Allan McCollum in "Systems" - Season 5 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

ALLAN MCCOLLUM:
If you can draw these simple forms–

the ball, cone, cube,
and cylinder– you can draw

a real picture the very first
time you try.

- I had an Uncle– his name was
Jon Gnagy– who had a television show

Learn to Draw.

-Today we're going to draw

a snow scene, in which we make
the paper work for us.

We don't have to do too much
work ourselves.

- And he would design these
drawings that he could then

teach other people how do to.

- Just put in those ragged

strokes, always remembering that
a pine tree is a rough cone form.

That post, you know,
is a cylinder form,

so you shade it down the left,

like this, to really make it
Round out.

Remember, our light's coming
from the other– upper right.

Yes, it used to be that the
mailbox was the chief point of

contact, but, you know,
nowadays, a lot of these folks

have television.

-You know, I knew him, and

I just got the feeling that it
never occurred to him to come up

with a painting or drawing that
he couldn't tell someone else

step-by-step how to do.

So I was just a child,
but that influenced me.

Whenever I design a project,

it's in my head while I'm
designing it that I would be

able to show someone else how to
do it.

This looks a little bare up
here, but for now, it's okay,

I guess.

The drawings that I sent

to Sao Paulo were done in 1989,
and they were created from

templates that I made in 1988.

The stimulus for this particular
drawings were triggered by an interest

in heraldry and the way that
families come up with images to

represent their family.

And I was thinking about
symbols, and I was thinking,

"Well, okay, we typically create

singular symbols so that we can
all feel we belong."

Like, we look at the American

flag, and we say, "Oh, we're all Americans."

It occurred to me that if one
used a certain kind of logic

and really worked at it,
one could come up with a system

that would produce a shape for
everybody on the planet.

The idea of trying to picture
a billion or a million

Is something we think we can do.
But we can't.

Say you're a general in the

army, and you have to send
al these troops out to have

a battle, and you know only
so many are going to come back,

and it's gonna break your heart
and make you sick unless you

start thinking of them as
all alike in some way:

just soldiers, just units, you know.

And, I mean, that's an extreme

example, but there's times when
you have to think about people

in categories, or you'll go crazy.

But that can go wrong also, and

it's something you have to watch
and think about.

One of the things that I'm
a little concerned about is,

when you get, like, a whole
bunch of the same width

and the same...

- Mm-hmm.

- you know, that's just another
thing to...

- Wait, you mean like different sizes?

- Like, you don't want two the

same size together.

You don't want two the same
width together.

You don't want two...

- Yeah.

- I mean, it's so funny.
It has nothing to do with what's

in the frame, you know?
[both chuckle]

Sometimes you can't do anything

about it, but if you can,
you know, shift it so that--

-Okay, so I'll
double-check that.

-Yeah, I mean, that's just
one thing.

In my youth, I worked in
factories quite a lot.

I mean, I worked in industrial
kitchens quite a lot.

And my parents worked in
factories.

I found myself wanting to try to

work in quantities and make
things that were singular and

unique at the same time.

We probably define uniqueness by

thinking, "Oh, it's not
mass-produced."

I felt I wanted to resolve that
on a higher level.

But there is, of course, the
drama of thousands of things.

It can be nightmarish, or it can
be wonderful feeling of

abundance, and it can go back
and forth.

And there's a lot of
emotionality when you see

thousands of things.

Some people would want to run

out of the room when there's
too many objects to look at,

and other people would stand
there in awe.

There's also a kind of science
fiction element in here where–

of, like, something that sort of
takes over and grows.

When I'm juggling ideas of what
I'm gonna do next,

one of the considerations that's major
always in my mind is, "Does it

make a good story?"

I put it in my mind that it

would be interesting to work
with people I had never met,

that I only communicated with
over email or telephone.

Like, you go in to see the exhibit.

Well, it could just be looked at
as a bunch of little decorative objects.

But there's a story
that goes with it.

You can tell it rather quickly.

I wanted it to be: "Oh, the
artist went on the internet.

The artist found four people

from the state of Maine who all
of whom worked from their homes

and all of whom made shapes,
and he never met them.

