Successful younger artists describe their careers and offer advice on achieving recognition and developing new strategies in today's art world.
Paths to Success: Recently "Emerged" Artists
by Anne Barclay Morgan
Those who have graduated from the status of "emerging artist" are artists who have found a level of recognition that allows them to, at least in part, live off their work. Many other artists who seek recognition find that it is often difficult to plan their careers to optimize their chance of this kind of success. Many wonder, for example, whether they need to move to New York, or London, or another art capital in order to succeed. In today's pluralistic art world, it is also difficult to know what aspects of their work to emphasize most in a strategy for success. This article presents the voices of some recently "emerged" artists, who offer a variety of viewpoints and strategies on achieving success as sculptors. Beverly Semmes is from Washington, D.C., but now lives in New York. Her art career began with a 1982 BFA from Tufts University in Boston, a stint at Skowhegan, and an MFA from Yale in 1987. Between 1990 and 1997, she had 24 solo shows in Europe and the United States. For Semmes, the years immediately after receiving her degrees
were very important for developing her work. As she found out, for many people "sculpture is what you sit on when there isn't a chair." Not only is there little understanding of sculpture among members of the general public, there is little awareness within the art world of the diversity of materials and approaches used by sculptors today. Because her artwork employs fabrics, she had to apply for grants in mixed media or other categories rather than sculpture.As a result of such experiences, she strongly believes in nonprofit artist
spaces, which have shown more understanding of her work-she has had shows at P.5.1, Artists Space, and the Sculpture Center in New York. She feels these spaces are especially important now, "when times are tough." She also says that artists need to be flexible and resourceful in difficult times, and, in her case, says, "I know how to use the yellow pages-and thank God for conceptual art." Semmes also feels that young artists should realize that "there is no one schedule to follow; it is important not to be in too much of a hurry to show." Janine Antoni experienced rapid success after receiving her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in
1989. She was included in the 1993 Venice Biennale and the infamous 1994 "Bad Girls" show at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York (which also included Beverly Semmes's work). She was also nominated for the first Hugo Boss Prize.
Several years ago, she decided to leave her New York gallery and work without gallery representation. During that period, she received grants and critical recognition and had numerous shows (including alternative space exhibitions like 1996's "Three-legged race"
with Nari Ward and Marcel Odenbach, in an abandoned fire house in Harlem). Despite this activity she says that collectors were reticent to buy her work -specifically beca use she did not have a New York gallery. Collectors are al 0 frequently frustrated by site-specific installations, a medium in which Antoni often works, because there is "nothing to buy." She is now showing with Luhring Augustine Gallery in New York.
Other artists have continued to follow maverick paths. Although Robert Chambers received his MFA from New York University, he divides his time between New York, where he has a studio, and his home in Miami, where he taught until recently at the University of Miami. His career was launched by a show at the Sculpture Center in ew York in 1991. He has shown frequently in exhibitions curated by Kenny Shachrer, who is known for including unexpected, diverse, and even quirky work in his shows. Chambers's latest installation, DRIX (1997), at Ambrosino Gallery in Miami, included sounds, smells, lights, projections, and pools of water. The installation demonstrates his unusual creative processes, consisting of "breaking habits" and putting himself into a trance-like state, as methods of encouraging experimentation. "If you feel comfortable with your work, it's a bad sign," he advises, "always feel a little unsure." Otherwise, he says, the work is not a conduit for things that are affecting the artist now, but rather for some prior experience. On a more concrete level, he notes that "You would think it would be the responsibility of curators and alternative spaces to seek you out, but that is rarely the case," and therefore it is essential to "create your own venues, and also create them for others."
Chambers even feels that it's important to make compromises "in order to get the work out there," since, as he says, "it's a lot harder for artists today than it was." In these circumstances, he advises artists that "helping other artists as much as you can" will improve the situation for everybody. Cooperation and mutual support are, in fact, recommended by many of the successful artists we spoke
to. In spite of the difficulties in today's art world, Chambers is optimistic in his final advice to artists: "Keep doing your own work, and something will happen."
Jason Rhoades lives and works in Los Angeles, which he considers the perfect place, "because nobody bothers you." He feels he has been able to develop work without art world pressure. Since receiving his MFA in 1993 from the University of California at Los Angeles, he has had solo shows at the Kunsthalle in Basel (and an upcoming one in Nurnberg); he has shown in the 1997 Venice Biennale, the 1995 and 1997 Whitney Biennials, and in museum exhibitions all over Europe; and he was reviewed by Roberta Smith in The New York Times three times in the past five years. He has shown much more widely and is better known in Europe than in the
United States, prompting him to comment that "America will come along later." What was the cause of his success?
"More than anything else, that I aimed high," he says, and taking what he calls an "uncompromising position." He did not settle for what he calls "pathetic dealers." He concedes an "agility at being a young artist, to experiment and to push things rather than being put into the market." In Rhoades's opinion, "younger artists are going about it the wrong way, they are making art for galleries."
Mentors are also very important to emerging artists. The mentor that Rhoades mentions as being influential for him is the Los Angeles artist Richard Jackson, "who was very...
