Fabrika Look Book by Lisa Williams

FABRIKA Published on the occasion of FABRIKA, May 5-June 23, 2013 at Court Square, an exhibition featuring collaborations by:

Travis Boyer Paul Branca + Jeannine Han JAM Archives Presents with April Chambers + Marley Freeman Julia Sherman Saira McLaren

court square 21-44 45th Ave #2

LIC, NY, 11101

www.ctsq.info

COLLECTION: 8.

FABRIKA Lisa Hayes Williams/CTSQ 36.

THEIR COMBINATION IS SPECTACULAR Thomas Bayrle

38. JAM ARCHIVES PRESENTS April Chambers & Marley Freeman 50. 5 MINUTE FACTORY Mary Walling Blackburn 56.

FROM PAINTING CANVAS TO PRINTING CLOTH O.M. Brik

57. SANS DOUCHE ATELIER Jeannine Han 60.

LE VOLTAIRE Joris-Karl Huysmans

62.

CAROLYN Julia Sherman

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THE FIRST SOVIET EXHIBITION OF NATIONAL TEXTILES A. Fedorov-Davydov

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MATERIAL AS METAPHOR Annie Albers

70. GENE VANDYKE IN CONVERSATION / PORTFOLIO Jonathan VanDyke 90.

FABRIC / PAINTING Roberto Calasso

92.

HOW A TEXAS POSTAL WORKER BECAME AN HERMÉS SCARF DESIGNER NPR

102. IN SEARCH FOR LOST MEMORIES Daisy Nam with Donna Huanca 116. RECOMMENDED READINGS

FABRIKA "Alone and together we embroidered, wove, painted, and pasted static, geometric pictures." Hans Arp / Sophie Taeuber

When they met at Zurichʼs Galerie Tanner in the fall of 1915, at an exhibition of Hans Arpʼs recent painted and woven abstractions, Arp and Sophie Taeuber had each been working in art and textiles for some time. Taeuber had been enrolled at craft schools in St. Gall and Hamburg, and had studied in the textile workshop of the Lehr- und Versuchsatelier für angewandte und freie Kunst (Teaching and Experimental Studios for Applied and Fine Art) in Munich, while earning a living producing hand-crafted work and painting portraits and still lifes. Arp, who studied painting in Weimar and Paris and was involved in avant-garde circles, had begun making small wool embroideries in 1914, a gesture made, in part, against traditional easel painting. Drawn together by a mutual interest in "structures of lines, surfaces, forms, and colors” as well as collaborative processes that gave agency to rethinking established paradigms of creative authorship, value, and production, Taeuber and Arp partnered in what ultimately became a lifelong project of making “an anonymous and collective art.”1 While still producing distinct works of their own, the two engaged in intense periods of collaboration from 1916 until the late 1930s, making collages and embroideries that they called “duo-collages,” “duo-drawings,” and later, dessins à quatre mains, or “drawings for four hands.” Alternating between geometric linearity and biomorphic shapes in works like Stoff Plastik (Textile Sculpture), 1918, and Pathetische Symmetrie (Pathetic Symmetry), 1918, Taeuber and Arp employed their own individual styles or playfully mimicked each othersʼ, sharing formal vocabularies and strategies of production such that the authorʼs hands were rendered all but indiscernible. In so doing, the collaborators established a model of relationality in which discrepancies between the artistic 1 Hans Arp, "And So the Circle Closed" (1948), in Arp on Arp, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Viking Press, 1972), 245.

identities of a woman and a man, of fine and applied art, of order and chance, of abstraction and figuration, could be transcended or cast into doubt. As might be true of any creative partnership, they related in terms of “an ideal community in which, they hoped, other artists would eventually participate.”2 Following this line, or thread, of thought, Fabrika gathers a group of artists and textile makers working in various modes of experimental collaboration, and considers how formal, material, and ideological terms typically associated with these discrete practices transform through collaborative processes. Alluding to the word fabric, the title translates in several languages to factory, locating our inquiry from ʻstudioʼ to ʻindustrialʼ collaborative production between artist, designer, weaver, or machine. Its early Latin roots, fabricare, means to “make, fashion, construct, or build,” but also “to fit together,” as in the weaving of two or more creative practices. And why collaborate? In Fabrika, partnerships are inspired as much by common interests as by chance, curiosity, convenience, or even survival and the search for an “ideal” community. For Arp and Taeuber, the media of embroidery, weaving, painting, and collage possessed metaphoric significance for their conceptual and physical processes as models of both Zusammenarbeit (working together) and Verzweigung (branching out). Fabrika takes a view towards this paradoxical condition of collaboration, in which oneʼs individual practice and production are at once diminished and in excess of what could possibly be accomplished on oneʼs own. What results from these indeterminate and playful processes are the works that remain, standing or hanging or lying on view, as patterns or diagrams of exchange. * The weaving of art and textiles shuttles in and out of spaces from studio and gallery to factory and storefront. Whether through intimate cooperation of “four hands” in the production of unique gestures, or through engagement with industrial production for mass consumption, these strategies offer means of refiguring terms of authorship, value, labor, production, and display via material and aesthetic "structures of lines, surfaces, forms, and colors.” As elaborated in recent and distant history, the very conception and construction of textiles and art as “ideological goods” embody forms of creative and social consciousness.3 During their activity from 1919 to 1933, for instance, artists of the Bauhaus established partnerships with 2 Renée R. Hubert, “Collaboration as Utopia: Sophie Taeuber & Hans Arp,” in Magnifying Mirrors: Women, Surrealism, and Partnership (Wisconsin: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 36. 3 Aleksei Fedorov-‐Davydov, Soviet Textiles for Daily Life (Moscow: Higher Technical Institute, 1928).

industry so as to extend artistic involvement into every phase of production, from concept to design, to accounting and distribution. Elevating fine, applied, and industrial art to equal rank, they endeavored to unify artistic practice more “holistically” with everyday life. Taking a comparatively independent position, but likewise asserting textile design to be integral and equal to her artistic oeuvre, painter Sonia Delaunay founded the Casa Sonia (1919) in Spain and the Boutique Simultané (1925) in France as commercial outposts for her designs. In concert with her avant-garde practice, she collaborated with the textile design firm, Metz & Co., in the production of over two hundred textile designs that patterned apparel, domestic fabrics, and architectural spaces internationally. Concurrently, Russian Constructivist artists and the directors of Soviet textile design firms, Varvara Stepanova and Lyubov Popova, promoted a shift from floral and iconographic textile designs associated with the pre-revolutionary Russian bourgeoisie, to geometric patterns that ostensibly bore no class association, and whose “egalitarian” motifs were thought more fitting for the new proletariat. Their fabric swatches look much like the geometric abstractions that populate galleries and storefronts today. Against the richly textured backdrop of historical collaboration, Fabrikaʼs inquiry as exhibition, project, and catalogue, is however most significantly informed and inspired by contemporary practitioners of art and textile design. Participants include Travis Boyer, Paul Branca, April Chambers, Jeannine Han, Marley Freeman, Julia Sherman, and Saira McLaren, as well as those with whom they have worked and collaborated, too great a number to name here, but mentioned throughout this catalogue. An open-ended experiment, Fabrika invites these artists and textile designers to collaborate in a dialogue of making and displaying. Here, discrete realms of production take the other on, unraveling or weaving more tightly the ties between them. For JAM Archives, painter Marley Freeman and textile designer April Chambers present a restaging of their participation in Print Source, a 2012 convention organized for the promotion and sale of textile designs to commercial industry. Comprised of drawn, painted, or printed pattern swatches created by over twenty-five artists, designers, friends, and colleagues who had been invited to participate, JAM Archives operated as a kaleidoscopic exhibition/gallery/retail outlet that continues its circulation of patterns here at Court Square for the duration of Fabrika. Travis Boyerʼs installation likewise threads through artistic, commercial, and domestic spaces of production and circulation. Like many of his paintings, Boyerʼs shoes, Palm Beach Pythons, are stained and splashed with pigment on velvet. The product of a

