GIRLS 19

NOVEMBER 2023

VOLUME 3, ISSUE 3

GIRLS MAGAZINE

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

VOLUME 3, ISSUE 3, NOVEMBER 2023

GIRLS MAGAZINE WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP Letter from the Editor - 3 Madeline Berger - 4 - 14 Laura Hughes - 15 - 21 Jackie Im - 22 - 28 Callie Jones & Julia Li - 29 - 33

GIRLS MISSION STATEMENT GIRLS is a revised portfolio of interviews from a nationwide community of real, strong womxn. It's a magazine that is 100% all womxn, which is beautiful in its rarity - the magazine is a safe space FOR womxn ABOUT womxn. Created by Adrianne Ramsey, it serves as a content destination for multigenerational womxn. Read on for an engagement of feminist voices and a collaborative community for independent girls to discover, share, and connect. The usage of the terms "girls" and "womxn" refers to gender-expansive people (cis girls, trans girls, non-binary, non-conforming, gender queer, femme centered, and any girl-identified person).

Front and Back Cover Image: Photo by and courtesy of Zabrina Deng

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: OFFICE HOURS

BY ADRIANNE RAMSEY

Being a woman in charge is not an easy feat, especially when running an art space. Since I started GIRLS in 2017, it has been a treat to witness the evolving careers of past participants, where they decide to go, and what they choose to do. Hannah Gottlieb-Graham was completing her senior year at Sarah Lawrence College and presenting her black-and-white analog photographs when I interviewed her for the inaugural issue of GIRLS; now, she is Founder and Director of ALMA Communications, a New York based boutique, women-run arts & culture agency. A couple of days after I published GIRLS 9, Cameron Shaw was promoted to Executive Director of the California African American Museum (CAAM), and a week after I published GIRLS 10, Legacy Russell departed the Studio Museum in Harlem to become the Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Kitchen. There are several women directors whom I am either in conversation with or admire greatly, such as Connie Butler (MoMA PS1), Johanna Burton (MOCA), Thelma Golden (Studio Museum in Harlem), Ann Philbin (who recently announced she will depart the Hammer Museum next fall after an incredible 25-year run), and Monetta White (Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco).

While I have highlighted women in business throughout GIRLS’ history, I found it important to have an issue dedicated to women who founded and directed their own art spaces. This raises a further question – what is art? The beauty of art is that it can both be created and presented through different methods. In this case, the four spaces that are featured in GIRLS 19 exemplify just that – a costume design house, a bookstore that also features art exhibitions, an experimental art gallery, and a commercial art gallery. I would like to thank Madeline, Laura, Jackie, Callie and Julia for participating in this issue and advocating for the importance of women at the helm. Lastly, thank you to Haley Mellin and Jeremy Maldonado, Founder and Director of Giovanni’s Room (Los Angeles), for purchasing an ad and supporting a small business!

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MADELINE BERGER

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Madeline Berger is a talented and multifaceted costume designer and wardrobe stylist based in the Bay Area. With her background as a Local 784 costumer, tailor, and professor of Costume Design, she brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to every project she works on. Madeline is known for her exceptional organizational skills, her ability to manage people and projects with ease, and her meticulous attention to detail. She is a strong communicator and welcomes constructive criticism, making her an invaluable asset to any team. With a passion for creating costumes that serve a purpose beyond her own artistic vision, Madeline has brought together a talented group of individuals to form the Bay Area's first full-service costume design house. This innovative company provides a platform for costume design to flourish as an art form and makes the world of wardrobe more accessible to all. Madeline's leadership and commitment to her craft have made her an integral part of the Bay Area's creative community.

Photo Credit: Madeline Berger

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. It took place in September 2023.

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MADELINE BERGER GM: We went to high school together and I remember seeing the beginning stages of your design practice. What was your path to becoming a costume designer?

MB: Our senior year, we finally got full access to the theatre building after being denied for the first three years! (Laughs) Ms. Dreyfus, the theatre teacher, found out I knew how to sew and said, “Oh great, you can do our costumes!” [In most people’s brains] knowing how to sew equals fashion or costumes. That year ECHS let me take a media arts class and theatre at the same time – I don’t know how or why they let that happen. In the media class, I was making the poster for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and then I’d go to theatre and would work on the costumes for Midsummer, bouncing back and forth. The next semester we did Little Shop of Horrors, and those were my first experiences in costume design. I had previously done theatre in elementary and middle school as an actor, but had never thought about working behind the scenes until after those productions.

GM: When did you begin sewing and how did that translate into your college experience?

MB: I started sewing at around eight years old and really fell in love with it. I did not think I was a very fashion forward person and didn’t want really anything to do with fashion, even though that was expected from my love of sewing. Going into college apps, I never thought about [sewing] for my life and career building. Being a creative director for some company was the dream at the time. I wanted to go to art school, but we couldn’t really afford it. There was so much pressure back then on going to a good school and following your dream – it was very heartbreaking to realize I couldn’t afford the place that would “fulfill my dream.” I ended up at UC Santa Barbara because they gave me close to a full-ride, but I was pissed because it felt like college was chosen for me. I skipped freshman orientation, wandered around campus, and eventually found this woman, Trela Sunshine, who was willing to talk to me about what I could do with my time at UCSB. I told her all the things I wanted and dreamed, and she basically told me, “Sorry, this is the wrong place for you!” (Laughs) However, she followed it up with: “But here are the things you can do that have aspects of what you’re after.” We both knew how to sew, and she suggested that I use my work-study in the costume shop, which I did. […] There was one costume teacher in the theater department and she said I could take her one costume class, Intro to Costume Design, and see how I liked it. I ended up taking that costume design class 6 or 7 times, but she would scale it up for me so I was being challenged past what the other freshman, who had never done it before. In the end, I majored in Art, with an emphasis on public art, and a minor in theater production, with an emphasis in costume design, just so I could get more knowledge about the specific things that interested me.

