[Ed. note: Sarah Hanley's planned piece on Dana Schutz has been postponed; this week, she takes an in-depth look at the prints of Helen Frankenthaler.]

“Wherever I work, I bring …the same sense of what quality is and what beauty is to every place…”

—Frankenthaler quoted in Thomas Krens, ed. Helen Frankenthaler Prints: 1961-1979 (Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1980), 26.

Helen Frankenthaler. "Madame Butterfly," 2000 (Goldman 24). Woodcut in 102 colors on 3 sheets of TGL handmade paper, 41 ¾ x 79 ½ in. (overall). Publisher: Tyler Graphics Ltd., Mount Kisco, New York, edition: 33. Image courtesy Ameringer, McEnery, Yohe, New York.

As the public commentary on Jerry Saltz’s recent obituary for Helen Frankenthaler in New York Magazine makes plain, the late artist inspired extreme opinions, both toward her work and her person.  Her lush, gestural, saturated abstractions evoke something close to rapture in some viewers, while others completely disparage her fame and accomplishments, solely attributing them to her privilege and art-world connections (details of her biography are available on Wikipedia). Whether her work is of personal interest or not, her achievements – which are neatly summarized in her New York Times obituary by Grace Glueck – are indisputable.

Frankenthaler’s contributions as a painter are generally the focus of discussion, but her achievements as a printmaker are equal – if not greater – in importance.  In fact, she continued to make inroads in this medium and garner critical attention for her editions even after contemporary taste had relegated her painting to the margins.  In her essay for the catalogue raisonné of Frankenthaler’s prints, Suzanne Boorsch neatly summarizes her achievements, discussing Frankenthaler’s early use of monoprint in the 1964 lithograph Sky Frame “long before the method became fashionable,” her monumental 1971 lithograph Lot’s Wife, measuring 11’ 2” x 3’, and of course, her 1973 breakthough in woodcut, East and Beyond – the elegance and simplicity of which inspired a resurgence of interest in woodcut, which had been relatively neglected for over a half a century (“Conversations with Prints” in Pegram Harrison, Frankenthaler: A Catalogue Raisonné, Prints, 1961-1994 [New York: Abrams, 1996], 11-12).  Boorsch also counts among her notable achievements Frankenthaler’s 1982 monotype session at the Institute of Experimental Printmaking, San Francisco, involving the use of torn rubber to embed embossed and debossed forms within the composition; and Gateway Screen, 1982-8, which incorporated three large vertical intaglio prints in a hinged bronze frame designed by the artist in a variable edition of 12 (the prints were also issued separately as a triptych simply titled Gateway).  Absent from this list of highlights is Frankenthaler’s 1977 woodcut Essence Mulberry, which marked a watershed moment both for the technique of woodcut and her development as a printmaker.  The catalogue ends in 1994, after which Frankenthaler created two more notable breakthroughs in woodcut: Tales of Genji, a suite of six prints completed in 1998, and Madame Butterfly, 2000 (illustrated top). (For a complete discussion of these and other woodcuts, see Judith Goldman, Frankenthaler: The Woodcuts [New York and Florida: George Brazillier, Inc. and Naples Museum of Art, 2002].)

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Amy Cutler. “Cake Toss,” 2004. Lithograph in colors on Fabriano Artistico Hot Press natural white, 21-1/2 x 24 inches (image and sheet). Edition: 39; publisher: Universal Limited Art Editions, Bay Shore, NY. Courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York.

Fantastical narrative is a guiding principle for many artists who have come to prominence in the past decade; Amy Cutler and Dana Schutz are foremost among these.  Both possess extraordinary imaginative powers, creating worlds that are entirely fresh and singular. This month’s and the subsequent post of Ink will focus on the prints of these two young artists, respectively, both of whom have created a significant number of prints that directly relate to their paintings and drawings.