collaboration with Stubbs & Wootten, and worn in a performance by Matthew Lutz-Kinoy at the Stedelijk Museum, here they step into another context of display, marked like coordinates on the wall with corresponding switch plate covers, constellating around a silk painting. Here, Boyerʼs work indexes phases or stages of collaboration that culminate in discrete and choreographed gestures, like dance moves. Julia Shermanʼs Room-A-Loom is the first of a series of weavings that, as its title suggests, transform the architecture of a room into a functioning loom and that is produced by a public audience who are invited to gather materials and contribute to the collaborative textile. Made at Workspace in North East Los Angeles, the project was later recreated using Shermanʼs how-to manual at artist-run spaces including Copy Gallery in Philadelphia, SEA Change Gallery in Portland, Cairo in Seattle, Goonies in Vancouver, and Swimming Pool in Chicago. Each weaving became a narrative of the material culture of its community and environs. Likewise engaging the tenuous ambiguity and interweaving of textile, art, and object, Paul Branca and Jeannine Han mix vocabularies of painting and textile design as if ingredients or snacks, in metaphysical arrangements of gradient-laden farfalle pasta, cookies, and coffee that transform from object to pattern and painting and back. The ruffle, zipper, the marbledmottled surface conjure dress but also place, as in their Bar Gatto, paired together with a frothy Cappuccino. While Fabrika culminates primarily from these collaborative permutations, the exhibitionʼs conception stems both from the work of these artists and designers, as well as from the work of artist Saira McLaren, who on the occasion of this show occupies an auxiliary space for the development of a special project. Having shifted from paint to fabric dye in the production of her textile-like canvases, McLaren considers the Inuit culture of her native Canada and their belief in the shape-shifting and transformative power of fabric and costumes upon the object or person adorned. Here, this notion is merged with contemporary design and studio practice, as McLaren employs the same fabric ground to create both painting and “drapery” that, installed together, conflate terms of “fine” and “applied” art, underscoring and neutralizing their discrepancies at once. Finally, putting to practice Zusammenarbeit and Verzweigung (working together/branching out), this catalogue/Look Book extends the exhibition onto an ephemeral platform of image and text by participants and contributors. Herein a collection of writings and portfolios, interviews and

documentation expands our engagement of diverse perspectives and collaborative positions taken in the making of art and textiles. Contents include contributions by Court Square, JAM Archives with April Chambers and Marley Freeman, Mary Walling Blackburn, Jeannine Han, Julia Sherman, Gene and Jonathan VanDyke, Daisy Nam and Donna Huanca, as well as quotes, articles, and images that continue to inform a kind of research and inquiry towards our subject. Marking Court Squareʼs second anniversary, we are pleased to celebrate an exhibition that engages the very nature of partnerships, community, and the underweaving and overweaving of ideas and actions, and are grateful to all those who have had a hand in its making.

LHW / CTSQ NYC, May 2013

Travis Boyer Paul Branca + Jeannine Han JAM Archives Presents with April Chambers + Marley Freeman Julia Sherman Saira McLaren

Travis Boyer

Paul Branca + Jeannine Han

Julia Sherman

JAM Archives Presents with April Chambers + Marley Freeman

Saira McLaren

THEIR COMBINATION IS SPECTACULAR Thomas Bayrle Forty years ago when I started talking about weaving in relation to art, people were completely unwilling to follow this idea beyond discussions of technique and skill. At that point it was almost blasphemy to connect meditative feelings with the mechanic world of machines, to have the desire to try to link the rhythm of your self and your body with the automated machine rhythms. However, this was how I felt after I had been an apprentice at a weaving factory, and at that time I didnʼt realize how valuable this expertise would turn out to be years later, as a metaphor in my work… While standing in the weaving factory, day after day, hour after hour, I sank deep into this undergrowth of warp and weft myself. I kind of melted away. Yeah – especially when I felt tired, I was immersed in this endless reinforcement of millions of crossovers and crossunders that make any average fabric consistent… When I was at the factory I intended to be a patternmaker, not a printer. But that was soon about to change…In spite of that I never forgot the reality of the canvasʼ construction, of what carries the paint. Many people who paint on canvas never think about what is underneath. While standing at the loom, I tried with my gaze to dive into the structure of the canvas itself. Even if later on as a printer, I would work one millimeter “on the first floor above” the woven structure, I always tried to be in organic correspondence with the structure beneath…and in this way the printed form seemed to turn out differently. The structural view was an entrance

into a fantasy or hallucination that reached further, and in which the finished product – the fabric – came to represent wholeness, and ensemble, a society or collective. The single thread stood for a sort of individuality, with the implication that the ʻsocialʼ fabric is made up of individuals who are woven together, but cannot move. They are bound up with each other... Oneʼs lonely craziness is important. You shouldnʼt let collective euphoria carry you away, the way a lot of activity in 1968 got carried away by its own movement. You must allow space for personal adventures to unfold, social networks, and ideas to come together in their many layers. Their combination is spectacular. With Lars Bang Larsen, Iʼve a Feeling Weʼre Not in Kansas Anymore, 2008 (excerpt)

JAM ARCHIVES PRESENTS

Cover Page A. Collaboration April Chambers and Marley Freeman, photos by Travis Boyer

with Marley Freeman & April Chambers

Group One A. Sophy Naess 1. Mary Walling Blackburn 2. Essye Klempner 3. Progressive Wave 4. Micaela Zahner 5. Progressive Wave 6. Sophy Naess 7. Leigh Forsstrom 8. Leigh Forsstrom

Group Two A. James Gillispie 1. Leigh Ruple 2. Cat Balco 3. Beka Goedde 4. Aoife Ludlow 5. Caitlin Keogh 6. Caitlin Keogh 7. Beka Goedde

Group Three A. Yonatan Zonszein 1. Andrew Holmquist 2. Andrew Holmquist 3. Yonatan Zonszein 4. Lukas Geronimas 5. Emily Neal 6. Emily Neal 7. April Chambers 8. Peter Mandradjieff

Group Four A. April Chambers 1. Ben Pritchard 2. Textile Artifacts/ Paul Freeman 3. Arla Bascom 4. Oyama Enrico Isamu Letter 5. James Gillispie 6. Oyama Enrico Isamu Letter 7. Ben Pritchard 8. Emily Neal Back A. Sara Magenheimer

MARY WALLING BLACKBURN Original Title of Work: 5 Minute Factory

Original title of work: 5 Minute Factory Produced in response to Temporary Services newspaper on Artist and Work in this Recession The animating question of their paper: How do artists survive in a recession? Despite this, they neither reserved/nor raised funding to pay the contributors. All wrote for free.

Domy Books, in association with Temporary Services, presented "Art Work: A National Conversation About Art, Labor, and Politics" on Friday, January 22, 2009 at Domy Books, Austin. Event organized by Kate Watson and Claire Ruud and Circulatory System. Claire and Kate asked me if I had something to say about artists' economies and would be interested in being on this panel. "Can I do a performance, can I make the audience work for me free since I am always, as an artist, being asked to make work, well, for free?" Kate and Claire said yes. At the end of the panel discussion led by Brett Bloom, I turned the audience into, well, sex workers. Below is a transcript of the event, from memory, 18 days later.

