New Florence. New Renaissance.

Technology and my Passion: Sam Noto and Sculpting

Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.

This time it is Sam Noto,(Pic 1 - see appendix below for details of each) who I worked with at PwC in the early 90s. His Amazon bio says "Having spent much of his youth in the military and in business, Noto became a full-time art student in his early forties, earning his MFA in sculpture from the University of Maryland-College Park in 1995. Working directly with a wide range of media, a "persistent curiosity" about materials and techniques has directed him through an engaging stylistic trajectory over the past three decades, and continues to lead him toward new pathways of creative expression." Here he explains his passion for sculpting:

Sculpting is the second act in my career. Actually, more like my 7th or 8th. Let me explain. I first remember painting one of the by the number kits. I quite liked the experience plus I had a girlfriend, a painter. Somewhere there's a painting of me in a kimono. It was really, really cool. I always wanted to be an artist...but

...my family were doctors and lawyers and workers. ((Pic 2 on right.) My family wanted me to be either a doctor, a lawyer, a priest or an accountant. I didn't want to be a lawyer. I had no interest in that at all. Being a doctor was totally out of my realm of possibilities. With no family or friend to mentor me, I had to do it on my own and I did. 

Accounting was not my favorite subject, but I toughed it out. I worked for two CPA firms. I got a job with the federal government. I was a systems accountant with the Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington, D.C. I was okay with it, so I did that until it was acceptable for me to change.

(Pic 3 on left) While I was at PwC I met Vinnie. Soon after I realized I was finished with the accounting profession, time to move on! However, I couldn't drop everything and become an artist. I couldn't be Gauguin who left his precious daughter. Gauguin was a stockbroker who wanted to turn his stockbroker coat in for an artist coat. That was something that was not going to happen to me. I'm not driven that way. I couldn't leave my wife and son. Family is first. The day my son graduated from Georgetown University and said he didn't want to pursue an advanced degree, I felt it was finally my time. My wife, Charleen had her own career and was doing very well, it was my turn.

I went over to the University of Maryland. I walked in the door and I signed up for whatever course they'd let me take, as a special student. I started taking sculpture courses. Maryland was the right place for me. It was truly a university. It was not a tech school. They didn't teach how to. I figured out how. I really was very, very comfortable with the theory part of art. Very comfortable, indeed, as a student, to follow the rigors of university system where I formed my own theories.

The “Courage to Create” by Rollo May was my bible. May taught me that limits are the source of creativity. I got through graduate school and I started driving around the Washington Beltway attending more courses and teaching others.  I taught in  high schools and colleges.   As an adjunct professor you are a contractor and were paid by the number of courses you taught. I taught a bunch of Air Force guys. Actually, I wasn't teaching them how to sculpt, I was teaching them how to think, how to be an artist.

I did what came naturally and I had the best two and a half years of my life. I totally enjoyed graduate school. I was right where I needed to be.

My biggest fear of going into this was I didn't understand abstraction in a way that I could relate to. There are people who do abstraction intuitively. I had to approach it a different way because I had no background to absorb knowledge in this way.

The artist is a professional. It is a real profession just like being an engineer or an accountant. There's a common body of knowledge and there is an unique jargon. I understood that from my study of accounting.

Marcel Duchamp was a major influence on me because his words and thoughts resonated with me. I understood what he was doing and it made no sense at all. That's why I was attracted to it.

In art we have had a plethora of "isms". Impressionism was probably the most prominent “ism” because the artists wanted to brake all the molds from the past. They didn't want to follow formal paintings. Then surrealism came along, whose manifesto basically said, if it comes out of your mind, then it's real; it's art. Wow, heavy stuff!

All of a sudden, there was no more “isms”.  Art was over as we understood it, new ideas came from everywhere.  One of which was a movement in art called Dada, and Dada is anti-art. Thank you Marcel Duchamp!

I've considered four artists as being a major influence on 20th Century art: Duchamp, Jackson Pollock, Joseph Beuys and the latest one is Banksy, a street artist who is famous for being invisible. His latest piece, a painting sold for $1 million at auction. In the frame that he used to present the work he built in a shredder.  As soon as he sold it, the purchaser turned it on, and shredded the painting, and now it's worth $2 million.

