Hey MC Blogmaster 5000,

Here I am again, getting back in the writing groove. Funny enough, just read a story in the last New York Times Magazine (August 3rd) about a group of internet pranksters that generally call themselves “trolls.” Seems they like to nuke web sites and mess with people very aggressively. One of them is quoted as saying that he “wants everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed.” Guy seems like a real party. Too much free time, if you ask me.

But back to the arts.

The project has evolved significantly since we last exchanged thoughts this way. We’ve completed our first two-day workshop with everyone in the Team Building project and have been talking about what it all means ever since. Right after the second day concluded we went out with Lisa (Freiman) to discuss where this was going and exchanged some really interesting ideas.

Type A has always made work that respects the idea first and the medium second. Ultimately the medium we choose for a project must be in response to the concept driving that project, and, in fact, the medium ideally helps to inform and reinforce the concept. Different media can do different things well, and we would never choose video to do what a photograph can do, nor would we choose to make photographs when the weight and authority of a sculpture is what’s called for. In the end, then, the medium is simply a conduit and is chosen for its ability to channel the idea properly. Reveling in the medium makes sense only when it’s functioning as a good conduit. Once that purpose has been fulfilled, we can roll around in the formal glory of whatever medium we happen to be working in. In the end, the medium should practically disappear.

This is a way of working which has been liberating for us because it means we are free to use whatever path is best suited to the concept and can focus completely on developing that concept. Although we’ve always loved the OBJECT in art, whatever that object may be, in the end it is disposable and is in fact not the art itself. This is where the Team Building project comes in.

When challenged with developing a piece for the Art and Nature Park, we realized early on in the process that an object-oriented piece would never be able to achieve what we wanted. We are too concerned these days with the shortcomings of art-as-commodity and the dangers of institutionalized mediation and intimidation messing with the experiencing of art by the public at large. Object-oriented art reinforces this, with the aura of the object being preserved and augmented through access control, provenance, market fluctuations and an accretion of expertise that a very small community of people continues to guard as their own. In short, it is often intimidating for people to go into a museum and restrictions on how one can understand art are inferred at every turn. This can be reinforced by an institution or it can be challenged. There are now significant discussions at the IMA to lead things towards a more open way which encourages a sense of entitlement in how the community can access and experience art, and we are privileged to be a part of that.

You and I decided that we wanted to create a gesture as well as an object and that the gesture is the primary component of the project. The medium we chose is Experiential Education, one which has no physical result (other than minor injuries) and which is direct and unfiltered by the history or art or any other discipline other than its own. The Team Building project can’t be touched or held or bought or sold. It can be experienced, either as a participant or as a viewer. It has an presence beyond what happens within the core team of participants, but defining that is as elusive as defining an invisible man. You can only see his shape when something is draped on him, when some piece of fabric or a mattress or a bathtub full of water betrays his outline and weight and movement. In a sense we have done away with the object and the medium altogether and instead have started a relationship with a cross section of people at the institution which has invited us to make work. What happens within that group is the piece itself, the draped fabric that gives this invisible man shape. The work we do is based on a set of principles and ideas that’s constantly changing, but has a foundation in trust, respect, inquiry, playfulness and honesty.

The project does have an object-oriented component as well, and how. It’s going to be a huge sculpture (we think) and, as such, will function as a counterpoint to the experiences we are sharing as a group. At this point we are feeling an increasing need for the group to have a hand in the design and fabrication of the piece and that will play out in the weeks to come. Having a huge sculpture is arguably the complete flip side of the principles that inform the intangible, performative heart of the project. But is it incompatible? Are we having our cake and eating it too? Seems pretty clear that the answer is yes, but is that so bad? Don’t these two components complement each other and in doing so set the issues in relief?

There’s a lot to consider. This has been an amazing experience so far and we’ve got a long way to go.

Yours in rubber chickens,
Blogwin

Dear B-Lo (again with a new name, this one with a trendy feel),

“Trolls” going onto the Internets to get everyone off the Internets? Hmmm, irony can be pretty ironic.

Anyhoo, it has been a while since our last blog-fession. What’s the penance for that? I’m guessing it has something to do with getting on Facebook.