Amy Cutler’s world is populated by plain women who hail from an imaginary or bygone era.  They wear vaguely traditional dress of the artist’s invention, informed by an amalgam of periods and cultures, and engage in surreal or unlikely tasks, often with serious or sober expressions. Like many contemporary artists (i.e., Enrique Chagoya, Kara Walker, Laylah Ali, Shahzia Sikander), Cutler has reached beyond the history of Modern art for inspiration, finding a new vocabulary in which to address the contemporary condition.  The artist has cited Persian miniatures, fifteenth-century German painting, Japanese       ukiyo-e, and medieval art as influences in her work, as well as the folkloric heritage of the Brothers Grimm (see Lisa Freiman, “The Marvelous World of Amy Cutler,” in Amy Cutler [Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2006],10).  These precedents are certainly apparent in Cutler’s jewel-like compositions that are lavished with minute detail. Her technique is alluringly skilled, but this is by no means the focus (when her process is mentioned, it is usually to note the meticulous manner in which she applies patterning to textiles).  Instead, any such description is primarily an enriching factor in the artist’s bizarre narratives that instantly capture the imagination.

Though Cutler’s work has sometimes been dismissed as illustrative (a tendency abhorred by an older generation of critics and artists), this is the very quality that contributes to its beguiling power.  Cutler’s attention to detail grounds the work in specificity; the objects and environments they depict are recognizable and appealing.  These familiar elements rope the viewer into a process of telling a story to “make sense” of it.  This impulse is noted by Freiman and analyzed in further depth by curator Laura Steward in her introduction to the catalogue for Cutler’s recent exhibition at SITE Santa Fe: “your impulse is to imagine a narrative that could take place in the scene she depicts, and further, to imagine what that narrative might mean” (Amy Cutler: Turtle Fur [Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011],12).  Yet there is no such meaning to be found; interpretation is intentionally left open-ended.

Cutler thus deftly awakens the viewer’s compulsion to apply “morals” to her tales.  One common response is a feminist one – the industriously toiling women of Cutler’s world are often engaged in “women’s work” of an absurd nature, prompting empathy or outrage for their perceived thankless labor.  Yet Cutler’s intention is contrary to this understanding.   Addressing her proclivity for female subjects in an interview with Aimee Bender, she states “I love the idea of a fictional utopia of women who are strong and self-reliant” (ibid., 23).  She also notes that her experience of attending an all-girls school may have influenced this preference.  Likewise, she does not espouse the idea that her women are engaged in drudgery.  When questioned on this point, she explains, “I think it comes from my fascination with anything that is meticulously crafted – things that are created by individuals with specifically honed skills…I am especially drawn to methodical work that requires a lot of concentration…[T]he rhythm and repetition…lends itself to introspection” (ibid., 22-3).

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Municipal de Fútbol, 2008. Image courtesy of Texfield.

Municipal de Fútbol, Book One: Municipal de Fútbol. Image courtesy of Texfield.

The box houses two small books that are bound in the same green-colored cloth and contains an oversized poster and lithographs by artists As-Found, Arthur Ou, General Idea, Jakob Kolding, Jonathan Monk, Mari Eastman, Michael Well, Peter Piller, and Roderick Buchanan. It also includes an Adidas jersey. To put it lightly, there is a lot of stuff contained in this box, yet it all fits together perfectly, aided by black ribbon-pulls that help you leverage the contents out of the box.

Municipal de Fútbol lithographs.

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Moveable type no Documenta - Printing in Kassel. Courtesy Ben Kinmont.

This past month, I encountered Ben Kinmont’s work for the first time, appropriately enough at the Fales special collection in New York University’s Bobst library. Walking through the double doors at the entrance to the collection, I could not help but notice the signage for his retrospective of works made from the late 80s until the present, Prospectus, hand-drawn with guidelines still in place on the wall. At the entrance to the library were also glass cases containing a catalogue for the retrospective, a form of lead type for letterpress printing, and a series of broadsides made for the occasion of specific works by the artist.

It was not until another visit to Fales that I would get to take in the breadth and sophistication of Kinmont’s projects, which take on a range of issues related to art historical politics, and which confront various practices and ideas undergirding contemporary art. Walking down a long corridor, I read a series of broadsides made by Kinmont via his Antinomian Press. Many of these broadsides featured information about rare books having to do with 18^th and 19^th century French gastronomy, social etiquette, and agriculture. Another broadside contained information about artists who in the course of their careers explored different professions and forms of work. Among these artists was Lygia Clark, who eventually developed a psychoanalytic practice based on her performance works. A number of other artists including Ravio Puusemp, Hans de Vries, Laurie Parsons, Mierle Ladermann Ukeles, and Jon Hendricks were featured for their various excursions into politics, farming, social work, business, activism and other professional fields normally independent from visual art.