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MADELINE BERGER

Still of Man of God (2022) at Shotgun Players. Photo by Benjamin Krantz and courtesy of Shotgun Players

GM: Since the resources at UC Santa Barbara were so limited, how did you gain knowledge of the costume industry outside of school?

MB: As you know, a dear friend from high school’s mom was a wardrobe supervisor for film at the time – she’s done a lot of cool movies. When we graduated from high school, she knew I had interest in costumes, so she would say, “If there’s a good movie that comes along that I don’t think is awful, I’ll bring you along.” (Laughs) Her rhetoric the entire time I’ve known her is that film is the worst thing someone can do, and I will show you! (Laughs) The summer before junior year of college, she called me and said, “I have a movie for you, can you get to LA?” It was for Café Society (2016) by Woody Allen, so I quit all of my many jobs that I had that summer, drove down to LA, stayed with some friends of friends, and she trained me before we got into the movie the rest of the summer. I did go to school and technically major in public art and costuming, but [as for] the actual job training on being a costume designer, I learned everything from that first movie. That was the moment where I realized, “I can make money! Maybe I can actually do this as a career!” (Laughs) The following summer, I came home and got called to do 13 Reasons Why for Netflix – they were shooting out in Vallejo. That was one of the wildest experiences of my life and I would never do it again, but I learned so much about how to be a leader, how to run a costume department and what it meant to be a professional costume designer. I had to go to back to school for my senior year, but they saved my job for season 2. I literally graduated college on a Saturday, moved home on Monday, and started working on the next season that Tuesday. That lasted a little over a year, and I’ll spare you the gnarly details, before I was forced to reevaluate my priorities to myself and my family, and ultimately decided to quit because it had gotten too extreme.

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MADELINE BERGER GM: That sounds like a lot of turmoil and frustration – how were you able to turn it around and encourage yourself to keep going?

MB: I left that show and was in a very bad place; I decided to take a little break and not do film for a while. I got back into doing theatre shows and commercials in the area. The whole industry here is word of mouth – one job led to another two jobs, etc. It’s all about who you know and who you have worked with before. I did end up going back and doing some more movies! (Laughs) Some of them were better than others – The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) was a lot of fun, and was with two really good friends from 13 Reasons.

Amanda Ramirez was the costume designer and Kristen McCullough was the supervisor, and we were just doing our best trying to make shit happen on no money and no time with a tiny crew but we had a lot of love. I later ended up on a movie out in Indiana right before the pandemic hit that was a very hard experience, mainly because it was filmed almost entirely at night. For three months of my life, I lost sunlight, and I was also in the middle of nowhere with no access to anything close by. Anytime I was free, it was the middle of the night. It was a very eye-opening experience, and I came home feeling like I had been creatively drained, and then the pandemic hit. (Laughs) I spent a lot of the pandemic trying to reclaim my creativity [because I had] spent the last five years monetizing what started off as passion, hobby, and a love, and I definitely lost that along the way. The minute you start monetizing your art, things get really weird. I think it was a good reflection point of realizing that there were parts of my job that I really loved and also parts that I hated, and I spent a lot of time in the early stages of the pandemic looking for community, but I couldn’t find it. The only place I found it was in the UK because of how they respect theatre and costumes. I was very aware of how lacking [that respect] was in the States, and eventually it did change as we got deeper into the pandemic, as there was more community building around costumes in America, specifically centered around LA and a little bit of NY.

Still of The Chinese Lady (2022) at Magic Theatre. Photo by Jennifer Reiley and courtesy of Magic Theatre

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MADELINE BERGER GM: What motivated you to take the next step into going into business for yourself and launching your namesake costume design house?

MB: I started talking to my costume friends and we all had the same sentiment – “The way we have been doing this is bad.” We were all burnt out and felt like we always had to do this job alone. You spend time sewing alone, and if you don’t have access to funding to pay other people, then you are your own cutter draper, wardrobe assistant, supervisor, PA, and it goes on and on. You wear all the hats all the time, and I think a lot of us, myself included, got really stuck in this pre-pandemic idea that this was it. I definitely had little moments, like when I built a studio in my mom’s garage and thought, “This is enough!” I loved doing every role and could’ve done it on my own forever, and it felt perfectly acceptable [at the time]. But then the pandemic caused us to realize, “No!” We don’t have to be alone. Coming out of the pandemic while getting back into work, we literally needed more bodies to complete the job because we needed layers of COVID protection. I could not go to a house and do a fitting, so instead I had to prep the costumes, give them to somebody else to drive, and then deliver to the actor. We couldn’t shop in stores, so lots of us were helping each other shop online. The roles started becoming really singular in focus, and all of a sudden, we weren’t doing everything ourselves and had others in it with us.

GM: When I started curating during COVID, it was all virtual. I couldn’t even go and physically do studio visits with artists, which was really frustrating. It’s not the same experience, and it was hard to visualize the works because they weren’t in front of me.

MB: Yes, it’s drastically different. That really started the conversation on what needed to change, and then I got a job at a community college to teach costume design, which never ended up happening because of the pandemic. (Laughs) But it gave me my first big studio – I had a proper building to run and operate in. There was momentum coming out of the pandemic and everyone wanting to do something fulfilling. People started asking to help me because I was getting theatre projects and fun commercial builds, and everybody was just so desperate for just a little nugget of something interesting and fun. I just said, “Yeah! Come on down! Let’s be masked in this giant room where we can make things together.” I’m a part of a bunch of local theatres who started getting emails from individuals inquiring about costume design opportunities or internships. The theatre companies would then forward them to me because they didn’t have internship programs, so they asked if I could email them back. (Laughs) I’d write back and say there’s no formal structure, but this is what I’m doing, and you’re welcome to come and be a part of it!

