9/19/2015 Session 2 Notes

9/19/2015
Art Cart Session 2
• Introductions of faculty present
• Briefed artists on fellows visiting their studios sometime this semester and doing the GEM
• Announced no class next week, postponed to 10/24, details to follow in email
• Agenda: Above Ground presentation, artist presentations, classweb review, photos, meet & greet
• Reminder that artists will be sent release forms to sign for photos taken of them and that their work’s copyright is always their own
• Passed around hard copy of Above Ground study, also available as PDF on classweb
o Above Ground Presentation
 “How are you today?” “Well, I’m above ground.”
 Acknowledgements
 Artists are a model for society
• 44% increase in elderly from 2000-2030
• Baby boomers are retiring
• Demographics are changing
 Artists’ identity
• 64% satisfied
• 68% high self-esteem
• 54% want to explore new avenues in their art
• 90% would still choose to be an artist if they could do it all over again
• Lifetime engagement with art
 Who was studied?
• 213 aging visual artists/146 professional artists
• 62+ years old
• Spent a lifetime making art
• Resident in 1 of 5 NYC boroughs
• In-person interviews: English, Spanish, Chinese languages
 Respondent driven sampling (RDS)
• Reveals hidden populations and social networks
o Homophily measures tendency of people to associate & bond with others like themselves
• Coupon referral system
o 6 people to start out with
o Each get 4 referral coupons ($25 for participating, $15 for each referral)
• Incentives: honoraria, artists’ pass
• Being an artist is a master identity that transcends race
 Profile of NYC Aging Artist
• 73 years old
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree
• Has a retirement plan other than Social Security
• Strong social network
• Daily or weekly contact with other artists
• Feels discriminated against
• Works in studio daily
• No plans to leave NYC
• No preparations for work after death
 Artists don’t retire
• 80% are not retired
• 13% are semi-retired
• 88% will never retire
 Health coverage
• Same % as general population
 “After you dissect artists, remember to put them back together.”
 General Recommendations & Policy Implementation
• Redefine work and old age
• Informal social care
• Flexible models of retirement
• Rent regulations in NYC
• Adequate health care
• Estate taxation
• Social services delivery
• Community
• Legacy
 Artist-specific Recommendations & Policy Implementation
• Reinvent community of artists
• Studio & exhibition spaces in government buildings
• Services for immigrant artists
• More grant funds and greater access to existing grant funds
• Access to social and artistic services
• Assistance in transporting and archiving work
• Integrate info about aging artists into artist education
o Artist presentations
 Zigi Ben-Haim
• Came to NY in the ‘70s after living in Europe and getting degrees in California
• Started out collecting paper off the streets of Soho and throughout career collected found materials to use in work
• Moved on to packing materials, construction materials, more industrial materials like metal and concrete. Always altered in some way.
• The Eastern Story
o Painting on aluminum plates
o aluminum plates are boring, blank slate to start from, makes a painting three-dimensional
• Note in the Green, 1994
o Sculpture with aluminum, bronze, & concrete
o Things from culture and personal experience translated from the environment – the color turquoise, associated with the evil eye in the Middle East
• Rhapsody in Blue, 2001
o Painted canvas and paper on hooks on aluminum
o grant to be in the Soviet Union, caused a change in perspective
o All of the icons were on one wall of the Church, each person was paying to a different icon, led to paintings of different parts, not just one image, like this piece
o Leaves are the culture of nature and bricks are the culture of humans and his work puts both together
• Unknown Grounds, 2007
o Painted canvas and paper on hooks on aluminum
o After 9/11, everything was up in the air and we’re now living in a different era – led him to collect more reality-based images, though his found materials are manipulated in some way, the viewer still gets a feeling of where it comes from
o The construction of this piece leaves it unstable, everything move, uses empty spaces.
