“Walking around in my heart”

THE LIFE AND ART OF MICHAEL GAILLARD

By Abigail Jones

Michael Gaillard pushes a roller of white paint against the walls of his already white art studio on 115th Street and Broadway. The small, square room is in a state of contained disarray. Scattered on the paint-stained floor are piles of oversized photographs, some as large as two by three feet, all taken with a large-format camera: images of his father, shirtless and aged; of his father’s arm, scarred from branding himself with the hot tip of a golf ball retriever; of water drying on the windows of a Nantucket Island ferry, the site of his grandfather’s suicide, the third in three generations of Gaillard men. The photos lie limply, stills from a tragic family legacy that Gaillard has spent his thirty years alternately sprinting toward and running from.

“I don’t really know what contentment is,” he says quietly, hunching his broad shoulders as he rolls another white band on the wall. “Every once in a while, I sit back and feel a moment of repose … but it’s hard for me to escape my mind. … It’s tough to be an artist and want everyone to like you. Sometimes I envy the artists who don’t give a fuck.”

A bluesy tune floats behind Gaillard as he speaks. He is good looking in a rugged, unkempt way, with a muscular body, a wide, toothy grin, and the kind of floppy hair that belongs on a boy. Routinely dressed in black t-shirts, baggy jeans, and handsome brown boots, his attire is a meticulous study in understatement and nonchalance. Gaillard is many things: a lifelong surfer, a basketball and pool player, a dreamer of titanic dreams, a tempered drinker, a storyteller. As a boy, he wore sailor stripes and collared shirts, artfully arranged the stuffed animals in his bedroom, and approached school projects with vigor and commitment. Since then, he has been constructing and interpreting the arc of his life. On any given day, he is a concoction of introspection, magnetism, and self-absorption, and speaks with an authority reminiscent of therapy (he never went past the first four visits). With a body of work that is intrinsically tied to his experiences, Gaillard has spent his entire life giving a fuck.

It is 5:00 p.m. on a chilly November afternoon, and for eight hours Gaillard has been preparing for Open Studios, the annual event for second-year students in the Masters of Fine Arts in visual arts at the Columbia University School of the Arts. Gaillard is one of three photographers in a class of 25, and as he repaints a nicely painted wall, it is clear that he sees his studio as part of his art. In here, everything has meaning. On his desk is a bottle of single malt scotch, two-thirds empty: a nod to his divergence from a family history of alcoholism. Tacked to the wall is the poem he wrote for a suicidal friend: a constant reminder of the line that Gaillard himself never crossed. Like his tiny Upper West Side apartment, a museum of artifacts from a childhood spent living on and longing for Nantucket, his studio is the place where he curates his life, making sense of who he is, where he came from, and how he escaped what he was predestined to be: a failure.

* * * *

From a nest of thick eyebrows and sunken wrinkles emerge two piercing blue eyes that won’t let you look away. Photographed from the shoulders up, Gaillard’s father, Michael Sr., stares at you as if someone has wrung the last drop of life out of him. Every pore, blood vessel, and imperfection is visible, and when you try to avert your glance, you can’t, because hanging to the left of the photograph is the same image, reproduced in the same size (27.5 inches by 22 inches), watching you with the same intensity. The moment your eyes drift to this second Michael Sr., the image on the right falls into the periphery, a ghostly shadow waiting for you to accept its gaze again.

“A photograph is a purveyor of embedded information and a vessel for the projections of the audience,” says Gaillard, speaking with his typical vocabulary of art theory and philosophy. It is the day of Open Studios, and he is wearing a spruced up version of his daily uniform (darker jeans and a dressier black shirt). Pristine and orderly, his room is packed with guests whispering with varying levels of authority about the large photographs and small installation pieces on display.