Fales Project Art Ethics poster. Courtesy Ben Kinmont.

The broadsides, I would learn, point to a crucial moment in Kinmont’s career, where in order to support his family the artist founded an antiquarian book dealership. Kinmont, like the artists featured in the aforementioned broadside, is an artist who practices what he calls “becoming something else.” His work foregrounds the fact that artists’ careers are often defined by hiatuses, as well as by excursions into other disciplines and cultural fields. Enframing art production with other labor practices, Kinmont reveals the multi-disciplinary nature of the typical subject in a post-Fordist society. The confusion between these boundaries often acts as his preferred aesthetic material, such as in a series of performances wherein he contracts to wash dishes for a certain duration, or other works in which he approaches others in order to offer them his services.

Fundamental to Kinmont’s body of work is a looming ethic of the art project and the social contract. Kinmont addresses the ethics of what he calls “project art” through a broadside in which he lays out what he feels are the grounds for inducing others—strangers, or a community of which one simply does not recognize themselves to be a part—to participate in one’s art practice. This ethics is tested repeatedly throughout the artist’s work, particularly in a work he made at Documenta in 2002 with the aid of a portable office (backpack, printer, paper, laptop). In Moveable type no Documenta, Kinmont held interviews with residents of Kassel, Germany (where Documenta takes place), in which he asked them about “what was meaningful in their lives and if they could and should think about that thing as art.” The result is a compelling portrait/ethnographic survey of how art is valued and defined by people who normally don’t attend an international art biennial, even one in their own town.

Moveable type no Documenta - Blue flyer on wall - Kassel. Courtesy Ben Kinmont.

In another “project art” work, The Digger dug (begun in 2004), Kinmont discusses with professional social workers and art students “how it is possible to help others through an art practice and how a move outside of the institution might benefit or complicate that effort.” Contemporary with much of the recent art work devoted to service, Kinmont draws his participants/collaborators/students into a debate about the ethics underpinning such works, which are ever complicated by how the artist is positioned towards a certain set of subjects, the people who they would ostensibly like to help. As a social worker/friend tells Kinmont, “nobody participating in a project would want to be ‘authored’ by another, no matter what the purpose,” noting as well, “the difficulty of most artists to have a meaningful effect on others due to the brevity of most artists’ commitment to a given social cause.”

Kinmont’s work poses a number of questions crucial to art historical discourses of the past decade. What is the role of the artist in society, and how are aesthetic practices transected by other forms of cultural production? What do we consider the work of art when the artist’s labor is determined by a complex of cultural, social, and economic factors? Where do labor, life, and art fuse, and to what extent is this possible fusion problematized by social, cultural, and economic dilemmas? Another important question Kinmont’s work poses concerns the place of the archive in the individual artists’ work and within the realm of disparate social practices. At Fales one could open a number of archival boxes with primary and secondary documents from art works produced by Kinmont. In the catalogue accompanying the Fales retrospective, individual entries extend the artist’s archive into print indicating which works should be reproduced, as if to anticipate the archival and moral dilemmas of reenactment.

In a video interview project devoted to the remembrance of the conceptual artist Christopher d’Arcangelo, recently at Artists Space, Kinmont points out the artist’s contributions to a discourse about institutional critique, in the course of the interview recognizing how their practices differ. As Kinmont explains, the central difference between his work and d’Arcangelo’s appears through his desire to explore new spaces where the relations that he would want to model can take shape. Life work and art work become fused around sensibility, style, and custom, especially through a series of works involving the preparation of multiple-course meals for paying participants. Drawing upon his professional interest in gastronomic literature, but also an artist’s tradition of culinary processes (Gordon Matta-Clark’s and Carol Goodden’s FOOD restaurant, for instance), Kinmont uses artists’ recipes to prepare an “exhibition” in the mouth. His most recent version of the piece will take place at the Performa 11 biennial this month, where Kinmont will serve a six-course meal to participants. His efforts will be supported by friends and colleagues who make their living as chefs and restaurant proprietors.

I will wash your dirty dishes at someone's home. Courtesy Ben Kinmont.

