Unedited version of Steve Lafreniere interview with Hudson, Index, November/December 2006, 34 -41

HUDSON with Steve Lafreniere

STEVE LAFRENIERE: So many galleries nowadays use art school undergraduate and graduate
exhibitions as a kind of star search.
HUDSON: I stopped attending them about five years ago. It's become production, it's become professionalized.
What's being produced there is too guided toward the marketplace, and within the parameters of what's
popular right now. Hand in hand with that is the problem that so many of the art schools use faculty that are
almost the same generation as the students. It makes for a very inbred stepping of predictable ideas. That
shouldn't be supported. Generally speaking, I don't believe that people interested in becoming artists should go
to art schools anymore. It's a deterrent.

Really? What would you suggest?
Don't go to art school, or go to college for something else, maybe take a few art classes, and make the work
on your own. If you have some kind of technical need to take a class, yes, but certainly not to get a Masters
of Fine Art.

The art school/art gallery culture is sort of eating itself?
It's shitting itself. I mean, where can it go?

You're known for having an idiosyncratic eye. Does that account for the formidable range of work
that you show?
I don't have a specific aesthetic criteria. I wait for something to stop or slow down my line of thinking,
to re-shuffle the deck. That tends to cause a tingly feeling in my stomach and light headedness. Most always
art that does that is imbedded within the maker, not over-intellectualized, and hints at room to grow or change
or deteriorate in interesting ways. Something that's not shut down, but that can open up.

All of that within one piece?
Rarely. More so from a body of work. Generally I want to see a selection of work from over a number of years.
I'm looking at it much like I scan a person, for how alive they are, are they moving with openness and uncertainty.

The possibility of having some kind of actual adventure?
Well, that's one of the benefits of living with a work of art, that the ideas behind it start coming into your life.
That's its power to change you. It's not something that necessarily happens right away. It can sometimes take
a number of years. Not even paying direct attention, but letting it eke its way underneath. It's like having seen
the same person every day for years, and just one day realizing that there is something about them. (laughs)

Having known you for some time, I would also say that you particularly like work that makes you
laugh out loud.
Of course. Humor has to go hand in hand with serious, philosophical or sociological considerations. Rigidity
creates set patterns of response.

Let's take three very different painters that you've worked with: Daniel Hesidence, Lily van der
Stokker, and Jason Fox. Can you tell me briefly how you became attracted to each?
My god. Well, my initial experience with all three was really a physical one, almost like a giddy gnawing in my
stomach. My brain stops. I have to look at what it is and organize my thoughts, and that's not so simple. They
get scattered because the references in the work come from so many places. So many levels of appreciation
and information. Those three artists struck a physical experience. That was the first thing I noticed when I
looked at their work.

When did you first see Jason Fox's work?
In the late '80s or the very beginning of the '90s. I thought he was black at the time.

Black? (laughs)
And I was tickled by the thought that this person had ingested both white and black culture, he had criss-crossed.
When I found out he was white, it was like oh my gosh, white artists aren't supposed to represent black people
in their work. At that time straight people weren't supposed to represent gays, and men weren't supposed to
represent women. And here was this person doing just that, with this incredible violence, with socio-sexual and
socio-political overtones. He was playing with comic books and graphic illustration, and also referencing art
historical painting. And then he also had such a weird material sense.

What about Lily?
It was all this pretty girl doodle stuff that undermined these very strong feminist concepts about pattern,
decoration, and useless work--the young, absent, naive little girl. With Daniel Hesidence, at the time there
wasn't much violence-against-women subject matter--or what appeared to be at first--in painting that was also
so expressionistic and manipulated. They each felt fairly singular to me in the way that they addressed both
their subject matter and the application of materials.

Your shows can seem ruthlessly edited and completely subjective at the same time.
I plan things very intuitively, and there exhibitions I've planned that I'm almost certain are going to slop. But then,
at least so far, there has always been something going on in the installation that's enough to keep it interesting.
There have been times I get very worried. There are those wonderful serendipitous things that happen between
pieces that I don't plan. It gives me faith that you pick interesting good things and you can find ways to put them
together. That you don't have to deal with the curatorial aspect of chronology or similarity or difference in ways
that academic understanding encourages.