That quickly escalated from 1 to 6 people within the course of 2-3 months, so it became very obvious that I was no longer doing this alone. It became very apparent that we needed structure, and I started dreaming about an alternate future with Kristen, who I worked with on The Last Black Man and 13.

(Continued)

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MADELINE BERGER We talked about all the things we wished we were supported in over the years – looking at LA, New York, and London, the way that they operate is so different out there because their industries are set up to support them, so they have a slightly easier time in some aspects of the job. In the Bay Area, we’re doing the same job, but without the same support, especially in terms of funding. […] There’s a lot of people out there that ask you to design the moon, but aren’t willing to pay for the moon, which continually blows my mind. It’s rough creating the moon for almost nothing, and it became obvious that no one was doing anything to address it. Now, here we were, wanting to do something about it. A lot of the rental places we had access to get costumes from closed during the pandemic – as of now, there’s only one left. That was also a strong motivator on realizing we all had stocks that we hoard – what if we grouped it together and started renting it out? The rental opportunities we previously had were very theatre oriented, so the film community here didn’t know about it, and they would go to LA. That phrase, “Oh, we’ll just get it in LA”, really pisses me off! There are amazing costumes and clothing here in the Bay– if you ask the right people and spend just a little time trying to find it, you would instead of going the route of bringing it from LA. So that is really what got us going, and we decided it should be attempt to be proper costume house like you have out in LA and New York – something that gets to exist in the Bay Area for the very first time.

GM: Your costume house is advertised as being a “full-service costume design house” – what does this mean, and why do you use this model?

MB: We basically take care of every role in house. Surprisingly, there’s no full-size costume design house in America – they all are specialize. In LA, you’ll have someone who is really great at buttons, hats, or drafting superhero costumes, but they are all separate businesses. A rental house typically includes fitting space and/or workspace that may or may not help source things for you, but when you’re attached to a studio, they have their own stock, builders, and makers - doesn’t mean you always get access to all of it. (Continued)

Still of Extinct Animals (2015) by Meraki at UC Santa Barbara. Photo by David Bazemore and courtesy of UCSB

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MADELINE BERGER In New York, you have the Broadway version of that – custom shops, or someone that specializes in shoes, the showgirls, foundations, or costume builds. In Europe, they do full-service at an extreme scale, mainly because there’s one company in particular called Peris (c. 1856). It’s been around for so long that they have the coverage and the volume; they’ve really taken the full-service concept to a whole new level. It blows my mind that they haven’t come to the States and taken over, but they were the ones that I looked at and realized, “That’s how you provide full support for an industry that doesn’t exist here like it does in other places.” I realized how all the talent was here, but it wasn’t consolidated anywhere.So, we started grouping together all these amazing artisans. I have friends who are great at shoes and know how to speak to manufacturers and get things custom made. I have a friend who’s great in leather, can make me anything, and has her own separate business, but through me and our partnership, we’re able to come together to directly support the costume world. It kept happening – every area of support we thought we could offer, there were multiple people in the Bay that we had already worked with and had relationships with that could fill that void. It started off as partnerships with individual businesses, and now it has formed into the costume house. Honest to God, in the beginning all we did was start calling ourselves a costume house in public, and then everything snowballed from there. (Laughs) GM: To have your business receive so much optimistic recognition must be incredible!

MB: It is! Just saying the words out loud made it was true; people just started responding so positively, and the volume of people that have found me and the group because of it is just exponential. I’ve spent a lot of the last couple of years trying to play catch up legally and business structure wise to the momentum that happened organically, just from all of this craving for this same thing and deciding to come together to be able to support each other doing what we all love. At the end of the day, this is a tough job and there’s just not that many of us! It just doesn’t make any sense for us to be in competition with each other when it’s this small of a community and we all have really different skill sets. None of us operate the same way – for example, coming together and knowing that some people love natural dyeing, and another prefers to shop then build. We can all utilize and try to do just the things we love the most. We don’t have to do these other jobs and wear all these other hats that we’ve been forced to just because there weren’t other options. Now all of us together, we can foster community, collaboration and commitment to costume design as worthy of all this artistry and support.

GM: Costume design is widely recognized by the art world, most famously The Met’s Costume Design Institute, but I’ve seen great costume design exhibitions at numerous museums. Have you seen any exhibitions that stood out to you?

MB: I have a horrible habit of only going and doing things that are costume related. (Laughs) I do go to a lot of costume exhibits at museums; there’s so many glorious ones. The most recent one I went to was Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty at the Met. It was really beautiful. Anytime I’m in New York I always go to the Met’s Costume Institute; they do such a good job at curating and making costumes accessible to the greater public. (Continued)

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MADELINE BERGER There are usually a couple other museums I always try to go to – last time I was there [I went to] the Museum of Art and Design. They had a reclaimed materials costume exhibit, which was a lot of fun. We get exhibits out here every once in a while, at the de Young for example.

GM: I saw the exhibition, Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love, at the de Young and I really loved it. The exhibition Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy at the Legion of Honor was also great. She designed Rihanna’s gown for the 2015 Met Gala, which hosted China: Through the Looking Glass. I believe she was the only costume designer of Chinese ethnicity used for the event.

