Jeffery Saddoris

You don’t have to look far to know that AI is everywhere and it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. It’s in the news and on social media. It’s what your colleagues are talking about when you’re at work and what your friends are talking about when you’re not. And no matter what you do for a living or for recreation, it seems like AI is going to either disrupt it completely or at least affect it somehow.

I’ve been following the development of some of the more popular AI platforms from the wings for a while now. I’ve tried ChatGPT, and I recently did an experiment with Midjourney and Stable Diffusion to see how they would handle prototyping ideas for a personal project I’m working on. Even though the results weren’t exactly what I wanted, they got me thinking about what I did want in a different way and ultimately gave me some new things to think about and iterate on in my sketchbook. While I can absolutely see the potential power of AI, I can also see some of the potential cost—and that’s what concerns me.

LINKS
Microsoft Designer - Stunning designs in a flash
AI Art Generator – Adobe Firefly
DALL·E 2
Midjourney
Stable Diffusion Online
ChatGPT
Rick Beato on AI
Generative AI Has an Intellectual Property Problem

CONNECT WITH ME
Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com 
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris 
Instagram: @jefferysaddoris

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Subscribe to Jeffery Saddoris: Almost Everything in your favorite podcast app to get more conversations like this. You can also find a written version of Iterations on Substack.

MUSIC
Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

In 2018 I released a book called Photography by the Letter. It took three years of research, writing, re-writing, designing, and re-designing, and while it wasn’t as financially successful as I had hoped, it was one of the most satisfying projects I’ve ever done. After shopping it around to a number of publishers—all of whom passed on it—we self-published a limited print run and released it simultaneously as an eBook. Opening up the first box of books from the printer and seeing those three years represented as actual objects was a very emotional experience. I sent a copy to Ted Waitt at Rocky Nook, who had been incredibly helpful and supportive while I was writing it. He responded with a lovely email that read, “It is really quite beautifully designed and very well printed. I honestly cannot think of a self-published book that I have seen better production values on. Nicely done!” The book has gotten hundreds of glowing reviews like this, and none of them are wasted on me. As proud as I am of what we accomplished, I remember telling Adrianne that while I would love to write another book, I’d never do another one like Photography by the Letter. The technical nature of the writing was hard, dry, and way outside of my wheelhouse, which is why it took multiple passes to get it right. Still, I loved the process as a whole and have had the idea of writing another book in the back of my head ever since. The question is, which one?

LINKS
Write what you know?
Quentin Tarantino on writing
Brian Eno on ideas

CONNECT WITH ME
Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com 
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris 
Instagram: @jefferysaddoris

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Subscribe to Jeffery Saddoris: Almost Everything in your favorite podcast app to get more conversations like this. You can also find a written version of Iterations on Substack.

MUSIC
Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

A little over a year ago, after getting a very disturbing email from my then web host saying that they were closing shop—without including an end date, mind you—I decided to try an experiment with my website. Rather than simply move my existing Wordpress installation to another web host, I built a new site using a platform called Carrd (affiliate link) which, according to the website, is perfect for building “simple, free, fully responsive one-page sites for pretty much anything.” And while that’s mostly true, there are features that allow you to fake displaying multiple pages on a single page and paid features that can add even more functionality. You can also set up subdomains to stand in for additional pages—which is what I’ve done to display multiple bodies of work—and for the past year or so, it’s done exactly what I’ve needed it to do.

LINKS
Carrd (affiliate link)

CONNECT WITH ME
Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com 
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris 
Instagram: @jefferysaddoris

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Subscribe to Jeffery Saddoris: Almost Everything in your favorite podcast app to get more conversations like this. You can also find a written version of Iterations on Substack.

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Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

In this episode, Maarten Rots joins me from the Netherlands for a terrific conversation talking about a recent salon group show he was in and the importance of saying yes to putting our work out into the world. Plus, I pitch him an idea for a potential new zine project and we even talk a little bit about AI…just a little.


LINKS
Kristopher Matheson
Everything’s a Remix on AI
Brian Eno biography (via Amazon)
John Cage biography (via Amazon)


CONNECT WITH MAARTEN
Website: https://www.maartenrots.nl
Instagram: @maartenrots
March & Rock magazine: https://marchandrock.com

CONNECT WITH JEFFERY
Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com 
Substack: https://jefferysaddoris.substack.com 
Instagram: @jefferysaddoris

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SUPPORT
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MUSIC
Jeffery Saddoris

For years I’ve wanted to do some sort of legacy project that would allow me to explore and somehow acknowledge and maybe even come to terms with my family history. As many of you know, I come from a family of railroad workers. In fact, I’m the first and to my knowledge the only male in three generations of my family not to work for the railroad. At the beginning of 2019, I started laying the groundwork for a project that would not only allow me to lean into my family history but that I could also use as a starting point for something much bigger that could end up being the legacy project that I had been looking for. Unfortunately, COVID shut the world down and because the project really had to be done in person, most of the connections I made up to that point and permissions I had secured became moot. I got really upset about it because I loved the idea and it had taken me a long time to get there. But how I wanted to do it was completely disrupted and since at the time nobody had any idea how long the lockdown would last, I put the whole thing on hold, and it’s been there ever since.

CONNECT WITH ME
Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com 
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris 
Instagram: @jefferysaddoris

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Subscribe to Jeffery Saddoris: Almost Everything in your favorite podcast app to get more conversations like this. You can also find a written version of Iterations on Substack.

MUSIC
Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

Last month, we lost Ryuichi Sakamoto, who was an absolute monster of an artist and since hearing the news I’ve been going back and listening to a bunch of his catalog, which is not only massive, but it’s also incredibly diverse.

