Jacob Hartman
July 17 2009
The Orchard Projects: Okay, tell a story.
Jacob: To do this story justice, we'll have to go back to Apathy Ranch. My mom lived in this place that we started calling Apathy Ranch, because she didn't have enough resources to fix everything. She basically could just barely feed the animals. She lived in Canyon Country. She had two chows, she gave horseback lessons and rides, and she lived with my brother James. James was a skinhead, and at the time doing a lot of meth. Her two chow dogs were Ming and the other name I can't remember. One of these was really sick, and we would tell her she would have to take this dog to the vet because it was essentially rotting. Visibly obvious, like a piece of overripe fruit. I have no idea how this happened, but it was a form of leprosy, or some kind of flesh-eating virus. I don't know what it was, but it was disgusting. It would lose patches of hair, and you could see the flesh being eaten away. We would bring this up with my mom, to which she would say, "Nooo, he's fine. He's gonna be fine!" Basically she would say anything to get out of taking them to the vet.
I wasn't there when this happened, but James relayed a story to me about the dogs that was horrifying. They were watching TV, the dogs were laying in front of a fire they had going, and the one who was rotting lay in front of the fire on its side. The dog gets up and walks away, but its tail is still laying there. My brother goes, "Um, mom, the dog's tail just fell off." Without saying anything or acknowledging it in any way, she gets up, picks the tail up, throws it in the fire and goes and sits back down. Just a day in the life of a dog on Apathy Ranch.
Chroma Box, 2006
Jacob: She never had enough money. A visit to the vet for one of her horses was considered important or necessary because it brought money in, but in the case of dogs, they come and go. They get hit by cars, they wander. Just as easily as she could lose a dog, another dog could just as easily come onto her property, which meant she had a new dog.
This, more than anything, is a perfect example of Apathy Ranch. It was a ranch, a working ranch but a lot of things would just slide. This scenario was one that an outsider would find this amazing, but if you saw something like her rotting chow dog, you might think, "Oh…here is a rotting, zombie dog of the dead."
I made a really ornate sign with the intention of advertising her horseback lessons to cars as they drove by. A month later I asked her if the sign helped, if people saw it and came in, and she said,"Oh, yeah... that fell down awhile ago." So I said, "Oh, well, did it get put back up?"
"No, no…noooo. Oh no."
Her response was like I was crazy for asking if it got put back up. I feel like small things like a sign, show that at the Ranch there were combination of disfunctionalites. To this day, it's like this. The last time I went out there I was with my sister, and my mom picked us up from the airport. I had some surfboards with me, as well as a suitcase. My mom was an hour late. I felt like her timing was a recurring thing. Throughout my childhood I was the last one to get picked up from school or practice for something. Then, on top of my mom being late to airport, she's driving a roach coach, like a sandwich food truck. There were sandwiches everywhere and no room for me or my sister. I could only fit in there without any of my stuff.
Psyche Wall, New Langton Arts, San Francisco, 2005
TOP: What was she like when you were a little kid?
Jacob: I think every kid thinks their parents are cool at a young age. Which I did, I thought my mom was cool.
TOP: When did you start noticing that things weren't as they appeared?
Jacob: When did I notice the enormous cracks in the facade? She and my father separated when I was about fifteen. At the time were living in Iowa. Shortly after my dad left, our electricity was shut off in the middle of winter. We would sit around electric heaters and read by candle light. We had no plumbing, and we had to pump water to flush the toilet. At that time, I realized the situation qualified as not the coolest, and certainly not normal. It was an eye opener, but also not all her fault or responsibility. My dad also just bailed.
TOP: You had surgery on your back. When that happened, were you in Los Angeles?
Jacob: I was living in San Francisco, and I came down to Southern California for the surgery. I knew I didn't want to stay with my mom. I didn't want to live on Apathy Ranch. Around this time, my brother was trading meat for beer with some guy who was missing a hand and had a hook, in place of his hand. It was like Hook, or some movie character. The guy actually had a hook for a hand.
TOP: Sometimes when I watch movies, they really strike a chord with me. I make a connection between the way the movie narrative is being told to my own life. For example, Napolean Dynamite. When you look at that movie, despite how great it might be as a film, you recognize characters that resemble yourself. Is there a movie that when you watch it, you think resembles your own life?
Jacob: Parts of my life, at certain moments. Actually watching Napolean Dynamite was weird because I lived in a rural area for awhile where I worked in a chicken coop, it was disgusting. Watching the movie was bizarre because I had that same job when I was thirteen or fourteen, the exact same job as one of the characters in the movie.
TOP: Do you have any memory or can you recall one time that you have escaped death?
Jacob: Not really, I mean, maybe bad driving situations, but never where I thought I might die.
TOP: Have you been in a car crash?
Jacob: I've fallen asleep at the wheel, but it wasn't that bad aside from being scary. I've never been in a situation where someone has pointed a gun at me, or something like this.