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Approximate Transcript for "5 Minute Factory, Man" You are all here tonight because you support the arts. You are all here because you want to do whatever you can do to support the arts. In fact, you are eager too. Great. I'm here to support the arts here too. For Free. Given this, I'm pretty sure you are all willing to do what you can do to help me right now. I'm here. to. tell. you: All of you are my workers- working for art- and you are working for free. This will be my 5 minute Factory. For 5 minutes you will work for me. For Free. [Hands out scraps of paper and pencils] The person handing out that paper to you, right now, works for me. For free. [People are instructed to make a fast list of women and men they admire in the public realm]. You have one minute. Get to it. It's my time. [People are writing] You are working for me right now. No texting. [laughter] No phone calls. My Time.

OK. Time's up.

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[Gathers lists] Next task. [Workers have another sheet of paper and pencil] Draw as many cock and balls as you can on this sheet of paper in the next minute. [gestures to woman to her right] She's timing you. Keep drawing these cock and balls. As many as you can. Keep production up. This is my time. You have no Health Insurance, just so you know what you don't have. [laughter] Keep working. You can't unionize. This is my factory. OK. Time's up. Day's half over. Lunch break Oh! Lunch break is over. Get to work.

Turn your piece of paper over For one more minute draw as many vaginas and vulvas as you can. Fill the page. Vulvas AND Vaginas Keep at it.

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Do not slow the pace. This is my factory, man. My sweatshop. Break Break Over.

Last Minute. [Lists with the names of the publicly admired are re-distributed to crowd/workers]

Now, select a female name from the list and give it to those cock and balls. Name those Cock and Balls after that admired woman. That is a drawing of her cock and balls. [Susan B Anthony's Cock and Balls reads one drawing. Gertrude Stein's Cock and Balls reads another] Now hand that paper to the person to your right. Select a man's name from the list to give to those vulvas and vaginas. [Obama's vagina reads many drawings. My Dad's Vulva.] OK, pass them all up to the front. [one woman is ripping hers into bits]

Because they are all mine. For Free. You worked for me For Free. Because it's Art. Thank you. _________

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Postscript: Afterwards, I dropped my harsh factory boss countenance and explained that I feel very tenderly towards the establishments that have asked me to write for them without payment, have invited me to perform for free, or have selected me talk without compensation because they are respected, smart, important cultural outfits with little funding. But how am I supposed to pay for the dentist, I asked. Later, this was performed again, without payment of myself or the audience, as part of a group show, class, organized by Jennifer Dalton and William Powhida in NYC. But to endlessly repeat this factory performance did not communicate the reach of my exploitation. The project could only be completed by the sale of the work created by my unpaid laborers. JAM Archives was part of the solution. At a textile trade show, they offered prints (woodcut and lino) made from these stolen drawings. The colors of the prints ere selected based on the hues Pantone had announced as the industry colors of 2013. If the print is purchased by a buyer through JAM Archives, I will no longer have the right to reproduce the image. It will solely belong to the buyer who can reproduce it any form the buyer sees fits. These cocks and pussies could decorate dishtowels, surface as upholstery on couches, be burned into leather handbags...their right.

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FROM PAINTING CANVAS TO PRINTING CLOTH O.M. Brik Why then is a certain art fundamental with regards to another? Why does painting a still life have to be more important than producing a lightweight printed cotton…. One of the main points about production art, and how the object looks, is that it is determined by its economic destination and not by abstract or aesthetic considerations, and this is still not sufficiently appreciated by our industrialists, for whom it seems, the artist wanting to go deeply into the ʻeconomic secretsʼ of the object, is interfering in things which have nothing to do with him. Hence applied art is an inevitable result of the existing split between the artist and production. And this split makes the artist, who does not receive the necessary economic directives, slip, whether he wishes or not, towards creating esoteric designs. What consequences need to be overcome? Firstly, to overcome the split! Firstly, toward the union of artist with the factory! Lef, 1924, 2(6), 27-34 (excerpt)

SANS DOUCHE ATELIER Jeannine Han Jeannine Han is a textile artist situated in New York, where she can usually be found in her Sans Douche Atelier, working on multi-disciplinary projects in textiles, costume, fashion, visual art, design and sound. Originally from the Bay Area, she recently moved to NY from Sweden, after completing an MFA degree in Textiles and a guest studies program in fine art at The Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. She formed a conceptual textile studio with her partner Dan Riley, facilitating artist-run workshops, commissioned projects, and housing Subject––Object which consists of developing long-lasting textiles for interior spaces and clothing that can be worn for self-fashioning identities or whatever else. In her leisure time you will find her looking at art and cooking with friends. Her work for Fabrika is in collaboration with Paul Branca, a painter who works in the subject of abstract art. She finds the collaborative process inspiring in art-making as it allows her to engage in critical discourse, expanding vocabulary in aesthetic principles, and the growing of friendships through shared experiences.

Websites www.sub-ob.com www.scisci.org/han

LE VOLTAIRE Joris-Karl Huysmans

The modern painter…is an excellent couturier. Le Voltaire, 1879

CAROLYN Julia Sherman

We are destined to carry our artwork with us, the intuitive paintings we did as a child, the earnest works from our early twenties, and the pieces we are struggling with in the present moment. Literal and metaphorical baggage, these objects and ideas moor our present identities to our former selves, for better or worse, and guide us in a lifetime of making. Carolyn Potter has taught weaving at the Barnsdall Art Center in Los Angeles for over fifteen years.1 In 2008, I signed up for her Saturday morning class, “Weaving on the Loom.” The class attracts an eclectic mélange of students; there are the regulars who return to the course with religious fervor, and there are those who sign-up and promptly disappear in search of a more accessible hobby (it takes an entire semester just to get your warp properly set-up on the loom). But for Carolyn, making has no beginning or end, because one project necessarily begets the next; she does not distinguish between craft and fine art, nor does she make a distinction between the immersive, vaginal sculptures and installations she made in the 1970s and the tiny polymer clay goddess figurines, or the little nudibranchs2 she crochets these days.3 1 Carolyn helped me conceive of my collaborative weaving project, A Room-‐A Loom, on view a Court Square May 2013 as part of Fabrika. The weaving in the show was made in my artist-‐run space in Los Angeles, WorkSpace in 2008. It has been in my parents’ storage unit ever since. 2 A nudibranch is a member of Nudibranchia, a group of soft-‐bodied, marine gastropod mollusks which shed their shell after their larval stage. They are noted for their often extraordinary colors and striking forms. 3 The nudibranchs are the result of her in-‐depth study of the marine creatures’ elaborate decoration, and her interest in their hermaphroditic versatility, and each one is meticulously fashioned out of yarn. She notes that though she prefers them shown as sculptures resting on hollow gourds, she is not opposed to their being repurposed as small hats, or epaulettes for instance.

