Suggested Media from Dan
Suggested Media
We moved quite a few times when I was a child, and my mother would always say, “With you father, we always have to move twice, once with all of our stuff and a second time with all your father’s books.” I inherited my father’s affinity for books and all informational media, and Snowdrift has given me the space to amass a library of over 5,000 books and hundreds of CDs and DVDs. I tend to see my library as an extension of my mind, and my books, periodicals, journals, CDs, and DVDs—with all the notes, page markers, and references I have applied to them over the years—offer an endless, personalized source of inspiration for making new work. Just as the layers of artwork and materials in Snowdrift inspire me to keep working, the photographs, idea tables of books and journals, monitors with museum slide shows and videos, and various amplifier systems (Snowdrift has five high-fidelity systems throughout the building and six Alexa locations that can play music and podcasts on demand) add another layer of inspiration and information that allows my work to evolve in endless permutations.
The process of designing the Arrays exhibit made me take a closer look at the impact of media on my process. On this short list of works that found their way to the idea table for the Arrays exhibit, I describe how each one has influenced my work.
Kubler, George. The Shape of Time. Yale University, 2008.
This book on anthropology has influenced many artists. It presents a theory of how objects mark time and shape our concept of history. Kubler changed my way of looking at objects. He led me to think of objects as a combination of ideas, materials, and energies that communicate across time to shape a cultural topography that we all inhabit. These objects act in an almost astronomical way. They attract and orbit one another. They form groups and clusters. They have momentum. They experience entropy. They warp our cultural space and, in doing so, shape our idea of ourselves and our history. In a way, Kubler is applying many of the ideas from cosmology to art, and it is a surprisingly good fit.
Artempo, Where Time Becomes Art. MER/Paper Kunsthalle, 2008.
This exhibit catalog documents Axel Vervoordt’s exhibition of an eclectic mix of objects, ranging from ancient to contemporary, at the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice. Vervoordt does not seem to be concerned about traditional notions of exhibition design. He is driven by how objects interact with each other and how they exist in Palazzo Fortuny, which has a wonderfully worn and aged feel. He is a master of array manipulation. This book made me take a fresh look at some of the rougher qualities of Snowdrift’s exhibit space and see character and potential where I had previously only seen decay.
Banach, Joan, et al. Lee Bontecou. Koenig Books, 2017.
Bontecou is a favorite artist of mine that utilizes a conglomerate of materials to make sculptures that resemble biomorphic forms and galaxies. The final chapter of this book includes the construction of an artist’s sandbox where a selection of her sculptures are thoughtfully placed. The process of placing these sculptures is fascinating to me. Things that might not garner notice or even be considered complete suddenly rise to prominence in the little world she creates. I would also recommend Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective (Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 2003) as the best visual record of Bontecou’s work.
Byzantine Things In The World. The Menil Collection, 2013.
This is a catalog from the Menil Collection exhibit that connects the notion of “thingliness” in the Byzantine world to how art objects function in a gallery, museum, or studio. It questions the blinders we have introduced to our perception of “art” in these spaces. The Byzantines did not look at objects as being representational or disconnected from their source concepts. Objects in their world were interconnected in ways that run counter to the way we separate and categorize our world today. The exhibit behind this book places Byzantine objects next to contemporary artwork to see Byzantine objects in a new light and to reframe our understanding of modern art.
Donald Judd Spaces. Judd Foundation, 2023.
The Menil Collection in Houston, and Donald Judd’s art spaces in Marfa and New York, represent the closest model of a “neighborhood museum” that I have always wished for Winslow. Judd’s appreciation for the historic character of a building, his almost religious respect for his materials, and his way of living in his work space all strike similar notes to my concerns at Snowdrift. While I have never been overly attracted to Judd’s work, I find the way he organizes and operates in his studios to be very interesting, and I have adopted some of these ideas into my own studio. In a number of my art books, I have noticed that Judd, the Menil Collection, and Byzantine perspective are often discussed in terms of one another. Add to this discussion Michael Kimmelman’s book, The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa (2005) and his chapter on pilgrimage to Southwestern art places including Marfa, and you have this odd “religion” of Southwestern contemporary art that is attractive to even an atheist like myself.
The Films of Charles and Ray Eames, Volume 1: Powers of Ten. Demetrios, Eames: “901: After 45 Years of Working.” Eames Office, 2000.
