Janine Antoni, "Lick and Lather" (detail), 1993

This week’s column features a new interview with Janine Antoni in advance of her upcoming keynote address and workshop at the National Art Education Association’s annual conference on March 2nd here in New York City.

As many of you already know, Antoni’s work blurs the distinction between performance art and sculpture. Using her body, she transforms everyday activities such as eating, bathing, and sleeping into ways of making art. She has chiseled cubes of lard and chocolate with her teeth, washed away the faces of soap busts made in her own likeness, and used the brainwave signals recorded while she dreamed at night as a pattern for weaving a blanket the following morning.

The second half of my interview with Janine will post next week. For links to both parts of our conversation from 2009 click here: part one & part two.

Enjoy!

Tell me about some of the things you have been focusing on at Columbia University since the last time we spoke. What course(s) are you teaching and what has the experience been like?

Janine Antoni: I’ve been teaching for the graduate program at Columbia University over the past 12 years in a very interesting program they’ve developed called the Master Class/ Mentor Groups.  The students chose two mentors from a pool of twelve artists from very different perspectives. It is a one-week workshop that happens every semester during their two years of graduate school. There is an intensity created from being together all day that leads to a kind of intimacy that’s very productive to teaching. Columbia has never instructed me on what to teach but the intention of the class is for the students to get into the mind of their chosen artist, allowing them to experience one way of being an artist in the world. This enables me to model the class alongside my current creative process and explorations. Over the years, after a lot of experimentation, I’ve slowly developed a methodology that seems to foster creativity in interesting ways. I create a loose theme for the week, and I vary the activities as much as possible. We make, we look, we move, we explore, we create dialog, and I intentionally create gaps between these approaches and the theme is never revealed. These gaps are created to allow the artists to find bridges in relationship to their work and interests. Again and again I am surprised at how their experience during mentor week triggers new work. The thing that I’m interested in is that the creative process is never in a straight line, so if you teach in a straight line you won’t get the best results. To create you have to be out on a limb and to teach requires the same risk.

Since you have a child in school now, I am wondering about your reactions to the art making experiences she has had so far. What kinds of things has she described when it comes to participating in “art class”?

JA: She rarely speaks about her art classes specifically. But the other day she told me that she’s the only one in her class that can cut a perfect circle. She wasn’t so interested in the fact that she perfected this craft but what she wanted me to know is that she could make a perfect circle as a lefty using a righty scissor. She instinctively invents a personal way of approaching all tasks. What’s important for me is that I value that personal approach in her and that her teachers have the sensitivity to do that as well. Continue reading »

Paul McCarthy, "White Snow and Dopey, Wood", 2011. Image: artobserved.com

Up until recently, I was unaware of how difficult it is for some students (and perhaps adults) to reach into their memories and use a past event, sound, place or even scent to influence the development of a work of art. A few weeks ago as part of a larger sculpture unit exploring how memories can be represented, I asked one of my classes to sketch two different memories in three different ways for a total of six small drawings. The three ways included:

1. Sketching the actual memory as best they could- no shading or intricate details necessary at first
2. Sketching an abstract representation of the memory using shape, color, texture, etc.,
3. Choosing a word that somehow describes the memory and then finding a way to draw or design the word itself as a representation of it.

Getting students to think about the two memories in three different ways, I had hoped, would allow them to explore what they recalled in more detail. But I was amazed- no, floored- at the number of students who “couldn’t think of a memory to try” or students who bitterly complained they “didn’t want to draw a memory.” I kept thinking that the assignment, which was part of an introduction to representing memory three-dimensionally, was broad enough to have students reach back as far as they liked in order to share a fun, funny, bizarre, bitter or celebratory memory and influence their initial brainstorming. But getting these first sketches done was pure agony for some.

Now that we’re further into this particular unit, I look back on that first week and wonder how I may have started off differently. I thought a lot about what students needed in the beginning in order to more freely explore their own memories and share them. In the end it was no surprise that I came up with basically my own advice, given to other educators many times before… Share better examples and do more “front-end” work.

While I had asked students to draw two different memories to start, I hadn’t shared very many artists at that point who use memory to inspire their own work. I also hadn’t asked students to talk with their parents or family members about what they remembered about their own childhood, just as a way to trigger certain ways of thinking. Sure, we had discussed and briefly looked into works that gave specific memories form, such as the Iwo Jima Memorial and Janine Antoni’s “Moor”. We even had the opportunity to talk about how memory is constructed and the fact that specific events can be remembered very differently by people who experience them together. But we didn’t do enough to get good quality ideas going in and as a result I have quite a few half-baked sculptures (both literally and figuratively) that explore memories even the students themselves consider inconsequential.