Carolyn is a glutton for material: clay, gourds, fabric, yarn, plaster, cement, mosaic, autobondo... She rescues every scrap of her capricious studentsʼ wasted fabric and yarn -- a continuous feed to the ceiling-high piles of fabric, indigenous weavings and embroideries in nearly every room of her home. It makes one wonder if such intrigues lie behind the doors of all of the cookie-cutter, putty colored, suburban homes that line her block in Burbank, California. Carolyn is more preservationist than hoarder; if only she were immortal, every last thread would be put to good use. Carolyn received her MFA in Fiber Arts from UCLA in 1970. She became a master weaver and an experimental installation artist, creating large-scale fiber installations of the sort that are echoed in the work of artists 40 years her junior. While she was stretching the limits of her medium, she was also working anonymously on-spec for a commercial weaving studio, producing small woven swatches for corporate clients looking for decorative wall-hangings to adorn their offices and vestibules. When Carolyn talks about this commercial work, she is equally as excited as when she talks about her own projects, though she has no images of the pieces she made, nor did their owners ever know it was she who had made them. Four years passed before I recently reconnected with Carolyn in her home, where, at my behest, she unearthed a sculpture from her UCLA thesis exhibition entitled, Clitoris #1. She has kept this large sculpture in a plastic shopping bag for 43 years, which came as no surprise as I watched her individually wrap and pack each pocket-sized goddess sculpture she was making by the light of a dentistʼs fluorescent lamp in her living room. We took Clitoris #1 outside to the front stoop to get a better look at it. She flopped it on the ground with a coy smile. She was not at all precious about it, but handled the piece with the manner of someone who is being reconnected with a childhood friend. I asked her what happened to the subsequent clitorii in the series, to which she responded, “I never got around to that, but I think my recent crocheted nudibranchs are the next in that series.”

THE FIRST SOVIET EXHIBITION OF NATIONAL TEXTILES A. Fedorov-Davydov Among the diverse applied arts, textile design is one of the most important. As a kind of primary necessity, millions of meters of fabric are produced annually in our country and find their way into even the most remote areas, populated more by bears than anything else, and into the houses of the most backward of people. As one of the primary necessities, marketable in the city and in the countryside, textiles were among the first things from the new culture to reach the most solitary and far-flung regions. Machine made fabrics tended to overshadow home made materials which as a rule were created, thanks to the servile or semi-servile work of women, and this they introduced an element of change into the closed circle of subsistence, and cleared the way for industrializations and a progressive urban culture. From this it is clear that textile design is entitled to play an enormous part in transforming old tastes and breaking old aesthetic habits and traditions (together with the ideological rules so deeply rooted in them) and it is a vehicle for a new culture and a new ideology. It responds, even if in a slightly unusual way, to the use of textile products in an urban environment and to the role they play in the organization of a new ideology in the minds of the proletariat and working classes. An Introduction to the First Soviet Exhibition of National Textiles, Moscow, 1928 (excerpt)

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MATERIAL AS METAPHOR Anni Albers Now material, any material, obeys laws of its own, laws recognizably given to it by the reigning forces of nature or imposed by us on those materials that are created by our brain, such as sound, words, colors, illusions of space – laws of old or newly invented. We may follow them or oppose them, but they are guidelines, positive or negative…. How do we choose our specific material, our means of communication? “Accidentally.” Something speaks to us, a sound, a touch, hardness, or softness; it catches us and asks us to be formed. We are finding our language, and as we go along we learn to obey their rules and their limits. We have to obey, and adjust those demands. Ideas flow from it to us and though we feel to be the creator we are involved in a dialogue with our medium. The more subtly we are tuned to our medium, the more inventive our actions become. Not listening to it ends in failure… In my case, it was threads that caught me, really against my will. To work with threads seemed sissy to me. I wanted something to be conquered. But circumstances held me to threads and they won me over. I learned to listen to them and to speak their language. I learned the process of handling them. And with the listening came…another medium, graphics. Threads were no longer as before three-dimensional; only their resemblance appeared drawn or printed on paper.

What I had learned in handling threads, I now used in the printing process. Again I was led. My prints are not transfers from paintings to color on paper, as is the usual way. I worked with the production process itself, mixing various media, turning the screensâ&#x20AC;Ś What I am trying to get across is that material is a means of communication. The listening to it, not dominating it, makes us truly active, that is: to be active, be passive. The finer tuned we are to it, the closer we come to art. February 25, 1982 (excerpt)

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GENE VANDYKE, ED.D., in conversation with Jonathan VanDyke I grew up in the Pennsylvania countryside, but my early life was by no means pastoral: my father, a lifelong artist and progressive art educator, envisioned the early education of my brother and I as an opportunity for broad artistic experimentation. Together my parents guided us through the making of felt, paper, rugs, inflatables, baskets, wall hangings. Movement among forms was not only encouraged but expected: at one point I made a loose, abstract watercolor painting and translated it into a methodically-organized latch hook rug, a method of translation that re-emerges in my current work. As I experienced art, no clear division was made between the mastering of creative tasks and the creation of the home – the upholstering of furniture, the sewing of clothes and curtains, even ironing (one of my chores from a young age) were presented seamlessly alongside more loosely creative projects. It was later that institutions – museums, and schools – offered me an ideology of formal separation, of media and methods organized into departments and modalities. Of course, there were exceptions – the masterful fiberwork of Claire Ziesler, which I saw as a boy in a group show at the Corcoran Museum, struck me as an otherworldly, yet everyday object that has haunted me into my adult years. Was it the hardcore, pro-corporate privatization begun in the late 80's, in tandem with the rise of the commodity-driven art marketplace – as well as the increasing force of MOMAstyle departmentalization – that cauterized boundaries among high and low, degrading an openness about making and process into jokes about macramé? While seeking to make work that undoes such boundaries, I asked my father to describe an earlier era and his work with fibers. – Jonathan VanDyke

Gene VanDyke, Gee Honey, You Look Like a Real Doll Tonight, 1989

When did you first start working with fibers, woven materials, and felt? Were you instructed in these methods, or did you teach yourself? As a young college grad and new teacher my own work was in the area of my degree concentrations; painting and metals design. I was producing a lot of work and saw both areas as fine arts or sometimes the politically correct terminology separated the work into fine art (painting) and fine crafts (metals). But all the crafts areas were coming to the forefront of the contemporary art scenes. The American Crafts Museum in New York City was elevating the crafts into “fine crafts” and/or “fine arts.” Outside of New York City, Peter Voulkos was making and exhibiting highly creative clay pieces, Marilyn Levine was making clay pieces in a trompe lʼoeil style that was indistinguishable from leather and fibers, Kenneth Beittel, ceramic professor at Pennsylvania State University (my undergraduate alma mater) took a sabbatical to work in Japan, and numerous Asian artists (in a postwar flurry) were influencing clay and fibers work internationally. This interaction with Asian philosophies was instrumental in moving many of the crafts from utilitarian to fine crafts with obvious attachment to creative, selfexpression, etc. Books such as The Unknown Craftsman; A Japanese Insight into Beauty (Yanagi, 1972). A multi-university (Alfred, PSU, NYSU, RIT, OSU, etc.) collaborative founded an annual, “SUPERMUD” conference each fall. Each conference provided a 24-7 time to create pottery, build kilns, and of course collaborate with national, if not, international potters. It also became a symbol to the art world that clay had arrived and had become an important fine art form. Meanwhile the time period was one of living “free” and expressing oneself. Numerous self-supporting communes where young couples lived this “new” life style of farming, gardening, and producing goods and arts to sell to help support themselves were established throughout the country. Their goods and arts were often created by utilizing the products and/or bi-products from their agrarian life-style (waste not, want not). Hides, wool, vegetable fibers, hand-dug clay, pods, seeds, hand polished stones were turned into beautiful cabochons and subsequently exotic jewelry, etc. “Creativity” was clearly the direction of fine arts, fine crafts, and for that matter, art education for this period of time.

