Case Study
Jason Salavon: A Thousand Butterflies
By Aaron Landsman, December, 2002

Jason Salavon calls the Creative Capital grant "the gift that keeps on giving." The 32-year-old Chicago-based installation artist says that, prior to working with Creative Capital, he was moderately successful in Chicago. However, he had made few inroads onto the New York art scene, which he identified as an important step in his career.

As a new grantee, Jason decided to attend Creative Capitaläs 2000 Artists' Retreat, where he made a connection with gallerist Christian Haye of The Project in New York. Shortly after that, Haye agreed to represent Jason, and ever since, Jason has seen the demand for his work expand exponentially. "On some level, most everything that has happened is attributable to that first meeting," Jason says.

Creative Capital initially awarded Jason $8,000 for his project, A Thousand Butterflies, and subsequently awarded him $15,000 of additional support. His project is part of an ongoing investigation into the relationship between macro- and microcosms, the individual and the collective. The work is installed in a darkened room and features a wall of projected and blinking light sources. Through the use of digital triggering devices, viewers effect subtle shifts in the light patterns, then watch the effects of their choices play out over time. The work's ambitious goal is to mimic the "butterfly effect" in weather patterns and economies, in which small changes can produce drastic outcomes. A former software programmer and video game designer, Jason is an artist at the forefront of technological innovation, and he says his programming skills allow him to "pre-conceptualize aspects of a piece, because I know I can get them done later."

In addition to Haye, Jason met with several consultants at the 2000 and 2001 retreats, including Sandra Gering and a representative of the Wexner Center for the Arts. In 2001, an informal discussion with a fellow grantee led to the Rotterdam Film Festival picking one of Jason's visual images to use as the cover of their 2002 festival catalog; the festival also exhibited his work as part of a group show in conjunction with the festival.

Soon after Haye began representing Jason's work, The Whitney Museum expressed interest in several pieces. These were subsequently exhibited at the important Bitstreams exhibit, which was covered widely in The New York Times and other publications. The pieces were later purchased by the museum. In preparation for Bitstreams, Creative Capital awarded Jason a $5,000 Strategic Support grant to purchase a data/video projector.

Jasonäs solo show opened at The Project in October 2001, and several pieces were sold to museums, including Chicagoäs Museum of Contemporary Art. In June 2002, The Project presented Jason and several other artists, including fellow Creative Capital grantee Maria Elena Gonzalez, at Art 33 in Basel, Switzerland, which Jason describes as "the big granddaddy of contemporary art fairs." Jason has just finished solo shows at the Madison Art Center in Wisconsin and Seattleäs Golem Gallery, and he has been featured in group shows from Switzerland to Tokyo, from Bellevue, Washington to Houston, Texas. With his work more in demand than ever, Jason is looking forward to several commissions and group shows in the coming year, and his recent successes have allowed him to move into a larger workspace.

Since receiving Creative Capital support, Jason has been awarded funding from the Illinois Arts Commission, and for his Seattle exhibition, he secured the donation of an $18,000 large format laser printer from Hewlett Packard, his first experience with direct corporate sponsorship. A professor at The Art Institute of Chicago, Jason has also been increasingly in demand as a guest artist and lecturer at other universities.

Creative Capital awarded Jason a Competitive Funding Opportunity grant for $10,000 to help him pay for software programming and the design of a custom interface used in A Thousand Butterflies. The project will be completed in 2003. He says the ongoing nature of Creative Capitaläs support and programming has been invaluable in a number of ways. "I feel like I have an organization backing me with a sincere interest in the total success of my project, not just a check in hand."