Cascade/Vertical Landscapes, 1988
Of all the artists represented in this exhibition, Carole Ann Klonarides may be the most "estranged," as she puts it, from her Greek background, although she says she has many Greek or half Greek friends. Her great-grandfather, George Klonarides, immigrated to the United States from Crete in 1879 and eventually became the headwaiter at Sherry's in New York, partly due to his agility at juggling five languages. Her father and grandfather both married non-Greeks.
"My father was not into being Greek and didn't practice religion. He was never "Greek" except when we went as a family to the local Greek restaurant on special occasions. My mother is of a "first family" of Virginia (F.F.V and D.A.R.) and my dad was proud of this... The Greek part has always been the exotic part of my background."
Her mother's father was "a serious Sunday painter;" but her own father had hoped to become a commercial artist, and enrolled in the W.PA. Design Laboratory in New York. Although his life took other directions, he encouraged his daughter to draw and paint at an early age. She earned her undergraduate degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in painting and printmaking, receiving a 1972-73 Whitney Museum scholarship to paint. While she was videotaping artists discussing their work, Klonarides "noticed that the minute the camera was turned on, artists adopted a certain posture, a way of speaking." Struck by how the camera produced this role-playing and energized by the possibilities of video, she "began working with artists in making video equivalents of their ideas:'
In 1980, Klonarides began working with Michael Owen-and referring to themselves collectively as MICA-TV-creating videotapes in collaboration with other artists, including John Baldessari, Chuck Close, Dan Graham, Laurie Simmons, Richard Prince, and Cindy Sherman. These works not only convey the way in which identity is projected into art, but they demystify the artistic process, revealing layers of strategy, contrivance, and artifice. This is not to suggest that MICA- TV's video's are not works in their own right; the Laurie Simmons video, for example, is an underwater ballet of contemporary bathers with Simmons as a character, the artist at work with her water camera, shooting photographs as her models swirl and dive around her. Other videos by MICA-TV explore narrative and illusion as part of the language of mass media.
While working as a video artist, Klonarides lived in New York, and also curated exhibitions (including quite a few video exhibitions). In 1991, she became Media Arts Curator at the Long Beach Museum of Art in California, and in 1997, she became Curator at the Santa Monica Museum of Art.