Jeffery Saddoris

One of the first photographers I reached out to when I started recording conversations and podcasting was John Keatley. I was introduced to his work by my friend Kevin and what struck me straight away was how seamlessly John’s commercial work fit with his conceptual photographs. Though each body of work is distinct, John’s eye for detail and his love of ambiguity runs through all of it. While we don’t talk often, when we do I find that the conversations stick with me and often they inform the way I think about my own work as well as the work of others. He’s recently entered the world of fine art photography with a project called UNIFORM that centers around his personal exploration of identity and, as he puts it, “a deep need to be seen.” In addition to a series of limited edition prints, UNIFORM is available as a book, John’s first in fact, and that’s where we begin in this episode.

LINKS
To purchase a copy of the UNIFORM book, visit https://www.johnkeatley.com. For pricing and availability on UNIFORM prints, email [email protected].

The Jim Morrison contact sheet that John mentioned was taken by Joel Brodsky and featured in a show called
CONTACT
at the Fahey/Klein Gallery. See the image at http://www.faheykleingallery.com/exhibitions/contact#5.

CONNECT WITH JOHN
Website: https://www.johnkeatley.com
Instagram: @johnkeatley
Twitter: @johnkeatley

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
 (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

My dad and I never really did a lot together when I was growing up. I mean, yes I spent summers with him and my stepmother Linda in Arizona but it was always with a group of people – and don’t get me wrong, it was a terrific way to spend the summer. But rarely was it ever just the two of us.

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Charmolipi: joy making sorrow – Full FIlm
An Intimate Look Inside The Art Studio Of Scott Avett
Color Grading Netflix’s Mindhunter

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

“Because I had really poor depth perception, everything in my world flattened into two dimensions. I struggle to incorporate depth into my work because that’s not how I engage with what I see.” — Jo Mackby

If you listen to any of my other shows—particularly Iteration 52—you know that earlier this year I had surgery on my eyes to correct a condition called Strabismus. About a month ago, I got an email from a listener and a photographer who recently had a similar surgery although I’ve since learned that her condition was much more dramatic than mine. I’ve never met anyone else with the same condition, let alone had the surgery to correct it. I responded to her email and asked if she would be willing to have a conversation about how her experience compared to my own, specifically around how it shaped her approach to art, both as a viewer and as a maker.

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You can find Jo on Instagram @jomackby or on her website at jomackby.com

If you have an interesting story to share, I’d love to hear from you. Email me at [email protected] or connect with me on Instagram @jefferysaddoris.

Music in this episode: Take Me Higher (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

In 2020, I’m launching a brand new show that will be my most ambitious project to date. A Day’s Work is a podcast about how we spend our time when we’re not with family and friends. Inspired by the landmark work of Studs Terkel, I’m having conversations with everyday people and going beyond the small talk to really explore the deceptively simple question: “So, what do you do?”

Subscribe to A Day’s Work to get the first episode the day it drops. Or you can subscribe to Jeffery Saddoris: Everything to get everything I produce, including Process Driven, In Between, Iterations, and of course A Day’s Work when it launches next year.

I hope you’ll join me for the next chapter in my podcasting journey. I can’t wait to share this with you.

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I’d love to hear from you. Email me at [email protected] or connect with me on Instagram or Twitter @jefferysaddoris.

Music in this episode: Algorithms (Chad Crouch) / CC BY-SA 3.0

The tormented artist. You’ve heard the term — hell you may even be one yourself. I know I was. For years, I was absolutely convinced that if my art wasn’t the albatross around my neck, that I was somehow unworthy of the title. Why is that? Why do so many of us feel at one point or another that the suffering is necessary — that it’s somehow inexorably linked to the intrinsic value of what we make? That’s exactly what we’re talking about in this episode and it all begins with a Nine Inch Nails concert in 1990.

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If you enjoy listening to In Between, please consider leaving a review or a rating on iTunes to help others discover the show.

I’d love to hear from you. Email me at [email protected] or connect with me on Instagram or Twitter @jefferysaddoris.

You can find Jon on Instagram @jonwilkening or on his website at jonwilkening.com.

Music in this episode: Take Me Higher (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

I got an email a couple weeks ago from a listener asking if I had any advice for finding a mentor. Now, while I have been incredibly fortunate to have had – and frankly still have – some amazing people in my life who have in one way or another taken on the role of a mentor, I can’t say that it’s ever been intentional in the sense that I want to connect with this person or that person so they can be my mentor. In my experience, mentors find their way into my life at just the right moment – and it may only be for a moment. Here’s a piece of a conversation with my friend and not so occasional mentor, Jon Wilkening.