So, in the last three weeks, much has happened, as you mentioned, with the Team Building project. The blog has the potential to be a place to expand our conversations, to continue to leave residue. I say “potential” mainly because we haven’t exactly… written. Instead, the ideas stayed where, I guess, they are more comfortable: in the ether just above our head waiting to be referenced. Holding the concept to be primary and leaving it formally undefined is a way to avoid losing it. Trying to contain ideas by writing them down, for example, can be a foolproof way of having the concept become slippery, more evasive. At the same time, I want to get some of this stuff down on paper (or, at least, on The Internets). The idea that things cannot be defined is a nice bit of theoretical play but winds up creating paralysis. Sure, no one can know exactly what I am trying to convey. So what? Trying is a noble failure.

So, on to the residue or, more specifically, the Invisible Man (I like to capitalize this as a proper noun since I prefer to believe he actually exists). He’s wrapped in bandages in order for his shape to be seen (he also wore those funny, goggle-like glasses and, if memory serves, a dashing smoking jacket). In order to be identified as a human, these “drapings” were necessary. Sure, no one could tell exactly what he actually looked like, but they could tell where he was and what the hell was holding that pipe up in mid-air (By the way, if he smoked or drank, wouldn’t we see the substance ingested? I mean, the invisibility didn’t extend to external objects, right?) From there, we realized that the “drapings,” or residue, can initially be acknowledged as a need for everyone else to know where the Invisible Man was at all time. Otherwise, he would be undefined, undetectable and, at some point, able to see them naked. Though the residue was for the protection of the visible, we soon realized that they were much more important for the Invisible Man himself. Without it, he would not know where he was. And that would be maddening (not in an irksome way but in a loony-bin way).

Without a sense of self, without the ability to have some identifiable aspect shown to someone or, more importantly, reflected back to oneself, there can be no sense of self. Sure, the reflection can only approximate and is inaccurate (Check this out), but they are somewhat beneficial reference points. And don’t get me started on Lacan’s Mirror Stage (You have read your Lacan, haven’t you?). Inaccurate reflections may create anxiety that sends us to analysis, but they do provide for some psychological stability. The alternative would be much worse. In art, we need our concepts to have a physical or psychological remnant. In a cynical way, art can be too interested in the physical object. People can use their knowledge of what the object “means” and what someone may or may not understand about it to create a culture of intimidation. The residue can, and often does, end up in the hands of someone with an agenda. This happens quite often when the artist is unreachable or, more so, dead. When the gap between artist idea/experience and audience is so vast, some feel the need to create authority in order to tell people when they are experiencing art. Perpetuating the myth that people need to be led through art in one way or another is a way to keep a lot of people employed (art consultants, anyone?). This has gotten us a bit P.O.’d. We’ve been around too many people who make such a point of being told what to see and, more specifically, what to buy. Now, we are definitely calling for a egalitarian, non-commodified, peace, love and understanding hippie like art world. But, we’d like to see a bit more direct experience as the rule, not the exception, right? This has been the driving force behind Team Building. Give some people some direct experience and see what happens. Let the art be made from that.

So, the project needs the residue. Without it, it could not be identified. More importantly, without it, we could not identify what we’re doing. We set up situations and then leave a lot to chance. But, the residue has become a prominent point for us to reevaluate and understand our need to get some of the ideas down. Without it, we would not be able to point to what we’re doing. And, without that, we would not be able to point to ourselves.

As for the sculptural element, this “big tower” that we’re constantly referring to, it is as necessary as we want it to be. It can be the largest bit of residue that our involvement with the IMA could produce. I’ve been struggling with the “having the cake and eating it to” thing as well. It’s always seemed like the Team Building and Tower endeavors were separate but connected. After our last meeting with The Group (capitalized for the same reasons), we’ve become much more focused on how the tower cannot be discrete from the experiential education. Each part keeps seeping into the other; and while it’s akin to osmosis to maintain homeostasis, the environment keeps changing. So, we continue to attempt to bring the various elements into balance while acknowledging that tension is necessary in art as it is in life. So, these seemingly antithetical elements maintain a stress but also provide a release. I have to believe that we have internalized Experiential Education’s message of self-challenge to such an extent that we are seeking out struggle as a choice to expand our lives and, by extension, grow. The two components don’t have to be resolved; that would be improbable, unrealistic and just plain misguided.

Our goal now is to continue to push to find ourselves in new situations providing new experience, tension and all. We can then offer ourselves and others the opportunity to drape something. To not do so would be insane.

AA

Dear Co-Blogger Dude,

And so it begins, writing for IMA blog. Never blogged before, and I’m not quite sure what to write about. I think it comes down to two possibilities: our Team Building project at the Art & Nature Park or music. I’m gonna choose a combination of the two.