MB: She’s the only Chinese couture designer period, in the history of couture – so she’s a big deal! […] I am obsessed with all things costume and it’s really important to me to see things up close. I took a pre-pandemic trip to Europe and went to a lot of textile and costume museums that are so different than what we have here. There was a corset and foundations exhibit at the Decorative Arts offshoot of the Louvre, and it was just phenomenal because it was a really great example of how museum curation can really assist in costume discovery. They had an entire timeline of how corsetry changed throughout the ages, but at the end [of the exhibit] you got to see these hanging corsets from the ceiling that you could pull them down and put on. All of a sudden it became highly interactive. There were kid and adult versions, so you got to see little children experience what a hoopskirt is like to wear. Adults could try on hip and leg padding like the kings used to. It was a great way to show how far we have come in Still of Adios Mama Carlota (2019) at San

foundational wear to a modern human.

Jose Stage Company. Photo by Dave Leprori and courtesy of SJSC

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MADELINE BERGER

Still of Meet John Doe (2022) at San Jose Stage Company. Photo by Dave Lepori and courtesy of SJSC

GM: What are you currently working on, including any upcoming plans for your company?

MB: I am currently in my third of a four play season right now, so I’m just deep in the thick of it. I’m the costume designer for Edit Annie at Crowded Fire Theater in San Francisco, which will open soon. I also just worked on Wolf Play at Shotgun Players, which opened last weekend. Following this, I’m working on Tintype at CCCT. Business wise, I’m at the point right now of trying to bring in outside people to help run the actually business so that I can stop wearing so many hats. We need to do a public launch; the theater and film world know of us but don’t really know what we are capable of because we haven’t had the time to show them– yet! We want to host an open house of sorts to show people the studio and the space [in order to] get them excited about the possibilities for costumes now that there is support in the area. We’re currently building a registry of every person that touches clothes in the Bay Area – so every seamstress, dresser, designer, and stylist, etc. [We’re] hoping to have a little directory of all of us so that we can further utilize each other’s skills and help get the right people for each and every job. We’re also talking about making some classes next year; there’s a huge lack of education for costume-specific stuff, for example, how do you work as a costume supervisor on a theatre show or a wardrobe supervisor on a film? What is an ager/dyer? How do you hold an inclusive and respectful fitting? There’s all this very valuable knowledge that is not shared in the community, and we want to change that.

GM: What’s so interesting is that costume design is something that is highly recognized – you can win an Oscar, Primetime Emmy, or Critic’s Choice Award for it! These are real, legitimate, big-time awards. The same goes for makeup and hair, these aren’t throwaway careers. There’s also the Costume Design Awards and CFDA, so it’s odd that costume design and fashion history doesn’t trickle down into secondary education.

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MADELINE BERGER MB: It doesn’t at all, unless you really go for it and find a highly specialized program! We’re working on hopefully fixing that – we may or may not be writing a textbook to make the knowledge super accessible and versatile for a range of careers. (Laughs) That’s its own undertaking. There’s lots of cool little projects in the works, with a very heavy focus on the community building aspect as the primary goal. This year we spent a lot of time trying to please the clients, such as theatre communities and film producers, and that was fine. It worked, but it wasn’t as fulfilling as we hoped. Moving forward, the fulfilling aspect to all of us is community building, networking, supporting, and teaching. The new year pivot for us is more about us as costume makers, designers, and people interested in identity and clothing. That can come in so many different forms, and that’s also the cool part. I don’t need to limit this company or us in any way. A private individual can come learn from us, just like a theatre company could, and it doesn’t have to be a gatekept thing. You don’t need to be interested in film or theatre to have access to it.

We all get dressed every day and make decisions about [out clothing] being publicly acceptable to wear outside, and that process can be shared with everybody and talked about more in depth.

Thank you so much for helping bring awareness to us and the knowledge we are trying to share!

Photos by and courtesy of Madeline Berger

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LAURA HUGHES

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Laura Hughes, PhD, is a writer, translator, bookseller, and educator. She is the author of the book Archival Afterlives (Northwestern University Press, 2023). Focusing on archive theory, media and sound studies, and creative partnership, her research has been published in scholarly journals and supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Institute for Citizens & Scholars. Laura grew up in Houston, received a BA from the University of Texas-Austin, an MA from the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at the Université de Paris 8 (Vincennes/Saint-Denis), and a PhD from New York University. After a decade of teaching literature, theory, art history, and cultural studies at New York University, she returned in 2021 to Houston, where she co-founded Basket Books & Art, a bookstore and art exhibition space, named after Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas’s poodle. She teaches in the Glassell School of Art and lives in Houston.

Photo Credit: Laura Hughes

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. It took place in October 2023.

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LAURA HUGHES GM: What were you doing before opening Basket Books & Art? LH: I was teaching at NYU as a visiting assistant professor and also got my PhD there. I was hoping to get a tenure-track job and enter academia in a very conventional way. But it became clear to me that that was just increasingly unlikely; waiting around for that to happen was becoming a risky endeavor. (Laughs) I think it’s really ironic in some ways that I realized that opening a bookstore and art gallery would be less of a risk than trying to stay on a traditional academic job path. I’m a writer of mostly scholarly texts, and I’m trying to transition out of that into more open-ended text, non-fiction, and essays.

GM: Alongside your husband, Edwin Smalling, you are co-founder and co-director of the bookstore.

Why did you two decide to go on this venture?

