photo: hw

Entertainment sells. Up until I met Miles Mendenhall last Thursday at Half Gallery’s opening, I was pretty much living in a hole. Of course I knew about Bravo’s Work of Art reality series, and had even given it about thirty minutes of attention on hulu before losing interest. It’s hard to justify my time sitting and watching a reality show about art that’s not actually about art, but more about selling the idea of what art is suppose to be about. The show could easily be read as a ploy needed by broadcast television to shake things up a bit, because who watches television anymore? When I was introduced to Miles, his work, and subsequently all of the events that led to his show at Half Gallery, I couldn’t resist having a chat with him to hear about his take on Work of Art.

Miles was leaving New York City back to Minnesota in a day and a half, but we managed to get a drink at Culturefix in the Lower East Side before he jets. I honestly didn’t think it was necessary to watch the episodes prior to our conversation, but soon realized that was a mistake. If I had prepared more, my questions may have been smarter and juicier. He arrived carrying an enormous backpack, an amiable expression, ready for a drink. He told me his work sold pretty well at the Half Gallery show, so I asked him how he got involved with the gallery. The owner of Half Gallery, Bill Powers, was actually one of the judges, he said. OH. I told him that I have not watched much of the reality show, because it didn’t seem interesting to me.  He told me that I didn’t miss out on much. I asked him if he watched it, he said, Yes…all the way through.

courtesy of the artist

My attention shifted to his backpack, I could sense he has traveled around and was curious to hear about it. He seemed enthusiastic and said that it’s about endurance — travel is the best way to learn and experience [life] unlike anything else. Coming from that experience myself, I couldn’t have agreed more.

When did you decide to become a full-time artist? Although he doesn’t like the idea of being fully supported by his art, he seems to be doing pretty well at this point. He tells me that he’s 23. So, like about 2 years ago (he thinks). And he is happy to be where he is right now, especially after being in Work of Art, an experience he believes changed him completely as an artist or just as a person. He revealed bits and pieces of this reality, most interestingly he never took Work of Art seriously from the beginning when he found himself on the queue for casting. From there, moments later, he was called up,  got on television, and boom boom boom, he was suddenly being judged by a million pairs of eyes, including critics, collectors, friends and family, me and you. What’s interesting about this, he explains, is that this happened so early on in his career as an artist. He’s just beginning to have fun. One of the biggest desires for an artist is to have their work reviewed and critiqued by top critics, and who can do this better than New York’s own Jerry Saltz (one of the judges on Work of Art). Although the “next great artist” concept is still absolutely absurd to me, I guess it makes perfect sense on reality tv.

Miles is currently working on developing a series of what he calls Daydream pieces.