From The Desk of Pat Greene

New York based artist Frank Haines is a visual artist, performer, writer, and a lot of what he does barely falls into those confines. Quantifying him, short changes what he does. His performances often involve music, theater and a lot in between. He has written several essays and books. Florida Damage is a long memoir type essay about his early days in Florida. He has performed as Sandy Smiles, Francis Heinzfeller and other names. He is interested in a wide variety of subjects. We talked about the occult, psychedelics, Florida etc.

Jim Drain is an artist who mostly works with textiles but is definitely not limited to any medium. His work in film and music is worth checking out. He currently teaches at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. He went to school there, where he was a large part of the Fort Thunder and Forcefield Collectives. They were featured in the Whitney Biennial in 2002. I met him when he lived in Miami. He was a founder of the Bas Fisher Invitational. His textiles have been worn by the likes of Bjork, Erase Errata, and many others. His work has been shown all over the world. He is a generous force in an art world that isn’t always blessed with generous forces.

For most of this century, Big Car Collaborative in Indianapolis has been not only the biggest force for redefining Social Practice Art, but they have also been extremely effective in practical terms of bringing parts of Indianapolis back to life, and reemerging these areas in a better way. Married couple Jim Walker and Shauta Marsh are the brains, the brawn, the creative and emotional forces that have made this work. In 2015 London’s Guardian presented them as an example of how gentrification can work, and be sensitive and aware of who lives in these neighborhoods and giving them a better place to live. Big Car Collaborative has brought in affordable housing, the Tube Factory art gallery, Listen Hear an ambitious sound art program and an FM radio station. These are just a few examples of what they have done. They have secured major funding from grants and donors. They are models of how to make a city a better place.

Megan Frye is a writer, photographer, and translator. She has been living in Mexico for the past few years. She has been published in many national and international publications. She has a keen eye for detail and is a compassionate observer.

Rat Bastard has been a longtime Miami noise legend. His fame has gone way past south Florida. His band the Laundryroom Squelchers operates more like a collective with a crew of musicians, non-musicians, and performers. Rat may be best known for his yearly event the International Noise Conference (INC) in Miami. No money is exchanged. All shows are free, nobody gets paid. Sets are limited to 15 minutes. It happens every February.

Pedro Reyes is a Mexico City artist who studied architecture. Oftentimes his work consists of physical sculptures. His two projects that led me to him were Palas por Pistolas, and Disarm. Both used guns from the Culiacan area, a known area for drug cartel violence. The former project he made melted down guns into 1527 gardening tools. The same number of trees were planted with those tools. Disarm used confiscated guns from the area to make musical instruments. The variety of his work seems to be a response to the times we live in.

The first part of the interview with Scott Hocking we talked a lot about life, our fathers and baseball. Scott said something about how these stories helped talk about what helped shape into in the artist that he is today.  The second part we talked about his art and art in general, and came back to some of stories about our lives too. 

Scott Hocking is a sculptor, installation artist and photographer. His monument like art has been seen all over Detroit for years. Scott creates temporary installations using abandoned spaces, debris, and disregarded objects. His art also serves as commentary about waste and misuse. It’s often a reminder of Detroit’s prosperous past, along with the endof that prosperity. He is currently showing his work at Crystal Bridges in Arkansas. He grew up in the Detroit area. I really believe that Detroit should hire him to redesign the city.

Eve Payor is the Director of Community Programs for the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She is also a sound artist, educator, oboe player, composer and DJ. She’s led the community in Sound Walks, and runs the Caneveral National Seashore Sound Art Residency. Eve’s efforts have made sound art into an accessible art form without compromising the integrity of it.

Grant Cogswell is the owner of the only English language bookstore in México City, Under the Volcano Books. Grant is a poet, and a screenwriter, who is currently working on a memoir. Following years of civic activism Grant ran for City Council in Seattle in 2001. Phil Campbell wrote a book about this. In 2011 Stephen Gyllenhaal directed a film based on the book. I met Cogswell in October 2019. There is so much more to him than my blurb states.

I interviewed composer and visual artist Guillermo Galindo. Guillermo was born in Mexico City. He received his Bachelor's degree from Berkeley College in Boston. He received his Master's from Mills College in Oakland. At Mills College he was introduced to composer Pauline Oliveros and other major influences. Mills College merged with the San Francisco Tape Center in the 1960s. The Tape Center was started by composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick. The Center also had Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros and several other major influences.  As a result of this merger Mills College has become a hub for New Music. Galindo did a collaboration with Chris Brown called the Transmission Series. He has written a commission for the Kronos Quartet, and Wolfeyes has opened for him. He has had a career that doesn’t seem to be dependent on a dealer or the art market. He seems to respond to the world as he sees it. His most well known recent work was Border Cantos, a collaboration with photographer Richard Misrach. The show became a traveling museum exhibition, and a book published by Aperture. For the show Galindo created primitive musical instruments using objects that had been discarded by people attempting to cross the border illegally into the United States, many fleeing persecution. Misrach took haunting large format photos of a border area devoid of humans. The project was extremely powerful. It’s an example of the humanity of Guillermo Galindo’s work. He is currently working on a project called Sonic Botany for the Huntington Library, Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

His work has been shown at Documenta 14, ICA in Boston, Rollins College Cornell Museum of Fine Art, and several other museums and galleries.

I interviewed Simeon Coxe of Silver Apples in 2016 in his backyard in Fairhope Alabama. Simeon is a true pioneer of electronic and rock music. He spent some time at Andy Warhol's factory in the 60s. Andy painted a portrait of Simeon. Silver Apple's oscillator based sound has been a huge influence on experimental music. The name Silver Apples comes from composer Morton Feldman's piece Silver Apples of the Moon. Coxe continues to play and tour, and he also continues to paint.