You have said that you think curatorial positions in museums should be created for people from
outside of academia. Who would those persons be?
Robert Storr is the perfect example. He was not trained as a curator. He entered MOMA as an artist and a writer,
and clearly his exhibitions show a sensitivity beyond what one usually sees, both in the actual installation and
the choices of the artworks and artists. Of course there were limitations--he was working with MOMA. But he
really did stretch the experience for the viewer in a way most academically trained people would never be able
to accomplish. They understand work conceptually--in the head--and not through the eyes. Therein lies the
difference.

There are the politics too.
Well, now you go to school for that. (laughs) Look at how so many curators are mostly in their museum, looking
at books and not out looking at art. They learn what they read about or what people recommend to them,
instead of through the experience of viewing. That's why I think it would be good to think outside of using
academically trained curators. Granted there are problems, but I think those are interesting problems. Those
people may not be so interested in the same type of historicizing of artworks, or even look at them within the
parameters by which academia qualifies "good," "bad," "interesting," "not interesting." That would be a
welcome relief.

Do privately-owned galleries suffer the same malady?
It's different. I think the problem with galleries is the impulse to be in the business because of the business.
Especially with the proliferation that's occurred in both the number of galleries and the number of buyers. It's a
business, and art suffers as a result.

You run Feature with a relatively small staff.
Yes and no. I don't want it to get larger. I don't like to delegate so much, and I'm not interested just to sell art.
Also I don't want to just do one thing. Or three things. I need seven things.

Have you ever thought of running Feature somewhere other than New York?
Yes. I initially resisted coming to New York. But it became clear that I needed to be here. Most of my clients were
not in Chicago, where Feature began in 1984. The artists I was working with were not appreciated by Chicago
collectors, and very few of them purchased art from Feature. It was supported elsewhere. So it just seemed
pointless to be there. Also, the artists I was working with were beginning to be represented by galleries in
New York.

A number of them left Feature.
Yes, and that's okay. It just takes a lot of strength at that point in one's life to believe that that can be good.
Another thing: there have been artists who have been of great economic benefit to the gallery. When they left, I
found that other things flourished. Once you've had a few of those experiences you become more confident that
you can let it go its own way. That you don't have to control it.

You've collected quite a bit of art yourself over the years. Yet you almost always donate it after owning
it for some time.
When you're ready to let go of a piece of art, you should donate it to an institution (who can distribute it to a wider
audience). I think that reselling is generally disgusting.

Well, let's talk about that audience. Does the artist bring the artwork to life, or does the audience?
To think that the artist's idea around which artwork is made, or the critic's idea around which artwork is
described and analyzed, is the experience of the work, is completely false. It's so nice when I hear someone
express a totally different experience around an artwork. You start to realize, oh, lots of people are having
experiences that are different than what the artist or the critic or the gallerist anticipates. It's the problem with
the audio tours of museums. People learn to experience through words, rather than looking at something. It's
like that Borges story of the travellers with the map that covers the actual territory. I think about that all the time
the last couple of years!

You don't show much photography, and even less video. Are they just not to your taste?
Right now, yeah. But I used to show a lot of photography, and a fair amount of video. In the early '80s I showed
Sarah Charlesworth and Richard Prince, Robert Flack and John Glascock. And I used to have video nights at
Feature.

The video nights were very narrative things, as I recall.
At that time there was very little video installation. That's really something of the early-to-mid '90s. But by that
point, most video had moved more towards entertainment or formal technical stuff. That wasn't so interesting to
me.

Pretty much the only photographer you show now is Judy Linn.
And she comes more from the history of photography. She's thankfully not a painter, sculptor, installation artist
using photography. That's so exasperating.

