Animating the Private Lives of Artists

Navigating the wobbly tightrope between the artistic and the domestic life is frequently the subject of great art (see current exhibition Scenes from a Marriage: Ed & Nancy Kienholz), and in Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s recent Couples series featuring Cassandra C. Jones and Mikael Jorgensen, it was also the subject of a great conversation.

Jones, a remix visual artist who uses digital images to create often humorously reflective large-scale pieces, and Jorgensen, the Grammy Award–winning keyboardist for the alt-rock band Wilco, spent the first chunk of the night reflecting on their separate artistic practices. 

As the son of recording engineer Joe Jorgensen (according to his obituary in Variety, he worked on albums for Frank Sinatra and Engelbert Humperdinck), Jorgensen said he developed a love of both music and technology at an early age, and “while other kids were out smoking and watching The Wall, I was at home keeping it real on the computer.” He met Wilco founder Jeff Tweedy 21 years ago and joined the band soon after that.