Looking back a few weeks, and looking forward to trying this again in the future, I would share a more diverse range of artists and art works that specifically deal with memory in various ways. I would consider sharing Josiah McElheny’s work and paintings by Susan Rothenberg. I’d (carefully) select works by Paul McCarthy and perhaps Judy Pfaff, Mark Bradford and Mike Kelley. I would even include a range of works by surrealists such as René Magritte.

Working with memory presents challenges, like many themes and ideas we choose to teach with, that are terribly difficult to get rolling without an organized, broad and juicy introduction. Still, the great thing about teaching is that we get to continuously reflect on our work and make it better for the next time around.

Edward Hopper, "New York Movie", 1939 Image: heaviestcorner.org

It’s amazing… After over twenty years teaching I still get nervous. And I’m not thinking about the first day of classes (everyone gets nervous then), I was actually thinking about putting together an exhibition of student work. While it doesn’t carry the weight of big-ticket shows in Chelsea, student shows on college campuses, high school galleries, community centers, middle school hallways and even elementary school gymnasiums carry the weight of student ambition and often serve as a form of self-assessment for everyone involved, not just the students.

In a few weeks I am putting together an exhibition of student work at Hopper House here in New York called Reasons to Paint. This is the second show I have organized in the small, three-room gallery that once was the ground floor of Edward Hopper’s home. The first, an exhibition called Common Ground in 2008, paired student and teacher work side by side. Art educators from across our district were asked to identify a student who, in some way, shared a common concern, theme or approach in their own work and then exhibit alongside them. I was interested in students and teachers having the chance to show together on the same walls. In the end the opening was packed. Everyone was enthusiastic to be part of an exhibit in a professional gallery space. Best of all, parents and community members got to see the students in a way they didn’t experience all that often- seriously talking about their own work and having a dialogue about the works of classmates and teachers. Many of those students were at critical stages in their own school careers at the time, and I sincerely believe the opportunity to be part of a unique exhibit really made a difference as they began thinking about their own next steps after graduation.

This show, which opens on November 20th, asks students to take a work by Edward Hopper and simply be inspired by it to create a new work of art. The artist himself once said, “If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint,” and students are being asked this time around to look into the work they select in order to decide what exactly it is that’s so inspiring. Whether it’s the way unexpected colors come together, the gesture of two figures, the memory a particular image recalls, or even the ambiguity of a solitary figure in a room, students need to take that point of inspiration and create a work in response. Some students have understandably decided to paint, others have chosen photography or mixed-media. I even have one student who has chosen to make a sculpture… in a glass box, of course.

So why am I sweating it? Because I am dealing with high school students who have little regard for the word DEADLINE. While works were “due” this past Monday I still have these wonderful student artists casually coming by the classroom (as I am nearing a stroke) and saying things like, “I was thinking about cropping that photo we discussed instead of using the version we agreed on.” Whaaaaat??

Regardless of how they understand what it means to be prepared… in advance… I am hanging a show next week. And many of these students, like the students in Common Ground years ago, have some important decisions to make. This show, if we’re lucky, will be a tipping point for some that not only says it’s “ok” to make art, but it’s important to make art.

John Chamberlain, "King King Minor", 1982 Image: artinfo.com

In two weeks I am taking a group of students to visit the September 11 exhibition at PS1. Most of the high school students in these two classes have some recollection of 9/11 since they were about five or six years old when it occurred and it goes without saying that for some the memory may be much different than others. So for starters, as I prepare to visit a potentially charged exhibit like this one, I want to be thorough on the “front-end’’ of getting ready. Some of my students may have lost friends or even family members in the attacks and I need to talk with them in advance to discuss how comfortable they are about the trip itself.

With 41 artists represented in this show, many of you may already know that a majority of the work was made prior to 9/11. This is also a good time to tell you that one of our biggest reasons for attending the show is not necessarily to continue reflecting on the events of 9/11, but rather to see how a curator worked with this very specific theme in order to select and assemble a body of work. This approach to organizing an exhibit is much different from a single artist working with a theme or historic event and putting together an exhibit. For the curator, working in this case with a very particular moment in history offers an opportunity to process and represent the range of emotion, confusion, anger and even solidarity that resulted from these attacks. The show allows us to see how Peter Eleey has chosen to visually reflect on the events that took place a decade ago and have us think about the lingering effects.