It was sort of about the–
the exotic, faraway place,

I mean, which, to me–

I've only been to Maine once in
my life, and it seems very

exotic to me, Maine.

[low, deep rumbling]

And I started becoming
interested in people who had

businesses in their homes and
also kind of very independent.

And kind of like the contrary to
our obsession with globalism

right now, you know, is that
there are people locally all

around us working in their
homes, making thousands of things.

I looked on the web.

I looked up "Maine," you know,
On– googled, "Maine, craft,

home," you know, all the words
that would lead me to people who

worked at home and made craft
in Maine.

And I had to sift through
hundreds and hundreds and–

and slowly realized, "This is
a huge thing in maine: you know,

people working at home making
crafts and then selling them on

the internet.

I chose a narrow group of them
who basically did shapes,

Like rubber stamps,
ornaments,

silhouettes,
and cookie cutters.

And then I wrote them lengthy
emails about my work and what

my interests were and why
I wanted do to this, I mean,

emails that--much too long,
I'm sure.

- I had no idea who he was.

My first thought was that he
might be a kid claiming

to be an artist.

Of course, you don't ever know
on an email.

And then after I investigated
and went to his website,

I found out that he was quite
an accomplished contemporary artist.

[metal clicks softly]
-The cookie cutter people?

I don't know–

I don't know how they–

I never watched how they did
what they did, so they–

If they invented a new–
a way they hadn't done before–

I do know that they used to make
snowflakes, and there's no way

this shape is more complicated
than the snowflakes

they were making.

[laughs]

-Some of his shapes were very
difficult.

It was challenging.

[chuckles]

And actually, I would say, after
making the shapes for Allan,

That I'm improved.

I mean, I'm better at what I do
because– because of that

project, because I actually
learned how to do some things better.

- I've been doing
combinatorial projects for 40 years.

All my projects have had
combinatorial elements, where

I'm taking a vocabulary of parts
and putting them together to

make something else, you know,
which is very computerlike,

but there was never any computer Involved.

The Shapes Drawings Individual Works Project,

neither of which
involved any computers.

The drawings even look like
the shapes that I'm working on

now, but they were all done by
hand with pencil.

And I didn't have a computer at
that time.

In those days, I was using
photocopiers and stencils and

things like that.

Whereas if I had to do this with
stencils, it would've taken me

an hour, but what I can do now
is just reach up here

and copy one shape, like that,
and then go over here

and copy another one,
and then I can put those together.

And then copy a bottom,
and put that together.

And then copy, you know,
a bottom that goes on the right,

and we'll put that together.

And then I have a shape,
and it has its own I.D. Number.

I mean, this just doesn't take
very long.

So with these four shapes, I can
make around 200 or so million

unique shapes.

But there's another system where
I use six shapes,

and then there's these things
I call necks, like your neck.

Like, this is a body with
a neck, and then the top part

is a head.

So then once you start using
this system, you can produce

60 billion shapes.

Once I got all the shapes made,
I started combining them into

tops and bottoms.

Then instead of making four
parts, I would only have to put

together two at a time.

Then I put them in what I call
arrays of 144.

So I can copy this array and
combine it with this array.

Then I'm making 144 shapes
at once, and that's called

a collection.

That's how I produce them:
in collections of 144.

The number 144, there's an irony
to it 'cause it's considered

a gross in industry.

This is one of the collections
that was sent to horace varnum

to do the wooden shapes.

-Every one is absolutely
unique.

Every one is different.

ome, you sit there,
and you work with them.

You cut with them.

And it's almost like sitting in
a psychologist's office, and you

see shapes: this is a wolf head.
This is an angel.

This is–

So it's fun.
[machine whirring]

See, it's soft enough that it

won't cause any damage, unless
you're doing it for an hour or two.

It's what thieves do to take off
their fingerprints.

[laughs]

-The idea of making an object
for everybody in the world

is absurd.
Yeah, of course.

I mean, I couldn't possibly
do it.

But it would be nice if everyone
in the world– doesn't this sound

like a child talking–
if everyone in the world could

agree on a symbolic system,
You know?

And it hasn't happened yet,
but it's– I think it's–

it might, you know,
one day.

[soft electronic music]