Many things are at work in this documentary. There is the evolution of a creative space over a period of decades. There is the concept of the space as not being settled, with moveable walls, things in progress, remains of older projects combined with the new, inspiration coming from surrounding yourself with material, and of the space defining the artist’s evolving identity. Beyond that, there is the reality of the space ending, the artists dying, and what happens after that. This film made me realize that as long as I am working in my studio, Snowdrift exists as a work in progress. But at some point it will come to an end, and the only thing that may remain is the story of what Snowdrift was. That idea is with me every day as I document my time in Snowdrift.
Fiennes, Sophie. Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow. Kino International, 2013.
There is a second film on Anselm Keifer called Anselm that has much the same feel, but I like this one better for a number of reasons: 1) Minimal explanation about the artist and space and moments of great silence. 2) Kiefer is a world builder, and I am fascinated with the scale and industrial character of his all-encompassing environments. 3) There are moments where the camera goes from the studio/outer space to the office-library/inner space. It is a striking display of a “live/work” space taken to its extremes. 4) There is a great focus on materials and found objects in the creation of Kiefer’s work and space. 5) There is respect for the character of decay and disorder in Keifer’s space. He does not seem concerned about “finishing” an artwork in the traditional sense. He allows his work to age and decay as part of his artistic practice. 6) The emphasis on the character of the materials, and the respect for the process of working the materials. Keifer seems to enjoy the struggle to create, using things like molten lead, broken glass, and flaming torches to create work in an almost apocalyptic manner.
Art 21, Art in the Twenty-First Century. PBS, 2001 to present.
Art21 has been a source of inspiration for me for years. The show, now in its twelfth season, is particularly good at showing artists working through ideas in their studios. There are dozens of episodes I could recommend from this show, but two of my favorites feature artists Elizabeth Murray (“Humor,” Season 2) and Susan Rothenberg (“Memory,” Season 3). Murray and Rothenberg both share aspects of their practice without pretense, and they are particularly good at describing their process for making art complete with all the indecision and inspiration that occurred during its creation. Rothenberg makes a statement at the start of her episode that has always stuck with me: “If you don’t know what you’re doing here in the Southwest, in this kind of isolation; if you don’t understand that you are supposed to have work and a purpose to every day, you’re going to float off into the stratosphere or move very quickly back to an urban center.” These episodes are available to stream at art21.org. I would also highly recommend the documentary Everybody Knows…Elizabeth Murray by Kristi Zea (2016), which not only shows the evolution of her work but balances that evolution against the reality of her impending death.
Bukatman, Scott. Hellboy’s World: Comics and Monsters on the Margins. University of California Press, 2016.
Hellboy’s World is a book that looks at the development of artist Mike Mignola’s character and the world he creates for that character to inhabit. Beyond the typical stereotypes we associate with a graphic novel, there is a depth and artistic quality to the Hellboy comics that are worth the time to explore. The series does an excellent job of layering multiple story lines within various historical times and locations, with plot lines that are built in part around actual folklore from cultures throughout the world. To me, Mignola is a modern-day Hieronymus Bosch, complete with an array of extravagant monsters that are not necessarily evil and that often shine a light on our all-too-human failings. His stories embody many of the attributes I associate with arrays. He creates characters, places, and stories that require the reader to step back and look at their own world from different perspectives and to realize that no one perspective actually tells the whole story. You would think stories about demons and monsters would be pretty black and white, but Mignola’s stories are anything but that. You may find more empathy for the demon with the power to destroy the world than you do for the various archetypes of humanity that battle with and against him.
Koerner, Joseph Leo. Art in a State of Siege. Princeton University Press, 2025.
I visited the Albuquerque Museum in 2025 to take in the exhibition Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910-1945, and I came across this timely book in the museum gift shop. I don’t have a particular interest in German Expressionism, but given the current rise of authoritarianism in the world, I found the show compelling. Art in a State of Siege looks at artwork created by Heironymus Bosch, Max Beckman, and William Kentridge at moments of societal crisis. It may refer to a medieval army literally laying siege to a city, or it may refer to the internal states of siege artists face when their own work challenges the state (facism for Beckman and apartheid for Kentridge). Given our current predicament, this book made me reflect on my own motivations for creating work in these unstable times.