Jim Woessner at home in his studio |
Jim Woessner lives and works on a houseboat called Casa de Amor on Issaquah Dock in Sausalito, Californa. The entire top floor of the houseboat (where you would expect to see a living room/dining room) is devoted to his art studio, save the small kitchen area that faces the dock. He lives there with no evidence of the fact that once he worked as a nuclear engineer and showed up everyday 9-5 and then some for PG&E on Market St. in San Francisco. That was before one sunny afternoon when in frustration Woessner suddenly threw his briefcase across Beale Street and proceeded to watch in amazement as the briefcase hit a fountain, broke open and all his papers were swept up and carried aloft by a sudden gust of wind. Witnessing this surreal display, Woessner realized he had just ‘let go’ literally and figuratively. Very liberating, as he tells it. |
| If you take a look around his workspace/gallery, you’ll see what looks like an exhibition of many artists. But the artists are all him. He works in an assortment of radically different styles--from representational art in oils and acrylics to mixed-media sculpture in wood, clay, metal, and found objects. Diversity of style is key to Woessner's perception of art. |
All the art in Woessner's studio is his, and represents a wide diversity of media and styles. |
"...being fixed in one style is the absolute antithesis of what art is all about." |
“For me, having a style and being fixed in that style is the absolute antithesis of what art is all about,” says Woessner. “I go into art gallery after art gallery and the only thing I see is that the art has to adhere to some kind of formula to be commercial. It’s totally irrelevant what the subject is as long as it’s commercially viable because that’s what it's about these days--making money.” A great admirer of the works of German artists Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter, Woessner likens his own abhorrence of the notion that an artist should have a style to Richter's philosophy. "Richter's attitude is 'style' is like having shackles or handcuffs." |
A tall distinguished man with silvery white hair and starkly blue eyes, Woessner considers the last great art movement to be Abstract Expressionism, a post World War II art movement. And in California, the California School of Fine Arts was a magnet for those interested in the movement.
In the late 40s a group of Abstract Expressionists that became known as the Sausalito 6, made it a practice to meet in one another’s studios--mostly in Sausalito: George Stillman, Walter Kuhlman, James Budd Dixon, Frank Lobdell, Richard Diebenkorn, and John Hultberg. Several of the artists began showing their work together. The alliance was informal and not stylistically separate from the larger movement, but the men were drawn together by a desire to break away from the artists associated with the Metart Galleries, whom the Sausalito 6 believed to be too influenced by the art of Clyfford Still. |
"Art is an attitude. It's about discovery, not craft." |
Woessner self-portrait |
Later it was Jean Varda and his contemporaries with their own active art and poetry salons centered around the ferryboat Vallejo, which Varda shared with Gordon Onslow Ford and later Alan Watts, who would draw attention to the heady mixture of art and Bohemia on the waterfront.
Woessner makes it clear he would have loved to have been around during those days, to have been a part of the exploding art scene.
He views the current art scene with different eyes.
“Just like Clement Greenberg [American art critic closely associated with modern art] proclaimed, ‘Art is dead’,” says Woessner. “When the Sausalito 6 were exploring Abstract Expressionism--you’re talking about the last great significant art movement in history.” |
An old boat on a sand bar at Point Reyes |
"Art that is simply craft to me isn’t art. It’s decorative and that’s fine, but it isn’t art." But that's not necessarily bad. "About 75% of what I do isn’t art and I love it anyway. . ." |
Woessner says the couple in "Suspicion" keeps reappearing in his work. Photo via jdw-artworks.com |
For Woessner, decorative art is the result of “hand-eye coordination, skill, a craft that can be learned as opposed to something fresh and new.” For him art is defined by movement, “Pulling me in a direction I’ve never been. That is art.”