A few days before we attend the exhibit (and after I speak with any students who have any personal experience with 9/11) classes will view selected images from the show and immediately begin thinking about how and why the works may have been chosen. Asking students to make connections and draw conclusions first is just as important as me filling in the gaps and sharing information that may not be apparent, such as how Christo’s proposal from 1964 to wrap two buildings in lower Manhattan may somehow be symbolic of the particular protection or safety we once felt inside our homes and workplaces.

Continue reading »

Amy Sillman, Untitled (object on table), 2007; courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

One of the students in my advanced classes is taking on the theme of “looking vs. seeing” for her first semester portfolio. She wants to explore the things people tend to overlook (or under-see) and over the next four months will create about a dozen works of art that explore the theme from different angles:

• What does it mean to see something?
• How is looking different from seeing?
• When you really see something, how do you know?

And this is just one of the many outstanding themes students are exploring. Others include:

• Picturing sound
• The relationship between drawing and photography
• Fear
• Beauty and youth
• Fairy tales and false promises

I even have one student who wants to explore, visually, particularly elusive phrases connected by the word “and” (such as “body and soul”).

Asking students to not only work thematically, but to work thematically in a series allows for the kind of immersion that most teachers dream about. Testing, unfortunately, has many of these teachers flitting from topic to topic trying to “cover a curriculum” that will surface on some standardized test vs. making space for students to become invested in exploring a theme and the big questions that go with it.

But getting to a theme that a student really wants to explore is perhaps the hardest hill to climb. Prior to choosing themes in the fall semester, I asked students to do a LOT of sketching as well as research into artists that have similar passions, ideas, or approaches to making art. We did a lot of exploring and talking about what makes us particularly happy, angry, confused and excited. We made lots of lists and notes. In just two weeks I have shared the “portfolios” of artists such as Eleanor Antin, Marilyn Minter, Ed and Nancy Kienholz, Amy Sillman, Sally Mann, Cindy Sherman and Barry McGee, to name a few.

In order to visualize working in a series, students need to see artists that not only work this way but think this way. Artists that do this especially well, and I am sure to bring into the classroom soon, include Dana Schutz (who happens to have a great show at the Neuberger Museum right now), Mark Rothko, Diego Rivera, Carrie Mae Weems, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Nancy Spero, Collier Schorr, Rineke Dijkstra, William Eggleston, Robert Mangold and Mary Heilmann. Too often, students expect to generate great ideas by staring at a blank piece of paper and waiting for lightning. Instead, I encourage them to visually “wander” in order to compare the ideas they have with other artists, or compare the approaches and processes that some artists use with their own in order to inform their work… and ultimately inform the series.

How many of you get the opportunity to work with students on developing a body of work around a theme? What are your experiences? Are there other artists you use to illustrate working in a series? Share your stories with us!

Ambrose at work...

This week’s column follows up on last week’s post and features part two of my interview with Adam Weiler of Ambrose, an atypical after school club in Holland, Michigan. If you haven’t already, check them out. You may even want to try the Makers Dozen to go….

Joe Fusaro: So what does a typical afternoon at Ambrose involve? What’s an after school session like for you and the students?

Adam Weiler: Students trickle in after school. We have healthy snacks available for them to munch on and at 3:30 we start community time where students and leaders tell their best and worst parts of the previous week (dubbed “Happies & Crappies”). The first Thursday of the month we’re joined by a guest artist who kicks off a collaborative project based on a process and we like to have them join in on “Happies & Crappies” too. After this we invite the guest artist to share their story, portfolio, and some lessons learned along the way (including the importance of the business side of art). The meat of the workshops are hands on projects focusing on the processes the visiting artist is known for… Brainstorming. Design Thinking. Graphic or Product Design. Paper Cutting. Typography. Drawing. Photography, etc. We try to do a short 1 hour project and exploration to get a taste of a process and then the following weeks we execute a larger group project based on that process around a theme.

Adam Weiler working with young artists at Ambrose.

JF: Do you have a favorite part when it comes to working on this project?

AW: Hands down it’s the relationships. With students – seeing them grow to connect with volunteers, community members and career pathways; and with staff – having a team that sees experiential education and the potential it has to change the world for the better.

JF: And where do you see Ambrose in a few years?

AW: Our goal is to do the best we can with what we’ve got. For now that means continuing the local work of building relationships with community partners, refining the curriculum and honing the business side of the program. We’ve figured out what it takes to make it happen full time for our community so that’s what we’re aiming for. When I dream about the future I think it’d be amazing to see Ambrose pop up elsewhere: groups of artist-educators from New York or Atlanta using the model to support local chapters. Kids all over the place getting pumped about design, problem solving, creativity and entrepreneurship. That’s a long way off…but one can dream.

