Spontaneity Captured in Art: Creativity as Performance with Artist & Poet John Barney
A Review From Dr. Dezember’s View
Creatives of the Modern Era—1800 to today—often aspire for their art to be like music.
In other words, rather than creating static scenes or narratives to imitate what is seen, visual artists and poets with a modern sensibility give—in addition to their talent—of themselves in expression.
They want to uplift us with an artistic flow. They instill into their works dynamic forces captured—and captivating.
As with a musical score peppered when performed with improvisation, artist and poet John Barney renders his visual and verbal art with an underlying structure enhanced by performance.
Performance, in the context of this review, is both the creation of the works as well as the sharing of the works with viewers and audience. For example:
Visual art performance is the creation of the work that can be witnessed—long after the creative process has ended—through the energy of line, shape and color.
Poetry performance, most often thought of as the speaking of the poem, could also be the creation of the poem. Additionally, it is the engagement (that can even be a thrill) that a reader or audience member experiences when reading the sounds and images on the page or when heard spoken.
Being an audience member is an essential part of shared performance.
While performance as creativity can be—and often is—done in isolation, performance with an audience is an energetic experience between performers and listeners and viewers. Audiences, in fact, are part of the performance. Additionally, improvisation during performance is a creative act that is done within community.
“Being a creative in the spotlight,” as I state in my blog post Creative Spirit & the Value of Audience (May 21, 2020), “with others who gather to engage with us and with our art, or having our art spotlighted with an audience of one who is reading, viewing or listening to our work, a second creation happens—human community.
Without such forms of communal interaction, community stays static, keeping change and growth at bay.”
I add: “If you are given the gift of creation, if the Muse visits you, you might need to perform your gift, your art, to your community. Sharing your ‘visions’ could be advantageous for your own health as well as for the health of community.”
I think a score can be a prescription for performance or a recording of performance. The creation of the score itself may also be a performance activity.
—Artist, Poet, Performance Artist John Barney
Dedicated to the practice of performance in both his visual and verbal art, John titles his recent art, poetry and music exhibition S C O R E.
S C O R E is being hosted by Thirsty Eye Gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from December 10, 2021 to February 6, 2022.
Four of the six paintings by John Barney at Thirsty Eye Gallery in the S C O R E exhibition.
Photo courtesy of John Barney
In addition to highlighting his own paintings and poetry at the exhibition, John includes other area musical and verbal artists in the opening and closing activities:
Guests enjoyed opening reception events with musical guests Chatter All-Stars (David Felberg and Jesse Tatum) on Friday, December 10, 2021 and a bonus performance on Sunday, December 12, 2021 by Moving Line Ensemble (John Barney, Levi Brown, Lisa Donald, Charlotte Leung) and invited poets (organized by Don McIver and John Barney).
A closing event for S C O R E will be Sunday, February 6, 2022, from 3 pm to 5 pm MT. A performance by John Barney and David Felberg with invited poets will be 4:00 pm MT.
S C O R E Paintings
This review will look at two paintings: one of the six in the exhibition and one that is not exhibited but is still part of John’s S C O R E collection and has “partner paintings” in the exhibition.
The first painting:
Barney, John: Low Line #2 (Anicha) 4’ x 8’ mixed media on wood panel, 2020: Displayed in the S C O R E exhibition at Thirsty Eye Gallery. (Photo of painting courtesy of John Barney.)
Let’s look closely at this painting:
Some Close Looking reveals:
A combination of straight and curved lines in emphasized (foregrounded) black and de-emphasized (backgrounded) grey rectangles filled with 0s and 1s, looking like typed newsprint or symbolic algorithm code.
The lines and curves radiating to, from and around a focal point of curved shapes that define a larger triangular “heart shape” offset from the high-tension middle point.
Symbolic outlines in magenta of possibly recognizable figures (like “Hidden Pictures”) frame the left side and move with the diagonal lines of the right side (clothes line pins? spikes?) and swim throughout (fish? whales?)
Yellow highlights create depth.
On left side, handwriting (personal—letter? poem?) moves into the type-style lettering (impersonal—newsprint? calculations? matrix? algorithm?) that creates a structure “behind-the-scenes” and backgrounding the heart shape.
Meaning Making
Humans are meaning-making beings. If you think about it, everything can be a symbol. It is we who have placed the meanings to letters, musical notes, and other figures.
In the context of John’s statement on how he thinks of a score in a painting, I see Low Line #2 Anicha as symbolic of a creative score.
It seems as if there is an algorithm behind a structure that radiates from the “heart,” yet allows for the randomness of figures, a spontaneity.
Ultimately, Low Line #2 Anicha radiates a sense of movement, as if the typed “behind-the-scenes” code or algorithm is creating and re-creating with dynamism the painting itself, as if the viewer is seeing the performance of creativity.
What do you see? If you’d like, you can reply in the Comments section below.
In improvisation, we use “frames” filled with ideas; these allow the performance to be partially planned but still allowing for spontaneity, which, to the audience, appears as if it were memorized and rehearsed.
—Artist, Poet and Performance Artist John Barney
The second painting:
Barney, John. Mason Jar #1, 24” x 48” mixed media on canvas, 2021: not displayed in the S C O R E exhibition at Thirsty Eye Gallery. However, “partner paintings” to this one are displayed. (Photo of painting courtesy of John Barney.)
Close Looking:
Eight clear containers/jars of various heights but approximately the same shapes.
All “see-through.”
All have closed lids.
Contents inside of six are rectangular outlined-in-red shapes of yellow, green, white and red (to me, looking reminiscent of Piet Mondrian) and also thick white impasto brushstrokes that seem to reach out of its containers (jar, painting) to the viewer (a style reminiscent of Vincent Van Gogh).