LH: I worked in a bookstore in Houston, Blue Willow Bookshop, when I was in high school. It’s owned by an amazing woman, Valerie Koehler, and it’s still here. She’s been an amazing, supportive presence in the Houston area as we’ve started this. My husband is an artist and has an MFA from Yale. We’ve been together for about fifteen years now and have always loved spaces that have combined books and art, because a lot of artists are readers too and draw from text in their practices. Likewise, people in the literary arts community are tapped into what’s happening in the visual and performing arts communities. We’ve been drawn to spaces where there was a creative acknowledgement of that, as well as overlap. This has been something that has been really important in our relationship too. We’re now raising our daughter, who’s four years old, so it’s important to show that to her too. The importance and the power of the arts, and also what we can do as individuals through a lot of hard work, dedication, and intention to community is something you can manifest.

Installation view of a flag by Center for Imaginative Cartography & Research (Emily Halbardier and Erik Sultzer) as part of CURRENTS (2023) at Basket Books & Art. Photo Credit: Alex Barber

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LAURA HUGHES

Interior of Basket Books & Art - shelves of books in literature, nature, science, poetry, and zines. Photo Credit: Laura Hughes

GM: How did Basket’s physical space come to fruition?

LH: [We’ve been open for] a little over a year and a half. It’s definitely been challenging, as we’re first-time business owners, [let alone] first time running a bookstore or a commercial art space. It’s been a huge, steep learning curve, and we’re still learning a lot! By no means would I have professed expertise. (Laughs) We realized that we were at a tipping point, where we knew enough, so we could start, and if we learned too much more, or if we spent enough time trying to learn too much more, then we might lose that sense of naivety and wistfulness. We didn’t want to get discouraged and not do it. For us, it was important to start doing it and figure out things as we went along. I think it’s been good in some ways, but quite willfully naïve to do that, so we’ve had to clean up some of our own messes as we’ve gone along. In general, it’s on track to be as successful as we expected through our business plan. In terms of the success of community involvement, support, and enthusiasm, it’s been off the charts successful. It’s been really thrilling to see and hear people who are happy that we’re here, so that’s always nice.

GM: How do the store’s operations run on your end - is it your full time job?

LH: I do all of the operations for the bookstore, including ordering, programming, and financial matters. With the art shows, I contribute writing to the press releases, marketing, and communications, [as well as] thinking about curation, what fits together, and how the flow of different shows needs to go. I was able to have more of a curatorial presence in CURRENTS, a group show which we had previously, and I was really excited about that and hope that I can continue in that way. I taught for a long time, and then I never really thought I would again. But this year, I’m starting to teach again in MFA Houston’s Glassell School of Art. They have an advanced program with a seminar component that I’m running now.

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LAURA HUGHES GM: In addition to being an independent bookstore, your space hosts art exhibitions, film screenings, and poetry readings. Why was it important to the both of you to feature a diverse array of programming?

LH: It’s important to have all of that because Houston is a place where all of the arts are just thriving.

We’re trying to diversify our programming so that eventually the crossovers between literary, performing, and visual arts could start to happen more organically. We’ve had a couple of events where we’ve had readings that have featured live, experimental music and a film screening. We’re really open to ideas from people in Houston’s arts communities, but we’re also trying to make those connections ourselves, either through partnerships with institutions that are big and small. We’ve had recent partnership events with the Aurora Picture Show, University of Houston’s Blaffer Art Museum, and Contemporary Art Museum Houston (CAMH). We’re also trying to connect a lot of big and small name underground, artist-run institutions and spaces in Houston.

GM: Since you have programming in so many different disciplines, how are you able to make sure each event compliments one another?

LH: The bookstore is in our downstairs area and upstairs is our exhibition space. We currently have Adam Marnie: The Red Show in the front and back rooms, and occasionally have separate exhibitions in the two spaces.

We’ve somewhat programmed ourselves into a bind.

We’re too busy! (Laughs) I feel like everyone is so excited about being able to program events again after so many years of uncertainty [due to COVID]. In the next year, we’re definitely going to slow down a bit on our programming. As for the space itself, we were quite lucky to have found it. It’s a beautiful space and was almost completely ready for us; we had to build the bookcases and set everything up, but it was mostly built out. The disadvantage is that there is an upstairs and downstairs – in terms of accessibility, it’s a big problem. But we do feature art downstairs, and usually there’s a little bit of a connection with the show upstairs. (Continued)

Film screening at Basket in partnership with Aurora Picture Show. Photo Credit: Laura Hughes

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LAURA HUGHES Right now, downstairs, we have a red piece on the wall that is Adam Marnie’s, and the Dani Levine painting on the wall behind me is from our previous show. So, we have art intermixed with the downstairs space, but our upstairs is dedicated to full shows. [There is an] advantage in that the upstairs does give a separate, dedicated space to exhibitions. A lot of the exhibitions we’ve done have an architectural awareness of thinking about what this space itself is like.

GM: As your roots are in Texas, what does it mean to you to have a space that contributes to Houston’s art and culture scene?

LH: We’ve conceived of this space as a portal where it works both ways. People who are living in Houston – artists, creative people, thinkers – can come here and have a sense of being [that is] connected to the intellectual and artistic world beyond Houston. People who visit Houston can come into the store and be immediately aware of the vibrancy of the Houston arts scene. We have a lot of local writers, illustrators, and artists who we feature in the store, and most of our events are local people who are celebrating something. It’s really amazing that almost all of our events are book launches for art books or poetry books. [The bookstore is] acting as a portal that really shows how Houston is a sophisticated, international, creative center, and a place where people can come together. We are a commercial place, but having exhibitions and showing work is not our sole goal -- we’re just open all the time. We’re a place where people can come hang out and just talk and connect in a really casual, familiar, friendly way. [….] There’s a lot of activity in Houston’s independent bookstore community.