In an age when photographers are rapidly shifting to the digital format, Gaillard clings to his Wista metal field camera, a large-format film instrument that renders photos in exquisite detail, indulging his love of — and need for — perfection. The accordion-like machine, which sits on top of a tripod and produces negatives that are 4×5 inches, looks like it belongs in another century, but it has an understated elegance and bravado — just like Gaillard himself. “He will meticulously set up and compose and frame, slowly, with this clunky . . . camera,” says Johanna Wolfe, a fellow M.F.A. student at Columbia. It is “a more carefully considered, pre-meditated process. I think it fits in really well with the type of work he’s doing …”

From the center of the crowd, Gaillard answers questions about “sonfather” with a newfound confidence that even he is not used to. Adjusting his wire frame glasses, he explains to a visitor that the piece “questions the significance of the autonomous photographic gesture.” He often uses words like “moment,” “gesture,” and “context” when discussing his art, because he sees his life in dramatic terms, defining it by a series of moments, gestures, and contexts. Born on Nantucket in 1979, Gaillard was raised by strong women and grew up around a rotating cast of unstable men. When he was a boy, his mother, Maia (who he calls Mai and who requested to go by her first name), explained why she was so strict with him. “Your granddad committed suicide,” she said. “[Your stepfather, my father, and my mother’s father] are alcoholics. You don’t have a lot of good role models in your life, so I’m mom, dad, grandma, and uncle rolled into one.” Gaillard had the foresight, even as a young boy, to say, “Wow, I’m really at the butt end of this.”

To a certain degree, “this” started with his paternal grandmother, Gwen Gaillard, a glamorous and sardonic woman, a mythic figure in Gaillard’s life and Nantucket lore. After she left her first husband, Lyman Bloomingdale, one of the founding brothers of Bloomingdales, she married Gaillard’s grandfather, Harold, and opened the Opera House in 1946. The restaurant was an island institution, where guests such as Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland dined. Yet the Gaillard family romance with high society did not last. Harold committed suicide in 1972, and a few years later, his son, Michael Sr., was institutionalized for what doctors believed was bipolar disorder. “They just threw psychotropic drugs at him like he was a drug testing machine,” recalls Maia, who married Michael Sr. in 1978. Gaillard was five years old when his parents divorced (each has been married four times), and he moved to Sonoma with his mother, then a graphic designer, and his stepfather, an artist and alcoholic with a penchant for marijuana and mustaches. Equating drunken times with happy times, Gaillard grew up with illusions of a more perfect world waiting for him on Nantucket with his father, who worked as a scalloper, taxi driver, and massage therapist — who represented to Gaillard the “the voice of the heart, the shaman.”

This tension between the father of Gaillard’s fantasies and the man of reality is central to his work. He does not simply take photographs to better understand his past, and “sonfather” isn’t simply the portrait of a troubled man. He is on a quest to deconstruct photography as a medium, to unpack the relationship between the photographer, the photographed image, and the photograph itself. Fighting against preconceived notions of what photography is and how it functions, he examines the spaces between the self and the idea of the self, the past and the future, the photographic object and the object photographed. This fascination with extremes stems, in part, from a life lived at extremes.

Throughout high school, Gaillard downplayed his intelligence to gain acceptance, and during his freshman year at Stanford, he traded his education for parties and women. With a head full of dreadlocks, he dropped out and spent a year on Nantucket and in Costa Rica. Gaillard graduated in 2003 (in five years, not four) with a close group of friends and the Leo Holub Award for Excellence in Photography. Still, he struggled to claw his way out from his past. Moving to New York City in the summer of 2004, he began what Maia calls a “terrifying, terrifying” time.

Like many middle-class twentysomethings who arrive in New York City after college, Gaillard led a fast-paced lifestyle. When he wasn’t out, he and his roommate, Josh Howes, were writing a screenplay, and when they weren’t writing, they were unwinding in a local bar until 4:00 am. “There were always people there,” says Howes, still a writer and close friend. “It was a huge drug den. We were so innocent that we didn’t notice.” Gaillard devoted little time to photography, and the alcohol, stress, and lack of sleep took a toll. “He looked like he aged ten years,” Maia recalls. In late 2005, Gaillard’s apartment building was condemned, and on his last night there, he had to climb up the side of the building and break in through the back porch. The next morning, he woke up on an empty mattress, a snowdrift forming nearby. It was a turning point. “Without his art,” Howes says, “I don’t know, I think he would have absolutely ended up …” He struggles to finish the sentence.

Gaillard’s anchor during these years was his maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Oldham, 82, who lives on Nantucket and works at the Nantucket Historical Association. Island life and artistic genes run thick in her veins. To Gaillard, she was a force, and to Maia, she was a lifesaver: “My mother was . . . important, because she didn’t judge him,” she says. “I don’t know what I or Michael would have done without her.”