Contents within one is (in the top half) rectangular shapes and (in the bottom half) flat red.
Contents within one that is partially hidden by two other larger jars is entirely flat red.
Containers are set in a line in their shadows on a red base.
Behind them is blue, more saturated in some places than others.
Meaning Making:
Within the context of S C O R E and John’s quote about frames in improvisation, I see the containers as symbolic of sections of a performance, the shelf being the linear basis of the performance.
Each container is a section of the performance, the frame for that section, holding the artistic ideas. There is an unbroken flow due to the transparency of the glass of the containers.
Thus, we can see the performance of art as an entirely (the containers lined up on the shelf). However, the creativity happens in frames (each container).
Viewing the painting outside of the context of S C O R E, I see the containers as symbolic of people, and if we could see inside people, we would see them filled with creativity.
Now you:
If the containers of colors and shapes were creating musical performance, what sounds might you hear?
How does the nearly-hidden container with only red inside it sound?
In other words, can you “read” the musical score this painting creates and imagine what the sounds might be?
What do you see the containers and their inside art as symbolizing?
S C O R E Poetry
At the December 12, 2021 event featuring Moving Line Ensemble, John, at the mic, expertly performed several poems, speaking with smooth flow, as if memorized.
Moving Line Ensemble performing at Thirsty Eye on December 12, 2021.
Photo courtesy of John Barney and Bruce Warren Davis
After speaking with John after the show, I learned that he was following the “score” within his mind, allowing some improvised words to mesh with the improvised music of Moving Line Ensemble.
The result? Creativity in action. And a performance with the polish of rehearsals that never happened.
While improvised words or lines appeared in most of his poems, one poem, “Fay’s Garden,” was entirely improvised. Again, I didn’t know this until speaking with John after the show. To me it sounded like an excellently-executed memorized poem; thus, John’s improvisation demonstrated masterful use of frames.
In “Fay’s Garden,” literally created in the moment, John weaved a story of human angst and moral dilemmas, that—revealed in the final line of epiphany—animals simply do not share.
The energy of creativity in action by the improv professionals of John Barney and Moving Line Ensemble turned the room electric.
After the applause, I heard another audience member say words that echoed my thoughts:
“Who needs to go to New York when we have talent like this in Albuquerque?”
Yes, surrounded by John’s paintings and hearing the performance by John, Music Line Ensemble, guest poets and Chatter All-stars, my thoughts exactly.
You can hear and speak with John Barney at Creatives in Conversation on Wednesday, February 2, 2022, 5:30 pm MT.
John will explain in more detail some concepts of this review in his presentation entitled: Score: Art as a Performative Practice.
Join us!
If you are in the Albuquerque area, you can also hear John and see his art at the closing event at Thirsty Eye Gallery on Sunday, February 4, 2022, 4 pm MT.
Again, if you are in the Albuquerque area—John will be the performing poet at Chatter Sunday in Albuquerque, New Mexico on February 26, 2022 and February 27, 2022.
Find out more by clicking on the links below:
https://www.chatterabq.org/product/february-27-2022/
https://www.chatterabq.org/product/february-26-2022/
Albuquerque based visual artist, poet and performance artist John Barney has shown and performed work in New York, Miami and San Francisco, including installations and readings featured at Burning Man, Austin International Poetry Festival, Bay Area Fringe Festival and the Johnson Art Museum.
As part of his graduate studies in landscape architecture, he came out to New Mexico to work on projects at Zuni Pueblo and in Albuquerque. His work focuses on the dialectical relationships between the body and place, figure and void, movement and space.
John has shown work at a variety of spaces, such as the Harwood Art Center, Magnifico, University of New Mexico and Third Street Arts. His work was recently featured in Santa Fe’s Trend Magazine. In addition, he has completed design commissions for a number of artistic residential gardens in Albuquerque, NM and Ithaca, NY.
John currently daylights as the Leslie Knope of the Bernalillo County Parks & Open Space Department and teaches at the UNM School of Architecture and Planning.
He draws every day including almost every week at Chatter Sunday, where he is the artist in residence since 2016.
See more about John, his art and performance here:
https://www.facebook.com/johnbarney66
Photos Courtesy of John Barney
NOTES:
Reading and engaging with this review is also a performative act. You can read more about this topic on my blog post of May 21, 2020, by clicking on the title here:
Creative Spirit & the Value of Audience.
Quotes from John Barney are from conversations with the review author, me.
If you enjoyed the exercises in this review in Close Looking and Meaning Making, join me in some of my art events via Zoom.
Another way to enjoy looking at art is to book a tour with Santa Fe Art Tours, where we Look Closely at art in Santa Fe galleries, Make Meaning together, and enjoy other great activities planned by founder, lead guide, and arts educator Elaine Ritchel.
Elaine Ritchel of Santa Fe Art Tours
Photo credit: Sean Ritchel
About the Blog Author
Mary Dezember, PhD, also known as the Art Ninja (as dubbed by John Barney) is a poet, an author of fiction and non-fiction, an educator, and a lover of visual, verbal and musical art.
Mary is seen here giving the two thumbs up for John Barney’s Low Line #2 Anicha, shown at John’s S C O R E exhibition at Thirsty Eye in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Mary earned her PhD in Comparative Literature, specialization in Comparative Arts, from Indiana University in 2000, with PhD minors in Art History and Performance Studies.
Professor Emeritus of English, she taught Comparative Arts, Art History, Creative Writing and Literature at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology from August 2000 to May 2021.
She is a tour guide for Santa Fe Art Tours.
Her publications include several non-fiction essays and articles and two books of poetry: Earth-Marked Like You (Sunstone Press) and Still Howling (CreateSpace Independent Publishing). Her novel, Wild Conviction, is in the works to be published.