Although our tastes in music differ quite a bit, there’s quite a lot of crossover. Shared music includes Clutch, Secret Machines, Radiohead, Dragonforce, Vast, Sugar, Sigur Rus, The Good The Bad and The Queen, and host of others. My most recent purchase is by “Battles.” It might end up on heavy rotation at the studio. (*)

I grew up with classical music as much as you did with rock. While I was being taken to Symphony Hall in Boston you were being taken to hear Zeppelin or the Eagles or the Stones. I think you got the much better deal. In any case, I ended up with a love of classical music that surfaces from time to time, and last week was one of those times. On Friday I took Gaby to hear Emmanuel Ax and the New York Philharmonic perform Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto. It’s a piece that’s moody and masculine, moving through thunderous and aggressive passages into delicate intricacy, and back again. It’s one of my favorite pieces of music and it was the first time I had a chance to hear it live. I was blown away. What I took away wasn’t measurable, wasn’t tangible. In fact the music itself doesn’t really exist except in the performance. The score isn’t the piece, a recording of the piece isn’t the piece either. The piece exists only when a group of people agree to do what it takes to perform it. This got me thinking about a word that came up recently regarding our work: “residue.”

The project we’re doing for the Art & Nature Park involves working with a team of 26 people from a wide variety of departments within the museum. Working within the basic methods of Experiential Education, or Team Building, we’ll play games and solve problems and talk about work and art and taking chances and respect over the course of several meetings in the months to come. In the end we are hoping that the group will be better positioned to successfully open the inaugural show of the park, and we will have collectively shifted the culture of the museum for the better. We were describing this project during a recent studio visit with John Hanhardt and he was trying to understand what tangible artifacts will remain after this project, what the “residue” will be. The fact that there will be not measurable residue seemed to fascinate him and defined the project for him as completely contemporary. Being at that concert last week gave this assessment a completely new meaning.

Lack of residue in art is nothing new. While the traditional parameters of art and criticism emphasize the presence of the object and consequentially the artist’s hand, music is one medium in which these two are not necessarily connected. We would no sooner represent the Team Building project with our notes and documentary photographs than a composer would present a score as the complete work and leave it at that.

What did the audience leave with last week? How did they represent the effect they experienced from the concerto? How did that experience influence them socially, if at all? If culture is defined by ideas and experiences, rather than objects, what is the role of monuments? How does that define the role of the sculpture we are building for the park? The tangible, the intangible, and the role of the artist’s hand — and consequentially the audience’s touch or lack thereof — is where the project rests right now. It’s a lot to think about.

Yeah, so I wrote about our work. Dammit. I thought I’d write about anything but, but… I couldn’t help myself.
Later,

Bordo

(*) REVISION: Since hearing Battles for the first time two days ago, it seems there’s no way in hell this will happen.

Dear Clogger (thought I’d create a hybrid term for us),

Music is the perfect place to start. Experience and preference regarding the medium are not only intensely personal but also largely intangible. You can tell so much about someone by how they regard their music collection. And if they don’t have one…God help them.

When you write of the concert you attended, it is completely understandable. And not in the “I understand what you mean” way but in the “I understand it” way. We’ve always talked about art’s ability to affect an audience as being located in the intensity and focus put into the art and not in the content. That’s why if someone makes art about a grand, sweeping idea like Love, for example, it’s easy to get lost and remain unattached to the potential of that subject matter. Too vague. If someone makes art about a particular idea like love of angora sweaters (as Ed Wood did), then we, the audience, have a much better shot of relating to it. It’s the obsession, the intensity that binds us (whether you like angora or not). So, you saw a performance of a classical piece. To someone who doesn’t like such music or just isn’t familiar with it, that may sound like a snooze. But the emotional response, that’s where that person comes in. When you mention the aggression and the intricacy that was conveyed, I immediately think of the Testament show I caught a few months back. For those not in the know, Testament is an 80s Bay area thrash band. Aggressive and intricate it certainly was. Classical…less. So the content is not as essential as is the passion to convey and connect. And it’s at this point of connection that the idea of residue begins.

Yes, there can be much documentation or proof that something occurred. But residue? That is trickier. With Team Building, we are seeing through a gesture that began with our desire to connect with and affect people. We want people to experience something and have that experience lead somewhere. Where? We don’t know. That’s up to the person doing the experiencing. There doesn’t need to be a physical or tangible manifestation of the experience. In fact, there can’t be. So the residue from the project will be unquantifiable. We know there is the potential for it but cannot, or will not, try to control it. The people involved will hold on to it in whatever way they want. Some may not hold on to anything. If any residue exists, it will seep into people’s minds and, perhaps, into their lives.

