Chewy Chips Ahoy, Part I: Brendan Carroll

Black Coffee, No Sugar series (detail), 2008.

Brendan Carroll is informed and inspired by Jersey City, New Jersey. Armed with a Polaroid Point & Shoot 600 camera, the artist considers the city's streets to be his studio, laboratory and theater. A second piece of equipment from a garage sale--a Remington Sperry-Rand typewriter--lead to Carroll's signature Polaroids like the one above. Anecdotes typed in the lower white margin of each picture are derived from books, personal memory, other people's memories, actual events, and from the artist's imagination.

Carroll's recent series, Black Coffee, No Sugar was included in the Bronx Museum's annual Artists in the Marketplace (AIM) exhibition earlier this year. This collection of 200 Polaroid photographs that the artist began in 2003 is a semi-fictitious portrait of Jersey City. The piece was a response to a book of poetry by Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology, which tells the fictional history of a rural town through the voices of its deceased residents.

In the first half of this two-part post, Carroll discusses his days as a BFA student at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the development of his work in Polaroid film, and the impact of the AIM program. In the second post, he walks me through recent projects by Agitators Collective, a collaborative that he co-founded in 2006. Agitators Collective creates site-related installations in urban locales that have fallen into neglect or dereliction in Jersey City. Their projects range from 8,000 marshmallow Peep candies on the stairwell of a city park to a 100-foot design in turmeric in a local parking lot.

When we first talked about a studio visit/interview for Contemporary Confections, Carroll began to fondly reminisce about a college job at a Philadelphia pastry shop where he was responsible for dipping strawberries in chocolate. Hence, I anticipated his request for sweets to be more elaborate than Chips Ahoy or chocolate and almonds. When I asked if he meant chocolate covered almonds, he responded, "That's for fancy people."

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Black Coffee, No Sugar (Installation shot), 2008. Polaroid photographs, type-written anecdotes, opaque correction fluid, pushpins; dimensions variable.

Contemporary Confections: So you were Born in New Jersey and went to art school in Philadelphia. When did you come back to Jersey?

Brendan Carroll: In 1998.

CC: And when did you work with the chocolate guy?

BC: Which chocolate guy?

CC: Dipping strawberries. You know, the story you told me at the Bronx Museum.

BC: Oh, that was in Philadelphia at the Pink Rose Pastry Shop. I got that job in 1997. I was 135 pounds before I got that job. After that job I was 165 pounds.

There were all these guys from Ghana working at the shop. Joe, the lead baker, and Kenny were Catholic. Hodgy was Muslim. Shit was going down. It was crazy. They were always yelling at each other.

There was a big stainless steel vat of chocolate on the stove. It was the perfect temperature, the consistency of honey. I was required to dip fresh organic strawberries in the chocolate, lay them out on a big sheet, and place them in the cooler. I would sit there and dunk the strawberries and then I would eat them. I was covered in chocolate. It was great. I worked at Pink Rose five days a week.

Black Coffee, No Sugar series (detail), 2008.

CC: Five days a week. No wonder you gained so much weight.

BC: Yeah, five days a week and $5.50 an hour. Oh man, it was so depressing. I was bartering puff pastries and pie for beer and whiskey at Mako’s Retired Surfers Bar on South Street. I would get drunk, listen to Slayer and drive home. It was a really dark time.

I went to Ireland [for a while], came back, and my buddies were like, “Listen, Philadelphia sucks. We’re moving to New York. We got an apartment in Hoboken. Do you want to come?”

I said, “Okay, where’s Hoboken?”

They said, “It’s near Jersey City.”

I said, “When are we leaving?”

They said, “In a week.”

We piled into the moving van and we moved up to Hoboken, down the street from Biggie’s Clam Bar, in a four-room railroad flat with no doors except for the front door. It was me and two other guys. It was like a slumber party with grown men. I shared a bedroom, but I was obsessed with Feng Shui. My buddy lived in the hallway…oh, it was so grim. The heater was off the stove and I had never seen that before. For the first two winters I refused to turn it on, so we just lived without it. There would be frost on my bed, which was by the window. We didn't have a couch either. We would lay our clothes on the floor against the wall and lean against them to watch TV.

...I had a brief stint in Brooklyn. I got accepted into Pratt for grad school in 2001 and I moved to Gowanus, which the realtor called “South Park Slope.” I was on Third and Carroll. I thought that would be good because my last name is Carroll, but it didn’t bring any good luck. [In addition to some financial aid problems at Pratt], the studio I was given was under water. There were no windows or electricity and I had to fix it. The school said that I had to wait in line for a new studio and maybe for a year. I dropped out the day before September 11th. I stayed in Brooklyn until December, moved back to Hoboken, and rejoined the slumber party. In 2002, my girlfriend Abigail said “Listen, I can’t go out with you if you keep doing the slumber party thing. You gotta get your own crib, because this is unacceptable.” That’s when I moved to Jersey City.