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Music in this episode: Brain Power (Mela) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Earlier this week, Adrianne and I watched the first episode of the new season of Abstract on the Netflix . For those of you who haven’t seen it, Abstract is a fantastic show about art and design. It follows roughly the same format as something like Chef’s Table — which is also an excellent show — where each episode profiles a specific artist or designer. Last season included Tinker Hatfield, Paula Scher, and Platon among others and this season starts out with someone who I’ve never heard of by name though I have seen his work. Olafur Eliasson is an artist and architect whose large scale works are focused and really dependent on the user or viewer’s experience of them. Many of his works center around light — specifically, the effects and manipulation of light. For example, one of his earlier pieces is called “Beauty” and it was his attempt to create a rainbow by lighting a gentle waterfall of very fine mist. The effect was such that no two people experience exactly the same rainbow, since the color and intensity are based entirely on your viewing angle relative to the mist.
“This is a space totally dependent on you being there,” Olafur says. “When you leave the exhibition, and there’s no-one in the room, there’s also no art.” This idea is really core to Olafur’s art — the Why of his art, if you will. Each piece he makes is a sort of challenge. As he puts it, “do I trust my own eyes and my own capacity to engage in the world?” His work is completely dependent on the spectator. It’s a collaboration –maybe even a conversation – between him as the artist and us as the viewer. Even his episode of Abstract is a collaboration, beginning with Olafur breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the camera — to us — as he presents the conditions of our collaboration.

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Abstract: The Art of Design
https://olafureliasson.net

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

As I sat down to write the intro to this episode of
Process Driven
, I struggled a little trying to come up with words that would convey some of my thoughts and feelings about the work of photographer Olga Karlovac. I then realized that the words had already been written by Koci Hernandez in his beautiful foreword for Olga’s latest book, 
the disarray
.

“You’re about to embark on upon a fantastic journey. It’s one of boundless time and space and it’s compressed with the pages of the book you now hold. I only wish I could experience again, for the first time, the disarray — visual poetry as a master work.

Let me assure you, the sign posts on your journey will be stunningly clear and mysteriously opaque, filled with blurry lines, half made worlds and the formless. Olga wouldn’t have it any other way. Don’t be fooled by what you think you see, because dancing within these pages is an unbound energy — an energy that at once can overwhelm the spirit and set eyes ablaze in wonder. You have been warned.”

That’s an excerpt of the foreword from 
the disarray
.

CONNECT WITH OLGA
Website: https://www.olga-karlovac-photography.com/
Instagram: @olga.karlovac
Facebook: @olga.karlovac

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
 (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Adrianne and I were in the car the other day — I don’t remember where we were going but I do remember that we were listening to Classic Vinyl on XM because we both really dig Meg Griffin. The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys by Traffic came on and whatever conversation we were in the middle of stopped and we just listened to this incredible song written by Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi. If you’ve never heard the track, it’s basically a twelve minute jam that ebbs and flows in dynamics and complexity with a 24-year-old Winwood singing over the top of it. The musicianship is fantastic and listening to it got us talking about creative complexity and how looking at or listening to something that is artistically or technically just out of our reach can be wildly inspiring, both as a fan and as a maker.

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The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys (YouTube)
Robert Rauschenberg
Mark Rothko
Cy Twombly
Echo in the Canyon
Brian Eno
Pet Sounds

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about art – specifically, what really counts as art? Is the art the thing that we make? Or, is in the doing? The making itself. Or is art in the reaction to work — the results of the doing? Or, is it something else entirely that is personal to each of us? I really don’t know. Historically, I have been very hesitant to call the things I make art, regardless of the discipline or media. It just feels like that’s a label that someone else should choose to apply or not to the work that I do. I’m okay referring to myself as artistic, because in my head that’s a value that somehow that feels tied more to the process — to the making — and not the end product. Regardless, I called Jon up to see if he’d be up for wrestling with it for an hour or so.

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If you enjoy listening to In Between, please consider leaving a review or a rating on iTunes to help others discover the show.

I’d love to hear from you. Email me at [email protected] or connect with me on Instagram @jefferysaddoris.

You can find Jon on Instagram @jonwilkening or on his website at jonwilkening.com.

Music in this episode: Take Me Higher (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0