Lucas Blalock, untitled (crystalline screw), 2009

Lucas Blalock’s only plan is to work… preferably in the evenings. He deals with a set of parameters that his tools provide and brings things he purchases at local discount stores into his apartment. From there it’s open season.

In a world filled with artists that create work in a myriad of settings, Lucas Blalock’s situation is fairly similar to the scenario many of our own students face- working at home and trying to hold down a full-time job (or a full-time class schedule) while attempting to make art in between. And while Blalock often creates art with objects he purchases and photographs, right in the living room of his apartment in Williamsburg, his process is quite unlike many of the students we work with.

In Lucas Blalock’s 99¢ Store Still Lifes the artist talks about discovering and creating visual problems in order to solve them vs. starting with an idea and finding a way to photograph it. Blalock comes at making art from somewhat of an opposite angle than what we may be used to, and certainly opposite of someone such as Paolo Ventura. Instead of following through on plans to photograph particular objects in certain ways, he allows himself to be attracted to different things… and then finds a way to solve the problem of making this thing interesting to a viewer, as well as himself:

Sometimes an object will really give me a simple problem to deal with. Other times it’s much more of a kind of flirtation with the objects in the studio that something gets pulled out of it.

There’s a big part of me that can see educators feasting on a short film like this (it runs about 6 minutes) because it shares examples of things that ARE working for Blalock and also finds time to share what happens when things AREN’T working. For example, towards the end of the segment, we see the artist wrestle (literally, physically) with trying to photograph some multicolored foam he brought into the studio. While obviously excited to use this material at the start, Blalock quickly becomes frustrated with it and decides to wait on trying to capture this particular subject matter. The inspiration may have been there, but the material wasn’t “doing” anything to impress him. Instead of forcing the issue, he simply remarks that he may have to hold the foam in the studio for a while before deciding how to work with it. He doesn’t throw it away. He doesn’t have a fit and trash the joint. He simply decides to wait.

Lucas Blalock’s 99¢ Store Still Lifes is an inspiring piece for teachers and students alike because it also illustrates how one can create a complex and stimulating context for making beautiful works of art in a simple space. But Blalock makes sure we understand it’s not easy. For every 20-25 photographs he takes and develops using his large format camera each week, only one or two “really work”. He goes on to explain that the most successful pictures are ones that “don’t fall into a category”. Perhaps an easy label means the work isn’t complex enough? Regardless, here’s to steering clear of categories.

Check out New York Close Up and please be sure to share any artists you are planning on working with… in and out of the classroom! See you next week.

Anthony Hernandez, from "Landscapes for the Homeless". Image: cgrimes-news.blogspot.com

This past Saturday, New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow wrote an op-ed piece called Them That’s Not Shall Lose which highlighted, as James Baldwin put it, how expensive it is to be poor in this country, not to mention in a country where half our members of congress are actual millionaires. In a series of poll questions included with the article, only 9% of those surveyed making over 75K per year had trouble paying for medical care for themselves or their family. On the other hand, 51% making less than 30K per year had trouble paying medical expenses. Only 11% making over 75K had any problems paying their mortgage or rent while close to 50% making less than 30K had trouble doing so. And this poll only included those who actually have jobs.

As I visited Mass MoCA this past weekend for the second year of Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival I came across three photographs by Anthony Hernandez, part of a wonderful group exhibition called The Workers, which documented the physical traces of homelessness along the freeway between Los Angeles and Santa Monica. Instead of photographing the homeless, Hernandez makes us look closely into an undistorted life, literally on the road. The pants hanging to dry in the tree branches and scavenged materials fashioned into a work space from Landscapes for the Homeless had me thinking about Blow’s op-ed piece and illustrated (in a simultaneously beautiful and alarming way) how grueling homelessness and poverty can be.

Utilizing Mass MoCA texts on the artists featured in The Workers, much like utilizing texts and resources provided by Art21, allowed me to approach the work in a meaningful way that shared its context- immediately offering me an opportunity to compare what I was seeing to what I just read that morning in the newspaper. Pairing up news, commentary and social issues with contemporary art that illustrates it in unique ways is another opportunity for us to share new art and artists that are both exciting AND relevant. Mr. Blow and Mr. Hernandez should talk!