We, as artists and performers, will give to the audience. We will get back whatever energy they give and whatever experience they afford. It’s a bit of a dance. The effects of it are sent out to influence in any way that it might. Can culture be affected? Yes. Will it? That’s not the point. Or at least our point. Our goals are to create an experience not determine an outcome unless that outcome is to create a desire to experience more.

Therein lies the connection with music and live performances. We put on a show. The audience comes to see us. We give and get. They give and get. When it’s over, it’s over. Until the next concert.

You can, however, buy a t-shirt on the way out.

AA

What a month it’s been so far in Indianapolis. My Target Chip Ganassi Racing team has performed flawlessly and put my teammate Scott Dixon on pole position, with myself close behind in second for our first ever one-two start at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I’ve always been fortunate in my career to be in great equipment, and I hope to take the No.10 Target Honda Dallara to victory lane Sunday.

What a great feeling it would be to win a second Indianapolis 500. Winning this race in 2005 was the highlight of my professional racing career, and the highlight of my personal life came just a few short months ago in St. Petersburg, FL when I married my beautiful wife Susie. Things are going extremely well and I can only hope we have lady luck on our side when the green flag drops in a few short days.

I’ve always been a fan of the arts so in the spirit of good taste and with a nod to my heritage I’ll be sporting a new pair of PUMA racing shoes this weekend for the race. They are a very distinct blue, red and white pair that feature the British Flag…complete with a gold PUMA logo to accent the design. I also had a very special helmet designed for the race which shows off what its like to sip the milk at Indianapolis. I don’t want to give too much away so you’ll have to look for it on Sunday!

Finally, in starting on the front row for this year’s Indianapolis 500, my teammate and I were able to participate in a special visit to New York City on Monday at the new Sports Museum of America on Broadway in NYC. What a thrill it was to see a display showing off one of the helmets the team donated to the museum for the grand opening. That’s all the inspiration you need to close out the month of May in Indianapolis on a high note!

Here’s to another victory this weekend, and hopefully adding another piece of “fine art” to my personal collection!

Sean Miller is a participating artist in the exhibition On Procession. His project, the John Erikson Museum of Art, takes the form of miniature, portable museum galleries which he uses as a platform to host rotating exhibitions of other artists’ works. JEMA, named after Miller’s great-grandfather, was marched through the 2007 Art Parade presented by Deitch Projects, Paper Magazine and Creative Time. The Art Parade, an annual SoHo event since 2005, combines artworks solicited from an open call, museum-sponsored floats, and all types of rock n’ roll spectacle.

JEMA has been presented in other contexts, including other museums’ galleries. Beyond its obvious humor, JEMA offers an alternative vision of what it is to make an exhibition. As a portable museum, JEMA’s open construction and minimized logistical operations allow for more flexible or experimental programming than other kinds of museum galleries.

Sean Miller wrote this entry during a residency in Belfast at Flaxart Studios. He took the invitation to be IMA’s guest blogger as an opportunity to share his newly begun Director’s Notes. I encourage you to check out his Web site at http://www.jema.us/ to learn more about Miller/JEMA’s activities and details, including a staff listing, opening events, and a more thorough explanation of the overall project. JEMA’s exhibition of Saya Moriyasu’s Audience (2007) is currently on view in the IMA’s Forefront Galleries.

Rebecca Uchill
Associate Curator of Contemporary Art

As the Director of the John Erickson Museum of Art (JEMA) I have graciously been invited to submit an entry for this IMA blog. This invitation comes on the occasion of JEMA traveling Saya Moriyasu’s installation “audience” (2006) to IMA to be included in On Procession. JEMA is a location variable museum and currently I am busy scheduling, exhibiting, and juggling a new wing of location variable galleries in several different countries. I coordinated these exhibitions from Belfast, U.K. where I was participating in Flaxart Studios Residency Program. Rather than describe the functioning of our museum I thought I would include three excerpts from my Director’s Notes. In addition, I invite readers to view upcoming solo exhibitions at JEMA by Gregory Green, Cyriaco Lopes, Charles Krafft, Kristin Lucas, Yoko Ono, and Andrea Robbins and Max Becher. Please visit JEMA’s Web site for more info.

