Jeff’s Present

I’m just like my avatar: a little bit rough around the edges, nose slightly askew, but rich in line and texture.

I’ve been an artist for more than four decades. With that much experience behind me, I can follow the trajectory of my art practice over the years. And, while there have been a few twists and turns, that path has been consistent. I don’t just make art for myself; I want my work to affect others. Whether they like it or not is secondary. And, most importantly, I like the dialogue when the opportunities present themselves.

Early on, I knew my work would not pay the bills, so I found interesting jobs along the way. One of the first was as an Artist-in-Residence for the Barrio Mobile Art Studio, a project of Self Help Graphics in East Los Angeles. I’m also a recovering academic, having taught college-level photography and computer graphics for 23 years. With the advent of the internet in the mid-1990s, I was interested in how artists could use it to further their art practice.

In the late 1980s, I founded Artists for a Better Image (ArtFBI) to study stereotypes of contemporary artists. Part of ArtFBI’s mission was to show artists how to use the net. With access much more limited than today, I produced a “faxazine” of art information culled from online sources for artists in the Mid-Atlantic region. I organized panel discussions to offer ways artists could connect with their communities. And, to communicate with the public, I produced a series of bumper stickers that promoted dialogue about who artists were (beyond the stereotypes). Sometimes these interactions took place as I was driving 70 mph on the Interstate.

In 1990, I was an Arts Administration Fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts smack dab in the middle of the culture war raging against artists and their work. I found myself in Capitol hearing rooms, listening to Congress debate contemporary art and artists. That’s where Senator Ted Kennedy apologized after running into me on the hearing room floor.

Today, my interest in the social intersection of art and American culture continues as I explore new platforms to engage the public. In 1999, I was the first artist to use eBay by auctioning my demographics to the highest bidder. In response to 9/11, I created Dichotomy: It Was a Matter of Time and Place, a 9/11 storytelling project. This website was a finalist at the SXSW Interactive Festival in 2002. In 2008, to the chagrin of even my most ardent supporters, I used Twitter to tweet my root canal live to dentists across North America. Since 2010, under the guise of the Chamomile Tea Party, I’ve been creating posters about the rancor so prevalent in contemporary American political discourse.

My interest in the social ramifications of the net led me to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where I was Lead Producer of New Media Initiatives for 22 years before retiring in 2018. In 2005, I proposed and helped launch the Smithsonian’s first blog, Eye Level, and served as its managing editor for 13 years. I have a particular interest in how social media affects organizational structure and fuels change. During my time at the Smithsonian, I wrote many articles on this. These pieces have become historical markers in the development of museums and their efforts to engage their online visitors.

How did I get to where I am now? Perhaps the clues are somewhere in my past.