• Alternates between creating works that are big & small, sculpture & painting, cold & warm, etc
• Working partner: Frances Stern, runs an art gallery in Chelsea
 Terry Berkowitz
• 5 decades of work
• Background in painting, started grad school as a painter, graduated as something else
• Into political and social action
• A lot of installation pieces
• A Rock and a Hard Place, 1992
o Installation piece about 1989 Palestinian occupation – audio, video, live grass, oil drums, stone walls in a 15 foot diameter circle
o Odd to look at as a still thing
• Backseat, 1994
o Installation piece about rape – 2 rooms, 1st is a 15 foot diameter circle of reeds with the backseat of a 1976 chevy which a person enters to hear a soundtrack of one woman talking about her rape experience, 2nd is a room of videos of 25 more interviews with women about their rape stories
• Veil of Memory/Prologue: The Last Supper
o Installation piece about the expulsion of the Jews from Spain during the Inquisition – configured differently each time, but in pictures shown, there are 50 place settings at a large table set up in a cross shape and the viewer has to sit at the table in order to hear the story
o Includes Catalan liturgical music from that time period when Jews in Spain had 3 months to decide whether to convert to Catholicism, leave the country, or die
• The Malaya Lola Project
o Photo portraits of 60 women, the Malaya Lola, shown to song that they sing about their experience
o In the Philippines as part of Trauma Interrupted
o In 1944 Japanese soldiers wiped out all men of village and there was mass rape of the women for a day and night
o In 1996 they organized into a group, the Malaya Lola
o The photo portraits were meant to be created into postcards and sent to Japanese government to ask for reparations, but that ended up not happening
• Working Partner: Nicholas McGovern, art handler for 5 years, does a lot of work on video stuff, also an artist himself
 Amaranth Ehrenhalt
• 6 decades of work
• Writer & painter
• Lived in Philadelphia, then NYC and Europe back & forth
• Met her husband, from California, while in Paris, also an artist, had 2 kids, but divorced now
• Hitchhiked across North Africa with Hunter Glaser
• Moved back to NYC a few years ago
• Has paintings everywhere & considers it a miracle to have found this program
• Mixed media artist, when people ask her what her favorite medium is, it’s whatever she’s working with at the time
• Chen
o Watercolor, abstract expressionism
• Darby
o Watercolor, abstract expressionism
• Peperomia, 2007
o Acrylic on canvas, abstract expressionism
• Tulagi, 1991
o Oil on canvas, abstract expressionism
• Art critic John Ashbury went into raptures about one of her paintings that only had her last name attached to it and wrote paragraphs about it. When she later met him and thanked him he said, “Oh, I thought you were a man.”
• Working Partner: Devon Telberg, an architect herself, known all her life since her grandmother was best friends with the artist
 Harriet FeBland
• Born and trained in NYC
• Spent some time at every art school in NYC, learning from the artists of that time by cleaning their studios or doing other tasks for them in exchange for free instruction, which at this point was very traditional and academic
• Went abroad to England & France and was still a very traditional artist at this point, but when she returned to NYC after 11 years, discovered “action painters” and changed her thinking. They were divorced from subject matter and throwing paint around, changing what materials they used, not oils, but paints from hardware stores.
• She divorced herself from canvas and oils as well. She began “painting with nails”, putting nails in wood in different shapes and patterns, painting the nails, wood. Over 3 years has 20-30 examples of this style.
• After this wanted to experiment with transparency, tried painting on glass, but it got smashed, so she was trying to figure out some other way she could play with transparency. In the 1950s DuPont expanded on their paints with something new – powdered polymer with color, which was the beginning of acrylics. They sent this new product to her and she was one of 5 artists all over the country experimenting with this new product.
• She played with the acrylic on plexiglass. She painted both sides of it, stacked layers of painted plexiglass on top of each other. She also began creating lightboxes and other constructions of different shapes, using geometry in her work. Likes to combine painting and sculpture.
• Arrival II, 2013
o Painting/structure
• Sienese Landscape, 2010
o Painting
• Stargazer, 2012
o Totem construction, painted wood
• Truth, 2009
o Construction/sculpture, painted wood
• Working partner: David Pierce, his dad is an artist who is friends with Harriet so he’s known her over 10 years and used to manage a gallery in Soho
 Arlene Gottfried
• Born in Brooklyn, lived in NYC her whole life
• Photographer
• Communion, 1985
o Procession of girls going to their First Communion walking through the street, followed them along the sidewalk, great shot with TV’s sitting on a car hood, they used electricity from the light pole
• Devon Kelly Praises the Lord, 1990
o Life-changing experience for the artist – joined the Church of God in Christ Choir as a singer after photographing them for a year
• Jewish Bodybuilder and Hassid, 1980
o Riis beach, there was a nude side of the beach back then and this Hassidic man walks onto the beach off the boardwalk and this naked bodybuilder asks her to take a picture of them both since he’s Jewish too
• Midnight is Jesus, 1984
o Succumbed to schizophrenia, hospitalized multiple times, once after climbing to the top of the Williamsburg Bridge
o Book of photo portraits of him from 1984-2003: Midnight
• Working partner: Kim McGough, also a photographer, working with the artist for a year, grad student at the school of visual arts
 Barbara Hammer
• 76 years old, self-taught by reading artist biographies
• Self Portrait, 1969
o Painting
• Left her marriage and came out, moved onto film, 1st lesbian filmmaker
• X 1975
o Film
• At San Francisco State, produced 13 short films in a year and a half
• Meat was a common element
• Moving from a housewife to what she was becoming, she felt outrageous and like she was breaking free from middle class life
• 8 in 8
o Television installation
o New World disorder
o Fear of touching our own bodies, fear of breast cancer
o Ashley Montague’s book on touch, wanted to create something tactile
o 8 different monitors around the room, touch a model of a breast and the tv plays a woman’s story of detection
o In middle of the room TV on its back surrounded by bones covered with NY Times articles with scare tactic headlines
• All the Plastic in My Studio, 2011
o part of an installation
o Swedish coastline with wave of oil coming in from the Louisiana oil spill
o As you leave, the plastics are projected onto you, implicating you in the pollution
o Also projected it onto New York City
• Proposal for a retrospective of all her work in 2016 or 2017
• Has recurrent cancer and is currently in treatment, but does not identify with her illness, she identifies as an artist
• Working partner: Maya Suess, self-described queer, visual artist, mostly drawings
 Morton Kaish
• Painter
• Paints in series
• Chance vs luck: Chance is something that happens to you, luck is what you do with your chances
• Summer, Chilmark, 2006
o Painting through apertures – windows, doors
o Van Gogh moment
• The Bride Dressing with Magnolia, 1980
o Series of paintings depicting brides dressing while in Rome, traditions, rituals
o Left an empty space on the right side that made him feel the painting was unfinished
o Year later painted a magnolia into that space
• The Irish Chair with Passion Flower, 2015
o Went to Ireland, supposed to be painting landscapes, became obsessed with this chair
o Collected wildflowers, put them on the chair, created this painting, but felt like it wasn’t finished
o Later was in Florence, Italy. It was very hot and he took a nap. He woke up and there was this crazy flower right in front of his face and he thought he was hallucinating, but he drew the flower and later found out it was a passion flower.
