Why I Created the ALBATROSS Project
Currently, I’m storing 125 artworks I created between 1969 and 2016. The majority are framed and have been exhibited several times, while the others are unframed drawings and photos, ranging from simple visual experiments to preparatory sketches. My artmaking has always been driven by a desire to translate ideas into tangible forms, experience the creative process, and share these pieces through public exhibitions. I never saw them as commodities, so I never actively pursued sales or gallery representation.
Until about 2005, my work was primarily ephemeral, involving temporary installations incorporating occasional props, projected images, and audio elements. Around that time, my artmaking morphed into framed, object-based wall works. Because I have never been interested in sales, I eventually needed two climate-controlled storage units to house the growing back catalog. When moving to Knoxville, TN, in 2022, my new space was modified to house these object-based works. Feeling disconnected from the local art scene and reflecting on two recent retrospectives that had featured much of the work, I decided I no longer wanted to exhibit these pieces and felt an impulse to shift my focus back to bookmaking and ephemeral pieces reminiscent of my earlier, less tangible work. This stored work felt like an albatross, prompting a desire to repurpose the space it occupied. A sauna has always been on my wish list.
the ALBATROSS project began to take shape a couple of years ago at a party shortly after my move. A new acquaintance expressed interest in owning one of my pieces, and I offered to give her one (she thought I was joking). This encounter ignited the idea for a project to freely give my pieces to people who would appreciate and live with them. The idea crystallized at the 2023 Big Ears Festival, during the performance of John Zorn’s Cobra. The clarified concept: I would gift pieces from my back catalog in exchange for a non-physical, digital response from the recipient. These responses would become part of Aloft…, an evolving video work to be screened whenever possible and ultimately only “finished” when I am no longer able or willing to work on it.
After a year of planning and discussion, creative paralysis set in, and my progress stalled. A profile in the online CompassKnox by writer Steven Friedlander led to a chance meeting with artist Ashley Dawn Addair, whose community-focused, anti-capitalist art ideas resonated with my own. I shared my frustrations about the stalled project, and Ashley graciously agreed to help. Our subsequent conversations have been incredibly stimulating, providing the “jet fuel” and physical push to make the project a reality. A transcribed text of one of our many conversations follows the short video about the project that’s below.
Dan R. Talley, 2025 (for more information on my career, visit danrtalley.com)
Ashley Dawn Addair and Dan R Talley in Conversation, Spring 2024
Dan R. Talley (DRT): When did I ask for your help putting the ALBATROSS project together?
Ashley Dawn Addair (ADA): Late-spring or early-summer, so a few months ago, I think.
DRT: Yes, that sounds right—maybe two months, and since then we’ve been making great progress. In the process of working on the project, my studio has been rearranged and it’s getting in much better shape for certain things we’ll be doing in the future, probably more photographing of drawings and things like that. A major accomplishment has been inventorying the back catalog so that now I feel confident it’ll be easy to lay hands on any piece someone might request. I think we’ll be able to go live with the website this Fall. As I’ve mentioned, it’ll be a simple freestanding site that’ll have a gallery of the available artworks, a sample of the gift agreement with information about delivery options, and some background on some of the ideas that drive the project. I have an e-mail list of about 300 folks who will receive notices about the project as we get closer to being able to distribute the work. I’ll be putting together a social media campaign and sending out press-releases to various organizations. I’ve also made postcards about the project that’ll be placed in locations where art-minded folks might pick them up.
ADA: You might want to say something about what comes after the work has been distributed.
DRT: Oh, right (laughter). I’m freely giving the work, but I expect something in return. I’m asking recipients to send me a response to the piece they receive. It must be something in digital form, and it can be as simple as a single word, a sentence, a recording of ambient sound at a party, a photo from their phone, really anything that somehow relates to the way they think about the piece they just received. As I gather responses, I’ll incorporate them in-whole or in-part in a new video piece. I’ll give myself the permission and privilege of breaking responses apart if I decide they work better that way. For example, if somebody sends me a short audio, maybe I’ll only use a section of the audio. Of course, I could add effects to it, but in some form it will be incorporated into the video that will be called Aloft… —it’s like an expansion chamber for the ALBATROSS project. Everyone who contributes a response will be listed as a co-creator of the video, but I’m not planning to tag specific contributions since I see the whole thing as an amalgam. My input will be guided by the responses I receive. I suppose it may also include some excerpts from Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in homage to the birth of the expression “albatross around my neck.” It may also include some of the Gustave Doré illustrations made for the poem. I think of the video as an organic thing that will grow, morph, and redefine itself over time but it’ll be capable of being screened at any point in its evolution. There isn’t an end product, like finishing a painting and framing it—its ongoing aspect is central to the concept. Any time I get the opportunity to screen the video, it will be considered “finished” for that particular place and time. But it’s not a finished piece until I’m no longer willing or able to work on it, even though I’m reconsidering that aspect.
