At the end of May, Jane Dickson and I took a bus from Baltimore to New York, which is the perfect highway journey for a tete-a-tete on topics about everything from art and ideas to happiness and success. It was on this ride that she told me about her new work, “The Architecture of Distraction”, inspired by a trip to Las Vegas. Being fascinated with forms of distraction, I wanted to take this opportunity to chat with Jane about her new paintings and where they are taking her.
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Artwork © Jane Dickson
I love the title, “The Architecture of Distraction” as it implies an intention that goes beyond the more congenial term, “entertainment.” Please talk about what has attracted you to the idea of distraction and the forms in which it manifests in American life.
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I’m struggling daily to focus, to think my own thoughts clearly without interruptions and to follow through on those ideas. Yet I reject being a recluse because I’m as seduced as anyone by the overwhelming energy of the city, my brilliant friends, the internet… I’m driven to distraction by my desire to keep up with more than is humanly possible.
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I’ve been thinking about how this attraction/seduction/distraction paradox is structural to our hyper-commercialized culture. Our attention is hijacked every few seconds by systems designed by the best minds money can buy. Like everyone else, I’m struggling with the internet’s huge new layers of virtual info/distractions.
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You know, every time I sit down to write an email I find an hour has gone by, I’ve signed petitions to save whales, seen strange videos, read about art projects in Greenland and I’ve forgotten to do that one email I went online for in the first place. This is not news but it’s an ever-increasing challenge to find strategies to cope with. I understand the world by painting my dillemas so my current question is how to visualize distraction.
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Your new project focuses on Las Vegas, which is distraction on the largest possible scale. What is it about Las Vegas that you find in turns compelling and challenging in the desire to represent it visually ?
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I was at loose ends last year and a friend invited me to Vegas. Entering that seemingly endless maze of disorienting patterns and shapes, flashing lights and crazy music, what Rem Koolhaas called the Synthetic Reality of Fantastic Technology, I realized I had entered the 3-D precursor to the internet’s labyrinth of temptations. I took hundreds of pictures, many of people at slot machines. When I got home and looked at them I realized what interested me was the architecture and the way it swallows everyone. Slot machines look like computer terminals. We get away from work and then are riveted by these screens, losing money, thinking we’re having fun.
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You mentioned that you are also working on paintings of an amusement park ride in Vienna, and that this work recalls a project you did 25 years ago. What is it like to work on a similar subject through the lens of “distraction” ?
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Most of my work has focused on prefab entertainment zones since my first paintings of Times Square. One of my first jobs was working there as a computer billboard animator on weekend nights. I wandered around wondering why everyone, including me, wanted to be in a place that was so raw. I began to paint it from every angle I could, trying to capture the edges of it’s attractive/repulsiveness, when I was pregnant and couldn’t stand the smell of Times Square I moved on to Demolition Derbies, street fairs, …..asking, why this? Why does this signify fun? What does this have to tell me about myself, my culture, the world ?
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When I embrace a new subject it feels electric, like new love, totally fascinating. Eventually I get to know it too well and I’m done. With carnivals I’m revisiting an old subject from a fresh perspective. I’m a different person than I was when I first painted it. I see things I didn’t register before. Early on, besides glorying in the artificiality of the lights, I focused mostly on alienated individuals. Now I’m entranced by the geometric meta-structures that determine the scope of the “freedom” each ride offers. I’m observing about the architectural structures as framework for, creation of, limitation to, and distraction from desires and choices, reflecting the larger invisible structures, natural, political and economic that are reshaping my world every day.
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Artwork © Jane Dickson
I love how you had said about the Vienna work that the paintings were like potato chips, and that you couldn’t do just one. Please talk about the difference between this vibe and the more challenging aspects of the Las Vegas project.
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A lot of art making is a long hard slog into the unknown. “How the hell do I treat this? What do I put it on? What paint do I use? How thick, how big, how many…?” This is a process of trial and error requiring enormous faith to engage the biggest question; “Is this project really worth doing at all?”
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But sometimes there are moments of grace when I feel fluent with the subject and the materials and the work just flies. It feels like the push-ups are over and now I can dance. When the work is really flowing I feel like I’m gorging myself on colors and marks. “just one more…just one more…” I don’t want to stop.
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( I always imagine I’m eating colors.)
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With Las Vegas I’m still exploring, everything is in question. With amusement park rides I’m at home even if these paintings are on smooth square panels which I’ve never used before. That’s an important point. As an artist I can’t stay long in the familiar zone or I begin to fall asleep creatively. The architecture of these rides is exciting right now because I beat my head against the wall all last year exploring them with the wrong materials and it just felt dead. Now I know the subject well, I’ve finally found a congruent approach technically and it’s beginning to sing.
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Lastly I have to confess that whatever subject I am focusing on can begin to feel like a job. I start to push myself, make mental demands and commitments, get hyper-critical of the work in progress…..So the distraction of a side project feels like play. I haven’t promised it to anyone. I don’t have expectations for it. It can surprise me. Sometimes I switch which project is my main one in my head to trick myself into lightening the burden of expectations I’ve put on it. The one I don’t care about is always easiest.
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Artwork © Jane Dickson
Do you have your own favorite distractions, and in what form do they take?
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Right now reading, swimming, hip hop and indie music events, crossword puzzles, facebook and “Mad Men.”
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