(Continued)

(L-R): Artwork by Kate Mulholland, Dan Schmahl, Dani Levine, and Virginia L. Montgomery as part of CURRENTS (2023) at Basket Books & Art. Photo Credit: Alex Barber

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LAURA HUGHES

Installation view of Adam Marnie: The Red Show (2023) at Basket Books & Art. Photo Credit: Alex Barber After the pandemic, where people relied on Amazon as a connection to life and the world, and due to the horrible things that are happening in Texas as a whole and the Texas state legislature’s actions against independent bookstores and freedom of expression, it’s really important for bookstores to be spaces where you can go. You don’t have to buy anything! (Laughs) But you can go and see that these are the thoughts people are having and this is the world beyond Texas! There are a lot of really amazing things happening in the world that are unfortunately being suppressed in Houston, mainly in the schools and public discourse. There are still places where you can get that and have that in your life, and feel like you’re seen, heard, supported, and safe. The neighborhood that we’re in, Montrose, is a historically gay neighborhood. It’s changing a little bit, as gentrification flattens everything and wants to make it look the same. Neither my husband nor myself are queer or trans identifying, but that’s a really important thing for us, our lives, our friendships, and chosen family, and in the Houston arts communities. Having a lot of queer and trans supporting literature and theory is a focus in our store.

GM: Your book, Archival Afterlives: Cixous, Derrida, and the Matter of Friendship (2023), will be released in November – can you talk about what it’s about?

LH: [The book is] the culmination of my academic research and is about the friendship between two French contemporary writers and thinkers, Hélène Cixous and Jacques Derrida. A lot of people who know about the two of them tend to think of Cixous as a student of Derrida, putting his philosophy into practice. But they were actually much more collaborative than people realize. Their friendship and their work, [in which they] wrote about each other back and forth, really informed the way that they thought about their own archival collections and preserving their work for future generations. My book is about how do you preserve friendship beyond death – when one friend is no longer alive, how does the other friend take on the responsibility of continuing he friendship? It’s about the partnership between two people who had many differences but were committed to each other and their writing, especially around feminist and queer thinking.

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JACKIE IM

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Jackie Im is a curator based in Oakland, CA. She currently serves as the Associate Curator of the San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries and is also the co-founder of Et al. in San Francisco. Im has organized exhibitions at the Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art (SF), Queens Nails (SF), The Lab (SF), Important Projects (Oakland), Holiday Forever (Jackson Hole, WY), and SFAC Galleries. Her writing has appeared in Fillip Magazine, Art Practical, Curiously Direct, and various exhibition catalogues. She holds a BA in Art History from Mills College and an MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts.

Photo Credit: Soph Schultz Rocha

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. It took place in September 2023.

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JACKIE IM GM: What was your path to becoming a curator?

JI: I’m the youngest in my family, and there’s a pretty considerable age gap between myself and my next older sister. I was always kind of alone! (Laughs) I was always looking for ways to entertain myself, and one of those things I did was to draw. It was easy because there was always a pencil and a piece of paper somewhere in the house. My parents brought me a lot of art supplies because they noticed that I was drawing and painting, so there were always markers, crayons, and pastels in the house. I took art classes that were offered outside of school, and I later went to Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco. I finished my Bachelor’s degree at Mills College in Oakland, and I had the opportunity to take art history classes with Moira Roth, painting classes with Hung Liu, and sculpture with Anna Valentina Murch. While I was grateful to take studio art classes with these amazing professors, I didn’t know if I necessarily wanted to be an artist, or that there were things that I needed to say through my own art. While at Mills, I took a Museum Studies Workshop, which was initiated by the Mills Museum’s then director Stephan Jost, who is now at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto. [I gained] insight in realizing there were other things that I could do in the field that [didn’t require me to be] an artist. I got a work study job at the museum over the summers; Stephan was very committed in helping connect students with artists and assigning us hands-on work instead of gallery sitting and filing paperwork. We worked with collections and living artists who were building site specific installations. It was a really good way to learn curatorial work, and that was when I realized that this was the path I was interested in taking.

GM: You’re also Associate Curator of San Francisco’s Art Commission Galleries. How do you feel your curatorial practice has developed since you began your tenure there?

JI: I’ve been with SFAC for eight years; the Arts Commission is the municipal gallery for the city of San Francisco.

We try to be very cognizant of that fact, so we’re always thinking of ways to reflect the city’s population – who are the people of San Francisco, what are people interested in, and what issues are they facing? (Continued)

Installation view, Sowing World, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, December 9 - February 11, 2023. Photo

by Aaron Wojack

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JACKIE IM

Installation view, an idea of a boundary, San Francisco Arts Commission Main Gallery, September 22, 2017 - January 20, 2018.

Photography by Phillip Maisel

Sometimes you’re working with administrations that are more sensitive to certain issues, some more than others. [It’s about] taking in all this information and subtext and figuring out how we push to explore things that are challenging and feel relevant to what’s happening in the city. The way that my curatorial practice has developed while I’ve been there is that unlike when I was younger, I’m able to be more nimble or responsive to different audiences, what their needs are, and what they’re looking to say. We work with such a wide range of constituents, such as folks that come in with vastly different experiences with art galleries or people who have different expectations of what art can or should do. For a lot of folks that we’re reaching, it’s the first gallery that they’ve been to, so being really conscientious of that has been a big part of my growing as a curator.

GM: Alongside Aaron Harbour, you are Co-Founder and Co-Director of Et al. How did this space come to fruition, and what has been your experience running it?

JI: After Mills, I worked a day job for a while and I ended up going to get my MA in Curatorial Practice at California College for the Arts. In my last semester, I met Aaron, my husband and partner in the gallery.