Why exasperating?
It's generally so dull and predictable. Admittedly there are a lot of different modes there. There's the diaristic,
the technical, the sociological, (and so on). But they become codified so quickly that when you look at the work,
you merely identify the genre or subject matter and then you don't need to engage it. It's also been killed by the
quantity. One of the biggest problems with early 21st-century life (in general) is how the quantity of something
diminishes its ability to have power and meaning. It's really hard to fight that.

By avoiding so many of the givens of contemporary art dealing, how do you survive?
You can't be greedy. If you stay interested in art and not in product, a lot of those people who are only interested
in art as product and investment won't be visiting your gallery so often. They'll come when the most popular,
investible artists are on exhibition, but they won't be around for the rest. You can then defer more to people who
are genuinely interested. It's difficult. It creates a situation where you always feel like you're falling behind, or
outside. The fact of the matter is that I am more outside. I don't know if I want it to be that way, but it is.

You told me once that you'd rather people buy art for mere decoration than buy it for investment.
There's great possibility there! I would venture to say that most home decorating with art isn't so interesting, but
certainly neither is decorating with investment. Investment encourages artists to produce products, and for
people to look at art as a product.

Would you ever refuse to place work if you felt like it was being bought solely as an investment?
I don't like the word "place." I try to avoid that notion. Basically anyone can come in the gallery and talk to me
about buying anything.

The work at Feature is rather oblivious to trends.
Most of the art that I show I think addresses the trends, but it comes from a personal, peripheral point of view.
For me, that makes for more interesting art.

It makes for more interesting people.
You have a number of collectors who come to Feature for that reason, and a lot of goodwill from artists and art
audiences in New York. Those compliments are heartwarming and meaningful to me, but businesses don't stay
open on congratulatory remarks. (laughs) I still can't understand why.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Ella--the following stories can be interjected wherever needed. I think all three are important to the piece.)
You began as a dancer in the '70s.
I did modern dance. I studied Cunningham, Graham, and Horton techniques.

When I met you in 1981 you were known as a performance artist.
My college major was art education and painting, so early on I was using ideas from contemporary aesthetics
as ways to construct dances. (Over time) they were moved to the fringe of what could be considered dance,
until it became clear that, oh, this is performance. With a bad injury that made continuing to dance physically
and professionally worrisome, I moved eventually completely into performance.

Feature owner / director Hudson interviewed by Dike Blair, spring 2004

DB:What exhibitions are you looking forward to?

H:“Recent Autodidacts”
“Identity Theft”
“Oh don’t be an asshole, silly; it’s just a circle.”
“The East Village and the YBA”
Some women artists – I don’t know the title - of the last 25 years, however not those who have been most
celebrated, with essays and interviews which focus on differences between male and female art making
and art.
An exhibition of noted artists’ works considered to be failures or atypical.
And two small, amusing exhibitions: Richard Prince re-photographs and Alex Katz paintings l979 – 1988,
as well, paired abstractions by Gerhard Richter and Howard Hodgkin.
All up in that Imaginary Museum in my mind.

DB: What do you think about what museums are doing these days?

H: They need to flee from hipness and the current notion of art as fun, and ditto for artists, galleries, and
collectors. Museums are the big news these days, as their actions and changes deeply shape the art world.
There should be a critical examination of such things as their reorientation toward mass entertainment and the
scale of huge, and the expanding power of their education departments and their pervasive audio tours, which
seem to churn out like-minded fact followers rather than observant eyes. Whatever happened to the museum as
a place of study, aesthetics, and the subjective, or the quiet time wandering about a museum deep in thought
or ecstatic with emotion? Perhaps museums should institute one silent day weekly. Also, why are museums
collecting works by artists who have had fewer than three or four one-person exhibitions? And finally, curatorial
positions should be created for those with training outside academia.

DB: Speaking of academia, do you have any advice for the art student?

