When artist Tim Roda’s 10-year-old son, Ethan, and his wife,
Allison, enter his studio in Harlem, they are
unaware what Tim is
planning for them. What they see is a table, a bottle of wine, a crucifix, salvaged wood propped up
against the wall, and a lamp. In the middle is a clearing.
Ethan has just come from school, so there is a snack with juice.
Finally, Allison takes her usual place behind the Super 8 camera while
Ethan awaits instructions from his father, who is already dressed up as
an old, unattractive, heavily made-up Italian woman. As Tim sits down
in front of a makeshift vanity, he tells Ethan to stare off in the
opposite direction and dance—the film will be silent, and Ethan
will “play” the part of the music. “Feel the music,” Tim says, putting
on some movie soundtrack. There is no rehearsal; Ethan begins to dance,
Tim says okay, and Allison starts filming.
Tim aggressively plucks stray eyebrows and chin hairs while, behind
him, Ethan dances, shirtless. Ethan looks at his father only once,
briefly, fueled by the genuine curiosity of seeing his father dressed
as a woman and manicuring himself. His short break in character is an
honest moment that allows the relationship between father and son to
break through the art facade. After three minutes of dancing and
plucking—when the film runs out—the art is over. Ethan is
allowed to play. Watching Ethan tear down sets and jump on tables in
the studio is what inspired Tim to begin making Super 8s in the first
place.
An artist’s studio is a sacred space. Conventionally it is where the
isolated genius, holed up, performs the physical action of creating
art. But occasionally—very occasionally—it is also a jungle
gym, and the place for an after-school snack.
The most famous examples of artists picturing children bear traces
of darkness, whether sexual, violent, or otherwise. Lewis Carroll’s
19th-century child photographs can be seen as lewd; Ralph Eugene
Meatyard in the 20th century photographed his children in graveyards
and dilapidated houses in rural Kentucky (settings parents encourage
their children to stay away from); and most recently, Sally Mann has
been criticized for exposing her own children in intimate
portraits.
How much do children understand of the artistic process? Does it
matter? Parenting is a litany of dos and don’ts to help direct children
through life. Is it that much different directing them through a photo
shoot?
Tim Roda, a former Seattle artist (and represented by Greg Kucera
Gallery, where the dancing-and-plucking video was recently shown) now
based in New York, ups the ante by joining his own child in front of
the camera. He uses his family life in surreal, detailed scenes that
are so specific to his own psychology and history, it’s hard to follow
his narrative. This is where Ethan comes in, as a link between artist
and viewer. Like the viewer, he doesn’t know quite how to interpret
what’s happening.
Unlike the viewer, though, Ethan changes. He grows up. In early
photographs, he appears to be reacting, often as if he’s unsure or
afraid, to the emotionally charged sets. He grows more independent in
the videos, acting as a character. (He still doesn’t understand what
they’re doing because in art class at school, he’s taught that art is
making real-looking drawings.) One wonders what will happen in the
videos and photographs when Ethan hits his teenage years. Roda’s work
can’t help but incorporate the fascinating, mutating chaos of the
family itself.
Seattle artist Zack Bent makes photographs of his whole family, too.
He’s only been doing it about a year, and this month, he’s been
immersed in it. For a residency at Crawl Space, he lived in the gallery
for a full week, and for three of those days his entire family joined
him—his wife, Gala, 3-year-old son, Ezra (who was forced to
postpone his birthday because he was in the gallery on it!), and
1-year-old Solomon.
The resulting show, up through July 6, is called Home on the
Range, a title Bent chose beforehand, when he got interested in a
book about Daniel Boone. He decided to examine his own family’s journey
out west from Indiana to Seattle, using the family’s survival of
confinement to the gallery as a metaphor for survival in the
wilderness.
A few days into his residency, Bent was working productively in the
gallery, building a modern-day covered wagon. Then the kids came. All
the objects in the gallery were elevated and the table corners were
taped off: the place had been kid-proofed. Bent estimated he was now
working at about one-eighth his independent speed. He planned to make a
show of sculptures and videos, capturing the kids playacting in
costume, or in the dark, or describing what it was like when, outside
the gallery, they found a dead animal.
Bent’s agenda is vague compared to Roda’s. At times, even he is
unsure of exactly what he’s trying to get at, of where the realms of
the real and the fantasy are supposed to meet.
Because the final image is less concrete in Bent’s mind, he is more
influenced by the inclusion of his family. In order to get more
consistent results, in earlier photographs he resorted to creating
settings that would hold the attention of his young sons: a pile of
laundry, a stack of yellow paper, a big blue birthday cake. These
domestic images border on being more interesting to the father than the
viewer.
Bent’s residency exhibition at Crawl Space, which opened June 21, is
a step toward clarifying the intent of his work. Three looped videos
play on a TV inside a quilted covered wagon with handcrafted wheels.
The kids and their father are dressed in old lumberjack costumes with
contemporary details (REI vests, Croc sandals). In the silent video
Rope Man, the kids are pictured alone together, engaged in a
type of oblivious play that acts as a metaphor for the amoral pioneer
spirit. Compared to the earlier photographs, these videos are both more
real and more contrived, more candid and more edited—and richer.
