#unmade - report 1 (1-10)

February 1, 2017 marked the beginning of a year long painting / internet art project titled #unmade.

For #unmade, I am posting, via twitter, titles for 100 unrealised paintings over the course of 2017. A painting (most likely as acrylic and ink on canvas) is available for each title. To commission a painting, a person will need to contact me (DM) the day the title is posted. Each #unmade painting is priced at $100.

The first 10 tiles have generated 0 commissioned paintings with 11 likes, 1 retweets and 2 new twitter followers. This brings the account to a total of 289 followers. Of the 11 likes, 64% are from MTAA member emeritus @twhid.

My practical art side suggests I should just stop speaking about the workings of #unmade at this point. I should post the titles, report the results and leave the work alone for people to consider. It tells me statements around #unmade may muddle things up.

As I believe only three people in the world are looking at what I make these days, I might as well enjoy the advantage of isolation. I might as well make myself, and you, at home. So, to help us get comfortable with #unmade, I would like to tell you a story.

I closed my North 6th Street Williamsburg studio of 11 years in October 2015. Tim, my partner in MTAA, had already tossed in the towel on the artworld in 2011. A few years later, the financial burden of keeping a solo studio space was taking a toll. I was happy to show some work (link) in my post-MTAA era but lately no museum, gallery or collector was knocking at the door. I seemed to be making work only to make work. With my first child on her way in 2016, I packed up the studio and moved the small mountain of archived MTAA works to a 10x12 storage space in Long Island City. I was now both free of the space and completely restless without it.

Without a physical space in 2016, I decided to quietly return to making online art (link) (link). I was happy with building online work again and wanted to start something new. In early January 2017 I was scratching my head on what to do next when @wagnerblog randomly posted an old painting of mine on Twitter (link) . With this post, an idea and an agreement with myself appeared. Returning to early MTAA working method (link) (link) , I decided I would make a painting only if someone wanted it. If no one really wanted it, then I would at least have a year long text based net artwork to show for the effort.

So here we are, 10 titles into 100. To be honest, I am still thinking of how to work with some details for the project overall. As the delivery method is twitter, I’ve been thinking about character count, hashtags and how immediate the text should be to the moment in time. For process, I do think I will try to bundle the titles into sections of ten. I also think I will keep up with a reporting on the overall project after every 10 posts. For the first 10 titles, I just went with long and unwieldy. I think I will go short for the next 10.

More soon. permanent link to this post