Not long after I graduated, Aaron had noticed that his friend, Kevin Clarke, posted on Facebook looking for help organizing exhibitions in his storefront gallery, called MacArthur B. Arthur, on MLK and 40th Street in Oakland. Aaron reached out and we met with Kevin – we didn’t really know each other at the time, but he was so open to working together and to take this chance on two people who didn’t have a ton of experience in organizing exhibitions but were really excited to jump in. That was how Aaron and I started curating exhibitions together. We organized exhibitions at MacArthur B Arthur from 2010-2012, when Kevin decided to discontinue the gallery space. While we were organizing shows there, we had no idea about some of the logistics in running an art gallery. It was such a scrappy artist-run space and we really learned as we went. (Continued)

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JACKIE IM The openness to experimenting and just trying things that were just innate to Kevin really allowed us to play and invite artists who wanted to try things out with us. When MacArthur B. Arthur closed, Aaron and I organized shows at spaces around Oakland and San Francisco, but didn’t quite settle on any one space.

In 2012, we were invited to do a project booth at NADA Miami, and the funniest thing is that we didn’t know anything about doing an art fair. We went in completely green, and that was the first instance of Et al. beyond small local things. At the fair, we included the work of Facundo Argañaraz, who was interested in starting a gallery project. The three of us started talking about having a space, what it would look like, and what artists we would work with. At first, we thought we would have an office somewhere and do roving exhibitions all over the Bay Area, but Facundo found the basement in Chinatown where we eventually started. We kind of knew what were doing, but were also guessing. A lot of what we have learned about running a gallery has been learning by doing. We observe how other galleries are run and adapt these methodologies to what we do and in ways that feel right to us. We know a lot of artists and have heard some sometimes-sketchy things about other spaces and so we try to think through how can we run a space that feels good for us and drop practices that just don’t feel right.

GM: Can you provide any examples of what you wouldn’t do?

JI: We try to be really upfront with the artists that we work with and lead these relationships with honesty and trust. As an artist, to ship or deliver artwork that you may have spent a year or more working on is a big deal. We work really hard to make sure shows get seen, hopefully get written about, and ideally, place works within collections. But it doesn’t always happen, and I think we try do our best to express that with the people we work with. But we recognize that we’re far from perfect and are always trying to improve.

GM: How do you feel Et al. has contributed to San Francisco’s art gallery scene? Last August, The New York Times claimed that because two blue-chip galleries, Gagosian and Pace, had left the Bay Area, that the art scene out here is now dying. Pace wasn’t even in San Francisco, it was in Palo Alto, which is tough to get to without a car, and Gagosian was tucked away at a weird angle from SFMOMA. JI: I totally remember that article! [Those galleries] weren’t working with local artists in any real way.

GM: They didn’t seem to be that focused on artists from California as a whole -- it was weird. The shows also weren’t that exciting. But since that article came out, I feel like there’s been a rise in the commercial gallery scene out here, which has been really great to witness.

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JACKIE IM

Installation view, Kaleidoscope: Raydell Early, Faith Icecold, Alake Shilling, Et al. etc., May 26 - July 1, 2023. Courtesy of Et al.

JI: [Those galleries] didn’t make a real investment in the community here. I said, “It doesn’t matter. They helicoptered in and they’re going to helicopter out, like Silicon Valley.” There was this sense that there was a lot of money in tech, but they didn’t engage with the arts community here. When those galleries closed, it didn’t leave a void necessarily because they felt so disconnected with artists, curators, and other people who have a connection to the Bay Area.

Aaron and I both have day jobs, so we can function in a certain way with the gallery and work with people we’re really excited about, and not people whose work is kind of okay but we can sell a ton of it. That’s not what we’re interested in doing. In terms of being a part of the Bay Area community, we’re super excited to see all of these new spaces opening up. Places like Berkeley Art Center are going from one generation and passing it on to a new generation. We’re both really interested in supporting local spaces – this is our home! I’m from San Francisco and grew up in the Bay Area, so I want the arts community here to succeed. We also want to share our resources. Traditionally in the broader and commercial art world, things can get competitive and weird, and we’re just not interested in that. If somebody needs pedestals or needs to borrow a projector, we have that. There was one installation where we realized our drill died, and we had to run over to House of Seiko to borrow a drill from there! (Laughs) [It’s good to be able] to say, “I got your back!”

Installation view, Breathing House, Et al., September 10 - October 14, 2023. Andrew Sung Taek Ingersoll, Untitled (16 tuned chairs tapping @ 3rpm), 2023. Found and modified wooden chairs, custom steel hardware, dc motors, wires, solder, modified cast iron weights. Courtesy of the Artist.

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JACKIE IM GM: What are you currently working on, including any upcoming plans for Et al.?

JI: There’s always things moving at Et al.! (Laughs) We have a lot of shows lined up through this year and a lot of things that are locking in for next year, which is really exciting. In early December, we’re going to open a two person show in our Mission Street space with Minami Kobayashi. We discovered her online during COVID and became interested; we put her in an online group show that we curated for Arts of Life in Chicago. She’s a really great painter who is from Japan but currently based in London, and so we’re doing a two-person show with her and Adrianne Rubenstein, who was in San Francisco for graduate school and is now in New York. She was actually in our second show ever at Et al. in Chinatown. At the time, she wasn’t super excited about being an artist. We thought her paintings were really good and included her work in the show, and we’ve been in touch with her over the past ten years. When we reached out about doing this show – we know she’s a big fan of Minami’s work – she was super excited and worked it out with her schedule. It’s exciting to come back to someone we haven’t worked with in a while but are still really interested in their work, and to work with someone else who is fairly new to us! We have a bookstore too and it’s given us a chance to do tons of events with poets and authors, both local and from further afield. I’m also the curator for the 2024 Portland Biennial – that opens next May, so that’s the big project that I’ve been working on.