1. What is your background as an artist and how does this background inform and motivate your practice?

I grew up around artists and their families in Northern California in the 1960s and 70s. My dad is a conceptual artist, and at the time the San Francisco art scene was very small, with lots of kids running around, and usually the moms keeping track of everything. Dad was producing poetic, hand-made objects out of plastic, wax, and wood, and autobiographical photographic works which were taken by my mother with her Rolleiflex camera. At the time she was photographing his actions as well as the family and when not watching us kids, she was either in the darkroom, studying herbal medicine, or meditating. Her photographs with my father were of situations he decided upon and set up, but I feel that the photographs were somehow collaborations between the two of them and her photographic activity was the place where she had her “voice” outside of raising us kids.

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Mel Bochner. “Amazing,” 2011. Monoprint with collage, engraving and embossment on hand-dyed Twinrocker handmade paper, 94 1/4 x 70 3/4 inches 239.4 x 179.7 cm. Image courtesy Two Palms Press, New York.

“At the root of all my work is the recognition that we tend to take most of our experience for granted” (Mel Bochner in “Art in Conversation: Mel Bochner with Phong Bui,” The Brooklyn Rail, May 2006).

Mel Bochner’s recent work barrages the senses with a parade of related words that demand attention. In paintings and monoprints, he blasts the common language of the modern era in capital sans-serif letters across the surface of his choosing, using carefully selected colors that highlight some terms and obfuscate others, sometimes even confusing one word from the next.  Though these pieces often provoke an initial response of amusement, even laughter, the viewer is led into a deeper inquiry upon extended viewing.   The scale, physicality, and visual impact – coupled with an involuntary compulsion to read the text – provoke a visceral and cognitive response, leading the mind into a labyrinth of free association.  These often include collective or cultural connections as well as personal experiences or biases toward the terms on display.

As discussed in detail by Johanna Burton in her essay “The Weight of the Word: Mel Bochner’s Material Language” in Mel Bochner: Language 1966-2006 (New Haven and Chicago: Yale University Press and The Art Institute of Chicago, 2007), Bochner’s work posits questions and opens dialogue rather than provides answers.  This seems a natural result of the work of an artist who places inquiry at the center of his practice.  “I work by making up hypotheses, ‘What would happen if…’ and then working through the contradictions as they come up” (Bochner in  The Brooklyn Rail). Though he has also explored other systems of communication and knowledge (such as measurements, numbers, and spacial geometries and relationships), language has been a central concern from the beginning.

This interest in – and investigation of – language started shortly after he moved to New York in the mid-1960s when he taught at the School of Visual Arts (please see a brief bio here).  Though he was a painter, he was asked to teach art history.  Perhaps due to his prior study of Phenomenology giants Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty as an auditing student at Northwestern University, this experience prompted him “to think about how visual ideas can be discussed—the relationship between language and images” (ibid.).  While at SVA, he also curated a ground-breaking 1966 exhibition (which is now understood as a work of art in its own right), Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to be Viewed As Art, shown at the SVA’s gallery.  The exhibition was comprised of four binders that contained photocopies of works by his colleagues and contemporaries in art, music, philosophy, biology, engineering, and mathematics, placed on pedestals.

In its infancy, Conceptual art – which was frequently text-based – was thought to bear no trace of personal expression and to exist in a purely cognitive realm;  in other words, it did not need to exist as a physical object.   Among artists, “an assumption was floating around that using language in your art was a communicative shortcut, a direct route from one mind to another” (Bochner in “Mel Bochner in conversation with James Meyer” in Burton, et al., Mel Bochner: Language 1966-2006, 133).  However, in both writings and artwork, Bochner asserted that language itself is implicitly idiosyncratic and political, and that ideas cannot exist without a material component – what he called a “support” – be it a piece of paper, a wall, or a canvas. His position is best exemplified by the now-iconic 1970 work Language is Not Transparent in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in which he painted a messy, drippy field of black paint on the wall and scrawled the words of the title in chalk, as if on a blackboard.   Likewise, in the 1969-70 work Theories of Boundaries in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, he explored the relationship between language and physicality.

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Willem de Ridder. European Mail-order Warehouse/Fluxshop. Winter 1964-65. Photo: Wim van der Linden/MAI. The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift, 2008.