H: Hand in hand with the museum issue is the art school: the making of professional artists who are busy with
positioning themselves in careers. These years, it’s probably better to develop out of art school. It’s quite odd
now that art-school graduates expect immediate affiliation with a gallery, believing they are already artists of
some development. Generally, it requires five or so post-graduation years to disengage from the
teacher/school influences and create one’s own effort. At this point I’ve stopped attending graduate and
undergraduate art-school exhibitions as a way to remain in touch with younger artists and art. I’m looking
outside the box.

DB: It seems we could all use some of that.

H: Exactly. There are many ways to get outside the current commodification of art. For collectors, I’d say, turn
your back on the obvious, and favor collecting art as a passion, a curiosity, or for discovery. I even think that
collecting art as decoration seems more interesting than as investment. Investment collecting is seriously
changing art in a bad way. Critics could be less agenda-oriented, and artists more severe with their editing
and more honest with their selection of style and subject matter. Galleries should avoid art made for easy
consumption. We should all pay less attention to the salesmanship and showmanship of auctions and fairs,
and, of course, be more aware of the not new or hot. And lastly, stop running around trying to see everything
everywhere, and spend more time with the richness that is close to home.

DB: It’s always struck me that you show work that runs somewhat counter to what’s on view in other commercial
galleries. Is this conscious, and if so, can you describe how you bounce off the status quo?

H: The exhibitions at Feature are not intentionally organized to counter something. They develop out of what I
am most attracted to, and my decisions are far more intuitive than intellectual. On some level I see most of
Feature’s exhibitions as participating in the current trends, although from a personal or oblique perspective.
Generally, I prefer art that is complex and multi-focused. Such work is, and probably always has been, out
there, yet because it isn’t an easy read, or easy to explain, it rarely functions in the market in a very big way.
I once overheard two critics chatting about an artist, and the more noted critic mentioned that he loved the work
being discussed, yet he would not write about it, as he found it too difficult to explain! To me, that seems all the
more reason to write about it, or in my case, to exhibit the work.

DB: Usually your selections and exhibition groupings anticipate or make more concrete certain concepts that
artists are reaching for. Does the sense of trend interest you at all?

H: It is the artists who lead the way. Watch what they are doing and you will see what is happening. Trends do
intrigue me, yet because of my hands-on approach, I usually assimilate or reject trends quite some time before
they become pervasive. These years trends are so swiftly advertised and assimilated that it seems obvious to
stick to ones own guns. For me, a glut of anything diminishes its power, and when that occurs, the desire for
something else itches. Different people reach their saturation point at different times. Also, much depends on
what understanding— art hysterical, social, and other—one brings to the evaluation. And sometimes
oversaturation, the stay-and-play syndrome, may lead to something most unexpected and interesting. The
process is not cut-and-dried. If one has a gallery committed to trends and sales, then surely following the
cresting trend is most important. Should one have a personal gallery, one based on the owner or director’s
vision and ideals, or even a specific commitment to art and artists, then one follows some thread or intuition
regarding the matter of when to grasp and when to let go.

DB: So Feature is a personal gallery, and your selections are primarily intuitive. Do you ever fear that your
intuition could be reactionary?

H: Definitely. For example, my current moratorium on photography, especially art-directed snapshot-quality
images of low life, especially when class, gender, and sexuality are pictured. And I very much avoid the current
notion of the largest possible photographs, particularly when laminated to Plexiglas. I remember traveling
through the MoMA’s Gursky exhibition thinking that this guy makes great postcard images and that many of
them actually would be more significant at that scale and in that form. Yet if an artist presented me with
photographs, or even large photographs laminated to Plexiglas, that riveted my attention, my current position
would go down the drain. Even when deep in a saturated trend, there is always room for something
extraordinary and more defining. While I do make intuitive decisions regarding my selection of artists,
remember that I cart around undergraduate and graduate art training, a MFA in painting, and ten years of
performing as a dancer and performance artist, and I have viewed thousands of studios and slide packets. I
have 20 years of visiting at least 50 or so galleries per month in the capacity of a gallery owner, and my ten
years prior to Feature were spent as an administrator and curator in the not-for-profit sector.
I love what art does and we grok it in our hearts and minds. Aesthetic and socio-political decisions are more
interesting to me than business decisions.