o From this drawing he painted the flower into the painting and then it was finished.
• View From the Studio, 2002
o Beautiful Northern light, panorama of townhouses
o Worried they would knock it all down, but didn’t start painting it until it was landmarked and he knew it would be there forever
• Working Partner: Melissa Kaish, daughter, not present, also artist. Here with him is Grace Connolly, her assistant, an artist and actress
 Mary Miss
• Late ‘60s came to NYC
• In the ‘70s part of group of women unhappy with frameworks for feminist arts
• Began to work in the public
• 2008 research more integral in communities, City as a Living Laboratory (CALL) for scientists, historians, sociologists, artists
• Wanted to reveal the city in a way that will engage people, topics like climate change
• For example Broadway Bling – art occupying Broadway from Bronx to Manhattan
• Greenwood Pond: Double Site, 1989-1996
o Des Moines Art Center & Park
• Layered Pond: House Creek Basin, 2005
o North Carolina Museum of Art
o Sometimes proposals are never created, sometimes they are done by others and not in the way it was originally envisioned
• Perimeters/Pavilions/Decoys, 1977-1978
o Nassau County Museum of Art
• South Cove: Battery Park, 1984-1987
o Created a winding walkway down to the water
• Working partner: Christine Howard Sandoval, artist, teacher, studio manager, working together for 2 years
 Marilyn Schwartz
• Not present due to bronchitis, audio recording of her presentation
• Started out drawing and painting
• Became involved in activism, the women’s movement, took photos of demonstrations
• Had a dry dark room and finished developing in the kitchen
• Annual Earth Celebration NYC Lower East Side, 2005
o girl with accordion
o colorful, lighthearted
• 2012 Jazz collection “Call it Art” features some of her photos
• Portrait of Lucia
o Passed on in 80s, painter and good friend
• NY Trap Rock
o Streets of abandoned boat docks before River Park
• Womanbird
o Part of Fantasy series
o Inspired by Halloween series, which surprised her with the darkness of the children’s burgeoning sexuality, but the Fantasy series had none of that
o She acted as a director interacting with her subjects
o This subject eventually flew away to Alaska and Washington
• Various collections hold her photographs
• Working partner: Georgia Allen, also couldn’t be present today
 Adele Shtern
• Blue Beach Door, 2014
o Photograph, similar composition to Morton Kaish’s Summer, Chilmark
o Goldeneye Beach on Ian Fleming’s property
• Multidisciplinary artist
• Opening the viewer up to the revelation of seeing the familiar in a new way
• Ongoing series of explorations of Jamaican community
• Capturing visual rhythms
• Chop Chop Shop, 2014
o Photograph, food shack, lots of color
• Gilbert Fish Shop, 2015
o Photograph, little bay, captivated by the art on the building
o Had photographed it before, but this time around lucky enough to capture someone inside
• Window Reflections, 2014
o Photograph, art in each windowpane
o On return, had been renovated to be mediocre, so no other opportunities to capture its beauty
• Born in Montreal
• Wisdom of generations passed down to her
• Post-holocaust, diaspora suffering part of identity
• Family supportive of her being an artist
• Loved sculpture, but chose graphic design to get her message out and to support herself
• Went to Yale for graphic design and had every intention of being a papermaker
• Ended up as assistant art director at Talk magazine
• As a designer found that all she did was work and sleep, so changed paths to academia
• Post 9/11, focus on the art of living and creating
• “It takes a village to be an artist. Thank you for being my village.”
• Working partner: Roy Skodnick, writer and art historian, just published a biography of James Metcalf
o Classweb review
 Classroom
• Calendar
• Syllabus
• Meeting Guide
• Info/Policies
• Goals/Objectives
 No direct support link, looking into that
o Took photos
o Fellows met with Artists and Working Partners