Art without compromise

David Cheezem, known best in the Mat-Su Valley as the owner of the ever popular “Fireside Books” in downtown Palmer, will have a solo digital art show at The Alaskan Gallery/Mad Matters on the Old Glenn (next to the bicycle shop) this Second Saturday. The reception is from 6 to 8 p.m., and the show will hang for four weeks.

Here we have a successful bookseller who calls himself a “shy gadfly,” who is serving on the Matanuska Susitna Borough Planning Commission, who is active with local cultural organizations and who is having his first art exhibit. What is up with that? Could it be that he has something vital to say that can be manifested best through visuals of his own making?

According to Cheezem, that is his genuine intention.

“I want to express something more internal, something that expresses the questions I have about the complex, tangled layers of the human condition,” he said.

Then Cheezem relates to his own life with, “When I reflect on bad decisions I’ve made in the past — little things like eating too much or making a flippant remark — I think about the quality of thought I was experiencing at that moment. I think it was a kind of disengagement, allowing the gears to spin, but not being involved with my whole self. I have this hypothesis that that disengaged quality of thought is what leads people to commit atrocities — either with their own hands, or their own ballots. … At any rate, those are the kinds of questions I reflect upon when I’m doing art.”

So in order for “reflections (to) seep through onto the surface of the work,” he lives what he loves, and that is art.

“My passion is art,” Cheezem said. “Sometimes that means literary art. Sometimes that means visual art. I just can’t stay satisfied for long with everyday modes of communication — the prepackaged language, prepackaged thought. Something in me refuses, and I have to return to that other way of reflecting on the world.

“I’ve always gravitated to the avant-garde. I grew up listening to Yoko Ono after all, and it’s natural that I would gravitate toward new views, new tools. Art is distinct from all of my other activities, because every other human activity necessitates compromise. You can’t run a business well without compromise. You can’t function well on a board with a ‘my way or the highway’ approach.

“I consider myself a digital artist who most often uses photographs as the basis of my work. Some people still don’t think photography is a legitimate art form. Digital art is even less respected than photography. I don’t resent that point of view. I appreciate it. It makes me work harder.

“The reason for the misunderstanding is that traditional artists start with the pieces — brushes and strokes — and work their way up to the whole. Photographers work in the opposite direction, from the whole down to the parts.”

And what about computer-manipulated digital art?

“Computer art allows you to work from all directions at once,” he explains.

Back to the real world situation, he says, “I’ve lived in Alaska 15 years. I earned my M.F.A. in creative writing at UAA. I once taught high school photojournalism in Houston, Texas.”

He is now teaching creative writing at Church Eagle River Campus of UAA.

As busy as he is, he still describes a perfect day as one that includes putting in, yet, more time.

“I come home from work, tired, not thinking I’ve got anything left inside,” he said. “Still, I know that I have to spend some art time, even if it’s just doing exercises to keep the juices going. So I flip through some images I’ve stored just for that purpose and start playing: adding layers, drawing with the digital tablet, maybe folding in another image just because it adds texture, and negative-drawing (using the eraser tool) here, or doubling up the image there). Suddenly it’s four hours later, and this ‘exercise’ really speaks to me as a work of art. That’s about as perfect as it gets!

“There are things I want to say and do in the community. I want to argue for better transportation alternatives. I want to prove that we can have clean water and clean air — and still have healthy jobs. I want to promote public participation in our borough. But the artwork is more personal than political. It’s more of a spiritual practice, and I have to use the art time to turn my mind away from the more public things I do.”

When asked if Alaska, the place, ties in, Cheezem states, “Alaska is not the subject of my art, but I couldn’t express what I’m expressing if it weren’t for the sense of place here. I try to bring Alaska to my art, not as a subject, but as a state of mind. Everything in this world has been so over-documented. Almost every time I try to take a mountain scene, I get stuck, staring through the lens and say to myself, ‘How many times have I seen that picture before?’ If I don’t feel I have something new to add, then I refuse to take the picture. Instead, I try to reflect on the open spaces and bring them inside me somehow: open spaces, open mind.

“That’s what’s Alaskan about my art: I carry a camera that can take hundreds of pictures: snap, snap, snap, grab, grab, grab. I refuse. I wait for it. I stare through the lens for a long time before I’m sure I have the story this image is telling me. It’s not just framing the image or finding the right exposure. Somehow, in my mind, I connect that quality of patience with the open spaces here. The lesser ‘no’ for the greater ‘yes’.

“I learned that I don’t have to forcefully superimpose personalities on to the objects. Stare at the image enough and possibilities emerge on their own, which I can exploit in hundreds of ways to make it a stronger image.”

So then it is back to the computer, and the arduous manipulation takes place.

What is new and different enough to peak Cheezem’s art interest? Of course, that would be a good book.

“I am working on a series inspired by the book ‘Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti,’” he says. “The book is a 462-page taxonomy of crowds — of the many ways humans function, not as individuals, but as expressions of an overwhelming surge of group action. Canetti speaks of the crowd anthropomorphically — as if the crowd itself has its own impulse to live and grow.

“Crowd actions are one of the most troubling aspects of our species, where individual thought and action is buried in the group. I decided against using human faces. In a still image, the viewer would always find the individual in the crowd. So I looked for inanimate objects to express what I was learning from Canetti’s book.”

For his subject matter relating to crowds he “decided to play with a ‘crowd’ of cotton swabs.”

While deciphering photographic thoughts, he “took dozens of images of cotton swabs, at different exposures and lighting conditions, and just started playing with them in Photoshop — playing with the background, the color, the texture, challenging (myself) to find new ways to see these mundane objects.”

This weekend you will undoubtedly get to experience the life-of-its-own cotton swab crowd art, among other intriguing pieces at Cheezem’s first solo show. Be part of the crowd at Mad Matters.

Suzanne Bach is the Fine Arts coordinator at Mat-Su College and can be reached at creative@alaska.com.