DB: In the early ’80s you were the director of Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago. How did you come to that?
How did that shape your philosophy?

H: The director of the gallery headhunted me to develop a performance, live events, film, video, and music
program. At the time, late ’70s early ’80s, I was president of C.A.G.E [Cincinnati Artists’ Group Effort]. That
organization’s curatorial and administrative approach at the time is fixed in my mind as an extraordinary model
for the administration of not-for-profit, artist-oriented arts organizations—very socially unencumbered, free,
direct, accessible, and responsive.
Also at that time, I had begun my administrative involvement with NAAO, the National Association of Artists
Organizations, which provided me with a national overview of artists’ organizations and their programs.
The ’70s and ’80s not-for-profit sector partially developed out of the closed system of the existing commercial
galleries and its lack of reaction to the new, expanding artist communities. That helped create the format
whereby an organization generally worked with an artist once, or perhaps a few times over many years. After
shuffling too many artists through my programs, I realized that a lessening in my standards was endemic to the
constant search for the new. (One can see how this format could encourage the development of art as
entertainment.) The high turnover also made it difficult to foster the development of certain ideas or aesthetics,
which seemed more important to me than a diverse, constantly changing program. So I became interested in
working with fewer artists over a longer period of time, and the commercial gallery format seemed a way to
economically support my thoughts.

DB: So I imagine that’s why Feature Inc. came about? When was that?

H: Feature opened on April Fools’ Day in l984, with an exhibition of Richard Prince rephotographs. The gallery
name was chosen as a way to deflect a personality from the gallery, an attempt to let the exhibitions be the focus.
And the structure of having several galleries simultaneously show differing exhibitions was my move against
stardom and a push for pluralism and multiplicity.

DB: Your reputation is as an artist-friendly gallery. Your practice of looking at artists’ slides and responding with
a written note is legendary. How, when, and why did you start doing this?

H: Sometimes those notes, which I’ve written since day one, cause a backlash. The most oppressive response
yet, and it truly shook me, questioning my making any comment at all, was “So who the fuck do you think you
are—God?”
Artists put their ego, and then some, on the line when they solicit a gallery for representation. It’s an
embarrassing if not demeaning process, and it’s even worse if the gallery being approached is one of the
artist’s favorites. My concern has been to look at the work in terms of my interests and its possibility for
exhibition at Feature, and ever so briefly and candidly respond to its form and content, execution, and its
potential to evolve. With some frequency I request an update in a year or so. One artist presented me with
work for nine years and each year it was closer and more ready, and then finally—shit happens. Now he is
affiliated with Feature and having a visible success.

DB: How do the sheer number and intensity of these exchanges not overwhelm you?

H: The lack of a wall between my office and the gallery’s exhibition space is a joy but also a problem that I’ve not
been able to resolve. So far my best solution has been to partially obstruct the entrance to the office area with a
bookcase. The back of the bookcase, which faces the exhibition space, is an inoperable door. This hints at
privacy while allowing for easy access to the office and the storage space behind the office. Yet it hasn’t at all
worked well in creating much privacy. Visitors are frequently interrupting my work with mundane questions, or
unaffiliated artists’ needs drive them to introduce themselves, something I find annoying as I am almost always
quite obviously working. If I were leisurely sitting around, all that would be quite different. The artists who intrude
don’t seem to ask themselves why I would care to meet them while knowing nothing of their work. I usually
attempt to disarm the intensity of the situation with a bit of friendliness and an off-the-cuff remark.
While I am at Feature I dive into the thick of things. By the end of the day I require alone time. Rarely do I
socialize in the evenings following the closing of the gallery, and when I am home I maintain near silence until I
return to Feature the following day. No newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, phone, video—however, sometimes
music, and always cooking delicious meals.

DB: Do you ever consider altering or suspending your slide viewing practice?