I’ve been going up to Portland a lot and doing studio visits with artists for the past year. This fall will really be about bringing the show into focus and I’m really excited to see how the artists we invite develop their work.

Installation view, Castings, Et al., February 26 - April 2, 2022. Dionne Lee, Untitled copy of an improvised stretcher, 2022. Cotton dyed with marigold, wood, rocks, dandelion heads. Courtesy of the Artist.

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CALLIE JONES & JULIA LI

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Callie Jones previously served as a Director at Skarstedt and Fergus McCaffrey Gallery in New York and at Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco. For the past decade, Callie has developed close relationships with numerous private collectors, artists, and institutions, working both domestic and international fairs including Art Basel, Frieze London, TEFAF Maastricht, among others.

Julia Li previously served as the inaugural Director of Inclusion and Belonging at the Asian Art Museum, where she developed and implemented the museum's first diversity, equity, access and inclusion strategy. Julia is dedicated to championing underserved voices and artists with powerful stories to tell. She is also the founder of Create Space Generator, a nonprofit creative entrepreneurship incubator.

Photo Credit: Zabrina Deng (From L-R): Callie Jones, Julia Li

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. It took place in October 2023.

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CALLIE JONES & JULIA LI GM: Can the both of you talk about your individual backgrounds in the arts?

CJ: Since I was a little girl, I always knew I wanted to work with artists. I loved visiting museums and was enamored by paintings. I interned at the Rachofsky House in Dallas as a teenager, ran a small gallery during college, and started working at galleries in New York as soon as I graduated. It was always a dream to open my own space and I’m extremely grateful to have the opportunity to now do so!

JL: I was born in Shanghai and moved to St. Louis at a young age. Living between two worlds and identities was a whirlwind. Art transported me into a space of comfort, connection, and belonging no matter where I physically was. I went on to study painting and received my BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. My love for artists led me to found Create Space, a nonprofit dedicated to creative entrepreneurship, and previously serve as the inaugural Director of Inclusion and Belonging for the Asian Art Museum. I’m thrilled to start COL Gallery and continue our dream of supporting artists.

GM: How did the two of you meet and eventually decide to begin a partnership?

CJ: I met Julia after I relocated to San Francisco from New York this past year, as she was working at the Asian Art Museum. We connected immediately and it was clear that we shared similar values and outlooks on life and the art world. We really wanted to build a space focused on empathetic communication, long term relationships, honesty, and transparency, all of which are unfortunately often lacking in this field.

Photo by and courtesy of Zabrina Deng

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CALLIE JONES & JULIA LI

Installation view of Belonging at COL Gallery (September - October 2023). Photo by and courtesy of Philip Maisel GM: This September, you both opened COL Gallery. How did this space come to fruition?

CJ: Opening a new space is always a risk. There is a huge amount of competition now globally, as the art world has expanded exponentially since I started working in it. But we both really craved an artist's first space, which for us even starts with the name, COL Gallery, named in honor of Richard Nonas, who was an incredible sculptor that I had the great pleasure of working with for many years.

JL: Given Ghirardelli Square’s purposeful design as a community center – and as it is the home of Ruth Asawa’s first public work – the location immediately appealed to us. We hope to create a space for makers to gather – painters and writers and creators – those interested in the arts and apprehensive about entering it. If our space does that, then for us, it will be a success.

GM: Why was it important to the both of you to establish a contemporary art space in the Bay Area?

CJ: I was always fascinated by the Bay Area, having written my thesis on Jay DeFeo and after reading a good deal of Beat poetry and writing growing up. California, of course, has captured the imaginations of so many. San Francisco in particular has always attracted people for its tolerance, and as being a city that prides itself on individual and aesthetic freedom. I really believe that people underestimate the Bay Area, especially right now. There is an enthusiastic, knowledgeable collector base here, museums with incredible collections and visions, and artists eager to be given platforms to show their work – work that is relevant to an international discourse. We are grateful to be a part of the long, rich lineage of creatives in the Bay and hope to continue pushing it forward in some small way.

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CALLIE JONES & JULIA LI GM: COL’s inaugural show, Becoming, features ten femme artists who exhibited paintings and sculpture. What was this show about?

CJ: I was always fascinated by the diaristic nature of abstraction; if you could strip the object from its maker, what does that mean? We built the show around that idea. For me, everything we do is uniquely tied to who we are, which is a really beautiful thing – that we all have the capacity to leave our individual marks on the world. So even though these artists work in abstraction, their practices are intimately tied to their personal experiences, considerations, complications, and aspirations, and I just love that. It shows how complicated we all are, that you can take the idea of “abstraction” and everyone has a different view of what it looks like.

GM: What are your upcoming plans for COL Gallery?

JL: We are very excited to be presenting Lily Alice Baker’s works at the end of October. She is an insanely talented London based painter and it will be her first show here on the West Coast. She draws on both AbEx and the history of figurative painting and explores gender and performativity, and we fell in love with her work immediately.

CJ: In December, we are showing the photographs of Jan Meissner in her first California exhibition. Over the past two years, using a long-range lens, she has worked at night from her Manhattan rooftop, capturing fragments of life inside of distant windows. I own and live with a few of her images and always dreamed of showing them if I opened my own space. In January, we are showing the paintings of Francisco Moreno, a Dallas based artist who is a dear friend. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to show a new body of his work. His technical facility is unmatched and the way he renders his imagined worlds really draws the viewer in. This is done in such a way that

Photo by and courtesy of Zabrina Deng

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you constantly want to come back to them and see what you might have missed at first glance.

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NOVEMBER 2023

VOLUME 3, ISSUE 3

GIRLS MAGAZINE

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP