy groceries or figure out what to do day to day or go to a job or whatever.

from what I’ve seen it doesn’t seem to be a long term solution in most cases but it’s like a huddle maybe. that’s what an artist residency is, that’s what i’m doing.

Here’s some of what that means for me:

1. being taken aback by the beauty and poetry of day-old st. patrick’s day supermarket baked goods compositions.

2. having my art displayed at Sit & Wonder cafe in Prospect Heights!!!

better / more pictures soon, but for now just a taste above. it is so exciting seeing my work set in a real public place, on-goingly! I get to see it every time I get a delicious coffee! and I’ve sold 3 pieces already! to some amazing people I love. so I don’t even have to worry where the work is going — I get to visit it again. Many pieces are still available — let me know if you’d like to purchase any of them or let’s set up a time to take a tour together.  !

3. being a metro-north commuter. I’ve been going back to NYC every weekend to log some hours at my current job, have NYC meetings, check in on my awesome quilts, get a jolt of citttyyy. I’ve been blow away by the generosity of so many lovely friends who have hosted me, hosted my stuff, bought me food, assisted in errands before my show, etc etc etc. An extra special shout out to mermaid joe for providing dried papaya, hair-cutting buzzers, airmattresses & patches of floor, bike lights, & solid friendship.

4. making 1-word flags every day. these are creation flags. creating the day from nothing without context or history, just deciding what word I’m inventing as the theme of the day. not reflective. i have enough reflective crap. I almost finished this project at the end of march, but then I decided I’ll continue for at least April if not longer. When you’re making flags, you need A LOT of flags. imagine a ROOM CEILING BARN! full of flags! FULL OF FLAGS!!!!!! yes. that is what we are talking about people.

also stickers. I made little 1inch x 1 inch stickers of these flags. but they’re not big enough. I will be venturing into 4 in x 4 in flag stickers… but I need buyers to commit to specific flags/stickers first. so claim yours now — let me know which one you want. maybe they should be limited edition. like only 5 of each word. hmmm…. screenprinting??? either way, start claiming words people.

5. drinking a lot of water:

hydration is key. marketing and slogans is becoming something very interesting to me. corporations. conversations in the world. repeated and declared messages in the world. mass producing. stickers.

slogan i thought of today: “EVERYTHING MATTERS.” not yet clear what visual form it takes.

6. doing 8-hour in-studio performances:

I got a really wonderful response to this piece via the MAIL, which is EVEN BETTER THAN THE INTERNET (I said it! ha! take that! doesn’t mean I won’t LOVE you to digitally comment all over this blog. all over my face. wherever.).

Greg, my #1 gold-star-A+friend and fan reflected on my piece some really important thoughts: “you are chewing gum wearing headphones, totally unprofessional!!” OH MAN, GREG YOU GOT ME. geeze what was I thinking? way too (business) casual. sorry y’all. but, on the bright side, Greg said he loved my bad singing. so phew.

7. wearing lipstick every day for a week.

an experiment in being a BusinessLady. and getting lipstick on every cup I drink from. annoying! but classy.

8. making Headquarters Offices. out of a million USPS boxes.

this is inspired by a photo I saw a million years ago from my high school best friend Tessa, who ordered a million free boxes from the USPS and set up a little fort. ever since I saw that I’ve been wanting so badly to do that too, but had no excuse to um, utilize without a specific purpose (?) so many boxes. BUT ART TO THE RESCUE! art is always a great reason to use resources. the pictures above are a prototype. but I’m excited. even just setting up some of the boxes and starting to build around me was calming on an otherwise freak-out day. building a space, a square space, a businesslady zone. an office headquarters. office desk parts will soon be inserted into the spacial sculpture as well. Maybe these fancy stores will host a performance/workday/businesslady time zone workshop workday….

9. making PowerSuits.

deconstructing thrifted blazers, making patterns, making my own patterns, reconstructing, quilting, collecting, being professional.

10. ordering cups of free yogurt online.

11. cutting my hands in all kinds of vaguely stupid ways. I’m up to 3 wounds. they’re all healing but geeze annoying. refraining from posting pictures of the wounds on the internet = even harder / more annoying.

12. organizing a wassaic community wide open passover seder!!!! got my copy of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Haggadah the other week and I’m so excited and inspired! I’ll be combining it with the Bonar Family Haggadah. so excited. that’s my main focus this week — gonna make this holiday real for all of us people.

I’m imagining coordinated passover-costumes (comfy/pillows/regal/desert sandals); screen printed seder plate imagery that’s also on the place-mats; a huge array of different traditions encompassed in the menu and recipes; people from all faiths at the same table talking about real modern stuff they’re thinking about and dealing with and breaking free from; freedom from that which constrains us. YOU’RE INVITED TOO. Friday April 13. LET ME KNOW IF YOU’D LIKE TO COME & BE A PART OF THIS.

13. generally being incredibly awesome and totally attractive.