H: No, reviewing slides is important to me. I do learn many things about art and artists from the experience. And
I just could not send back a package without some kind of acknowledgement, as that seems too cold, too
corporate. This current, impersonal corporate model, with the invisibility of gallery staff other than a receptionist,
which continues to dominate our field, is not for me. Mom-and-pop operations charm me as a form, but that
doesn’t mean that I do not appreciate organization and exactness.

DB: Speaking of modest operations, I think that the artists you work with, almost across the board, make or
fabricate their own stuff. Does that sound correct? Is this simply a matter of your taste or is there a politic
involved, or both?

H: That’s correct, but it developed over time and without deliberation. My experience has been that most artists’
work cannot withstand out-of-house production. Essential things, the things that let an object live, that make it
art,become lost. There are few instances when the artist’s intent is so transparent to the produced objects that
out-of-house production works. Usually a sense of hand allows the eye and mind to more readily linger and
engage in the object and its resonance. The viewer is also vaguely reminded that a person is involved. Most
outsourced production results in more attention to the surface; the object becomes a shell, and the read of that
shell or surface is fast. I am more interested in the idea of being arrested by the object. The qualities brought
about by the out-of-house production most often re-represent and deflate both content and meaning. Yet, again,
there is room for everything, and certainly inherent to art making is an attitude that one may successfully do
what was not possible before. That is a laudable and worthy attitude, one that contemporary art currently
depends on.

DB: Do you think Chelsea gallery architecture has impacted the art?

H: Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it architecture.
Again, in scale, administrative layout, and personality—the suits—we see business at work, the corporate
model, which I don’t find rewarding or wish to encourage. Distantly related, and interesting to me, is the manner
in which the galleries, perhaps due to the overabundance of concrete floors, seem to have become an
extension of the sidewalk, almost as if there were no door. And so we have a further breakdown of public and
private. Casual strollers, rollerbladers, carriage pushers, cell phone talkers, shoppers, lunchers, et al. move in
and out of the galleries, traveling at a near consistent speed. While the democracy of that seems a good thing,
somehow the art and the possibility for involvement with art suffer. With that type of situation, how may one
have much of an internal experience, though there is more and more art that doesn’t want or need that manner
of experience? Generally, exhibitions at Feature are about interior experiences, and for some time, to
encourage that sensibility, I’ve been contemplating installing parquet floors in the gallery. There would be an
anteroom for shoes, bags, carriages, packages, etc., felt slippers for all, and relative quietness, of course, and
only five or six people would be allowed in the gallery at a time. All that is scary, as it reeks of the genteel
privacy against which so many have rebelled, myself included. Yet it seems right for the time, especially as it is
not the dominant mode.

DB: Feature really caught my attention in the early ’90s, when you showed at least some erotic art. This was a
time when political correctness had fused with identity art, but you allowed for pleasure. Can you describe what
you were responding to and creating at that time?

H: Political correctness is a bad thing. It’s shortsighted and encourages repression and polar reaction, rather
like Shakespeare’s lady: she doth protest too much. For me, art is about the mind, and the mind is an arena in
which anything goes. One learns there to distinguish between the personal and the public. Morals develop as
one moves through all the possibilities. Discernment is a must.
I am proud of having presented late-’80s and early ’90s exhibitions of rather extreme sexual work, and
especially the numerous exhibitions of the drawings of Tom of Finland. He remains a master draftsman and a
major influence on so many minds and bodies and artists. Inserting his work into the discussion put the hidden
agenda of the repressive politically correct, which then glutted the galleries, on the table. It’s sad that Tom of
Finland drawings should remain outside of art. Even to this day the dominant art worlds, especially the
American versions, remain so afraid of the representation of sexuality.
During one Tom of Finland exhibition, when Feature was on Broome Street, a busload of people visited the
gallery next door and a few wandered into Feature. A woman, say in her sixties, came in, carefully looked
around, left, and soon returned with a male/female couple of a similar age. They were in the gallery for quite
some time. On their way out, as they passed by the office, they were quietly speaking among themselves, and
the woman from the couple mentioned that she thought she had just seen pornography, and the other woman
replied, “Yes, but did you see the way they were drawn?” Overhearing that left me floating.


