Author: Kyle Clements

Kyle Clements is a Toronto-based artist and nerd. During his thesis at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Kyle began working on his Urban Landscapes series, a body of work that aims to capture the energy and excitement of life in the fast-paced urban environment. After graduating from OCAD in 2006, Kyle spent a year living in Asia to gather source material and experience in a different kind or urban environment. His work is vibrant and colourful. Whether painting the harsh Northern landscape, or capturing the overwhelming buzz of life in the city, his acrylic paintings hover between representation and abstraction.

Why can’t I photograph art? part 2

Why can’t I photograph art?
           Why do some museums, galleries and artists object to having their artwork photographed?
           In my last entry, Why Can’t I Photograph Art, I described the event that sparked my interest in the subject of photographing artworks. I covered my thought process at the time, and described how my adolescent mind tried to figure out what reason their was for banning photography in museums and galleries. I didn’t get very far.

           It wasn’t until my University years that I discovered the real reason why artworks could not be photographed: Copyright Law
           So I now had the official, legal reason for not being allowed to photograph artworks, but this seemed strange to me. Copyright law makes sense for books, songs and movies. In these mediums, money is made by selling multiple copies of the same thing. With paintings, there are no copies; there is only one. A song can have multiple copies and be sold multiple times, but every painting is unique; it’s the only one like it in the whole world. I finally had my answer, but something about it didn’t sit right with me. Why would a one-of-a-kind object possibly need copyright protection?
Continue reading Why can’t I photograph art? part 2

Why Can’t I Photograph Art?

           Have you ever heard something that didn’t sound right, something that just seemed wrong, yet you were never able to point out exactly what was wrong with it? I’ve had that feeling many times, and every time I think I’ve got it figured out, another idea emerges to counter my previous understanding.
           For years, one question kept popping up in my mind, and I couldn’t find a good answer for it. That question was: Why can’t I photograph art?
           Why do some museums, galleries and artists object to having their artwork photographed?
Part of me always instinctively shied away from photographing photographs, something about that just felt wrong to me; I’d sketch those out.
           But paintings? Sculptures?
           What’s wrong with taking pictures of those art forms?
Continue reading Why Can’t I Photograph Art?

Wasted Time? What to Look for in an Art Blog

           The last two entries in the Wasted Time series, Business Advice from Art Blogs and Repeated Advice from Art Blogs dealt with two central issues:
1. My frustrations over the plethora of art blogs that offer vague, generic, and repetitive business advice.
2. My scepticism of their claims on the importance of blogging.
I also ranted a bit about why visual thinkers should be asked to write.

           It is important to keep in mind that these business and marketing centric art blogs represent a small fraction of what is out there in the blogosphere, and dismissing every art blog thats out there as repetitive and generic would mean missing out on a lot of great, unique content. Trying to read everything thats out there would take many lifetimes, so strategies to quickly assess they quality of an art blog is critical. This post covers some of the techniques I use while skimming over a blog to gauge weather I should read more, or move on to the next one.
           When I come across someone’s art blog, I start skimming through their advice. If their ideas seem insightful, unique, genuine, powerful or authentic, I will give it a good, detailed read.
But, I wont automatically take their advice to heart until they pass one very crucial test: is the art on their site any good?
Continue reading Wasted Time? What to Look for in an Art Blog

Wasted Time? Repeated advice from Art Blogs

          In my last post, Wasted Time? Business Advice from Art Blogs, I talked about the repetition of advice that was so common on the art blogs I came across during my research. They all presented lists of advice, and the advice was always the same.

          One piece of advice that came up everywhere was the importance of blogging. Every single art blog stresses the importance of blogging. The advice reads like this: If you aren’t blogging already, start yesterday. If you are blogging, blog more!

          I know that I went into art because I am a visual thinker. I’m a Modernist at heart, believing that a medium should focus on its specific areas of competence. Ideas that are best expressed through words should be expressed as words, and ideas best expressed though images should be expressed through images. The ideas that are in my paintings are the ideas that I don’t know how to put into words. If I could say it better than I could paint it, I’d have written about it.
          I suspect that a good number of my fellow artists are also primarily visual thinkers. Visual thinkers can best express themselves though images, not words. In fact, based on the vast majority of artist’s statements that I’ve come across, I’d suspect that many artists aren’t really familiar with words at all, and I’d like to suggest that they stay very far away from them in the future.
          Some of the worst writing I have ever seen came from an artist. And thats fine. Not every writer is a great artist, and not every artist has to be a great writer. But these art blogs are telling artists, telling visual thinkers, that they have to write about their art, and write a lot.

          So, when everyone is saying “blog blog blog, then blog some more!”, The easiest thing for a person wanting to take that advice is rewording and repackaging what has already been said. The temptation to copy and paste other articles, do a quick re-write, and hit ‘post’ is very understandable. I’d do it too if it wasn’t for that little Modernist inside my head screaming, “be more original than that!”.
Continue reading Wasted Time? Repeated advice from Art Blogs

Wasted Time? Business Advice from Art Blogs.