The impact on art education was detailed in books like Creative and Mental Growth (Lowenfeld & Brittain, 1964), Creativity, Art, and the Young Child (Brittain, 1979), and untold others. Can you describe your series of embellished mirrors from the late 70's and 80's? What was your initial intention with these works, and at what point did they become a series? During this time period of 1970ʼs and 80ʼs, my wife was writing for the Pennsylvania Farmer Magazine and met and developed friendships with rural and farm people around the northeastern and mid-Atlantic United States. Consequently as she explored such things as cheese-making, carding wool and felting she brought these skills and arts into our home, teaching our two sons and me her newfound interests. Having had her interest piqued in many arts/crafts areas she enrolled in a variety of courses such as creative crocheting in a local craft school, The Manningʼs School of Weaving. Her travels and writing connected her with many sheep farmers and her stories from them about birthing of lambs and the docking of their tails caught my interest. Not being very careful about what I asked for, I quickly found myself as the guardian of hundreds of lambsʼ tails and a good supply of naturally varying colors of fleece. Subsequently, the lambsʼ tails were incorporated into many of my fibers pieces and carried the message of the free and creative lifestyles of the times (see photograph of Lambsʼ Tail Basket). The fleece was cleaned and carded and therefore readied for felting. Many books had been written by this time in regard to the process of felting so we were pretty clear in regard to what needed to be done. Books such Feltmaking; Traditions, techniques, and contemporary explorations (Gordon, 1980) were plentiful and provided instruction in feltmaking and discussed the history and aesthetics of it, as well. The lambsʼ tails were stretched onto boards and treated to tan and preserve them. After the preserving process, the tails also needed to be cleaned. So with cartons of lambsʼ tails and two young sons in tow, it was off to the local laundry mat to wash and dry the tails. We were feeling pretty “cool” in our VW Beetle convertible, top down with the cartons of tails and, oh yes, beach balls wrapped in fleece and compressed with used panty hose. Our pact was that we would act completely normal while other customers

watched us move the tails from the washers to the dryers and we sat calmly by while the scrubbed beach balls bounced happily in the dryers. Like my school students, sons Jonathan and Marc, built their own looms and created marvelous weavings even as very young children. They enjoyed the kinesthetic activities and quickly became interested in working in clay, metals via the lost wax process, papermaking, etc. well before they even entered kindergarten. Can you imagine handmade paper created from broccoli and celery? Paper good enough to eat, right?

Gene VanDyke, Lambsʼ Tail Basket, 1979

Gene VanDyke, Felt Basket, 1979

We also found that Goodwill Stores, the Salvation Army Stores, and stores boasting slightly used goods provided other supplemental items inexpensively for our family. Great “finds” soon included items to use in our arts and crafts work. Old fur coats purchased became part of woven bedspreads and a series of mirrors that I was producing. This series became more and more intriguing to me as the mirrors provided a mirror to the soul of the viewer; art through our own lenses. The intensity of mourning could be imagined through gazing through a veil worn by new widows and into the shattered mirror in my Mourning Mirror. Likewise, the viewer can feel the self-esteem being built by the right “out there” verse, “You are so beautiful, to me” in a mirror by the same name.

Gene VanDyke, Mourning Mirror, 1980

In your career as an art educator and artist, did you feel that fiber arts were given a different status than other media, such as painting? Has this status changed over time? As an art educator and director of an art program (1976-1989) for a large and affluent suburban school district I had the responsibility for planning and providing art educators from eight counties a professional development program several times a year. This became a tremendous opportunity to bring artists/craftsmen to our area for art educators and subsequently K-12 students. These visiting artists/craftsmen included glassblowers,

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weavers, basket-makers, metal-smiths, ceramicists, papermakers, etc. These “new” materials for fine arts/crafts were soon apparent on the course lists for local colleges and school districts. It also gave a whole new generation of local students and artists the knowledge that these “crafts” materials were really a part of the fine arts. Interestingly, forty years later these course offerings are still imbedded in the art curriculum of the local community college, the nearby state colleges, and almost all of the areaʼs public schools. What role do you feel fiber arts should have within art education? As a young teacher I was experimenting with teaching creative fibers (and all creative and fine crafts) in the middle school and high school grades during the 70ʼs and 80ʼs. Students who saw the renaissance of the crafts as relating to their interest in being a “hippy” were easily motivated to work in the fine crafts. Also, their need for kinesthetic learning and creativity were closely aligned with the areas of fibers, metals, clay, etc. Students readily engaged in activities such as using their bare feet to mix clay, cutting tails from road-kill to incorporate into weavings, making looms, etc. About the same time, Howard Gardner at Harvard University was defining, “Multiple Intelligences” through his research about how students learn. Certainly “visual intelligence” was an important intelligence according to Gardner, but “kinesthetic intelligence” was equally important. His book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple intelligences clearly outlines and describes these intelligences (Gardner, 1985). How did growing up in a farming family effect your relationship to crafts and hand work and, especially, to fabrics? How does your experience with "domestic arts" such as upholstering, sewing, flower arranging, relate to your other artistic projects? Did they inform one another? Though not residents of a commune our familyʼs (both the family I grew up in and then the family composed of my wife and two sons) activities closely mirrored residents who did. Gardening, canning, and freezing foods were part of lives and budgets. Because my parentʼs farm had many financial difficulties, my mother went to work when I was in third grade. All the responsibilities of maintaining a home suddenly became the responsibilities of my sister and me. However, my mother was also a craftswoman and taught us sensitivity to natural materials and objects, much like the guidance that Mrs. Wright gave

to her son Frank Lloyd Wright. Because of my motherʼs income we were, some years later, able to acquire indoor plumbing (water and bathroom), an electric range as opposed to a wood stove for cooking, a telephone with a party line, and a home with central heat. Many years later (late 50ʼs or early 60ʼs) we were able to get a television. So up until that time our home life was focused on doing things and making things. My mother, of course, instilled the sense of strong aesthetics into our being. She taught us that even in the absence of money we could create beauty in our home, our clothing, our food, etc. Therefore, as a married couple, my wife and I knew we could also create beauty in our home, our clothing, our food, etc. My wife made my ties and sport coats which were still required garb for all teachers. She made her clothing, our sonsʼ clothing, and items for our homes such as pillow covers and draperies. Together she, our sons, and I reupholstered flea market finds including love seats, dining room chairs, and much more. Renovations we made on our homes realized generous profits for us when we later sold the home and moved on to still another “fixer-upper.” As an aside, we (wife, sons, and me) didnʼt own a color television until the late 80ʼs or early 90ʼs. Our small black and white television provided the news and an occasional arts show, but importantly spared us the time for significant and deep dialogue about the arts, aesthetics, world affairs, etc. It was always our expectation that our sons would be able to hold their own in a dialogue or even a discourse. It was, in fact, the regular agenda during our dinners. Our regular visits to large city (NYC, DC, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etc.) museums also enhanced our sonsʼ understanding of the arts and aesthetics. Jonathan was still in a stroller when we pushed him through the impressionistʼs section of the National Gallery. Other museum-goers in the same galleries were dumbfounded and awestruck to hear this pre-school age child intelligently discuss the variations in several impressionistic artistsʼ styles. So, yes there was and still is a huge relationship between what we create for utilitarian purposes and for the art we create. The sense of a fine aesthetic is definitely a transferable sense. Most art educators try to help their students grasp this ability to transfer their aesthetic sense from one area to their whole being.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Brittain, W.L. (1979). Creativity, Art, and the Young Child. New York, NY: Macmillan Publication Co. Gardner, H. (1993). Creating Minds. New York: Basic Books. Gardner, H. (1985). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York, NY: Basic Books. Gordon, B. (1980). Feltmaking; Traditions, Techniques, and Contemporary Exploration. New York, NY: Watson-Guptill Publications. Lowenfeld, V. & Brittain, W.L. (1964). Creative and Mental Growth. New York, NY: Macmillan Publication Co. Yanagi, S. (1972). The Unknown Craftsman; A Japanese Insight into Beauty. New York, NY: Kodansha International, Ltd.