DB: Many consider your spaces eccentric.

H: Part of that, I think, comes from the fact that Feature presents multiple exhibitions simultaneously. The current
Feature uses its tiny mezzanine space as a discrete exhibition area, and we have an inoperable door space
on West Twentieth Street known as “The Wrong Gallery.” There are so many interesting artists whose work
should be seen and injected into our art discussions and art markets that no space should be left unused. It is
the responsibility of the galleries to challenge and broaden the market, not to acquiesce to it. One goes to art
for expansion, striving, and perhaps for some experience of an Other. I’m rather opposed to art being made or
presented to further satisfy more of the same.
Recently I heard a rumor that a collective of the larger contemporary art museums was considering
commissioning artists to create large works, which would then tour all their spaces. You can see the dollars
and careers at work luring the artists to produce works that fit within the content restrictions and scale
opportunities of the museums. Given that so much is at stake, you can be assured that such a program will
provide us with yet more products of fine entertainment—or is it fine products of entertainment? Art is such a
fragile thing, so easily perverted, and in the long term, commissioned works are generally lesser works.
But to get back to the spaces: I believe your observation comments on the lack of experience we have with
making or appreciating personal spaces, or spaces or buildings that are designed for a more particular system
or idea. This is again what I see as a reflection of the dominance of sameness, the corporate mentality. All of
Feature’s exhibition spaces have been quite normal, if not conservative: floors, walls, ceiling, and lighting in the
usual places and of typical materials. The furnishings however, are more personal and fanciful. I enjoy that in
my office and my home. I am always finding more effective and interesting ways to enjoy space and furniture,
and if I had my way and the time, I’d continually be renovating my home and gallery.

DB: I’ve never really known your spiritual beliefs, but I think you meditate, and you might be Buddhist? And I’ve
always sensed that you’re attracted to an art of the mind and to alternate realities. What are your thoughts about
reality?

H: I don’t follow any specific ideology or religious belief, and I’m not a Buddhist, although I wish I had a better
understanding of Buddhism. And while I have strong spiritual interests, I also keep at least one foot in the carnal
garage. For about thirty years I have happily engaged in a form of contemporary, secular meditation, one that
requires neither a master/student relationship nor any need to be part of a community, yet I also wander alertly
around, sampling a bit from here and there. I consider making and appreciating art a spiritual endeavor. It is
generally about bringing life to some otherwise inert thing.
As for the use of the mind, well, I don’t much see how not to use it when engaging with art. Not that it is the only
cognitive factor involved. Internal dialogue deeply interests me.
The notion of alternate realities goes hand in hand with that. It seems to me that the world is faceted into and/or
out of many realities. An examination of one’s cross-cultural experiences or drug experiences sophomorically
begins to expose such things, and the power of the belief in a single reality then begins to fall away. Yet I am
too scientifically uninformed and experientially limited to venture any evaluation of the fullness of life. My lack of
comprehension of the probable pebble of what we/I believe to be the human experience is humbling. Yet I do
rather like keeping it all vague-ish, ever changing, and adaptable.

DB: In closing, and very generally, what has your experience as a gallerist taught you?

H: One of the great things about aging and having the gallery for twenty years is that the cycles by which things
come and go and return yet again become humorously obvious. The notion of the new appears in a more
realistic perspective than we are generally willing to acknowledge, one involved with novelty, fashion, and style.
As a result, art with deeper levels of personal meaningfulness have become increasingly important. In terms of
artists, those with sincere, personal investigations hold greater magnitude, regardless of much else. It’s all very
freeing to be rid of this new thing, and as the urgency for mapping or recording this immediate moment
decreases, a much larger world is open to appreciation.

DB: And if you weren’t a gallerist, what might you be doing?

H: Chef for a tiny restaurant. Gardener. Sanskrit scholar.