jeremy tessmer | curator & designer

Last night, the Gallery got a few choice seats at the Music Academy of the West’s annual fundraiser at the Fess Parker Hotel.  It was such an exclusive event.  We were among the few, the chosen, the four-hundred ninety-seven…

The music was fantastic and the crowd responded enthusiastically with generous gifts to the Academy.  (Frank Goss put the Master in Master of Ceremonies as auctioneer of five special items.)   It was a grand, grand evening.  One party-goer said that it was, “the last great hurrah of the season.”  (Won’t Santa Barbarans be interested to find out that we have more than one season?)

Here, we see the effects of wine on hand-held photography.  Susan is so glamorous.  I am so shiny. We are both so blurry. That’s how you know that people were having fun.  There are never any sharp, well-lit pictures at good parties…

In September, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art will open Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910–12, and my sources tell me that the exhibition will make use of apps.  I can’t remember if they will be using iPads or iPods, but there will be a “digital” component to the didactic part of the exhibition.

At the Tim Burton exhibition, they didn’t even put up very many tags.  (How could they?  There were 700 plus objects)  They handed out customized iPod Touches.  Each object had its own app.

To check into Cubism apps, I downloaded Fracture.  The image above was made with the app.  It features a beautiful 70s car.  Cubism?  There’s an app for that, too.  On the one hand, it is wonderful that people can explore the formal side of Cubism in an intuitive way.   On the other hand, yet another wonderous human idea has been commoditized and sold for less than a dollar.

Pertinent to that, have you used the new iPad in the gallery?  What do you think?  Is it applicable?

I haven’t written a new blog post in ages.  I have continued to read, to make things, and to have thoughts about both activities.   As a courtesy, I will spare you the litany.

Briefly, however, I will submit that I have recently created my first two books for distribution through the Print on Demand service, Blurb.  I created the books in Adobe InDesign, exported to a specialized PDF, uploaded the files and got my books back.  One of the books cannot yet be discussed.  The other book is called De Forest’s Santa Barbara.  Frank Goss wrote most of the text, but I wrote the biography and a couple of the remarks.  The first copies should arrive by 1st Thursday in November.

That is not the reason for this post, but I thought I would mention it anyway.  I wanted to briefly comment on two things:

1.  David Brooks’ FABULOUS new article “The Flock Comedies”

I didn’t take any sociology classes.  Indeed, I was told that sociology was for girls who wanted to get married to a nice college boy.  I was mistaken on both counts.  This article articulates things about our society today that are well worth noting.  Great phrases include (but are not limited to): the eroticization of friendship, friendship mob, and an insular and stultifying social fortress.

2.  The Death of the Humanities

This past week, the NY Times has four articles (Going back, I could only find this one.)  on the death of the humanities.  The debate arose in response to plummeting enrollment and the recent S.U.N.Y. decision to discontinue the French department at one of their schools.  Obviously, I’m a soft-science kinda guy.  On the other hand, I get it.  I get the rationale for the cut.  What more needs be said?  One thing:  some things have a value that cannot be translated into dollars.  Those things are valuable and important, but NOT remunerative.  If this world is going to remain worthwhile, we are going to have to get it together to support valuable things that don’t pay out.  Fortunately, I think that the blogosphere will do wonders in that arena.  Optimism: a Young Man’s Game if Ever There Was One.