ADA: But the responses can potentially be ongoing too, right? There can be a back and forth, right?
DRT: Yes, right. That’s an option I’m holding open. As I receive a response from the recipient of an artwork, their response will become part of the video, but it could also possibly trigger a response from me to them. This back-and-forth dialogue could continue indefinitely until one of us fails to respond. There’s always the implicit potential for a next step and that intrigues me. I’ve recently been thinking I could change my Last Will and Testament so that the project can go to a specific person or group of people to continue the process after I leave this realm. I’m also considering adding a QR code to the video so that people who watch it will be able to send responses to it and thus become part of it in a sort of self-perpetuating way. It kind of adds to the notion of a collection that grows from a collection which further extends the collection. You had some thoughts about this kind of thing which you articulated before, right?
ADA: Yes, I’ve been struck by the relationality of the project and the way I’ve seen a micro/macro kind of movement happening between us in this process. There’s a ripple effect of shaping time and energy out into the future. I feel like you’re somehow extracting energy and ideas from the 1970s through the late-2010s and bringing them into the present.
DRT: Yeah. That time element is very important. In a way, it’s kind of like experiencing nostalgia. I think potentially parting with the pieces is exciting, but I’m also enjoying revisiting my earlier thinking. I’m almost 74 years old now and it’s fun thinking back to the time when I was a young art student—especially the naivete of that time, but also the excitement of art school and feeling I had finally found my people. I remember feeling it so dramatically because I was sort of an outcast in high school—I was a weird guy even though I was in a band, and that was supposed to make me cool. But we played rather loud music that wasn’t very danceable, so I think people thought “oh, yeah, but it’s not GOOD music.” In art school, most everyone was just being comfortable and confident in themselves, and that was such a refreshing atmosphere. Having some relationship back to that time has been wonderful for me.
ADA: Yeah. And that’s interesting to hear you talk about it in that way, because it’s like you’re extracting the potentiality of that time into the work you’re doing now in terms of community gathering and finding your conversation partners or your community here in Knoxville, a place you’re relatively new to. So, there’s a kind of parallel work going on here and it’s interesting to hear that. I don’t know, maybe part of why it’s interesting to you now is nostalgia, but maybe it’s also like a kindred sort of moment in time.
DRT: Oh yeah, I think you’re right—there’s a parallel. Like the way we connected through the articles Steven wrote about the two of us, and the strong attraction and fascination I had with your house for months before we met. There’s a kind of serendipity about it. And there’s an excitement for me in the people I will get to know through the project. I think it will broaden my circle in general and I’m especially hoping it will do that in Knoxville—that’s very important to me. Before meeting Steven and you, my Knoxville community consisted of my relatives and some of their friends. And of course, there are my Buddhist studies with Kyle and Jill and the small sangha that’s developing here in Knoxville – that was the first real connectedness I felt here.
ADA: The thing that’s ringing on my little radar right now is the project’s relationship to a Buddhist practice. I feel like that has come through in a lot of our conversation—things like attachment, detachment, time, the void. All these things we practice—we don’t practice together—but just sitting in meditation, I feel like that’s come up. That could potentially be an area to explore.
DRT: Yeah, that idea of attachment and self-cherishing is part of this. The pieces that I’m putting up for adoption(?) became my surrogates. It’s like I’m cherishing these objects because they’re part of me. But, in a larger sense I’m cherishing myself. When I really detach from the pieces and consider “what are they doing for me now?” I realize they’re just sitting, not doing anything. They are only objects that I’ve had a relationship with. I know I’ve mentioned my late friend, teacher, and mentor Bill Nolan to you. One day as he looked at a piece I had just finished he said, “well, do you think you’ve made these materials better, or have you just rendered them useless for other things they could have previously been used for?” The question stunned me and shifted a paradigm.