©G. VanDyke, 2013

PORTFOLIO Jonathan VanDyke

CAPTIONS Installation view, The Painter of the Hole Scaramouche, 2013 Cloak, 2013 [Brad and David canvases in push & pull sequence, David's shirt from 2011 performance, and camping tarp, in S. Delauney 1925 coat pattern] 47” x 66” Installation view, The Painter of the Hole Scaramouche, 2013 Barbizon, 2013 [Brad and David canvas in rough roll, ballistic, and slow dance sequences, S. Delauney 1925 pattern] 52” x 78.5” Nonviolent Protest, 2013 Archival pigment print Ed of 3 + 1 AP 28" x 18.5" Kicker, 2013 Archival pigment print Ed of 6 + 1 AP 14.5” x 22” Trouser (Left), 2013 [Brad and David canvases in submission and domination sequence, harlequin pattern] 47” x 70”

FABRIC/PAINTING Roberto Calasso The gods are above all an opportunity for the epiphany of fabric. Because people - strictly speaking - no longer exist, a bit like René Guénono, who used to say: “René Guénono does not exist.” Venus is holding a white rose – and its leaves are the only touch of green in the sky. They remind us that down there, very far away, there is the earth – and something called Nature. Venusʼs right arm brushes one of those superb flowered fabrics that were always a part of the last queen of Egyptʼs wardrobe. At the banquet with Antony, Cleopatra wears just such a fabric in a mauvish hue, while on receiving him at the port she prefers one with a honey-colored background (but the Angel who appears to Sarah – in the Palazzo Patriarchale in Udine – had hastily dressed in another of these flowered fabrics, with a black motif on a sand-colored ground). Between Venus and Time, a kind of pink vortex whirls in the air: another fabric, which does not seem to belong to anyone and serves for nothing else than to manifest its existence. But the most amazing thing is the color of Timeʼs huge wings. A slightly lighter turquoise than the cloud beneath. And the great scythe is tinged by the color of the supremely soft feathers. Its metallic gray benevolently welcomes light blue and silver reflections as far as the sharp point, which is a shard of orangy light. This family group (there is also a little Eros already blindfolded, clutching fast at his quiver, waiting to go back into action) brings together a sense of supreme indolence, concealed concord, and terror, all stacked up like a pile of laundry. Tiepolo Pink, 2009 (excerpt)

HOW A TEXAS POSTMAN BECAME AN HERMÈS DESIGNER October 21, 2012

About a year ago, writer Jason Sheeler was working on a story about Hermès scarves — the elaborately decorated silk squares that can cost as much as $400. He traveled to Lyon, in southern France, to visit the factory, and on his first day there he found an even more interesting story: A French woman threw out a big scarf with a turkey on it and asked Sheeler if he knew Kermit. He didn't. Kermit, as it turns out, is Kermit Oliver. He lives in Waco, Texas, and he's the only American to ever design scarves for Hermès. "As a matter of fact," the woman told Sheeler, "he is a postman."

A Deeply Humble Artist Several weeks and many voicemails later, Oliver finally, reluctantly, allowed Sheeler to visit him at home. Sheeler, who wrote about Oliver in the October issue of Texas Monthly, tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, that he was immediately struck by Oliver's artwork. "Every single bit of wall space is covered with incredibly beautiful, colorful paintings," Sheeler says. Most of them are portraits of children or farm animals. One huge painting showed a cat sitting on the back of a cow wearing a floral necklace. Another was a portrait of Oliver's father sitting astride a horse. Oliver is 70 years old. He wears his mustache trim and neat. And though he's one of the most important living African-American painters, he just doesn't understand what the fuss is about. Never mind that he's the only American artist ever to design a scarf for Hermès — which he's done 16 times. Again, he's also an employee of the U.S. Postal Service. "He doesn't believe he can make a living as a painter," Sheeler says. "He doesn't even believe that he's that good — those are his words. He just likes to paint. "He works overnight at the post office, comes home, paints a little bit, takes a nap and then does it all over again. He survives on two to three hours of sleep. Eats a sandwich on his break at the post office. He gets a 30-minute break, and then he goes back to sorting mail." A Fateful Show "I think that he's a mystery to everyone. I even sometimes ... wonder if it's a mystery to Kermit, because I think he enjoys people" says Shelby Marcus.

Marcus is the wife of Lawrence Marcus, the founder of the legendary Dallas department store Neiman Marcus, which was instrumental in bringing Oliver to the attention of Hermès. "He's private, that's the only thing that I can think of," Marcus says. "He has a need for privacy." Oliver went to art school at Texas Southern University in Houston in the late 1960s. Almost immediately, his work stood out. "His art is colorful. He works with very, very, very rudimentary supplies," Sheeler says. "He works with acrylic paint that he gets at Michael's [craft stores]. He works on very cheap watercolor paper. He draws, and then he paints. Oftentimes, he uses his family members in his paintings." A gallery in Houston recognized Oliver's talent and mounted a one-man show of his work in 1970. He became the first black artist represented by a major gallery in Houston. That's how Oliver first met Shelby Marcus — and later, her husband. "The Hermès company was looking for an artist to do a scarf with a Southwest theme," Sheeler says, "And Lawrence Marcus said, 'You know what? I know the guy. I've got the guy for you.' " "The thing that intrigued me and made me think of Hermès, for using Kermit's talent was the fact that Kermit tends to design from the outside in," Lawrence Marcus says. "In other words, he designs the frames of the pictures that he's painting. And that's the way Hermès has chosen its path and it just fit in to what Kermit was doing." By this point, Oliver's work was selling for tens of thousands of dollars. One of his paintings sold for more than $70,000. And all the while, he shows up at the post office in Waco to sort mail.

A Life-Changing Tragedy Oliver's story took a tragic turn in 1998 when his youngest son, Khristian, was sentenced to death for beating a man to death during a home robbery. Oliver tried, in vain, to have his son's sentence commuted. Hermès and the Marcus family helped him set up a legal fund. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers, but the sentence stood. In November 2009, Oliver and his family watched as Khristian was put to death by lethal injection. According to people who know Oliver, he was never the same after that. "He became even more reclusive," Shelby Marcus says. "I believe he had some searching to do within himself about his religion, because he was so crushed." "There was no common thread within his family that would lead one to believe that Khristian wouldn't have taken the same path as the other children," she says. "His faith has shifted," Sheeler says. "He'd definitely lost his faith, lost his way in the world, and at the same time having to go to the post office every day. And at the same time having to create these incredibly luxurious 410 squares of silk that are sold in exclusive boutiques worldwide." [Copyright 2013 NPR]

TRANSCRIPT: GUY RAZ, HOST: And if you're just tuning in, this is WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz. About a year ago, Jason Sheeler was working on a story for The Dallas Morning News. It was about those iconic silk scarves made by the French design house Hermès. And Jason wanted to know why an Hermès scarf costs $400 because, to him and to many people, it's just a small square of silk and 400 bucks seemed really high. So Jason went to Lyon in Southern France where those scarves are made, and he discovered the reason behind it.