Director’s Notes
John Erickson Museum of Art
A New Museum and Consulate Opens in Belfast

More High Art: A Museum Hurtles Through The Air
Thursday April 3rd, 2008, 5:10AM

As I write this entry myself, three galleries, and the video lounge from the John Erickson Museum of Art (JEMA) are 4175 miles from Atlanta and 37,037 feet in the air somewhere over the water between Ireland and Great Britain. Soon JEMA will begin its cultural and diplomatic mission when the museum opens at Flaxart Studios and Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast, United Kingdom. There is much work to do. JEMA was recently bestowed with the honor and duty of housing a consulate for the Free State of Caroline. When a new Caroline Consulate prepares to open, the state routinely requests an address to record the consulate’s location - but since JEMA is a location variable museum I was unable to provide the necessary details. Happily the Free State of Caroline granted the museum the ability act as a mobile consulate. This is a great relief to us because the museum is currently moving at 526 mph and it’s difficult to get a clear idea on a fixed position. In this situation, the museum may only discuss a possible trajectory and one that is of course entirely dependent on chance, weather patterns, and the proper functioning of navigational equipment.

On The Ground in Belfast: A Museum and A New Free State
Thursday April 5th, 2008, 11:33 AM

The Free State of Caroline is a nation founded by artist Gregory Green in 1997. Caroline is in Belfast recruiting citizens and offering promise of “a new future” but is not yet recognized by the U.N. One of JEMA’s galleries has been transformed into a mobile Caroline Consulate. Green writes, “The New Free State of Caroline is a haven for those individuals worldwide who are participating in alternative cultures and lifestyles that are not easily accepted by the current power structures within their respective societies.” Our diplomatic mission, in Belfast, includes a three-pronged effort to discuss Caroline, recruit new citizens for Caroline, find a Belfast citizen named Caroline, and issue her the first passport of the New Free State of Caroline. The search thus far has not located Caroline but Brendan at Flaxart has helped us locate the HMS Caroline (A British Naval Vessel) in dry dock in the harbor only two miles from the Flaxart Studios.

Yoko Ono and IMAGINE PEACE in Belfast
Thursday April 6th, 2008, 10:15 AM

The John Erickson Museum of Art is proud to travel Yoko Ono’s IMAGINE PEACE exhibition to Belfast, Flaxart Studios, and other venues. This exhibition includes her text-based work IMAGINE PEACE (2007) as well as WISH PIECE (1996). JEMA is also pleased to announce the completion of its new outdoor sculpture park. With a generous grant from Eleanor Phillips and Flaxart Studios JEMA has established its new sculpture park. The park proudly begins its collection with two of Ono’s interactive Wish Trees. Viewers are invited to participate by writing wishes on pieces of provided paper and adding the wishes to the branches of the tree.

Yoko Ono writes:

“Power works in mysterious ways.
You don’t have to do much.
Visualize the domino effect and just start thinking peace.
The message will circulate faster than you think.
It’s time for action.
And the action is peace.
Spread the word.
Spread peace.
I love you!”

-Yoko Ono, Excerpt from Statement for Imagine Peace Exhibition at JEMA, Spring 2008.

“Bavarian By Law” Is In Place
Wednesday, April 9th, 3:15 PM

Andrea Robbins and Max Becher e-mailed that they have completed installation for their upcoming JEMA exhibition Bavarian by Law. This exhibition photographically documents Maifest, an annual, May 11th, celebration in Leavenworth, Washington (a town that voted to arbitrarily adopt a Bavarian history). Leavenworth’s cultural make-over included drastic changes to the architecture, clothing, customs, and retail outlets. In May, JEMA will use its location variable abilities to return the Bavarian by Law exhibition to Maifest celebration.

Look for JEMA exhibitions at Golden Thread Gallery, (Belfast, U.K.), ACC Galerie (Weimar, Germany), Indianapolis Museum of Art, and “Cottage Industry” at the Contemporary Museum (Baltimore, MD.). Check JEMA’s Programs and Events for specific details.

See A Little Art… More or Less,

Sean Miller
Director
John Erickson Museum of Art
A Location Variable Museum
http://www.jema.us/

What is it about the fashion world that pulls us in? What draws us to these clothes that could probably only be worn on the runway or red carpet? Why are we willing to wear terribly tight shoes just because they look good? Fashion is art. Everything about it, from the clothes, to the make up, to the model. Art isn’t always appreciated by everyone. Each piece will have it’s fans and it’s haters. I can share with you some direct experiences I had through my eyes. I may not know how to create the next amazing trend in fashion, but I do know what it takes to show it off!