          Lately, I have been spending a lot of time trying to focus on the business end of my art career. I feel like the creating art side of my life is in a very good place right now. I’ve been working on paintings more or less non-stop for over a year now, and with every brush stroke I make, I can feel the difference that my constant practice has made possible. I would imagine that I am really close to my 10,000 hours by now, or maybe I’m already past it, I honestly don’t really keep track of my hours in the studio. All I know for sure is that this past year has done wonderful things for my art making skills, both in technical ability, and in problem solving abilities. When a painting just doesn’t work, I used to feel stuck, and I would either work myself into a creative rut, or I’d give up on it for the time being, with every intention of coming back to it later. Those aren’t problems any more, I’ve developed techniques for dealing with those situations, and I get the feeling that something wonderful could begin to come together in my work at any time now.
          But the whole marketing and business side of my life has been at a standstill. Other than the occasional website update, which I don’t do nearly often enough, or mass mailing, which I never do (How can I spam people, then expect to sleep at night?) I really haven’t done much of anything to keep up with or expand upon the business side of things.
          After the solo show at Open Gallery, and the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition and Nathan Phillips Square, I took 2 weeks off to read up on a bunch of art business stuff. I wanted to know more about branding, marketing, and presenting a more professional image to the world.
          I’ve always been the type of person to research something quite heavily before getting started in it myself. I like to know what I’m getting myself into, what to expect, and how to handle unexpected situations that might pop up along the way. I like to make sure that I’m not getting ripped off, screwed over, and most importantly, I like to be sure that I’m not making a huge mistake that I will regret for years to come.

          So, like any curious person who wants to know about something, I turned to Google. After a few keyword searches, I discovered a glut of art blogs; and much to my (initial) excitement, most of them paid a lot of attention to marketing and selling art online, and had a lot of ideas about getting noticed.
          “Perfect, thats exactly what I want!” I said aloud, without any concern for what the neighbours must think of this strange fellow talking to himself at 4 in the morning.
          I began clicking on every link that looked remotely interesting. Over 50 tabs were opened in my browser, and the next 2 weeks were spent reading, jotting down notes, and adding them to the wall of crazy that lives beside my computer. After I had taken all the information in, I began sorting through it, organizing it, comparing it, and I slowly began to realize something.
Continue reading Wasted Time? Business Advice from Art Blogs.

Stop ACTA Now!

This post is based on my ACTA YouTube video, posted November 04, 2009

In the fall of 2009, some information on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, leaked out to the internet. Eventually, the entire document was leaked, but this post isn’t so much about the content of the leak; this post addresses my reaction to the very purpose and existence of the treaty itself, and my anger over the secrecy and deception that was so common during it’s creation. But, when this was originally posted, all I had was the information in that first leaked document.

And to summarize things: it’s bad.

The recent Canadian copyright consultations had the public speak out, and express their opinions on copyright law, and from the responses I came across, the public was strongly opposed to strengthening these laws. People even expressed a strong desire to loosen up these laws, abolish crown copyright, limit penalties, and expand fair dealing laws, (or, “fair use”, for those more familiar with the American terminology.) Their were calls for clear exemptions for education, research, parody, and format shifting. These things should be legal. Follow this link if you would like to see a list of the consultation results as of September 2009.

The people have spoken, and they don’t want stronger copyright in Canada. With the current political climate in Canada, the minority Conservative government’s hands are tied, (update: Bill C-32 suggests that I was wrong about this, even as a minority government, they are trying to pass laws the majority do not want.)
Then these sneaky little things called “International Trade Agreements” that come along and bypass the democratic process of my country. They can be used to push laws onto people who have recently made it very clear that they do not want these laws.

These companies have failed to adapt to a changing market place. Rather than having their business adapt to meet the desires of their customers, they are having the laws changed to enforce their business models on to their customers.
Continue reading Stop ACTA Now!

My Take on “A Copyright Story”

           My last post, Copyright From an Artist’s Perspective was inspired by a fantastic blog entry I had read about a month ago. I came across an article by an artist on the subject of copyright, and while it does fall into some of the same old traps of mixing up moral, legal and economic realities, it also introduces some great new ideas. I knew it was a good entry because it made me sit, and think, and question many of my own preconceptions. Although my opinion hasn’t changed, anything that shakes me like that got to have some kind of power, and his message should be shared.
           I threw together a quick post for my tumblr account, to help me clear my head and sort my thoughts. This article builds upon that one.

           In the copyright debate, I have found the first article from ‘the other side’ that I think actually gets some things right. Jason Robert Brown had an excellent blog entry titled “FIGHTING WITH TEENAGERS: A COPYRIGHT STORY”.
(the follow-up post might be even better, but I’m not going to get into any of those ideas right here.)

