{"id":28925,"date":"2015-06-01T14:25:37","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T20:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=28925"},"modified":"2025-11-09T22:28:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T05:28:16","slug":"adjunct-four-artists-who-show-what-theyve-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/adjunct-four-artists-who-show-what-theyve-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"Adjunct: Four Artists Who Show What They’ve Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Untitled by Sterling Allen. Courtesy Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Contemplating Karin Hodgin-Jones\u2019 two remarkable machines, both titled \u201cTug,\u201d what may well come to mind are the unquenchably popular inventions of Leonardo da Vinci: the ornithopter and the aerial screw that couldn\u2019t fly, the parachute and the diving suit that would almost certainly have killed their users. Each was so much more beautiful than practical. The difference is that Hodgin-Jones knows her contraptions have no practical application; indeed, she means them as expressions of a kind of passivity bordering on futility. Nevertheless, they would have intrigued Leonardo, once he got past the novelty of seeing art in a public space dedicated to displaying it. \u201cTug (Peaks and Valleys)\u201d should have delighted him, as it did the visitors in the gallery they day I saw it. The triangle section at its top recalls the weaving mills seen in so many filmed versions of 19th century, social realist novels. Resting on a horizontal wooden frame, a web of strings runs through an array of pulleys and levers that, driven by a concealed motor, create a constantly shifting, utterly hypnotic display of Euclidian geometry. From there, strings drop straight down almost to the ground, where each is attached to a spot on a flesh-colored square of lightweight cloth. They lift this fabric into peaks that rise and fall in response to the pulling strings, suggesting the surface of lake water in a storm, yet in stately fashion, like a slow-motion film.<\/p>\n

The hypnotic beauty of that dancing bit of cloth takes on an ironic, even bitter humor in the context of Adjunct<\/em>, a collection of ten gems at UMOCA, some in multiple parts, brought together to call attention by means of visual metaphor to a plight shared by their creators, as well as by thousands of others like them. These four artists, then, have two things in common. First, all are competent, productive, functioning individuals whose careers give the lie to the myth that artists are inherently unstable fringe dwellers. And they do so while laboring on behalf of the world\u2019s most wealthy, culturally indifferent society, hoping to achieve success in a market that, to a degree unequaled in art history, operates on a winner-take-all basis that sees a handful of artists and works garner millions of dollars, while most artists can\u2019t even make a living. Second, while all four have in common one of the most familiar means of supporting themselves and their art work\u2014teaching\u2014they are forced to get by without the perks and protections available to their colleagues who, regardless of relative artistic merit, have landed that increasingly rare and endangered haven, a full-time, tenure track appointment.<\/p>\n

Some of the most important academics in America are adjuncts at old-fashioned schools that still recognize the value of peripatetic scholars, not attached to committees and revolving departmental chores, who can take full advantage of research opportunities and resources, while providing students early exposure to accomplished public figures. Most adjuncts, though, are temporary hires, paid near or below minimum wage, denied routine benefits like health care and retirement, and regarded for the most part as an unwelcome necessity. As much as any other marginal employment predicament, there is much that can be said about the plight of adjuncts. Yet the pressing question for now is what a work of art should, or even can, have to say about it. Just because some adjuncts are artists doesn\u2019t make employment amenable to explication in visual or aesthetic terms.<\/p>\n