Doug and Mike Starn, "Big Bambú" (detail). Image: cubeme.com

Each year the graduates and upperclassmen I work with look forward to their final project as a way of leaving a stamp on the school itself. Students are asked to create an installation on their own, or with a partner, and display it somewhere inside or outside the school building. I only ask that it be placed (or performed) in a spot that doesn’t usually feature art. Students learn in this final unit that artists sometimes use rooms or unexpected places as their canvas and often make works that are specific for a site- such as a stairwell or an underutilized office.  They also learn that installations, being works of art designed for three-dimensional spaces, sometimes involve the viewer IN the work, such as Doug and Mike Starn’s “Big Bambú” exhibited on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum last year. Occasionally, as was the case with this piece, viewers are even able to walk into the work itself.

But teaching about installation is much more than showing a collection of great images by artists such as Bruce Nauman, Kiki Smith, Hans Haacke, Judy Pfaff, Pepon Osorio and Sarah Sze, for example, and asking students to have a go at it. Great installations, like lots of great art, require a ton of good planning. So while I may start students off with showing a variety of approaches to installation, I also want to make sure that their initial sketches are working with themes that are meaningful to them and include materials that are accessible in one way or another. There’s nothing more frustrating than having a great idea and then finding out the cost or scale of the project will bring everything to a grinding halt. This initial planning often makes or breaks these student installations. I know because I’ve seen both ends of the installation success stick… I’ve had students abandon great projects because ideas were just too big and had others generate tremendous excitement through straightforward, unique works.

Taking the first stages of installation slowly and really getting involved in the planning with students, as well as those that will help create the art, is crucial. As we proceed into this coming week, I have some students creating installations involving performance, some enabling viewers to “re-see” things they take for granted (like each other), and some using everyday objects as design elements for larger-scale works. Students have begun gathering materials and assembling the works. They have secured spots for their work and have enlisted the help of others to assist in realizing their ideas. As we get closer and closer to the end of the school year, I realize that in units such as this I can probably be most helpful at the start. But I also need to be mindful about getting out of the way once all the “front-end work” is complete.

More to come!

Three things this week…

Maika Pollack recently wrote a wonderful review in The New York Observer about the current Glenn Ligon show at the Whitney Museum. As I visited the galleries about a week ago I kept coming back to questions around ways to teach about race and even perhaps making sociopolitical statements through the use of beauty. I mean, really, this is a beautiful show and it should be seen by teachers and students, as hard as that may be in late spring with the proverbial “testing period” hanging over everyone like an anvil. Yinka Shonibare MBE came to mind immediately. Not since Shonibare’s participation in the group exhibit, Ahistoric Occasion, just a few years ago at Mass MoCA, had I been confronted with work that was so simultaneously tough and gorgeous. The mammoth work, “Hands”, greets viewers stepping from the elevator- an obvious protest image (in this case, from the Million Man March) that needs no wall text to explain its connection to dissent. The text pieces in the adjoining room quietly pelt visitors with quotes about being black in America. Legible passages at the top of each work become muted and ambiguous as they return to the floor- much like fireworks as they explode and disappear. Even the installation, “To Disembark”, inspired by the story of Henry “Box” Brown, a former slave in a Virginia tobacco factory who literally arranged to be mailed in a wooden crate to Philadelphia in order to escape slavery, pulls you toward each piece in order to hear artists such as Billie Holiday and KRS-One. By the time you come full circle and are confronted with Ligon’s recent neon works, including “Rückenfigur”, America is literally turning away and facing the other direction. Being black in America- past and present- is shared through music, text, painting, installation and sculpture. It isn’t pretty, but the initial beauty of this show is what gets us to consider the works thoughtfully in the first place.

This brings me to my second item for the week, since we’re discussing turning away and facing the other direction.

Judith Dobrzynski (Real Clear Arts) and Lee Rosenbaum (Culture Grrl), among many others, have taken a stand regarding the Milwaukee Art Museum’s upcoming Summer of China show. Both authors, as well as this one, feel that museums have to begin making some kind of statement about the two-month detention (kidnapping) of Ai Weiwei. Museums that put together shows at this point with art on loan from China, without making any kind of attempt to address the issue surrounding Ai Weiwei, run the risk of appearing indifferent to the whole situation. Mary Louise Schumacher really sums it up in her May 20th Journal Sentinel piece which got Judith and Lee going in the first place.

Finally, a public service announcement… of sorts.

A few posts back I took on the idea of teaching graffiti in the classroom. Just thought everyone might enjoy this follow-up from The Art Cops. Priceless. Also kind of wondering what these two would dig up on a trip to China. I mean, why stop in L.A.?