           So, I’ll begin by telling the story of what happened. Mr. Brown found a bunch of his content on a file-sharing site. His work was being pirated. Rather than suing his fans (which is very stupid) he created an account on a file sharing site, identified the people who were distributing his content, and he very politely asked them to stop. He went though everyone offering up his content, and on an individual basis, he sent them a message asking them to stop. He was polite and professional about it (which is smart). I think it’s really cool of him to go and do this himself, and I think it was very good of him to explain that he is not ok with his content being shared like that, and many people stopped right away. He made a convincing moral argument, and most people listened. Most people. Not everyone.
Continue reading My Take on “A Copyright Story”

Copyright From an Artist’s Perspective

          I have been following the copyfight since the days of Napster (that’s 11 years now). Despite being an artist myself, I have always instinctively sided with the more anti-strong copyright leanings of the tech crowd. This seems to put my opinion at odds with most of the other artists I encounter. I am slowly learning that my stance on copyright isn’t something that can be politely discussed among artists.

          “Information wants to be free” is the meme that best captures the gist of the free-culture perspective. That quote is only a small part of what Stewart Brand actually said at the first Hackers’ Conference in 1984. The full quote was, “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other”. By “free” Brand was talking more about control than he was about price. But, over time, the exact meaning and extra words were dropped, and “Information wants to be free” is what people remember.

          I have never been the slightest bit convinced by any of the arguments from the side pushing for stronger enforcement and stronger copyright law. The copyright debate reads almost like arguments from the evolution/creationism ‘debate’; one side has logic, reason, and an ever-growing body of evidence, while the other side has charisma, wilful ignorance, and very deep pockets.

          In the copyright debate, I am drawn to the techy side because their arguments actually follow, they eschew passion and emotion and focus on the cold hard reality. They focus on what is. The supporters of strong copyright tend to focus on what ought to be. The heated nature of the debate comes from what I think is a misunderstanding of the other side’s position. People on the pro-copyright side are making moral arguments about what people should do, while those on the anti-strong-copyright side are making economic arguments about what people actually are doing.

          I’ve just never found these moral arguments to be the least bit convincing. File trading is out there, it happens, and it can’t be stopped anytime soon in the foreseeable future. Telling people that they shouldn’t share files because, “it’s wrong”, doesn’t really do anything to solve the problem.

          My stance on the issue is this: If we artists are supposed to be such creative people, why don’t we stop fighting piracy, and come up with new ways of doing things that use file sharing to our advantage?

Toronto Outdoor Art Show is in Touch with Common Sense.

(This post is adapted from an entry I made on Tumblr, July 5th, 2010. The original post can be found here)

           It often seems like when it comes to issues of copyright, artists tend to live in fantasy land, where what they think ought to happen can magically influence what actually does happen.

           The Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition has what I think is a very fair and sensible policy: no taking photos without the artist’s permission. It’s great, an artist should be able to choose whether the images owned by them can be reproduced or not.
           But these days, everyone has at least one camera on them, and artists only have two eyes. Some people and their cameras will inevitably get though. (I’ve certainly taken my share of secret photos and videos in galleries and museums.)
           One of the many messages to appear in my inbox during the stressful pre-show rush led me to realize, “ah! yes! I’m not the only one who thinks this way”

The “No Photography without permission” graphic to print out came with this message:

           “In reality being in a public space you cannot stop people from taking photos. This sign may help if you have concerns in this regard but it is not a guarantee by any standard.”

Thank you!

           It feels good to see a sudden outbreak of common sense coming from within the art world. Those moments are few and far between.

Throat Clearing

          I have noticed that quite often, before getting to the meat of the discussion, authors will start with a few hundred (or thousand) pages of what is called ‘throat-clearing’. This means that they spend a whole lot of time being really boring before getting to the point. But, it seems like a necessary part of making sure that the audience is on the same page as the author when that point is being made, so I’m going to have to do a little bit of that here.

          I am a visual artist. My primarily focus is painting, but I also do some photography, video, sound, and new media projects on the side. I also spend a lot of time with other artists; and, surprise surprise, the topic of our discussion is, you guessed it – art.

          I have noticed that a lot of artists claim to be very conceptual in their practice, even if that conceptualism doesn’t seem to show in the final work. They can sit down and have endless discussions over the finer points of, well, just about anything.
          Then, when asked to present their work, they will reach into their pocket, pull out a card, and proudly show off their highly conceptual art. A quick glance at the image reveals…some brown rectangles. Brown rectangles? With colour choices that look like they were based on the curtains available in this month’s Sears catalog.
          The artist will try to explain to me how their art explores some deep concept. This part of their work represents one thing, while another part represents something else. As I look at those brown rectangles, I strain to find the connection between what they are talking about, and what is actually present in their work. More often than not, I just don’t see it. The more this happens, the more I get the impression that those explanations are just thrown together after the fact. Why bother with these post-hoc explanations? Well, We do need something to write about, after all.

“What happened to those concepts while you were in the studio?” I often wonder.
Continue reading Throat Clearing