JASON SHEELER: They own the land in Brazil where the silkworms are grown and harvested, right? They own the mulberry - the groves of mulberry trees that the silkworms feed on to make, you know, the most perfect silk thread ever. So they own every bit of the process. And so they make their own weave. They have their own looms. They own their own worms, right? Hermès owns every single part of the process. And so that's how it ends up being $410. Then in addition to that, you know, the silk is brought back to Lyon and - where it's been made. (SOUNDBITE OF FABRIC BEING CUT) RAZ: This is the actual sound of one Hermès scarf - a single one - being hand cut and hand sewed around the edges. It takes a few hours just to get this right, and it's perfect - tight and flawless and classic in every way. It's a scarf that could allow Jackie Kennedy or Grace Kelly to go out and maybe snatch a few extra seconds of anonymity and still look fabulous. Anyway, when Jason Sheeler was at the Hermès factory, he discovered something else unusual about Hermès scarves. SHEELER: So I got there. And the first day I was in the scarf-making factory, this imperious French woman threw out this really great big scarf with a turkey on it, and it had Texas on it. And she said, you are from Texas, no? She said, do you know Kermit? And I was like, who? Or what? What's Kermit? Then she told me that there was a man in Texas who designs scarves for Hermès and he's the only American ever to do it. So I immediately was fascinated. I was - it was like of all people, there's a guy in Texas. And then she said, and as a matter of fact, he's a postman. RAZ: A postman in Waco, Texas. And his name is Kermit Oliver. Now, that part of the story didn't end up in Jason Sheeler's article, but he couldn't get it out of his head. And so around that time, he called the Texas Monthly, and he said there's a postman in Waco who designs scarves for Hermès. And they told him call him up. So Jason Sheeler did. SHEELER: Just to get him on the phone took about five or six voice mails, you know, really just saying, hi, it's Jason once again from Texas Monthly. You know, please give me a callback.

RAZ: And after several weeks, Kermit Oliver did. He reluctantly agreed to meet with Jason. He didn't want the attention, but Jason was persistent. And eventually, he headed to Waco to Kermit Oliver's modest home in a rough part of the city. SHEELER: And every single bit of wall space is covered with his incredibly beautiful, colorful paintings, most involving portraits of his children, of farm animals. There's this great, big, huge painting, there's like, you know, a cat sitting on the back of a cow. The cow has a floral necklace around its neck. These beautiful pastorals, a great big portrait of his father sitting, you know, astride a horse. And he's sitting there on a chair, on a quilt-covered chair, and he rises to meet me. And I tell him what an honor it is to meet him. I said: You've just got the most amazing story. And he says: Well, why don't you tell me what my story is? RAZ: Kermit Oliver is almost 70. He wears his mustache trim and neat. And the thing you need to know about him is he doesn't understand what the fuss is about, even though he's one of the most important living African-American painters in America and the only American artist ever to design Hermes scarves. He's actually designed 16 of them. SHEELER: Kermit would tell you he's a garret artist. He doesn't believe that he can make a living as a painter. He doesn't even believe he's that good. Those are his words. He just likes to paint. He goes - he works overnight in the post office, then he comes home and he paints a little bit, takes a nap and does it all over again. He survives on two or three hours of sleep, eats a sandwich at - on his break at the post office. He gets a 30-minute break, and then he goes back to sorting mail. RAZ: We tried to contact Kermit Oliver and his family for this story, but they didn't return our calls, and not because they're rude or he's rude, but rather because Kermit's just a deeply humble person. SHELBY MARCUS: I think that's a mystery to everyone. I even sometimes wonder if it's a mystery to Kermit because I think he enjoys people.

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RAZ: That's Shelby Marcus, and we'll hear more from her in a moment. She is the wife of Lawrence Marcus, as in Neiman Marcus, the legendary Dallas-based department store that was instrumental in bringing Kermit Oliver to the attention of Hermès. MARCUS: He's private. That's the only thing I can think of. He has a need for privacy. RAZ: Kermit Oliver went to art school at Texas Southern University in Houston in the late 1960s, and almost immediately, his work stood out. SHEELER: His art is colorful. He works with very, very, very rudimentary supplies. He works with acrylic paint that he gets at Michael's. He works on very cheap watercolor paper. He draws, and then he paints. RAZ: A gallery in Houston recognized his talent and mounted a one-man show of his work in 1970. And Kermit became the first black artist represented by a major gallery in Houston. And that's how he met Shelby Strope who worked at another gallery. This was before Shelby met and married Lawrence Marcus, an heir to the Neiman Marcus empire. Now, Neiman Marcus was and still is one of the most important retail outlets for Hermès. And in the mid-1980s, Hermès sent one of its top executives to Texas to meet with Lawrence Marcus. SHEELER: The Hermès Company was looking for an artist to do a scarf with a Southwest theme. And Lawrence Marcus said: You know what, I know the guy. I've got the guy for you. RAZ: Lawrence Marcus is now retired. He is in his 90s. And when we reached him at his home in Dallas, he recounted that meeting with Hermès. LAWRENCE MARCUS: The thing that intrigued me and made me think of Hermès for using Kermit's talent was the fact that Kermit tends to design from the outside in. In other words, he designs the frames of the pictures that he's painting. And that's the way Hermès has chosen its path, and it just fit in to what Kermit was doing. RAZ: Now, by this point, Kermit Oliver's work was going for tens of thousands of dollars. One of his paintings has sold for more than $70,000. And all the while, even to this day, he shows

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up at the post office in Waco where he sorts mail. Now, the story of Kermit Oliver might have ended there, but his life took a tragic turn in 1998. His youngest son, Khristian, got mixed up with a bad crowd of kids in high school. And one night, Khristian went out for a joyride with two friends - brothers - and also with Khristian's girlfriend who was in the car. They were drinking, and they were smoking pot, and they decided to rob a house. Now, the owner of the house, Joe Collins, wasn't home. But while the boys were inside, Collins returned, and he discovered Khristian and one of the brothers inside his house. And so Joe Collins pulled a gun on them. SHEELER: He fired. He fired at the brother. Khristian fired back at Joe Collins, and someone later beat Joe Collins to death. And there was a trial. The two brothers testified for the prosecution. Khristian's girlfriend was sent away for life, and Khristian got the death penalty. RAZ: Kermit Oliver tried to have his son's sentence commuted. Hermès and the Marcus family helped Kermit set up a legal fund. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers, but the sentence stood. And in November 2009, Kermit and his family watched as Khristian Oliver was put to death by lethal injection. According to people who know Kermit, he was never the same after. Here's Shelby Marcus again. MARCUS: He became even more reclusive. And I believe that he had some searching to do within himself about his religion because he was so crushed that his son had taken the path that was just not - there was no common thread within his family that would lead one to believe that Khristian wouldn't have taken the same path as the other children. But he did not. SHEELER: To talk about his faith had shifted, definitely lost his faith, lost his way in the world and at the same time, having to go to the post office every day and at the same time, having to create these incredibly luxurious 410 squares of silk that are sold in exclusive boutiques worldwide.

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RAZ: Jason Sheeler's story on Kermit Oliver appeared in the October issue of the Texas Monthly. You can see photos of his work at our website, npr.org. Some of his paintings are also on permanent display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Dallas and in Houston. And in early December, the Hooks-Epstein Gallery in Houston will mount a new show of Kermit Oliver's work. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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IN SEARCH OF UNKNOWN MEMORIES an Interview with artist Donna Huanca by Daisy Nam When I learned that artist and friend, Donna Huanca, was awarded a Fulbright and was leaving for her research trip to Mexico City in a few months, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to ask her some questions. Through our conversations, Iʼve learned about her artistic process and personal memories. An artistʼs process constitutes a murky and tenuous state of anticipation, anxiety, alienation and excitement. Navigation, being en route, through an unknown space requires experimentation and faith in the artistʼs intuition. Daisy Nam, New York: At the moment, weʼre both in a state of flux in our living situation. Your apartment and studio in Berlin is being torn apart and reassembled for renovations, and Iʼm moving apartments in New York. The other day, I was despondent, as I hadnʼt found a place to live. I was reassured when I read this Adorno quote: “for a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.”1For Adorno, writing could be an invented space when he had no claims to a state. For you is it about your art-making? 1 Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott (Frankfurt: Verso 1974), 87.