I was a huge tomboy growing up,. I wore hand me down clothes, and half the time it didn’t match. Yet as soon as I hit my teens I found myself sucked into glamour magazines. I would stare at pictures of pretty emaciated 14 year old models and wish that I could be them. I would stare at the designer clothes that they got to parade around in and I would go green with envy. How wonderful it would be to wear expensive designer clothes! Seemingly overnight I went from a nobody waitress to a model. I won the first season of America’s Next Top Model in 2003. What is it like to walk head on into the industry? What are fittings, fashion shows, and photo shoots like? Lucky for you, I love to dish dirt, so sit back and enjoy the ride.

At 5′10 and 1/2 and 123 lbs, I was told I was overweight. My first goal was to lose the weight. Sadly, I didn’t have much to lose, so it proved difficult. I moved into a models apartment with 5 other girls at the age of 21. They called me Mom since I was 5 years older than the youngest one! It was this apartment that I got acquainted with the ugly world of models. Our refrigerator was filled with bottled water, a few veggies, and one or two containers of yogurt. How could anyone eat so little? Why on earth would a woman torture herself this way? I promised myself I would never allow anyone to tell me to lose weight. It would be absurd! I was already so small. I found out soon enough when I went on my first go and see’s just why these women were willing to waste away.

In I walk into my first casting. I was asked to try on a few articles of clothing. As I tried to pull the softest material in the world up that wouldn’t budge just above my knee, it hit me. These women starve themselves because these clothes are made for pre-pubescent little girls! The next casting I went to, the person told me to my face that I was too big! In the real world, people say I am too skinny. In this world, I was too fat. I soon realized that at 21, I was an old fart. If I was going to compete in this game, I had to play by it’s rules. I immediately got a gym membership, and started dieting. Due to lack of protein and other much needed fuel from food, I started bruising easily. I also started developing dark circles under my eyes. However, I dropped the weight! When I walked into my agency, my agent hugged me and told me how wonderful I looked. Living dead girl was ready to hit the castings again!

I went out completely bitter and angry at myself for having done what I did. Losing weight like this was against my beliefs. At least I didn’t have an eating disorder. I was still eating! When I walked into my first casting for the day I showed them my walk. Within two days they had contacted my agency to have me come down for a fitting! This was to be my first runway show in Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in NYC. Anyone into fashion know that this is what it’s all about! The clothes slipped on effortlessly. I was a size 2 at almost 6 feet tall. When I saw my reflection in the mirror I made myself a promise. I would not deny my body anything for this anymore. However, I was happy I did it to at least be in this big show. The big night was mayhem. Gay men running around having diva fits over lighting and makeup. Eccentric women walking by to tell you how fabulous the show is going to be. Photographers trying to take pictures of your naked body between changes while people who worked for the designer freaked trying to ensure you didn’t rub your makeup on the garments. All the while your wonderful boys telling you just how damn amazing you look.

When my time came to walk all went silent. I didn’t hear the techno music anymore. I couldn’t see the audience stare me down as I walked. I sashayed directly into the brightest light I have ever looked directly into. I was that beautiful high cheek boned emaciated girl in the designer dress I stared at growing up. I was everything I had ever wanted to be. When I stomped my way back to the curtain I realized that this gig isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. How could I be able to remain healthy yet still model? I was naturally skinny enough when I was 12-15, but I was just too far into womanhood at 21. I didn’t want to give up the glitz and glamour of being able to draw gasps from a crowd once they saw you. As a Leo, I loved to be on stage. The next year I slowly gained my weight back and my jobs lessoned. Then, one day I was getting my hair done in Milan for a fashion show and was starring at a table full of American magazines. Almost every single cover had a celebrity on it. It didn’t matter if it was a movie star or TV personality. When my hair was done, I started flipping through the pages of a few. All the major ad campaigns were being swooped up by celebrities. The best part was the celebrities didn’t have to be stick thin. I had one up on most, since I was a TV personality that could model.

Four months after I returned to the United States I landed a gig on VH1’s Surreal Life. Ever since I have been booking TV gigs. Suddenly I am collecting bigger covers and deals than I had in my past. I found the loophole. I could continue modeling works of art for the public, both on runway and in print. The best part? I didn’t have to lose any weight and I can wear the clothes I see on the runway on the red carpet. I love being able to show off a more athletic body instead of a skinny un toned one. However, the second I am asked to drop 10 pounds to be able to model for a major campaign wearing the next big designer? Where, when, and how?!? Most women have an article of clothing that is too tight for them, but it’s cute so they suck in the gut. Some of us have pairs of shoes that are far too tight, yet we still rock them out. We will suffer for fashion….will you?