ADA: Yes, but when we were talking about organizing your studio you said, “I need categories” and one that you mentioned was “material.” There’s something interesting here about the idea of potentiality. Yes, a raw material has a lot of potentiality and when you do something to it, it’s arguably rendered useless. But in another way, it’s like a younger version of yourself was infusing a new potentiality in the material but you didn’t know it yet. Now it provides the catalyst for a more dematerialized statement. It’s still a material—it’s still a raw material for this project. There’s something about the cyclical nature of things that keeps coming up in our conversations and that’s inevitable because we are literally sorting through the past to bring it into the present and future.
DRT: Yeah, I like that a lot—you’ve mentioned that before and it makes sense, although it certainly wasn’t a conscious thing. But you’re right it has become raw material again.
ADA: And as I’ve heard a bit about the stories around how these pieces got made and the people attached to their making, I feel like the idea that keeps coming through in the most basic way is “right time, right place.” But there’s also a mystery and a magic that’s really beautiful to hear. It’s like maybe on one level you didn’t know what you’re doing, but then perhaps on another, you totally did as you followed your instinct. There’s a million ways to describe it, but it seems this has been a through-thread, whether it exists or it’s just the way you’re explaining a progression to yourself.
DRT: That could be. When I’ve considered this project, and organized the recent retrospective exhibitions, I kept noticing junctures of place, time, chemistry with people and situational opportunities causing things to blossom. Probably everyone has those kinds of moments in their lives?
ADA: We could think about it in terms of treating relationship as material or medium. I see your work as a study in relationship, both in the subject matter but also in the stories about how the projects came into the world. You’ve told me a lot about collaboration and how those are some of your more fruitful times. Just hearing all these stories about the impact of another person’s attention, energy, or an opportunity or what seems like a chance meeting go on to produce the next seed of potential and on and on and on. Aloft… is a continuation of this methodology by offering these things up again to instigate new relationships and conversations.
DRT: It’s true, and that conversation once again gets put into a visual form that can then be performed and reformed and performed and reformed.
ADA: Yeah, there’s this cycle. And that residual marking that’s coming through again in your work. I feel like I see it all time, like the piece where you made a mark on a piece of paper every time you walked past it. It becomes this thing of not knowing what’s the work—the action or its residue. There’s a way to conceive of the whole thing—the relationship, the life, and the collaborations as the work. And then the pieces are sort of—not to diminish them at all—just residue. Yeah. They’re just the residue of life, and energy, and a life being lived.
DRT: That really resonates with me. I guess in some ways I’ve always thought about pieces as just temporary endpoints of an intermediate process. Like having an idea or a vision of something, then to feel there is a process that’s necessary to complete it, but that completion isn’t really complete, if that makes sense. Although I suppose there were times when the idea itself became enough, but more often there was an action needed for it to crystallize.
ADA: That makes sense because the material of it could feel like a weight separated from the spirit component. Yeah, just like a dead body—that’s a way to think about it. And there it comes around to do this thinking about our relationship with material.
DRT: It’s interesting that you mentioned the collaboration aspect. When I first saw your work in the article that Steven did about you and read the things you had to say about your relationship to art, I felt like we could really get along intellectually because there was some kindred thinking going on. The more I got to know you, the more I felt this energetic connection. When you agreed to work on the project with me, it went from the idea state into an actionable kind of process. It was such a relief because I was impossibly stuck there for months. With your help, the project started moving and through that movement it finally occurred to me after 73 years of being in this mind and body, that I’ve always worked best when I’ve worked with other people who I felt “in sync” with. I always thought of the last extended phase of this project as being collaborative, but it had never occurred to me that the collaboration would be just as critical in this early stage of the process. Your involvement reinforced just how important the component of community and collaborators have always been to me. I never really saw it as clearly as I did when you and I had that first day sorting through the pieces in the storage area. It was the most energizing day I’ve had in ages!
ADA: I would argue that formal elements speak to the very thing you’re saying, and I bring it up all the time, but I just see diptychs in your work constantly. Like they’re saying it’s really not this thing and it’s really not that, it’s the space between. It’s the friction energy created by those two things being beside one another, whether that’s in collision or resonance, it’s there.