Battle Still series (detail), 1999-2005.

I was drawing toy soldiers from my childhood collection at the kitchen table in the Hoboken apartment. After drawing them a few weeks, I decided that I wanted to photograph toy soldiers in choreographed battle scenes using a Polaroid camera. Jenn, my girlfriend at that particular time, had just picked up a Polaroid at CVS. She took photographs, and it looked like fun. I decided that I wanted a Polaroid too. The Polaroid is quick, cheap, accessible. Instant gratification. Provides a ready made image. That's what I wanted.

Probably 2 or 3 years ago, my mom was at a garage sale and saw an antique Remington typewriter on sale for $5. She called me and asked if I wanted it, and I said, "Yes, thank you.” I was looking at these Polaroids and that white border was driving me crazy. I thought maybe I could type something on the border. I decided I was going to take passages from books that I liked and use them here.

CC: What books were you pulling from at the time?

BC: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien; Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy; The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones. That lead to other McCarthy and O’Brien books. McCarthy’s Blood Meridian was about a bunch of American scalp hunters after the Civil War and they’re hired by this Mexican town to go out and scalp all of the Native Americans. They trade the scalps for money. It ties in with Westward expansion, capitalism, free market economy; it’s really brutal and violent. It was a great book. I was concerned with taking things that are really violent and making them beautiful.

Battle Still series (detail), 1999-2005.

That’s what that I was thinking about and then September 11th happened; I was downtown on Church and Chambers at that moment. It made me think, “Why am I making this stuff.” Afterward, I went out to California to show some of this work. When I came back, I never wanted to make this work again, and I also stopped drinking.

[...]

CC: Fast forward to the AIM program at the Bronx Museum. How did that come about and what were you working on at the time?

BC: Well, I was knockin' around in Jersey City and participating in group shows in New York. I became familiar with Artists in the Marketplace and thought it was something I would like to do. The initial thought was that [this program] would teach skills that I didn’t have and needed to learn, and would get me where I needed to go. I got accepted [into the program]. At first, I thought this is prestigious. It’s a recognized institution. I’ll be around other artists. I'll get an exhibition and a catalog. Why wouldn’t I want to do this? But going through the program really changed the way I think about art. It changed how I think about my own art, about approaching art and other artists.

CC: How did it change the way you think about art?

BC: Before that program, it was me against the world. I had this sense that it was every man for himself, that no one was on the same key. It seemed like everyone else had been given a guide book about how to be in the art world and how to be an artist. I had this idea that everyone had a beautiful studio in New York with windows and views of the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges and 20,000 square foot spaces. I thought every artist had that except me. When I got to AIM, I realized that artists have a range of experiences. We’re all sort of on the same team and sort of sharing the happy burden of art making. It broke down the sense of isolation and fostered a sense of community.

Bologna and Mayonnaise on White Bread series (detail), 2005 - 2008.

At that point I had been making work for five years in my apartment. It was me, the desk, the typewriter, and the Polaroid camera. It got to the point where I couldn’t even see what I was making anymore. I was too close to it. The Bronx Museum, the AIM program, and people like Holly Block, Erin [Riley-Lopez], and the other artists made me see what I was making in a new light.

In the second session that Holly Block ran, she asked, “Where do you look at art?” Immediately there was silence and white noise in my head. At that time, I wasn’t even looking at art. I was just going to the movies and reading books. I felt a level of shame about that. I felt like I should be this, I should be that. When it came to this one artist, he said, “I look at art everywhere.” She said, “That’s what I’m looking for.”

The second question was, “Where do you want to show your art?” I had never even thought of that question. I just assumed that I was making art that should be hung on a wall, bought and sold. It never felt comfortable or right, but I thought that was what I was supposed to do. It was very revealing. I had never realized there were alternatives. I get the greatest source of satisfaction making work outside of established art venues, but I hadn’t realized or acknowledged it.

There was this thing called Access Zone in the AIM program. You were set up with three professionals from the art world: a curator, a gallery director and a writer. A writer for Art in America saw what I was working on at the time, which became Black Coffee No Sugar. She said “This is fine and good, but there’s only so much adolescent rage that I want to look at. You don’t want to get caught in that world.” That crushed me. But that criticism made me look and ask myself, “Well, what am I making? What can I edit out?” I think that comment made me see what I needed to do. I took the weed whacker out and was able to edit and refine. That was big. I was pissed [at first], but it helped.

To be continued...