the artist pt. 1

the tarot of a mid career artist

black and white abstract charcoal drawing of the character in Kafka's the artist

I know I am not the only one having a low key existential spring into summer so I will hold off on the apologies for missing posts last month. In Substack land, I got the retrograde news last week that AI bots ate the recording of last month’s episode of MISSIVES on Wave Farm with the artist Daniele Frazier. Initially this threw me for a loop in a moment of spiral I was already having but the more I thought about it, I also did have a feeling that it was meant to be, simply in that this was one of the rare times I have brought a complete stranger onto the show. As of late, I have been noticing during this spring’s tapings, my overall comfort within the conversations with guests has been expanding - so relaxed that I sometimes forget we were on the radio because I like talking to friends. So, I was excited to chat with Daniele because I didn’t know her at all. I fell in love with her work through her gallery’s IG and went to her artist talk and just invited her to come on out of the blue. Basically, I stalked her but was excited because I felt it would keep me on my toes this time during the interview. What happened was that we had one of the most personal and tender conversations that has happened so far and knowing that AI ate it makes me really see that one was for us and whoever happened to be listening live because we were doing something much more important. Besides, I also forgot about checking time until exactly 4pm so we never really had an end to that conversation either.

But Daniele is an artist you should really know about and I am also disappointed the recording is lost.

Daniele Frazier is a New York-based artist, published writer, and educator dedicated to a practice marked by rigorous formal aesthetics and a profound engagement with materiality. Her conceptually rich work balances a deep investment in craft with serious inquiry into phenomenology, the texture of everyday life, and the politics embedded within public space and the definition of ownership. Frazier employs a diverse material vocabulary influenced by a passion for collecting—from metalwork and textiles to alternative camera-less photographic and darkroom processes.

Frazier’s work has been exhibited widely at institutions and galleries including the Whitney Museum, The Queens Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, Guild & Greyshkul, Museum 52, Rivington Arms, Ritter Zamet, and Gavin Brown’s Passerby, among others. With 10 years of experience creating public sculpture in NYC, she brings her materially informed artistic life into direct dialogue with the social and political landscape of the city. She further extends this commitment to public memory, craft, and social practice through her work for the NY AIDS Memorial, where she facilitates the creation of new panels for the AIDS Quilt.

As an educator, she lectures at numerous colleges and currently instructs at the Buxton School.

Frazier’s current studio practice pushes the boundaries of photographic media. She has begun to color-process photograms in order to activate expired Kodak Ektachrome paper, leading a profound exploration into optics, light, chemistry, and color theory. This experimental work exemplifies her commitment to leveraging material constraints as a basis for unprecedented artistic invention.

Below is an image from her last exhibition Night Writing at SEPTEMBER gallery. Check out her other work here.

For this post, I have decided to do a combo essay/radio show post by talking through the spread, which is actually something people have asked me to consider doing more of on here.

Daniele’s spread was interesting because it really maps out the stages of the mid career artist especially in regards to coming to terms with the need for resource as one gets older and how difficult that can be in a climate where artists are expected to want for nothing while those who have support in other places get to perform a “sustainability” that isn’t even real which connects to some thoughts about how that smoke and mirrors reality gets troubled as artists age.

I have been thinking about a story that has been on my mind in regards to all of this. It’s a short story by Franz Kafka called The Hunger Artist which is about a professional faster whose art of self-denial falls out of public favor, leading to his eventual neglect and death in a circus, exploring themes of alienation, the misunderstood artist, and the futility of seeking meaning.

I taught this story throughout the pandemic to my English classes over Zoom. It is beyond bleak and I would not recommend teaching it online when it feels like the world is coming to an end like I did. It definitely left an imprint and I have been thinking about it every time the conversation about the state of the arts comes up.

The story follows the artist from his days of fame, where he fasts in a cage for adoring crowds, to his final days where he is forgotten, replaced by a panther, and dies alone, revealing his true hunger was for understanding, not food.

Like most of the conversations I have been having these days about all the art worlds and academia in general, it is beyond morose. Which is why I will be taking a break from the essay posts until October to focus on projects behind the scenes and just get some peace before the semester begins back up in the fall.

Now on to the spread!

Before I begin, I want to state that I firmly believe to my core that there is no prescriptive path to an artist’s life. These interpretations are based on observations of my own journey and the paths of the intergenerational community of artists I am part of.

In the PAST position, we have reversed King of Swords from The Modern Witch tarot by Lisa Sterle and The Cave from Kim Krans’s Archetypes deck. The King of Swords reversed represents the dark side of intellect and authority. I see this card in parallel with the Cave to represent the myopic focus required to set one’s self apart in the emerging state of an artist’s career. The time of ‘thirst’ where compromise and sacrifice come into play - where there is no question of compromise on various indulgences like relationships, eating regularly, health care, running water and not running your life into debt.

In the Present, we have the The Seven of Wands which is a tarot card of courage, standing your ground, and defending your position which is in relation to the Creator which I feel is the ideal state of a mid career artist in that it represents seeing the rewards of what you have achieved, maybe even becoming known for a certain things and how one does it, and also names a state where some lessons have been learned about where and how one wants to continue being an artist in the next phase of life.

In the Future, we have King of Pentacles which represents financial stability, abundance, and worldly success in juxtaposition with the Eternal Child!

Seeing this made me feel deeply affirmed in telling Daniele that her new teaching job was a well earned gift and container for her artistic freedom to do whatever she wanted in the studio and how magnificently ok that is to not put financial pressure on her practice at a time of transition in mediums. So she can just play!

This is something I am seeing a lot of right now in artists around me, especially those who have moved out of the major cities and are just ready to not compromise so much. Many of them established in a certain discipline but are now trying something else. Maybe just for themselves or maybe just a few. I am starting to feel this, outside of real estate, is the real reason so many artists from NYC in particular gravitate to the Hudson Valley.

I can personally attest that the writer to painter pipeline is real, seeing it a lot as of late and I am dabbling on that one myself but more on that later. :)

Anyway, not the same as the audio but hope you enjoy!

Will be recording backups in the studio from here on out.

Will be posting a pt. 2 with my culture list next!