Closing in

I have just returned from the Marfa Film Festival. And on Cinco de Mayo, we are closing in on what has been a compressed trajectory between launching this blog and finalizing the launch components of our full online magazine site, coming next month. What a time. We are in a revolutionary phase that I know I have never experienced before. One’s skillset, to use a word keyed into American life, has to parlay itself into new definitions in a society that loves definitions. Just this morning, as I was interviewing Ivan Barnett of Patina Gallery for my Art and Antiques article (due next Monday, appearing in July issue), we talked words briefly. We touched on Ivan’s own work, a series of recent metal fabrications called “Homage to Sandro (Chia)” that opened last Friday at Patina.The metal mobiles hang in the gallery like countervalances of light springy things with weightier questions about where art meets design meets craft. The word “craft,” Ivan reports, is back in. Does it need the adjective, “fine,” appended to the front of it, like before? “Interesting question,” he replied. Andrew Wagner, formerly of Dwell and recently the last former editor of American Craft, has gone on to edit Readymade, a magazine for young do-it-yourselfers chockfull of all sorts of craft (without adjective) projects. Janet Koplos replaces him at American Craft. Her article on studio jewelry appeared in the recent issue of Art in America. I digress, and yet not. Where Santa Fe plans its summer festival season, is where I have been–my usual interviewing journalist self, pen in hand, tape recorder at the ready. Yet how Santa Fe is seen from without, and the complexity with which we exist from within, have been the benchmarks of my creative efforts to launch the coming digital magazine. In the process I have (I hope) learned what feels like a doctorate’s worth about new media and immediacy, which can and do exist without sacrifice of integrity and critical discernment that make for strong content. Don’t let anybody tell you ever that content doesn’t matter. Our numbers on this blog spiked up last week to 200 a day. That’s a 100 percent increase. I don’t say this to brag as Internet audiences, as we know, can be fickle, and the question of judging who is seeing you, where they come from, what they think, do they like it? what do they want more of? Well, in this universe of the everyday, these questions are sort of like the kitchen sink, the dinner table, and the crystal palace all combined into one synergy of great service, excellent food, and the conversation that can only tick if all participate. So, consider this my hello for the week to our very valued set of early payer-attentions-to, of which, if you are reading, you are one. Thanks for your support so far. I’ll be back to say more about Marfa. We’re holding some things back now for  the online magazine launch so we’ll be posting perhaps at more infrequent intervals. I did see the Julius Shulman film that David D’Arcy posted about last week, on Sunday in Marfa. It was simply terrific. The photographer is 98 years old and will turn 99 on 10/10/09. His passage from a person whose early encouragement came from Frank Lloyd Wright to himself a modernist icon with volumes on his work produced by Taschen–all the while with a listed telephone number in the L.A. directory–is summed up in my favorite thing he said. “Work?” ended a question that someone asked him. “What else is there?” he replied.