Issue 27 07.15.2011

Issue 27
Assisting Miguel Palma

Working for other people is never an easy task. Likewise, working for those free spirits who call themselves artists presents a whole other set of issues to navigate. Yet, working for an artist can be a fantastic learning experience in many respects.

From June 2010 through September 2010, I worked for Portuguese artist, Miguel Palma, as his student assistant or liaison. Palma was undertaking a three-month residency at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California with the aim of creating a new artwork that would be shown in August at San Jose State University’s (SJSU) Thompson Gallery. Montalvo and SJSU cosponsored his residency and show, along with the San Jose-based art and technology network, ZERO1.

Miguel Palma at SJSU

Miguel Palma at SJSU

Palma produces mostly large-scale mixed media sculpture; the piece that would eventually be exhibited from his time in Saratoga and San Jose was a disk, eight-foot in diameter, that slowly revolved. On this disk, a landscape of different fantastic objects was monitored by a video camera, which Palma perched on the nose of a toy airplane. The imagery from the video camera was then projected onto a wall, creating a looping narrative based on this small spinning world.

As liaison, it was my job to make sure that Palma had everything he needed to create this piece. My responsibilities included helping him get situated when arriving to San Jose from Lisbon, finding art materials, and making connections with people who could solve various technical problems he ran into along the way. Not having a background in construction made it difficult for me to help him in terms of the actual construction of the work, but Palma, unlike some other artists, was very self-sufficient in this regard. He managed to transport the heavy metal tripod which anchored his new work from Lisbon to San Jose. It was a unique piece at a height between three to four feet that looked like it belonged at the site of a lunar landing. Practically from the minute he arrived, Palma began trying to find additional art materials: the local Home Depot and toy soldier store in Los Gatos became his primary sources. Impressively, Palma was able to put the sculpture together without much technical assistance.

That being said, I did have some involvement in the building process. I assembled 12 of 20 small, plastic model apartment buildings that Palma also brought with him from Lisbon; it was rewarding to see my long hours of tedious work integrated into his finished piece.

The Montalvo Arts Center also provides many resources for the artists that they host. For example, their staff was very helpful in providing Palma with a car for local travel. Another added bonus of their residency program was the resident chef, or culinary artist, who prepares dinner for the residents Monday through Friday. Occasionally, I attended those dinners and met the other artists and staff at Montalvo, all of whom were very informative and welcoming.

The most significant part of working with Palma came towards the end of his residency, leading up to the opening of his show at SJSU in tandem with the ZERO1 Biennial.  ZERO1 organizes a large-scale art and technology festival every two years. SJSU participated in the festival by exhibiting Palma’s sculpture in the school’s main art gallery. The first collective challenge was to transport his finished sculpture from Montalvo to the SJSU gallery. I worked with Palma to carefully disassemble and package small pieces of the sculpture. Then, I worked with Montalvo employees Alex Gibson and Joel Slayton to precariously transport the sculpture to the SJSU campus. Once that was accomplished, Palma worked out the placement of the sculpture and projection within the gallery. The school simply did not have the ability to carry out his original composition; however, after careful deliberation and compromise, a solution was reached.

Between SJSU and the downtown hub of the Biennial, ZERO1 installed a satellite component of Palma’s work at the San Jose Convention Center. The component shown at the Convention Center was a projection mirroring the video footage from the SJSU exhibition. The set up required a lot of careful coordination between Palma, SJSU, and the Convention Center.  Juggling many different groups of people, this process was ultimately worthwhile and effectively integrated Palma directly into the festival.

While I worked on arranging the component for the Convention Center, Palma worked with gallery staff to reassemble his sculpture at SJSU. This installation experience turned into a lesson in dealing with building managers. The Convention Center provided a large gray screen leftover from a previous project, which I had to sand down and repaint white. I enlisted the help of many personal friends of mine, who were willing to help another artist succeed. Ostensibly, there was also a projector remaining from the previous project at the Convention Center that ended up at Montalvo. The next hurdle was finding that projector–it remains to this day uncertain if we located that original projector or not. Needless to say, I obtained a projector, a particularly large one that had to be suspended from the ceiling. Luckily, no one disputed who would be liable if it were damaged.

When the exhibition ended and the installations finally came down, Palma sent everything to New York. Off he went on his next adventure, and I was left to go back to being a graduate student at SJSU focusing on my own work. Graduate school itself is a definite learning experience. That said, there is no substitute for working first-hand with an accomplished artist who has years of professional experience. Though challenging, industry experience is an incredible opportunity for learning and growth, both of which are essential to being an artist today.

By Sara Gevurtz