Well, specifically, you begin in the front, and in the back. “Most architects who design skyscrapers focus on two aesthetic problems,” explains the architecture critic Paul Goldberger in a recent issue of The New Yorker. “How to meet the ground and how to meet the sky — the top and the bottom, in other words.” By thinking of a jetliner as a horizontal skyscraper, we understand that its beauty is gained or lost chiefly through the sculpting of the nose and tail.

The plane eventually fashioned by Boeing was the iconic 747. It’s perhaps telling that today, strictly from memory, with the aid only of a pencil and a lifetime of watching airplanes, I am able to sketch both the fore and aft sections of the 747 with a startling degree of accuracy. Even for a talentless illustrator like myself, the sweeps and angles of the nose and empennage are drawn almost effortlessly. Looking at the finished product — or at a real 747 out on the tarmac — one notices an organic flow to the jet’s silhouette. For all its square-footage and power, it maintains a graceful, understated elegance.

The vertical stabilizer rises to greater than 60 feet — half or so the height of many airport control towers. Though essentially a six- story aluminum billboard, there’s something sexy in the fin’s cant — like the angled foresail of a schooner. Up front, it’s hard to look at a 747 without focusing on the plane’s most famous feature — its sloping, second-story penthouse deck. The 747 is often, and rather unfairly, derided as “bubble-topped” or “humpbacked.” In truth, while providing the plane with its most recognizable feature, the upper-deck annex is softly and smoothly integral to the fuselage, tapering forward — the cockpit windscreens anthropomorphizing as eyebrows — to a stately and confident prow. All together, the plane looks less like an airliner than it does an ocean liner. “A gentleman’s airplane,” as one captain puts it. Or, putting it another way, it looks like what it is: an impeccable piece of high industrial art.

In the second grade, my two favorite toys both were Boeing 747s. The first was an inflatable replica — similar to one of those novelty balloons you buy at parades — with rubbery wings that drooped in such violation of the real thing that I taped them into position. To a nine year-old the toy seemed enormous, almost like my own personal Macy’s float. Second was a plastic plane about twelve inches long, with rubber wheels. Like the balloon, it was decked out in the livery of Pan Am, and even carried the name and registration of the airline’s flagship jumbo, Clipper America. One side of the fuselage was transparent, made of clear polystyrene through which an entire interior, row-by-row, could be viewed. The blue and red pastels of the tiny chairs is something I can still picture exactly.

But what most infatuated me was the spiral staircase, modeled in perfect plastic miniature near the toy plane’s nose. Early version 747s were always outfitted with a set of spiral stairs, leading from the forward boarding door to the plane’s famous upper deck, a design quirk that, in my mind if nobody else’s became an iconic representation of the airplane. In 1982, when I took my first trip on a real 747, I beamed at the sight of the winding column of steps, materializing just beyond the El Al purser who greeted me at the end of the Jetway. It gave the entranceway the look and feel of a lobby, like the grand vestibule of a cruise ship. Those stairs are in my blood — a genetic helix spinning upward to a kind of pilot Nirvana. (Alas, updated 747s dispatched with spirals and adopted a traditional, ladder-style staircase.)

In league with the Concorde, the 747 is one of the only true Jet Age celebrities. Since Concorde’s retirement in 2003, it stands by itself as civil aviation’s signature product — one of very few eminently and instantly distinguishable aircraft. Even the name itself — the rakish tilt of the 7s and the lyrical, palindromic ring: Seven-forty-seven.