If you can figure that out, does that makes any sense? It shouldn’t, that's what I like about this new era. Tradition is gone, so now it's up to you. You are free to do whatever you want. I like the Dada influence.

I have evolved from one material to another; rawhide, copper, marble, steel. When I see material, I see a sculpture and see what I can do, what it might possibly become. The material becomes my muse.

I started with rawhide and stone. I was into stone carving. I really liked that. I was becoming reasonably proficient. However, I didn't want to go any further with it. Mixing stone and steel are when I began to really get into doing some significant work. I had to teach myself how to be a welder. I took every class I could find and I learned how to weld and after a while I began to teach others the basics. Recently I purchased a TIG welder, the latest technology. While exciting, I am still learning to use it.

I usually work in a series format. Most of the pieces shown here are from the Anxiety series which was on display at the American University Museum Sculpture Garden from September 2014 to March 2015.

(Pic 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10  below)

My friend, Dr.Claudia Rousseau wrote a book on my work titled Persistent Curiosity. She wrote the following about the Anxiety series.

"Looking and handling these pieces, I began to feel that the constructions I was making seemed to suggest anxieties in abstract form. Some connote nightmares (Bed, What is in Your Closet?) while others suggest betrayal (Whose Side Are You On?) and/or frustration (But I'm From New York, Blue Bird Can't Sing). Whose Side Are You On is all about balance—a healthy respect of its weight is required here—about being edgy but somehow centered. In a few of these works Noto has added color as an active element; some are just rusted steel. The "Anxiety" series closes with Lotus 2. The piece, whose curves nevertheless seem somewhat harsh with their textured and rusted surfaces. They seem to suggest that inner balance only comes with work, and perhaps through it."

The prime work is called "Anxiety". I was examining my own anxieties over a lifetime. When I began, it was about Catholicism and religion that a young boy had to deal with, I made the Immaculate Conception and all these symbols of Catholicism that I lived with. I went to a parochial school, so we got heaven and hell beat into us every day. I rebelled against it all and did all these sculptures about all those things that we were told that we had to revere. I didn't make fun of them. I just made my impression of them as they emerged out of the material.

I usually don't make anything from scratch. I just use the shapes the material comes in from the scrap yard. For example, the copper started with scrap from a roof of a historic building that burned down. The copper roof was salvaged and given to artists. I picked up a quite a bit of it, but it sat in my studio for ten years. I try to select metal from scrap yards and took five loads along with the copper as well as iron in my pickup truck and I brought it back to the studio. I made eight piles. Each pile became a sculpture. I didn't know what it was going to be, so for each pile, I applied the principles of art while assembling the scrap. I used a lot of arches and the circles. I used some straight lines, but not too many. Each sculpture developed on its own. Many times, I didn't know what it was until I was finished and sometimes that took me another year or so to figure out.

That in a nutshell is my last 25 years or so. Here is one of my still unfinished works (Pic 11):

If you would like to learn more about my work, my book is available on Amazon. Or if you find yourself in Washington, DC, I will be happy to give you a tour of my studio. Fair warning, as Vinnie will tell you I can talk for hours about my passion!

Appendix - Exhibits by titles, date, material and size

Triple shot of inspiration

The last few months have been traumatic for all of us, and the reopening, return to work protocols are turning out to be white-knuckle. The media is only too glad to feed our anxieties. So, I thought I would share 3 inspirational sources I have had which have helped calm my nerves and have fed my optimism in the last couple of weeks. 

I share a birthday - August 18 - with Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark explorer fame. So around this time of the year, I usually watch documentaries about their 3 year trek to the Pacific and back. It was soon after we acquired the vast swath of lands from the French as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Hollywood could not have written a more gripping story of their trek using primitive tools that we routinely do these days by plane or even by car.

Lewis was an assistant to President Jefferson. He had plenty of time to peruse his library which had a wide range of books speculating what the unexplored US West looked like back then.  It was rumored to have woolly mammoths, live volcanoes, seven foot beavers and worse. Mere mortals would have refused the assignment.  Instead, the Corps of Discovery went ahead and documented 122 previously unknown (to Western man) animal species like the grizzly bear, coyote, prairie dog and bighorn sheep.