Consider his 'floating heads' art. Each piece is made largely from found objects--particularly from the San Francisco Bay. He enjoys the fact that no two heads have the same hair treatment and that in some cases hundreds of 'strands' are applied with the utmost patience--made from such things as mattress coils and the metallic bristles from a street sweeper. One of the heads is pieced together using copper salvaged from the famed Vallejo, home and studio to Jean Varda for 20 years. ” |
"Mr. Stook" in his head home -replete with original paintings on the wall |
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| Floating heads made from found parts - each head unique, with hair from objects like old springs and street sweepers |
| And he points to a series of canvases on the wall. The figures appear against a background that seem to be scratched out. He proceeds to explain that he had a canvas he wanted to recycle. To do this, he started sanding it down. "Layer and layer came off and I liked what it looked like." So he intentionally started painting multiple layers (in acrylic) followed by sanding it down. . . Paint, wait a couple days, paint, wait a couple days--i.e. a very long process. But this process illustrates what art means to Woessner--movement, taking you somewhere new. Discovery. |
Discovering new variations on the scratch |
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Woessner created Artists of Issaquah (AOI) in 2003 as an avenue of expression, an opportunity for people to discover the artist in themselves. “Ric Miller [landscape photographer] was a hobbyist prior to the group. Some people came in cold; others had been doing art, but it hadn’t sold.” The annual AOI event attracts about 500 people who hear about it through word of mouth, posters, cards, and local press. Although the 20 plus artists are all from the Sausalito houseboat community, they are not all from Issaquah Dock. |
Not stained glass, but acrylic on wood |
Hands grab onto a tattered flag in this 9/11 sculpture. |
But the Issaquah group is not the only one Woessner formed. Drawn by the salons of the likes of Gertrude Stein and Virginia Wolfe’s Bloomsbury Group, Woessner started the Bridgeway Group--an avenue for art criticism--in 2006. “The first half of the 20th century is the history of modern art and I wanted to recreate that kind of salon,” says Woessner. “Criticism has become a four letter word in this culture and I think criticism is the best thing we have when it comes to learning.” Woessner explains that the name for the group came from the fact that he lives off Bridgeway and Die Brücke (translated “bridge”) was a significant art movement in history which started in Dresden in 1905 and, explains Woessner, ‘bridged’ what had come before--Post-Impressionism to Modern Art.
The group of 10 meets monthly at Woessner’s home/studio, gathering around the large table that is in the center of the space, and critique one another’s work. "Does this piece work, and if not--why not? It's all about pushing the envelope. That's what we do," explains Woessner. In April and May 2010 Bridgeway Artists have a group show at Sam The Butcher Contemporary Art in Ross, CA |
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He also conducts what he calls Threshold Workshops for people who want to "expand their creativity, develop abstract thinking, and encourage greater authenticity". "We're all artists," he explains with a smile. "But we stifle it as we grow up. It's about how you see things in the moment." |
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Woessner arrived in the Sausalito houseboat community in 1990, aware of what it was like when the waterfront was more free form. He longs for those times in many ways, but also likes it the way it is now. “There are not enough crazies anymore. Most of them can’t afford to live here.” But he likes the sense of community that exists there now, the ‘dock alerts’ (a phrase he coined to denote spontaneous parties called on a dock). “You take a TV tray, bottle of wine, cheese and crackers and set it up outside your boat on the dock and people know the party is there. Although the more modern version is a notice on the bulletin board.” And he loves the view of Mt. Tam. |
| His art practically overflows the walls and counter space of his studio. And it's not just here. From the window above the sink in the kitchen area he can look out to "Lulu," a piece he crafted for the lady across the dock. A few doors down is the whimsical "Catfish"--three aluminum panels (cat, water, and fish). |
"Lulu" as seen from Woessner's kitchen window on a rainy day |
Three pictographs spell out the name of the "Catfish". |
| “I gave up a house on a hill in Orinda, had to--to be an artist," he smiles. "I never felt I belonged in Contra Costa County." He's much more at home on the houseboat he shares with his partner Paro, with his large airy studio above his living quarters, impromptu "dock alert" parties, the excitement and struggle of creation, and the ever-changing vista from the water-end of his studio. |
The view from the back of Woessner's studio on a rainy day |
The bedroom is decorated in pastels and parasols. |
The living room is below the docks when the tide is low. |
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United States