PUMPED ABOUT LIFE Y’ALL. LET’S DO THIS THING.

love,

aliya

p.s. i have no idea how i’m using these blog categories. this post really did seem to be all of them so clearly they are bad categories. i am forever trying to figure out how to categorize or organize or plan out or list out my life. better.

WINNING

I don’t know if it’s the coffee, the awesome early morning spent at “CreativeMornings” with Jacob Krupnick discussing Girl Walk // All Day, the chocolate croissant, an awesome morning work-out, anticipation of seeing great friends tonight, all these classes I’m creating, this crazy helmet my dad suggested I purchase, or MY NEW BIKE (more deets/photoshoot later)!!!!!

but I AM dancin-in-the-shower FEELIN GREAT TODAY!!!!!

trip to moma ps1: kissing art

Last weekend I took a trip up to Long Island City to MoMA PS1 with the lovely Lily-bean to see, specifically, the Surasi Kusolwong piece “Golden Ghost (The Future Belongs To Ghosts)” that was re-installed from its original installation at Living as Form in September/October. I had to see personally how they had re-imagined (?) the piece – I had been totally incredulous that PS1 even wanted the piece in the first place, and that Surasi had allowed it to be “re-installed”. They used the exact same threadwaste that we had fluffed endlessly for 4 weeks inside of the Essex Street Market.

some images taken by a fellow museum-goer here.

It was an up-to-the-last-minute plan changer during the de-installation of the exhibition — were we going to have to take the threadwaste to the dumpster/recycling center (pay for transportation, pay for dumping per pound, all 7 tons of it), or was MoMA PS1 going to take it, paying for transportation themselves, and re-install it as art. it was a very bizarre art moment for me. They took it! and Surasi made new necklaces! and now even more people love it and play around like it’s a political (but that stuff is easily ignorable) McDonald’s ball-pit.

Surasi himself scampering across the “Threadwaste Landscape” opening weekend. This was the piece at it’s height, in it’s full glory. Also having Surasi there himself made the whole thing just 100x better. and more adorable.

From the run of the exhibition — above is one of the necklace-finders and his sister.

My parents adorably laying in the threadwaste landscape themselves. the first weekend.

Kevin, Leila, and myself putting in some late-nights playing working.

Anyways. It was great to be re-united with pieces of Living as Form. It even smelled the same as it had in the market (ok maybe this is gross?)! But what was more exciting from my visit was discovering Clifford Owens, specifically his body of work Anthology.

Briefly, for Anthology, Owens “asked 26 inter-generational black artists to provide him with scores for performance works which he interpreted in situ during a residency at PS1 last spring.” He was presenting a collection of highly personal interpretations and reflections on “blackness” and performed most of these actions using his body as the medium. There were many pieces that were interesting, and as a whole they told a collective yet individual story and history.

A great interview with the artist (scroll right): http://www.bullettmedia.com/article/cliff-owens-moma-ps1/

The piece that just had me frozen was the performance / instruction submitted by Kara Walker, who instructed Owens (I’m paraphrasing) to “French kiss an audience member and demand sex”. The performance was a room of presumably MoMA PS1 audience members (it might have been the same room in which I had been standing watching the video documentation of this event) standing along the edge of the room. Some had cans of beer in their hands. Owens walked casually around the room, getting closer to people, locking eyes, sometimes touching their shoulder or elbow, and then kissing them, more or less intimately, sometimes a long time sometimes just short. then moving on to someone else in the room.

image from @Ruschka on twitter, http://twitpic.com/7h2bbn. taken november 20, 2011

For me this was the ultimate social art piece. Not ultimate in the best most awesome wow this is what my work should be, but in that it was arresting on so many levels. It was nothing like watching a make-out scene in a movie. it was awkward, it was uncomfortable, it was extremely revealing of human-ness. You watched people — people that may well have been you!! — being awkward, uncomfortable, hands crossed in front of their bodies, maybe thinking about other people, maybe never been kissed before, and then the artist performed a very intimate and “meaningful” act in a context where everyone knows it doesn’t really mean those meanings we add to it. AND THEN on top of that, he is a black body in a room of mostly white museum-goers, bringing in histories and cultural stereotypes about African-American sexuality or force and all the injustices that have resulted from assumptions and institutionalized racism throughout our American history.

AND THEN on top of all that theorizing and history was the looks on the people’s faces, when they gave into the kissing. When most of them became really a part of it, closed their eyes and let their crossed arms down. Everyone knew it was just a performance, but it was still so human to give in, to connect with the person kissing you. It was like watching your bestfriend, yourself, make out with someone. which I’ve never done, but I imagine it would be like watching this video.

Some great articles reviewing Anthology:

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/12/artseen/clifford-owens-anthology

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-y-lew/kiss-tell-the-process-of-_b_1102347.html

So, this I consider socially engaged art, or at least engaging art, because it stuck me at my core, and made me uncomfortable, made me feel human, made me feel both connected and alone.

He is doing one more performance this Saturday, I think I will be going. Want to join me?