There are certain artists whose work allows you to see the world differently. If they’re really good, they might even allow you to feel it differently. Ryuichi Sakamoto was one of those artists. He worked across multiple musical genres and he was able to tap into and even affect different aspects of the human experience. I think the first piece of Ryuichi’s music I heard was Forbidden Colors, which is a vocal version of the theme to a film he scored and acted in alongside David Bowie called Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. It was also the first of what would be decades of brilliant collaborations with former Japan frontman David Sylvian. A friend in college had reintroduced me to David, who I was familiar with from Japan, but it was his solo record Secrets of the Beehive, which featured Forbidden Colors as a bonus track, that introduced me to Ryuichi and I’ve been a fan ever since.

LINKS
Yellow Magic Orchestra
Brandon Stosuy
Documentary about the piano that was damaged by the 2011 tsunami
async
Asia
Roger Dean
Tales From Topographic Oceans
Hugh Syme
Storm Thorgerson
Mick Rock
Eric Meola
Hipgnosis
Reid Miles

CONNECT WITH ME
Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com 
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris 
Instagram: @jefferysaddoris

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Subscribe to Jeffery Saddoris: Almost Everything in your favorite podcast app to get more conversations like this. You can also find a written version of Iterations on Substack.

MUSIC
Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I’m a big fan of trains and have been since I was a kid. My dad was a railroad man for the Southern Pacific, as were his two brothers, my grandfather, and his father before him. So you might say that trains are in my blood. I remember my dad sometimes taking me to work with him and I would get to ride on the caboose while he did his shift. Of course this was back when trains still had cabooses, which they phased out in the early 80s. My dad really wanted me to go into the family business and he even set up an interview where basically all I had to do was sign some papers and I would have been in. But when I got to the interview, I couldn’t get out of my car. I could see the trajectory of the life that would mean and it just wasn’t the life I wanted. When I told my dad about it, he was furious with me. And understandably so. He took my response to mean that I thought I was too good for the life that was good enough for three generations of the men in our family. But it wasn’t that at all. It wasn’t that the life wasn’t good enough for me, it was that the life just wasn’t right for me. I wanted something different, not better, and he just couldn’t understand that at the time. All this to say, I still love trains and will occasionally even go out of my way to see one, but my love absolutely pales in comparison to someone I’ve been following on Instagram for the last couple of months.

LINKS
Francis Bourgeois
Joe Jonas
Louis Theroux
Elizabeth Gilbert

CONNECT WITH ME
Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com 
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris 
Instagram: @jefferysaddoris

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Subscribe to Jeffery Saddoris: Almost Everything in your favorite podcast app to get more conversations like this. You can also find a written version of Iterations on Substack.

MUSIC
Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

In the last Iteration, I talked about how seeing the Philip Guston show at the National Gallery left me feeling a little envious of such a strong personal story, something that my own work just didn’t have. I talked to Sean about it over the weekend and shared some of what I had been feeling and he was quick to disagree saying that he thought my work was very personal. He said that in his opinion, my work is a reflection of how I see and experience the world. To him, all of my anxieties, my fears, even some of my childhood traumas are all right there on the canvas. “I know you don’t see it,” he said, “but what could be more personal than that?”


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Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com 
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris 
Instagram: @jefferysaddoris

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Subscribe to Jeffery Saddoris: Almost Everything in your favorite podcast app to get more conversations like this. You can also find a written version of Iterations on Substack.

MUSIC
Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

On Friday I went down to the National Gallery of Art and man I came home in a funk. Usually, I come back super charged up and wildly inspired and just ready to get back into the studio, but Friday was not one of those days. I went down to have lunch with my friend Michelle and after lunch we walked through the Philip Guston show that just opened. I had never heard of Guston before and seeing his work was a very dramatic experience. So much so that after Michelle had leave to get back to work, I ended up going through the show again and taking a little more time on some of the pieces that really resonated with me the first time through. Before you enter the actual show, there’s a short video playing on a loop that gives a little background on Guston’s life—specifically his childhood as a Jewish immigrant in California, where the persecution of Jews and Blacks by the KKK caused massive trauma that would stay with him for the rest of his life and feature heavily in his art. On top of that, three days after his tenth birthday, his father hanged himself in the shed outside their house and Guston was the one who discovered the body. As a means of processing his childhood trauma, he taught himself to draw and at 14, he started to paint.

LINKS
National Gallery of Art
Philip Guston Now
Philip Guston - Wikipedia
The Guston Foundation
Stedelijk Museum

CONNECT WITH ME
Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com 
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris 
Instagram: @jefferysaddoris

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Subscribe to Jeffery Saddoris: Almost Everything in your favorite podcast app to get more conversations like this. You can also find a written version of Iterations on Substack.

MUSIC
Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

A few days ago, I read a quote by the great art critic and author Jerry Saltz that goes, “Do not ask what a work of art means. Ask what a work of art does to you. Art is not a thing, or a noun. Art is a verb. Art is something that does something to you.” I’ve been thinking about the quote ever since and how it really came to me at the perfect time. First of all, I’d already come around to thinking about art as a verb, which I mentioned in a previous Iteration. But the other reason that the quote really resonated is that I’m getting ready to (finally) put my paintings out in the world and I’m thinking about value and worth—specifically financial value and worth.

CONNECT WITH ME
Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com 
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris 
Instagram: @jefferysaddoris

SUBSCRIBE
Subscribe to Jeffery Saddoris: Almost Everything in your favorite podcast app to get more conversations like this. You can also find a written version of Iterations on Substack.

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Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris