Art Doctor was a writer.  He wrote for a widely distributed free newspaper called “Market Square” that covered things happening in and around Pittsburgh.  It no longer exists.

The articles were written in dialogue format where the Art Doctor was asked questions by an invented interviewer.  For example:

Doctor… does this have relevance to the current Pittsburgh Renaissance?
Certainly.  Just as the Florentines realized that their artistic excellence was a means of securing independence through civic pride, we, too should look to the artist as a man of ideas, etc.
Sometimes the topics were more specific, like a particular show, the construction of important architecture… but the context was broadened to wide parameters including historical precedent, overall presentation, and thoughts about things being informational and/or contemporary.  Opinion about a specific artist within a group show would not be applicable to the tone of the persona.  The articles were written in the late 70s.
By the early 80s, I was providing theory for DAX (Digital Art Exchange -- an eclectic group of scientists and artists at CMU) and my thinking was expanded by exposure to telecommunication technology in its infant stage.

Pictured are submissions that I faxed as a member of the DAX Group to the 1986 Venice Biennale when I was supplying theory for the Group.  Although this region is the turf of phriar phil, the origins emanate from the Art Doctor idea.  In addition, the following thoughts might also be germane to describing myself as a writer and theoretician.  At any rate, they  constitute what I consider public utterance that still might merit a bit of attention:

from: New Observations 76
May 15 – June 30, 1990
Navigating in the Telematic Sea:  Yo Dana, Hi Hank

 

“As art and science seek convergence, the philosophy which supported the notion of categories will yield to something else.  Perhaps ‘Yo Dana, Hi Hank’ will be an aspect of its signature.  Probing into this affair, as was done on Earth Day, yields results which were utterly predictable yet were seemingly fraught with significance.
The stewardship of this predictability looms in the imagination, defying a ‘clear’ thought – just like the words hate and compassion defy definition by reductive analysis.  The human capacity for rapture, in its Franciscan, all inclusive and broadest senses, is simultaneously a desire for fulfillment and an invitation to anarchy.  The idea of scale (local-global) must supersede the question of quality in order to bring our feelings into equilibrium with our experience.” –phriar phil (Phil Rostek) 1990

 

In and around my own exhibitions I have said a variety of things as the Art Doctor and as myself:
 ‘Everything is infinitely complex,’ Phil Rostek, 1988 –The Tribune Review, Sept. 16, 1988, Paradigm Changes, Mellon Galleries, Carlow College.  Bill Homisak, Art Critic

Seton Hill Parlors, Exhibition and Lecture, Closing Remarks
The  Memorare, Philip Rostek

Nov. 15 – Dec. 13, 1996 --

“Both the medieval scholar and the simple country folk felt the need to see the Savior everywhere and they chose …’metaphors for Christ that were entirely of their own making.  The saw Him as a child in t he color of the pale pink carnation, stained with blood in the crimson of a rose; the first swallow of spring was for them the emblem of His Resurrection, as was also the butterfly… (Lour’s Charboneau-Lawway, The Bestiary of Christ, p. IX).’

“It is thoughts similar to these that seem to create an artistic imperative within me.”

Philip Rostek, 1996.