Thomas Arthur Schaefer

Friday, December 30, 2016

Range Of Expectations

So, what am I doing today? Well... sitting around working on art. Having lots of time to reflect on life as of late... what else am I ever really doing. A big portion of today was adding past works to my website and making updates. While doing so, I had some background videos playing. Today I watched all the episodes of Work Of Art (WOA) season 2 on YouTube. It was a lot of fun. I hate and love this show, both seasons actually. Some, but not all of my acquaintances know that I traveled all the way up to New York City from Atlanta in 2011 to audition for season 3. I graciously stayed with a friend and even borrowed his custom bicycle to ride all the way uptown to the Brooklyn Museum. I stood in line for 6 hours and met some really horrible artists... just horrible. The guy next to me with his painted squares... yeah... no. I talk about this experience in real time on this blog in 2011 actually. So, what happened? Well... I never got a call-back. But... if you know the truth, no one got a call-back. Season 3 never happened. A number of reasons — Jerry Saltz dropped out, no funding, no network backing, bad season 2 ratings... so many factors. The show, in the end, was ultimiatly never renewed for a third season.

So... where am I goin here. Well, I've started adding a number of peices to the Performance section of this site. A number of things I've done over the past 20 years are starting to fall into this section. I've proclaimed at the point of the action and now even after the fact — a number of events in my life are really nothing more than performances. So... the WOA 3 stuff I did, is indeed a section of my Performance output. What represents this Performance now however? Well, I have the portfolio I took with me to present as the central piece, some random photos of the trip, the blog posts and I'm even pulling out the clothing I wore that day. That whole ordeal was a Performance inside a Performance inside a Performance. The idea of being cast on the show itself, being on television and what happened during and after or the event of not making the cut — all the ultimate means of the Performance. So the entire action of the audition was just a portion of the begining section of the Performance. It's an exciting addition to the site and I look forward to getting it added soon.