With the President's guidance, Lewis prepared extensively for the journey.  He learned mineralogy, medicine, astronomy and many other STEM disciplines.  The trek itself was full of dangers - it took incredible courage, persistence, luck and diplomacy to survive the journey.

What I especially like about him was the fact that on his 31st birthday, he wrote in his journal how little he had accomplished and resolved ‘to redouble my exertions to live for mankind...as I have heretofore lived for myself’

Unbelievable - he had just become the first American to stand on the Continental Divide in Montana. When they eventually returned home East, their diaries opened up the West to generations that followed. His humility stands out.

Which brings me to my second source of inspiration. Between breaks in Zoom calls, I have been watching replays of the Smithsonian Channel's Aerial America. The 72 episodes show various parts of the US from a gyro-stabilized camera under the nose of a helicopter. While the imagery is stunning, I especially like the fact that they weave in history unique to various parts of the country.

You hear of the many who went West in wagons on the Oregon Trail, Mormons who took a different track to Utah, the 49ers who went to California. You hear of others who helped build the Transcontinental Railroad. You hear of cowboys who took herds of cattle up the Chisholm Trail from Texas to Kansas. You hear of others who paraded and protested for Civil Rights. Each one of them was incredibly brave and faced their own uncertainties. The rumors they encountered were likely even worse than what we keep hearing about COVID. Yet, they persisted.

For my birthday, my family gifted me a visit to Kennedy Space Center this weekend. That turned into my third source of inspiration. We saw man and machine which were part of the Gemini, Apollo, Space Shuttle, today's Dragon, and upcoming Orion missions. But I was particularly struck by the bravery of the early astronauts. Like Lewis and Clark, they had heard every possible rumor about aliens and UFOs and being stranded in space.

In all the other things we saw during the visit, I happened to catch a short video showing the crew boarding Shuttle flight STS-114 on July 26, 2005. This was the first "Return to Flight" Space Shuttle mission following the Columbia disaster. I came home and Googled to see if I could find a longer video. It's below. Starting around 8.25 you see the crew in Hawaiian shirts at a press conference, then confidently boarding the Astrovan to get to the Space shuttle. Later in the video you see many of the changes NASA made as a result of the Columbia investigation.

 

As we navigate uncharted waters post-COVID we are hearing plenty of rumors and we have plenty of fears. We may not have the backing of a President or the resources of a NASA behind us. In some ways, however, we have much better. As I wrote here, Moore's Law is being applied to human beings with stunning results "In all the doom and gloom around the virus, it is easy to miss the amazing acrobatics we have witnessed both in healthcare and life sciences. Telemedicine, pop up hospitals, medical professionals parachuting in wherever needed. Healthcare professionals have learned so much from the Italy and NY experience - how not to overuse ventilators, how to flex ICU capacity. Therapies like Remsdesivir, Dexamethasone and Convalescent Plasma have kicked in. All kinds of vaccines are being developed, clinical trials being accelerated like never before." Our HCM and Facilities Managers have been exploring all kinds of physical site re-opening protocols.

Let me close with something else I saw at Kennedy Space Center. This was a quote from a speech by President Reagan consoling the nation after the Challenger shuttle exploded upon takeoff in 1986.

We have repeatedly bounced back from adversities. A tiny little virus is not going to hold us back.

The next wave of C level conversations

I have done over 50 Zoom sessions with C level execs and practitioners in my "business acrobatics during the crisis" series. What's been wonderful is the range of executive titles like "Chief Equality Officer" and "Chief Customer Officer" in addition to many CEOs and COOs.

When I started the series in April, I thought I would likely end up 10-12 interviews and most of them would focus on leadership and resilience during the crisis. The conversations have actually ranged much wider from heroics in healthcare to facilities management to diversity. As months progress, the conversations evolve - many more are talking now about re-open protocols and changed markets.

While they are clearly stressed, I have been hugely impressed with their positive, optimistic tenor. In contrast, it has made me even more cynical of so much media which is mostly focused on doom and gloom. With their brands, they have access to many more executives than I do, yet would rather just feed on outrage. Oh well.

