First Friday: January 2024
Inspiration & Updates from Brian Madden Studio
Go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Happy New Year! I hope you’re enjoying this season of reflection, resolutions, and new beginnings.
Thanks to everyone who joined me at my studio holiday party in December. It was a beautiful celebration of creativity and community, made even merrier thanks to Liquid Death, Golden Rule Spirits, and all who brought cookies to share!
This special January edition of First Friday is full of the inspiration and energy that’s been fueling my creativity. I’ll share:
WHAT I’M MAKING: Premiering my Newest Party Print, ‘5 Hours in Dogpatch’
WHAT I’M READING: Oblique Strategies & Letters to a Young Poet
WHAT I’M SEEING: The Lily Too Shall Function at The Jones Institute
WHAT I’M SHOWING: The de Young Open is Closing
WHAT I’M HEARING: Introspective, Energetic, Different
You’re receiving First Friday because you’ve supported my artwork, visited my studio, or otherwise signed up to stay in touch. Thanks for being a part of this adventure!
WHAT I’M MAKING: My Newest Party Print, ‘5 Hours in Dogpatch’
At each party I host in the studio, I try to unveil something new for my guests. At my holiday party this year, I felt inspired to create the next chapter of a story that began last March. On December 16, 2023, from 5:45 pm until 11:45 pm, every person who walked into the studio helped me create a new time-based art piece.
Right before the party started, my assistant Brad and I installed 216 square feet / 20 square meters of white primed canvas diagonally through the space, creating the conditions that could organically bring a piece to life, and removing the role of the maker from the artist.
Stone dust imprinted on white primed canvas under people’s feet had similar textural mimicry to a grave rubbing. Spilled drinks and cookie crumbs were crushed into the surface. A toddler and toddlers at heart drew on the canvas with colorful paint markers. The work took on a mind of its own through the energy of the party. The canvas became a 5-hour time-bound visual record of people, place, and presence.
Looking back across the past year of stepping into more conceptual territory, capturing and celebrating moments in time has become a core component of my creative practice.
I’m grateful for filmmaker Jezrael Gandara joining us in the studio (and on the scissor lift) to document the event on film, for Hallie Olson and her photography, and for Hunter and the team at Golden Rule Spirits, Liquid Death, and everyone who brought cookies to share!
WHAT I’M READING: Oblique Strategies & Letters to a Young Poet
In this season of reflection, I was inspired to read about how different artists overcome creative blocks in the studio. Besides pulling out Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies card set (here’s an online version if you need a boost), I was particularly inspired by the thought of playing hooky with Rainer Maria Rilke, and reading his sage-like correspondence with a young poet seeking guidance.
Letters to a Young Poet is a set of 10 letters from Rilke offering wisdom, guidance, and soulful doses of reality to a young cadet going through the same military academy that Rilke had attended as a young man, who had reached out to Rilke, soliciting feedback on his verses.
Initially published by the young cadet Franz Kappus, this book is full of absolute gems from letters written to him by Rilke over the course of 5 years. I felt drawn in immediately, because providing support and mentorship for younger creatives has been a career-long focus and a privilege that I hold dearly. Another draw: it’s short enough to finish on a flight.
On trusting your own intuition:
“You are looking toward the outside, and that above all is the one thing you should not do at this moment. Nobody can give you advice and help you. Nobody. There’s only one way. Go within yourself.”
On patience and growth:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
On finding inspiration in the mundane:
“If your daily life seems poor and miserable, do not find fault with it. Blame yourself for not being enough of a poet to summon your life’s riches.”
On the need to create:
Explore the cause that compels you to write; examine whether it plunges its roots into the deepest part of your heart. Admit to yourself whether you would have to die if you were kept from writing. Above all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: ‘do I absolutely have to write?’ Dig within yourself for a deep answer. And if the answer is affirmative, if you can counter this grave question with a strong and simple ‘I must’, then build your life according to this need. Even during its most indifferent and emptiest hour your life must become a sign and testimony of this urge.
On doing hard things:
The fact that something is difficult ought to be one more reason for us to do it.
WHAT I’M SEEING: The Lily Too Shall Function at The Jones Institute
One of my favorite galleries in San Francisco is The Jones Institute, just around the corner from the Painted Ladies of Alamo Square.
I love the ethos of the aspirational artwork and programming that founder Aïda Jones and her collaborators bring to this space and the creative community. And I feel especially fortunate because it also happens to be just a few blocks from where I live.
The current exhibition The Lily Too Shall Function is presented by design firm Studio AHEAD and the Jones Institute, featuring the work of three Northern Californian artists who have a history of being commissioned by the firm to create functional pieces for their clients. The artists, Jessica Switzer Green (wool), Nathan Lynch (clay), and John Gnorski (woodblock, paper, light), created work “that not only represents the places where they were made, but also the lifestyles and practices of those who made them.”
The exhibition had the perfect blend of art and design to hook the designer and artist in me, so before I left for the holidays I stopped by to say hello to Aïda and check out the show. Lounging on the soft wool pillows underneath the paper lanterns, catching up with her four-legged docents, Macduff & Freddie, I basked in the tactile nature of the show. Such a pleasant variety of materials and textures, from Green’s nurturing, inviting wool, to the Lynch’s bodacious, lifelike ceramics, and Gnorski’s dazzling use of wood and paper.
Seeing the exhibition in person felt all the more special after meeting the artists and designers during their conversation at the Minnesota Street Project in conjunction with the premier of this beautiful film by Pavló Fedorov. The Lily Too Shall Function is on view at the Jones Institute and the Minnesota Street Project until January 28, 2024.
WHAT I’M SHOWING: The de Young Open is Closing
Hard to believe it, but this is the last weekend to see Six Months in Dogpatch at The de Young Open 2023! It’s a must-see showcase of Bay Area artists. If you’re interested in learning more about the exhibition or the Six Months in Dogpatch collection, you can reach me at info@brianbmadden.com and get tickets here.
WHAT I’M HEARING: Introspective, Energetic, Different
I’m feeling equally drawn to introspective and energetic songs overheard in San Francisco, Portland, and Marathon, Florida… grilling by the sea in the Keys, sprinting at Barry’s in the Castro, or obsessing over The Bear.
Each First Friday Playlist can only consist of songs I’ve heard, received, discovered, (or rediscovered) out in the world, songs overheard at (coffee) shops, restaurants, bars, galleries, or received from friends IRL and online.
By the way, the playlist for the studio party was a curated compilation of First Friday songs from throughout 2023.
Finally, I’m excited to announce that I’ll be premiering in my first ever podcast interview on Doing Everything Different™, hosted by Devin Lars, the founder and CEO of KURIEO™, a creative agency that intertwines digital marketing with real world experiences. The DED™ podcast was created to highlight the journey to achieving a goal. The episode is dropping Monday, 1/8 at 8AM ET. Check out Doing Everything Different™ wherever you listen to your podcasts!
Thanks, my friends. Happy 2024!
Brian
brian@brianbmadden.com
“When my soul touches yours a great chord sings! How shall I tune it to other things?”
Rainer Maria Rilke