From the other side of the Atlantic has come a different approach. “Air does not yield to style,” is a refrain attributed some years ago to an engineer at Airbus Industrie, Boeing’s main competitor. Right or wrong, he was addressing the fact that modern civil aircraft designs, the 747 and a few others notwithstanding, have been rapidly devolving to a point of total genericism. Jet Age romantics recall the provocative curves of machines like the Caravelle; the urbane superiority of the needle-nosed Concorde; the gothic surety of the 727. Now, they’re telling us, planes need to be boring, or worse, because in the name of efficiency and economy, they have to be. Not everyone believes it, and there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Boeing and Airbus have been at each other’s throats since the latter’s entry onto the aerospace battlefield with the A300, the first twin-engine widebody, in 1974. Those thirty years of competition reveal an odd cultural juxtaposition. The 747 isn’t the only good looking plane to emerge from Seattle in the past three decades, while after five baseline models and scores of variants, Airbus has given us only one true head-turner — the long-range A340. True to their contention that air and style are zero-sum variables, the Airbus consortium has produced a line of aircraft at once technologically exquisite and visually banal. Not long ago I was standing in an airport boarding lounge when a group of young women, seated near a window, began giggling as a small jetliner passed by the window. “Check out that goofy little plane,” one of the girls giggled. It was an Airbus A320, which you have to admit looks vaguely, well, dwarfish, as if it popped form an Airbus vending machine or hatched from an egg. You’d expect more, maybe, at $60 million apiece. And from the French, no less, builders of the Caravelle and who partnered in that most haughtily unmistakable of all airborne contraptions, Concorde. At heart, this is the story of a peculiar cultural victory — the Americans as the elite, trumping those boorish, tasteless Europeans. Who knew?

At Airbus, the pinnacle of aesthetic disregard was finally achieved upon rollout of the company’s latest and much-ballyhooed creation: the enormous, double-decked A380. With a maximum takeoff weight of 1,291,000 pounds, it is the first civilian airliner to exceed the million-pound mark. The Airbus A380 is the largest, most powerful, and most expensive commercial plane in history. And possibly the ugliest. With its abruptly pitched forehead and immense, swollen fuselage, it calls to mind a steroidal whale. I can’t begin to sketch the tail. It looks like a dozen other tails, except bigger.

Though, at the same time, not radically bigger. When the 747 debuted with Pan Am in 1970 (JFK-Heathrow was its maiden voyage), it was more than double the size and weight of its closest competitor, the stretched DC-8 from Douglas. A million pounds sure sounds like a lot — and indeed it is — but the Airbus A380 weighs in only about a third beyond the 747’s 875,000 pounds. Meanwhile, its much-hyped capacity limits of 800-plus passengers, not unlike the 747’s 570-plus potential, is likely to be seen only in rare, charter-only configurations. When it enters service with Singapore Airlines and Emirates in mid-2006, it will have room for about 500 riders. Some carriers, concentrating on first and business cabin amenities, are planning fewer seats than are found today on most 747s. The A380 is big; revolutionary it’s not.

Meanwhile, Boeing had not tweaked its 747 line since the -400 variant in the late 1980s. Sales had dropped off precipitously, and there was talk of the model going out of production. For a while it appeared that the A380 would be the only true high-capacity jetliner out there. For me at least, it was distressing to imagine the sight of a tarmac jammed with A380s; the 747 consigned to memory and old photographs.

But finally in November, 2005, after several teases and false starts, Boeing announced that it will go ahead and produce an advanced 747. For now, if not permanently, it is designated the 747-8. The nomenclature is a departure from Boeing’s usual ordered suffixing of -100, -200, -300, etc. While the aerogeek purist might gasp in disaffection, the name is a wily overture to Asia, where the bulk of sales are expected and where, in some cultures, the number 8 is considered fortuitous. The -8 will be available in both passenger and cargo options.

If you ask me, the best thing to like about the 747-8 isn’t the impressiveness of its performance data or its chances for sales. Quite simply, I’m enamored of the way it looks. Prominent tweaks are an all-new, futuristically raked wing, an extended upper deck, and a foursome of scalloped nacelles that help reduce engine noise. But from every angle it remains true to the original 747 profile.

As a kid, watching a whole generation of commercial airliners go ugly in front of me, I often wondered: why couldn’t somebody take a classic airliner, apply some aerodynamic nip and tuck, imbibe it with the latest cockpit and systems gizmos, and give it new life? Not as a retro novelty project, but as legitimate and viable airliner. Design trends speak to their age, it’s true, but commercial planes are built to last 20, 30, or 40 years. Certain forms are, or ought to be, permanently comfortable in that range. The 747-8 is one of those forms, and if Boeing’s back-to-the-future gamble isn’t the smartest thing to happen in commercial aviation in recent years, it’s definitely the slickest.

Over in Toulouse, Airbus is sucking its teeth, but swears the A380 is no white elephant. And how can we not agree? Looking at that beluga forehead again, that’s not doing justice to the grace of elephants. Does air yield to style? Maybe that’s the wrong question. For it certainly yields to a little imagination and effort.

Patrick Smith is an airline pilot, author, and air travel columnist.
Patrick has visited more than 60 countries and always asks for a window seat. For more information, please visit:

WWW.ASKTHEPILOT.COM