I have many more guests lined up in the series - they cover a growing list of industries and geographies. We should hear about many more heroics.

In addition, as travel starts to open up, I am going to try spend more one-on-one time with many more C level execs. Ideally over a relaxing drink or dinner.

I started this process with Mike Ettling, CEO of Unit4 this week. As it turns out both of us had birthdays this week and the restaurant thoughtfully ended dinner with a small muffin with a candle:)

We discussed software industry trends, but we also spent time on our respective global careers. It was wonderful to learn so much about South Africa (where he was raised), Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and reminisce about our favorite bird - the Boeing 747.

These executives have lonely, incredibly tough jobs and I am happy to mostly listen, off the record. No Zoom camera anywhere in sight. 

It's a recognition of their incredible efforts and a small thank you for keeping me positive during the crisis.

The joy of unusual names

Poor Tucker Carlson at Fox News. He pronounced Kamala Harris as Kamela, as in Pamela and has taken hell for that. I would similarly take heat - I have an aunt named Kamla, and I would pronounce Kamala without emphasis on the second a.

BTW, this has nothing to do with politics. I don't watch either Fox or CNN. Most of my TV watching involves sports, sitcom reruns and lots of Smithsonian, National Geographic and History channel episodes. I do love watching Jim Cramer on CNBC. If you did not know better, from his callers, you would think his first name is Booyah.

Continuing with names, I was born Vinod. In Sanskrit, the ancient Hindu language, I am told it stands for joy and humor. I liked those positive connotations. Then I arrived in the US in the late 70s, and I was taken by the Vinnie Barbarino character in Welcome Back, Kotter. So, I started introducing myself as Vinnie. Trust me, it was great as a single young man especially with blind dates. Of course, the letdown when they realized I was not John Travolta quickly negated that.

Then I read Lee Iacocca's (of Ford Mustang and Chrysler fame) autobiography where he explained why he changed his first name from Lido to Lee. Something about not needing two unusual names. I quite liked that logic and started formally using the name Vinnie. Yes, it involved a court visit to make that official. Now, I can carbon date people who knew me when I was Vinod - my family, school and university friends still use that name. A couple still call me Barbarino.

Vinnie has led to its own interesting issues. When I joined Gartner, HR assumed it was short for Vincent. All my payroll slips and tax forms from them show Vincent. I have a few friends who still call me Vincenzo,  

What I did not foresee in the 80s was the influence of AI on voice transcription. Vonage's ML has faithfully transcribed voice mail messages for me for over 15 years. I don't think they have ever got Vinnie right. Vini, Winnie, Willy, Timmy, Freddie - there is a long trail of emails to remind me.

Starbucks has never got my name right either. They cannot blame their ML algorithms, but I always smile at the distortions. The funniest one came courtesy of my friend, Holger Mueller. We ordered coffees and as I was paying for them, they asked him what names to put on the cups. I didn't hear what he said and did not notice till we both got on a Southwest plane. Everyone laughed at me as I walked down the aisle. I was clueless till we sat down and he took this photo and showed it to me.

Heheh.

BTW, I love learning about people's last names. It reminds me of the dignity of work when we celebrate the occupations of our ancestors. It could be the Chinese Chong (derived from bow maker), the English Weaver, the Egyptian El Mofti (Arabic for legal expert), Baumgartner (German for orchard) and so many others. Mine comes from our ancestry in Sindh, which for religious reasons my people were forced to leave when the British divided India. I understand it comes from Mir which means chief, and chand which stands for a shining object like the moon. I will take that.

I do admire folks who have retained their birth given names, unusual as they might be. I recently interviewed Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh of Saleforce, and she kindly helped me with the phonetics. She did it with pride in her Thai roots. Similarly, my name sake Vinod Khosla has done way better than me as a venture capitalist.

You know what would be fun? I would love to invite both Tucker and Kamala to my Zoom show. No politics. I would love all 3 of us to just share stories about the trouble our names have got us into. I have shared a few of mine above. Trust me I have many more I could share if the 3 of us got together.

Lighten up folks - let's celebrate our diversity and yes, even make fun of it!