TOP: How did you choose to go to school at SFAI?
Jacob: I went to City College in San Francisco. I lived with a girlfriend who was an artist. She was a painter who took a lot of classes and was telling me about how she went to art school. These conversations made me realize that there was an opportunity to go to school for something I found interesting, and she helped me figure out what classes I should take at City College. From there, I got a scholarship to go to SFAI. It was pretty expensive, but to go to a school that told me I was going to owe $40,000 was similar to telling me that I owed someone $100. I was always broke, so I just pretended that the money didn't exist at the time and I could figure it out later.
Still shot from "_ _ _ _ _ _ _ Head", an on-site sculpture/8 channel video installation
TOP: When you got to SFAI who inspired you, or who did you see as a mentor?
Jacob: There were a bunch. But the first was Tony Labat. Going into his class, I was thinking I would just take a performance art class for the experience. My instructor at City College told me that whatever I did, I shouldn't become a performance artist. So of course, my first inclination is to sign up for one of these classes to see what it was all about. Tony's class was a huge eye-opener. I remember a few things I saw in his class, and I thought, "Holy shit, I have no idea what is going on." Daniel Hipolito did a thing where he played an Alice Cooper song as his performance, and afterward I stood up and made a proclamation of how his piece wasn't art. Everyone in the class thought I was an idiot and told me to shut up. So I had to sit down and figure out why I was wrong. That was a huge moment.
TOP: In retrospect, do you think that was art?
Jacob: No, I think it was. Maybe not good art, but it was art. It was his work, and definitely art, but I couldn't understand the context so I dismissed it immediately.
TOP: So would you call that an epiphany?
Jacob: In some ways, that moment was because I had to struggle with it and figure it out. After that class I went to the library and became more open to ideas.
TOP: What did you study to change your opinion?
Jacob: I just started asking what people where looking at, and thought about how I could understand that. I asked professors what I should be reading. Tony told me to shut up and sit down. I think he had a larger dialogue around what I thought was art, but it was clear that my naiveté couldn't warrant a larger debate.
TOP: Can you remember a time when your schooling there "clicked"? When you began to realize your own language and what you really wanted to do?
Jacob: No, not specifically. But by the time I left, I felt like I had the tools to make works that were competent. But still in that context I think you are simulating or trying to be a part of a conversation and trying to learn the tools of the language of that conversation. When I left, I felt like I could engage in a conversation with my work that I couldn't have when I got there.
TOP: A few days ago we were discussing how when you finished school, very few spaces where showing experimental work. You were living on Mission Street, and I am wondering what drove you to participate in the levels of performance you are now known for as an artist.
Jacob: I think it was wanting to keep making work and realizing that there was a route of showing work through galleries and my work didn't fit into that context, so we created a space where my work would make sense. We were essentially curating ourselves into our own shows with our friends. We created an environment and context for our work.
TOP: Can you talk about who you were showing at the time?
Jacob: We were all in school together. I think a relationship started with our work before a friendship, because we were the people who were always at school. There was a rigor to the work that made us notice our similarities as people. We shared a struggle with the same issues. We had an awareness of struggling with being an all boys club, as well. A majority of these friends were male. I think there was a feeling that came across as being a boys club. But that was a feeling that started in school; a lot of male instructors would gravitate to male students and give those students priority. But this is another conversation.
TOP: Sure. I feel like there was a dynamic that was occurring there, and from what I observed you were fortunate to have that.
Jacob: That started at school but certainly once we left the school it dissipated.
TOP: You became the forefather of performance nights.
Jacob: When we started doing this, Tony said it reminded him of the early '70s. But those nights were for excitement to the art scene in San Francisco, but certainly there were people already doing performance art in the city. It was a way to make work and activate it. If you are working on something, you don't want it to just sit in your head or studio, so you write or find a place where you can put it on.
TOP: What is it like now that you have been in New York for almost ten years, what was it like leaving SF and moving to NY?
Jacob: It was time for me to go. Also, Eamon declared he was leaving and were putting on the 1947 space and before I left Eamon said, "I think I am going to stay." When I first moved there, I got broke really quick. I didn't want to get a job in a restaurant. To make rent one time, I made tacos and sold them for a couple bucks and I made rent. After that, instead of being the guy in San Francisco who had an interesting space, I became the guy who sells tacos at parties in New York. People were asking me to go to their parties and sell tacos. We had a show at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts featuring food and we made a big dinner, it was called "Another Universe". 5475 Love. I was fine with what it was, and got into grad school and Skowhegan.
TOP: What kind of experience did you have at Grad school?
Jacob: I didn't have the greatest experience, or feel that I connected with people the way I did in San Francisco, which is fine. I think that a lot of people in New York are forging a community. Or maybe I just didn't let myself fit in.