Fluxus, an international counter-culture collective of artists, musicians, and designers, was formed 50 years ago in 1961/2.  Its goals were laid out in the 1963 offset lithograph Fluxus Manifesto (on view at The Museum of Modern Art), which denounces the “bourgeois” preciousness and exclusivity that surrounds art, promotes art “for all peoples,” and calls “cultural, social, and political revolutionaries to united front and action.”   Fluxus artists and musicians–who hailed from all over the US, Europe, and Japan–felt that art should be affordable, participatory, and closely tied to everyday experience.  In addition to artists who are known primarily for their involvement with this collective–such as George Maciunas, its founder and leader, Robert Filliou, and Ben Vautier (Ben)–a number of artists who began their careers as participants in Fluxus moved on to become influential in the wider scope of Contemporary art, including Christo, Nam Jun Paik, Deiter Roth, Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono, and Claes Oldenburg.

“Fluxus Manifesto,” 1963. Offset lithograph. Edited, designed, and produced by George Maciunas. 8 3/16 x 5 11/16" (20.8 x 14.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift, 2008.

This fall, two survey exhibitions in New York celebrate the birth of this radical art movement:  Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University through December 3; and Thing/Thought: Fluxus Editions, 1962-1978, at The Museum of Modern Art through January 16.  The exhibition at the Grey Art Gallery, which was organized by the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, is accompanied by a scholarly catalogue and will travel to the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor early next year.  In addition, a number of focus exhibitions are on view at university and non-profit galleries in the greater New York area.  Fluxus at NYU: Before and Beyond in the Grey’s Lower Level Gallery and at/around/beyond: Fluxus at Rutgers, at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University (through April 1, 2012) highlight the significant role faculty members of both universities played in Fluxus.  Artists Space, Creative Time, and the Staller Center for the Arts, Stony Brook University, are also all showing related work this fall.  In keeping with the spirit of the movement, many of these exhibitions are supplemented by a roster of events, including gallery tours by the curators and artists, walking tours, performances, and panel discussions (please see exhibition websites for details).  Finally, the biennial performance art festival Performa, November 11-13, will include a number of Fluxus events.

Fluxus was primarily about ideas, and the goal was to reach the largest possible audience.   In a time before internet and email, prints and multiples in the form of artists’ books, ephemera, and mail art played an important role in disseminating the artists’ work, which were often group publications.  They also organized festivals, participatory events, happenings, and performances, and created mail art, film, and unique works.  Fluxus Editions were primarily produced and hand-assembled by Maciunas in unlimited editions and offered at low prices, distributed at artist-run Fluxshops or by mail-order.  The first Fluxus group publication, An Anthology of Chance Operations…, 1961/3, (on view at The Grey Art Gallery), was compiled and edited by the Minimalist composer La Monte Young and designed by Maciunas.  In 1962, Maciunas and Robert Watts came up with the idea of “an ever-expanding universe of events” (as quoted by curator Jacquelynn Baas in the introductory text at the Grey Art Gallery exhibition) that could be performed by anyone at any time.  Open-ended and minimal instructions for specific actions using everyday objects, to be performed by a single person or by a group, were “composed” by Watts, Young, George Brecht, and others.  These were mailed via postcard to colleagues, and a festival of performances was organized the following year, to take place throughout the month of May in the greater New York area. It was called “The Yam Festival” (May spelled in reverse).  Maciunas also organized similar events throughout Europe, called Fluxfestivals.

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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.

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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.

If you’re not familiar with Ambrose, well…. you should be. A few months ago on a trip to work with teachers at the Holland Area Arts Council in Michigan I was fortunate enough to meet Adam Weiler, the creative director of this atypical after school club, and immediately became interested in the work his high school artists were producing. The website for Ambrose perhaps says it best:

Ambrose is the greatest after school club in the world. Every month we feature a guest artist, develop a new tee, and complete a skill building collaborative project. Our goal is to grow citizens with strong capacities for creative problem solving, design thinking and entrepreneurship.

I became interested in Ambrose not just because they produce really cool t-shirts, but also because of the buzz that surrounded this group from the moment I landed in Grand Rapids. Many people, including teachers taking the weekend workshop with Art21, had nothing but positive things to say about the work Ambrose has done and the effect it has on kids who participate. Below is part one of an interview I conducted with Adam Weiler this summer:

Joe Fusaro: Tell me a little about how Ambrose is different from other “after school clubs” and how do you sustain participation in this kind of thing when so many projects like Ambrose start strong and then fade over time?