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer

OK, let me start off by emphasizing I am not retiring. Don't start any rumors. However, in the last couple of weeks I have had a chance to reflect on my career, and the crazy last few months.

I cry with so many who have lost friends and family to CV19. I get angry and elated and scared with others about our bipolar economy (Wall Street highs in the midst of historic unemployment), the divisive politics, the intense protests, the continued CV19 spikes. However overall, I think I have managed to stay reasonably balanced.

I have had a long, colorful career. Hundreds of wonderful clients, many a Magic Quadrant, 7 books, travels to 45 US states and 70+ countries, 12,000 + blogs, failed startups, way too much time away from family. So, how could 4 months in quarantine compete against those highs and lows?  5 things make this phase stand out

A focus on business acrobatics

Like most, I was traumatized in the middle of March - how could you not be with all the fatalities, the lockdowns, the Wall Street meltdown, the massive layoffs? But my New Florence research was also showing an amazing amount of innovation and heroics in business. I knew there would be enough material for my 8th book. However, I made a fateful decision to not wait for months it takes to produce a book. I decided to record executives on Zoom or MS Teams talking about how they were scaling up or down massively, how they were pivoting to new opportunities, how they were rapidly innovating products and services. I have done many of those sessions, nearly 50 of them are public in this series. I have fed off their stressed, but positive, energy. I have heard awesome expressions from them like "pain is real, suffering is optional". As importantly, it has helped me as an analyst. It has introduced me to how rapidly WFH technologies and related social issues are evolving. It has allowed to track how quickly the healthcare system has learned about overuse of ventilators, how to rapidly increase ICU capacity, how to handle surges with medical personnel across states, how therapies like Remdesivir and convalescent plasma are having a significant impact in acute CV19 cases. That has allowed me to be relatively calm while much of media (and social media) has been hysterical about the recent spike in positives in the Sun Belt. I have been saying - don't look at June/July positives from a February/March Italy/New York lens. I have heard how executives are rebalancing their technology, R&D and other budgets. I have participated in many vendor virtual events with that lens. Some are rapidly evolving, others are still trying to sell what they had in their bag in January. That's a semester of learning I could not have had at any university. 

Positive passions matter

I had already restarted the Passion guest series to celebrate the start of a new decade. Starting in March I accelerated the pace. Nearly 50 have contributed about their cooking, birding, charities,  I have helped guest writers with background research on how STEM has helped evolve their area of passion. Not only has that kept me and thousands of readers positive, it has given me a more nuanced perspective on how technologies are reshaping various aspects of life, play and work.

Honoring everyday workers

As most of us tech folks focus on digital acceleration, I have actually become much more appreciative of people who have allowed us to easily migrate to WFH. They work near our homes, they bring stuff to our homes, they operate stores, warehouses, plants we could not survive without. We should all be glad they don't WFH. I have been running an Instagram series honoring many of them.  As an analyst, it has made me much more aware of the need to balance our enthusiasm for digital with the continued reality of analog/physical capabilities.   

TFH - Travel from Home

My wife is a wizard at packing in a variety of activities in a day trip. Read about her passion here. Given travel restrictions we have become skilled at day trips on the FL Gulf Coast. There are so many pretty small towns we have rediscovered which allow us to safely be out and about, then return to the comfort of home. I have been posting in my "West Coast on the East Coast" series on towns like Dunedin, Sarasota, Sanibel, Tarpon Springs, Venice and many others on Instagram.

During breaks in the work week, I have also getting many of my daily 10K FitBit steps while watching the Smithsonian Aerial America 72 episodes on various US states. Between this and our weekend trips, my restless travel genes have stayed in check.

Each visit and episode has also re-introduced me to history. Our people and places have repeatedly bounced back from unbelievable adversity - no reason we will not from this one either. More positive thoughts.

Quality family time

The last time I did not get on a plane for this long was in 1982. This has meant plenty of time and meals with my lovely wife and daughter. My son is working from home in Colorado, and we have managed to play more card and other games with him virtually. We are very blessed.  

I am glad the last few miserable months have brought out my internal summer. They have made me a more rounded adviser and analyst, and a much more optimistic human.

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