DRT: And that was very perceptive because I had never noticed that recurring tendency, so I was kind of floored when you pointed it out. That’s a big part of a collaboration—it opens vision, for sure. It opened the way that I’m perceiving the things that have been hiding in plain sight for years. And in a way it leads back to the first concrete idea I had about the project when I was listening to John Zorn’s composition for the Gnostic Trio. I thought about Zorn’s creative energies going in so many different directions, but they all are underpinned by the collaborative nature of music. Even though I’ve been interested in new music since I was in my early-20s, I didn’t know much about Zorn’s work, but I found a great film about him, A Bookshelf on Top of the Sky: 12 Stories About John Zorn, by Claudia Heuermann (2002). I was so excited when I found it and I kept thinking, this is going to be so incredible but how is she going to do this documentary about Zorn who has spanned and expanded so many genres. I also thought about the demands on collaboration in a bio-documentary and the difficulties of dealing with another person who has their own life and priorities and somehow synthesizing that with the person who is making the documentary. It was beautiful to see the blending—Heuermann became the composer of the documentary as Zorn was the composer of music. It’s a perfect documentary—the way it kind of goes full circle dealing with frustrations and the difficulties and seriousness and the lack of seriousness in the making process—it all became integral to the documentary’s form. I’ve watched it several times and I’m still being drawn to it.
ADA: Yeah, that seems completely resonant with the ALBATROSS project in the way that you’re approaching it, it’s kind of meta—this is both the work and the raw material. This is the work—the archive, but it’s going to produce the actual work instead, just like an enmeshment or mixing of which is which. Duchamp came up in your writings and he’s over there (pointing to a replica of Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel in the studio). Yeah, there’s a little bit of a trickster readymade question here, which is interesting: which is the work?
DRT: Yes, and I guess the fact that I’m holding open the option to respond to the responses I receive is encouraging an ongoing dialog that potentially becomes contained in the video.
ADA: Yeah. Which totally rings true of this. Like your early grad school work that you’re attracted to right now. There is a little bit of persnickety-ness or a sort of playfulness that can’t be pinned down in it—a little bit of a wink-nod. And that’s kind of what you’re doing when you say, “it’s just going to be continual, and it’ll be ‘in-progress,’ and I’ll work on it until I don’t want to work on it and I’ll show it, but it won’t be finished.” And there’s that energy—it’s really playful, humorous. You could think of it as funny.
DRT: Yeah, and I do think of it as kind of funny and kind of this thing that just feels right. It’s like, why would I ever make something, frame it and say, “that’s done.” Which I guess kind of ties into the fact that I’ve never really wanted to make work for sale. I wanted to make work for myself, but then I wanted people to see it. It’s kind of like “look what I did, do you want to put this on your refrigerator?” It resonates with the idea of the video going on forever (or at least as long as I go on). I could change and rearrange it every day. And, again, that John Zorn reference comes back because his piece, Cobra. It’s created in real time as he uses hand signals and large cards with instructions to the musicians. The musicians respond with sound but also with hand gestures back to him that have agreed-upon meanings. He holds up cards and points to specific musicians, and they point to him with gestures that can further alter the performance. It was confounding to the uninitiated audience (including me), but such a wild thing to see and hear. They were creating this thing that had never been before and will never be again—I loved it.
ADA: That’s bringing to mind your drawing for the installation that had the word “art” rendered in reflective paint with other words projected around it. Yeah, it’s this idea of muddling a sense of what art is, what an object is, what authorship is. I hear all of that happening in that piece. But that’s also true in the ALBATROSS project, too.
DRT: Interesting. I can see it particularly in that piece. It very much had that little wink/nod because what is this thing that we call art? And why is it so important? And what does it really mean? Is it important that it endures?
ADA: And the paradox of it being, both all about me, but in a desire to connect. And I think that both-ness is so much of what propels all of us. And we just mostly don’t want to talk about it because it’s maybe embarrassing or it’s like the critique of your work that called it “onanistic,” but there’s a way of subverting that critique to say “yes.” And that’s where I talk about the micro and the macro. Again, it’s very much all about us, but it muddles the sense of the division of a self with the broader organism of life and earth. Because really, what’s about you and what is for your health is about us and what is our health and vice versa. And I think that’s what cultural production is all about. So, you’re meta and getting at all of that in this project.
DRT: Well, that sounds like an admirable thing to shoot for, for sure.
ADA: I think it’s there. I see it here and I see it in a lot of your work.
DRT: Well, I appreciate that.