Principal Juror – Michael Klein, Curator, The Microsoft Art Collection Seattle, 2004

Juror’s Comments – The Act of Looking

“So how do you do this?” was the question thrust at me. “How will you decide which to include and which to leave out? What are you looking for?” “Well, I don’t know what it is I’m looking for,” I said, “at first, I’m just looking. Then when I see something, I look some more. I suppose I’m looking for something different.”

There was silence and then the click of the projector as the next slide came on the screen and the machine’s automatic focus was engaged. The process of looking and reviewing the slides took nearly three nights. The first night was given over to looking at the entire set of slides that had arrived from Boston. The second night was devoted to eliminating anything that I was not interested in. The third and final night involved reviewing the remaining slides and deciding upon the final list.

The act of looking is, I think, a private act. It is much like remembering—that is, it calls on memory to immediately compare what you are looking at with what you may have already seen or know. Looking at new work is always a wild card; there is no known end result. It is not a scientific experiment that will net a certain outcome based on the known properties of the materials being used. It is unknown, and a surprise that is most rewarding when you find it. Yet the surprise, too, can be novel. For example I am always surprised by what catches my eye, because I want to know if it is because of habit or familiarity. Certain works always strike my fancy so the challenge is to try to step outside this visual comfort zone and attempt to experience something new, or all together different.

The selections here are by artists both known and unknown to me. Having lived on the West coast for over five years there are names and works that I have come to recognize and have spent time exploring. In this list I would include Josh Dov, Anna Fidler, Meg Harders, Lucinda Parker, and John Zurier. The other works selected here are new to my eye, and their inclusion is based on slides. I could not make studio visits, nor did I see these works on display in a gallery or museum. Nonetheless, I was intrigued by these artists, stopped the machine and spent time reviewing their work image by image. This list includes John Brosio’s suburban landscapes ravaged by tornadoes; Tom Fowler’s obsessive use of words and language; Joseph Gerges masterful figurative drawings; Jonathan Parker’s remarkably haunting miniature portraits; and Allison Schulnik’s primitive-like landscapes. All the works I selected made an impression on me, caught me, asked me to look further, pushed me to think outside my comfort zone, and caused me to consider what I already know (my personal visual encyclopedia, if you will), and compare them to that work. I then decided whether or not to include their work here.

Projects like this one for New American Painting always cause me to ask more questions than are answers. I am a fatalist and think that perhaps one day I will meet some of these artists face to face, and they will invite me to their studios, and I will then see more and find out more about the art they make and the choices I made.

The machine went silent.

“Did you finish looking…?”
“Not really.”