From the hallway outside Gaillard’s art studio, his wife, Brett, listens to him explain the significance of “sonfather” to another guest. As an architect, she brings a critical eye to his art. “He’s getting much better at talking about his work,” she says, running her hands over her low ponytail. In black ankle boots and a demure dress of grays, reds, and blues, she is a short package of dimpled sophistication. “He does big masculine gestures but in a sensitive, elegant, subtle way. That doesn’t happen that often.”

Gaillard is known for that exact combination, plus a heavy dose of generosity. In his early years in New York City, he waited tables at the high-end restaurants Kittichai and Megu, made from $600 to $1400 a week, and spent much of it on friends. At his bachelor party this fall, he pre-paid part of the bill. These days, he gives Brett centuries old, nautical-themed birthday presents: a compass (for direction), a brass propeller (for propulsion), a spyglass (for vision). In many ways, she is his ballast, and so the gifts say more about how she has altered the course of his life.  Of course, Gaillard will forever be linked to his father.  ”He’s still a profound influence on me, and without him, none of this art would happen,” he says.  “sonfather” reveals striking physical similarities between this father who often acts like a son, and this son who often plays the role of a father, but Gaillard is forging his own path, with Brett’s support.

* * * *

In thick black cursive, the words “starboard” and “port” are written vertically across two photographs taken from the Hy-Line ferry, which travels between Nantucket and Hyannis. The letters stand out against the sparkling yet muted haze of blues, grays, and whites. At 30 inches by 37.5 inches, the framed photos are a commanding presence, and despite clean, simple colors, they are a study in opposition. The camera focuses on the glass, not the view behind it. The light sky and dark water in the starboard photo contrast the dark sky and light water in the port photo.

“What is the significance of these?” a petite brunette asks, nodding toward “Legacy.”

“It has a very long story,” Gaillard says, much as he begins any explanation of his art. “The water collected on this glass becomes the salt remnants on this glass,” he begins, pointing from starboard to port. “It’s about circular patterns.” The words are read from bottom to top and left to right; the ferry leaves and returns; the water accumulates and dries during the journey. Gaillard has also hung the photographs in reverse order, with port (the left side of the boat) on the right and starboard (the right side of the boat) on the left, forcing you to reconsider your location and his. “Legacy” is about “the study of identity, says Gaillard’s friend Eriko Amino, an artist and former teacher. “It’s how you locate yourself in the center of your life, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.”

She’s right. No Gaillard work would be complete without a piece of family history, and this one surprises the petite brunette asking questions: “My grandfather jumped off the Nantucket ferry with bricks in his backpack,” he says, “so that’s another level of significance.” The young woman turns out to be an art collector (who prefers to go unnamed). After attending last year’s Open Studios, she is back to scout new talent — and is enraptured by Gaillard’s art. “His work stands apart because he operates in a lot of different mediums.” She is referring to installation pieces such as “My mirrors your eyes,” a white sculpture made from wood, glass, and mirror that hangs on the wall opposite “sonfather.” As you look into the rectangular mirror, you try to decipher the phrase written on the glass: “If you can’t see my mirrors I can’t see you.” It’s impossible to read the words and the reflections simultaneously, and yet as you strive to do so, “sonfather” is reflected in the background, still watching.

“I think he meshes together an aspect of conceptual art and a level of realism,” the art collector continues. “I see influences of Roni Horn and other well-known photographers.” Gaillard insists that his inspiration comes from within, though he would blush at the compliment; Horn, whose work is currently on display at the Whitney Museum, uses multiple mediums to explore identity, place, and the relationship between object and subject. While Gaillard admires a “pantheon” of artists, including Walker Evans, Bruce Nauman, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, he prefers not to place his art within an historical or contemporary context. “I don’t want to say that it’s unique. I mean, it just comes from me, and whatever kind of influence from other artists [is] present in the work, is a very unconscious one.”

Gaillard has worked hard to stitch together his life and his art — to make the narrative digestible. A turning point came when he was pursuing a Post-Baccalaureate degree at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. (The program, which he began in 2006 and completed in 2007, was his response to his tumultuous years in New York.) After producing a collection of stunning and lonely cityscapes, a professor challenged him: “So you can make beautiful pictures. Why? What does that mean?”