Adam Weiler: When we were first starting the program we surveyed both local business owners and creative professionals to see what they were looking for in potential employees. We found both sides wished they had a deeper understanding of the other- businesses wished they were more creative and creatives wished they had a better understanding of business. This focus on the business side of art and the art side of business sets us apart. Since we’re not associated with or funded by a school system we’ve been forced to take our own medicine and find a funding model that works in order to keep the program going. This year we launched a new line of shirts where our visiting artist of the month designs a shirt that we print with students. We’re constantly trying to find new workable ways for students to be involved in all aspects of the project such as planning, production, branding, etc…giving them more ownership and say in the direction of the workshops.

Regarding student participation – in a lot of ways Ambrose is like any other after school program. Every year students graduate and new students enter – group dynamics and energy are variables that constantly change. I think the personal attention of committed volunteers have helped retain students over the last three years. Professional adults in our community have been really excited about giving back in a way that connects with their passions. We have a solid group of weekly volunteers that are talented, genuinely like each other, and care about students’ development. It’s a trifecta, if you will, and I think it creates a culture that students want to be a part of.

JF: So how do you select artists to work with the group?

AW: The guest artists thus far have been friends of our community and friends of friends. It’s pretty grassroots. There are some really well organized creative networks in our region…and generous. When we’ve reached out to individuals they have been more than willing to help out, which is encouraging.

JF: And when you say students “graduate”, do you mean from high school, or is there some kind of graduation from Ambrose? Do students have the option of working with Ambrose after they are out of high school?

AW: Graduate from high school. We’ve noticed a real need for creative community amongst students who have graduated from school but aren’t pursuing college degrees. Up until this year the program hasn’t had any hard boundaries so those students still stop in for the occasional workshop. Occasionally during college breaks we’ll have “alums” come back to share what they’ve been learning, what whey wish they knew, and validate the importance of foundational skills (drawing from life / observational skills). This year we’re doing things a little differently. There will still be an open door to alums coming back but we’re going to have a hard graduation that marks a student’s initiation into the next phase of development.

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Ann Hamilton, “ciliary #3,” 2010. Lithograph, fabric, bamboo and hardwood dowel construction. Approx. diameter: 58" (147.3 cm). Variable edition of 19 unique works, published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles and New York. "ciliary" © 2010 Ann Hamilton and Gemini G.E.L. LLC.

Ann Hamilton’s work is founded on the idea of the line – both in its material form as thread, fiber, and hair; and its conceptual form in written and drawn communication.  From this deceptively simple beginning point, she creates subtle and profound worlds and objects that stretch our understanding of contemporary life in a technological age and touch upon the deepest reaches of what it means to be human – in particular, our ability to relate to others, build meaningful relationships, and share ideas through communication.  This path of inquiry began over three decades ago from her first love of textiles, then expanded into sophisticated and revelatory installation/performance works, a number of which can be reviewed on the artist’s website.  Though she has ventured into increasingly conceptual territory over the years, Hamilton has never lost sight of her beginnings in material culture and the rich presence of the hand-made object.  Her work first seduces with its visual and tactile appeal, and then reveals its conceptual underpinnings.

An online interview with Art21 raises the dilemma of ephemerality for Hamilton’s work – the fact that it must be experienced in a particular time and place.  This issue is endemic to artists who work in site-specific installation, and it often becomes increasingly problematic as time passes.  Though Hamilton has created objects throughout her career, the early examples do not fully stand on their own.  Some, such as the body object series of 1984-93, were “performed” and documented with photography (the images were then editioned and published); others are sculptural objects or digital media that played a role in an installation at one time.  However, as noted by scholar Joan Simon in her 2008 essay on Hamilton’s editions for Gemini G.E.L., she has recently “turned to different sorts of makings.  At one end of the spectrum are … chants and song; at the other reach of the spectrum are the objects that bespeak individually and as ensembles.” (Ann Hamilton at Gemini [exh.cat.], Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl, New York, 2008, 15).  The human voice has certainly played a greater role in Hamilton’s recent work, but she has also created objects and architectural structures that are self-contained and have a material presence, including a number of prints and variable editions.  This new direction in her work partially satisfies, as it has for many artists, an interest in reaching a wider audience and also presents new challenges and avenues of exploration.

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