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Donna Huanca, Berlin: I love that Adorno quote, I completely agree. That's one of the beautiful things about using clothing in my work; they excite me because I love hunting for them wherever I am.... Is that what draws you to using textiles as material in your work – the universality of them? Everyone needs clothes and so you can find them anywhere. What is your relationship with textiles? Most of my work begins with traveling, in search of materials and experiences to inspire new work. I like to get to know a place through its discarded clothing and objects. I have many times posed the challenge not to take anything with me on my journeys, forcing myself to search for new clothes, random objects, or trash to make my work with. The DNA of the place is then present in my work. As a kid, my mom and aunt would take me thrift store shopping every weekend in downtown Chicago, places mostly run by nuns. These were some of my favorite object and clothing collecting moments; I could be anyone and have anything that I found. We would spend hours sifting through piles. And when we got home, we would sit in a circle, carefully taking out the tags of our newfound wardrobe and then show each other and share how we were planning to use it. We would consult each other about outfits and even trade items. These moments developed my love for the hunt of energy through clothing, as I really believe this exists. I developed my work surrounding the re-creation of these ideas. That is such a great story. You speak of objects and their energy. I went to this show at Murray Guy and Gregg Bordowitz gave this amazing performative lecture. He stated that objects have emotions. Do objects have agency for you? Absolutely. Throughout time, cultures have created adorning objects that are labored upon to communicate an emotion that can transcend time, a container of sorts. We have all been at a museum only to be haunted by an object staring back at you.

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Yes, definitely. Even though these objects are taken out of their functional contexts, they can still speak to you in the present. Regarding time, do you have feel that youʼre trying to grasp something that's fleeting as you're mining for memories of the past through textiles? Fashion, after all, is temporary. Significant events mark time. I pay attention to things that are urgent to me and let them lead me. Thatʼs the best way I have found to navigate my time. I know you have an interest in the Mayan Calendar, which basically has a concept of no-time. There's just an ongoing cycle really. I mean, the world is supposed to end in December 2012, but they viewed this as another end with another beginning. Yes, I collaborated with AIDS 3D on a few performative works in 2007 and 2008 about apocalyptic anxiety. The protagonist was a girl who survives and becomes a hologram and is transported to the future. They were hopeful works.

Still from “Jerusalem 2012”, Performance Donna Huanca, AIDS 3D (Daniel Keller and Nik Kosmas)

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Donna Huanca, ETAPA DE FUNCIONAMENTO (SEGUNDO), 2008, for Network of Love Performance in collaboration with AIDS 3D

I do find your work hopeful. Your installations, sculptures and fabric collages are incredibly dynamic and tactile. How do you arrive at an idea or project? Do you distinguish from the beginning that certain works will be wearable and functional and others are just objects? I let the material lead me. My process begins with the initial hunt for materials that connects me to different geographies and economies where I select the most vibrant, alive fabrics I can find. Since I work with mostly used clothing, I feel some that are more energetic than others. Sometimes pieces want to hide behind layers of paint and I leave them alone, while other times they are desperately begging for attention. All the materials are then fair game back in the studio, whether itʼs for collages or clothing. Sometimes itʼs necessary to deconstruct the garment and recreate it (like the shorts I made for you) and for others, I either collage the piece with other complementary pieces to forget the shape completely. They definitely intersect in the final work. Here are examples as to how these silk pieces were transformed into an both installation and wearable:

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Shorts created by Donna Huanca for Daisy Nam, 2009

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This dress is made of a silk scarf and silk jogging pants from Poland:

Donna Huanca, dress, 2011

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Donna Huanca, Collaged Silks, with custom made boots (source of materials: Cuzco and Puno, Peru), 2011

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Donna Huanca, I was you and Never knew it (after Rumi), Installation for Puno Moca, Puno, Peru, 2011

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Do places ever find you during your art-making process, your hunt? I know one of your previous projects, you visited Potosi, Bolivia. Historically this is a place with a rich Incan history which then became a prosperous mining town in the Colonial era. But it is also where your father is from. One of the reasons I decided to have my “alternative” art-grad-school experience in Germany at Städelschule, an academy that claims to reinvent the art-school model, was because I knew that would make my dad proud, he might “get” why I make art and of course it would force him to visit me. When I first realized I would be moving to Germany, I immediately thought about my dadʼs stories about his crush on German girls in grade school while growing up in Bolivia. Since his mom owned a business in town, he was one of the only indigenous faces to attend his school. So there is a personal relationship to place. Bolivia and Germany are linked through the stories of your father. Could you tell me of your experience while in Bolivia? Is this where your performance took place? A series, Unearthing, was made with Roy Minten and was funded by Art Matters (thank you!). We actually traveled throughout Peru, not Bolivia, as the original plan, due to heavy protests and transportation strikes in Bolivia. In the series I was attempting to forge myself back into the landscape where I am genetically, historically tied. I visited several sites tracing the etymology of my last name, Huanca. What I discovered while on the trip is that I definitely do not belong there. I felt so much more of a tourist than in previous trips to Latin America. I felt like an outsider…I was not wanted. The people who I came across were a bit embarrassed for me. Perhaps my romanticism with “my” past was actually not mine at all. How did that effect your present? This experience forced me to take responsibility for the present moment and context that is unique to me. It was a bit painful but definitely pushed me into the present tense, which I am immensely grateful for.

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For years, I have been returning to the idea of genetic memory as a source of inspiration for my work. I was trying to decipher the deep wells of the past through stories from my father. I guess this stems from a sense of dislocation of culture. As a kid of immigrants, my parents were always trying to preserve their culture through me. Iʼve realized while living and traveling outside the US that wherever I go in the world, others see me as undeniably American. Although I see myself as a hybrid of many cultures. This goes back to Adorno who said, “the concepts of native land [Heimat], a country, are all shattered. Only one native land remains from which no one is excluded: mankind.” 2 Is there something between these two statements? Otherwise, should we connect them? Is there a place you can call home? Is there a physical place you are drawn to? For me I feel like I have many homes, but inexplicably I do love the desert. Is there a place like that for you?

desert, Palm Springs, CA 2 Detlev Claussen, Theodor Adorno, One Last Genius, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2008), 25.

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I feel at home in Berlin, so much that I decided to throw an anchor down after many years of being nomadic. Because of its heavy history, the city is still under construction, making it experimental and financially forgiving. Berlin has a certain confidence about it where time is not so much of an issue as it is in other cultural capitals. Itʼs the perfect base to develop and contemplate new work.

park, Berlin, Germany

I also feel at home in Mexico City. Iʼve spent time over the past 10 years visiting there as a tourist. I am so excited to finally have the opportunity to decipher that labyrinth of Mexico City, especially in 2012. I have had some of the scariest experiences in my life there, as well as the happiest. As I mentioned, I have done a few performances about

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apocalyptic anxiety. What a better way to put myself in the “eye of the storm” than to live in this insane city? I am too excited.

street, Mexico City, Mexico

Anxiety is a part of your process; it fuels you and creates excitement. Thatʼs an inspirational way to begin and end a journey.

First Published in Interventions Journal, Issue 1, Volume 1, 2011.

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