Gaillard remembered these questions a few months later, in April 2007, when he learned that a close friend had committed suicide. While visiting the family in Sonoma, he was bombarded with photographable images: the urn, NASCAR paraphernalia, the gigantic head of an elk that his friend’s father had killed. Gaillard was unmoved. “I realized I’m not interested in … producing this window into another time or another moment. … That was the first time I discovered that, or at least articulated it.”  Instead, Gaillard photographed a series of educational signs he discovered during a visit to his elementary school playground. Conveying the landscape of childhood angst that contributed to his friend’s downfall, they launched Gaillard’s formal investigation into the social and linguistic tools people use to construct narrative. Something significant happened: “I took these photographs for me and didn’t once consider their audience.” Suddenly, he cared enough about his art to stop caring.

* * * *

At first glance, “Expanded Field” looks like four messy black circles arranged horizontally on a wall, one next to the other, each a slightly different shape and size. This is the kind of photography that makes people who don’t know a lot about art feel uncomfortable and confused. To a certain extent, the images don’t even look like photographs. Yet as the crowd in Gaillard’s studio thickens during Open Studios, people stop to stare at the white wall with black circles. Unlike “sonfather” and “Legacy,” which are accessible, familiar, and linked to Gaillard’s past, the circles seem to breathe on their own, stripped of the history that bleeds, trauma by trauma, into his other works.

To create “Expanded Field,” Gaillard painted four semicircles onto drawing paper with oil-based black paint, orienting each one in a different position on the page: top, bottom, right, and left. He then photographed the images using precise lighting and a Schneider Componon, a lens so sharp that, in the 1950s, photographers had to register it with the FBI to prevent accusations of counterfeiting. Each semicircle represents what Gaillard calls the original gesture, the form that determines the shape of the circle. To complete the work, he printed the images and closed each circle by painting onto the photos with the same black paint, letting the oil seep into the photographic surface, degrading it over time.

“If it weren’t for Open Studios, [“Expanded Field”] never would have happened,” Gaillard says. “It’s going to prove to be a very important moment.” For the first time, he located himself in his art without alienating his audience and relying on his past to explain its significance. The original gestures within “Expanded Field” are reminiscent of the his personal journey, the series of memories, experiences, and traumas that determined the ways in which he lived, articulated, and even fabricated his life. “Expanded Field” tells that story, only without colors and beautiful vistas, and with details that emphasize paint and nuance over place and people.

A couple of weeks after Open Studios, Gaillard is back in his baggy jeans and black t-shirt, a fresh layer of stubble on his face. Sitting next to Brett, he sinks into the cushions on the couch in their apartment. Everything is tightly ordered and homey, with keepsakes from the Opera House, his stepfather, and Nantucket displayed alongside countless photographs, including one of Michael Sr. holding a surfboard, shirtless and tan, radiant, smiling, and alive, the man of Gaillard’s childhood dreams. While sipping a glass of white wine, he points to a card on the refrigerator and tells me to read it. Brett pokes him in the stomach for not getting it himself, smiling with the kind of love that says she never wants to not be his. On the cover of the card is a man walking off the roof of a building, supported only by a thin string he holds in his hands. Inside is a message: “My beloved Brett, without you I would never leave the roof.”

Sometimes Gaillard cannot grasp the fact that he has found love — and success. “I do think he’s afraid that this could all be a mirage,” says Howes. “That at any moment, someone could pull the rug out from him, and he could wake up back in that apartment with the snow falling on him, with no money and no prospects, or worse.” Gaillard always pushed forward — always completed the circles of his life on his terms. Howes thinks it’s because of his art: “He’s always had … secret grandiose dreams of being a great artist, and that … future has been a lifeline for him.” Maia agrees. “As a young person, Michael sought after predictability and didn’t get it. There was nothing predictable about his life, and I think that the fact that he’s not making predictable art is a reflection of how comfortable he is.”

Perhaps it’s true. Perhaps the man who fuses his art with the troubles of his past has finally found contentment. “Michael is somewhere,” reflects Thomas Roma, director of photography at the Columbia University School of the Arts. “He found himself somewhere. And so I walked [into his open studio] and had to reconsider work that I’d seen in the past because I saw it in a different light. … I’ve seen the arc of his development, where he’s gone with his artistic practice, and frankly, I was proud of him.” The footprints of Gaillard’s first and only Open Studios still linger. “It definitely felt like people were walking around in my heart,” he says. Of course, that’s the point of his art; walking into his studio is like walking into a living, breathing recreation of his life. It’s exactly where he wants his audience to be, but knowing where he will go next is another question entirely. As Gaillard’s close friend, Mike Taubman, says, “he’s found a port, a home — for the moment.”