Highly Personal Rauschenberg Exhibit Brings Back Memories
“Auotobiography” lithograph set 1968
all images shown in deference to Robert Rauschenberg’s estate
The Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center is hosting a traveling exhibit of a special set of work by Robert Rauschenberg – gifts, many made just for her, to his studio manager and confidant of 30 years, Bradley Jeffries. It’s an outstanding show with an initial grouping that is one of the most sensually beautiful I have ever seen in this or any museum. A good range of different media from this most versatile artist is shown, but a predominant one is solvent transfer, which captures pre-existing images, from text to photos to anything, in a dreamy and bluish hued tone of nostalgia.
Much nostalgia for me in seeing a certificate of participation in a glass case, earned by Ms. Jeffries, for completion of the workshop The Power of Art, a program sponsored by Robert Rauschenberg at the Lab School, a self-contained day school in Georgetown in Washington, D.C. which serves students with learning differences. Her’s was for 1999; I was a charter participant the first year in 1994. I was a new art teacher at The Achievement School (now The Fletcher Academy) and applied for the workshop using student linoleum prints executed on scrap linoleum from the school’s gymnasium.
Mr Rauschenberg spent the day with us,as I describe on my Black Mountain College page.
Robert Rauschenberg found out as an adult that he had a learning disability ( as distinguished from being what he thought was “stupid”) from Sally Smith, founder of The Lab School. He became a supporter of the school, and the “Power of Art” program, of which I was a charter participant, rewarded art teachers who worked with that that population. Mr Rauschenberg treated us to a presentation along with his assistant, gave us signed posters, a five hundred dollar gift certificate to Jerry’s Artarama,and sat and listened to each of us present about our work. That evening, we were feted at a private reception at the National Gallery’s East Wing, and Mr Rauschenberg favored us with a tour of his own work on the walls. He discussed his decision to create the “white painting” while at Black Mountain (Josef Albers thought it a needless extreme), and he gave a vivid description of painting the huge 25 foot work which was on display in the main room -smearing his hands with the white lead paint for hours and then having to go into immediate treatment for weeks because of the lead poisoning. He was charming and down-to-earth, yet fragile and a bit ethereal in his personal presence. That was a wonderful day.
Below is a photcopy of my certificate. Sadly (and thoughtlessly) I displayed the original near a south-facing window and it has faded considerably. Just as bad, I used dorm room sticky to mount the poster Mr. Rauschenberg SIGNED. Such is life when you are a generalist with too many pies cooking. But now I have added this event to the several that have linked me repeatedly to Black Mountain College over the years, leading me now to be a private scholar in the field and an active participant in the activities of the wonderful BMC museum in downtown Asheville.
BMC Conference Features Leo Amino and More
The 13th Black Mountain College conference called ReVIEWing features Leo Amino, of whom I had not heard before this event. He pioneered the use of polymer resins as the material for abstract sculpture. My annual BMC give-away is pictured above, with a book mark quote from Amino experimentally coated with polymer resin.
This year’s conference is marked by an ever evolving process of globalizing or non-Westernizing the narrative of art in America while signaling the amazing resilience of the importance of Black Mountain College principles and experiences in that narrative. BMC was very early in integrating its faculty and student body, and the Sunday campus tours always recall the major role of beloved African-American staff were in college life. The role of students in governing the college, the powerful roles played by women throughout its history (especially during WW II and then much less so in the last failing years), and the progressive experiential and material-based art instruction at the center of its teaching, all made for a wonderful readiness to explore new ideas that permeated the atmosphere and the work done. Now BMC scholarship is investigating the ways artists like Leo Amino created art that helped open up the artistic tradition to a wider set of values.
John Cage Legacy Anchors BMC Conference
The 12th annual ReVIEWing BMC conference starts tomorrow and I will be giving away a very special booklet. I was so amazed to find out that John Cage made paper, no less with Beverly Plummer, the first NC papermaker of whom I was aware, with the idea of eating a poem. He is the focus of this year’s conference, and so I created my most elaborate BMC project so far. I assembled a collection of fibers and other ingredients and combined them using random pairings and combinations. Cage used the I-Ching for the chance operations that were a hallmark of his work, but I just made item cards, shuffled chosen blindly to make groups.
The materials from the list were combined with a small dose of grocery bag, cotton linter, and potato starch. Each sheet yielded 4 bookmark samples for the booklet.
The papers are lightly attached and so if anyone really wanted to eat their poem, they could, and I hope they will let me know how that goes. Thanks to Julie Thomson, BMC scholar, who hand beat the hibiscus fibers, and to Alice Sebrell, who bestowed the salvage cotton bond paper used for the booklet itself. The BMC spirit lives on and is celebrated and enacted each year at this wonderful event.
Utopian Dreams at Fruitlands Museum
The Fruitlands Farmhouse in Harvard, Mass.
So proud to have my letterpress work displayed at an exhibition at The Fruitlands Museum. Fruitlands was the site of Bronson Alcott’s 19th century utopian community, and the show Recruiting for Utopia: Print and the Imagination explores past and present examples of “the capacity of print and the schematic imagination to build community.” For over a decade, I have been creating hand-laid paper printed objects to give away at the annual Black Mountain College conference conducted by the BMCM+AC. Shana Dumont Garr, curator at Fruitlands and former Program Director at Artspace in Raleigh, received a couple of these at the conference and learned of my tradition. She asked to display these items for the show. The museum purchased all the available items I sent, and now is collecting my mail art pieces!
Below is the Wayside Gallery, a large Fruitlands outbuilding which hosts the exhibit.The pictures zoom in a bit to show my pieces, with the Anni Albers Red Meander and Ted Pope’s blue broadside reasonably visible. The show now runs through March 21, 2021.
My photo below shows the collection of of conference handouts involved. I make about 50 and give away to the visiting scholars and the conference regulars that provide most of my friends in my retirement town.Click on the phrases to read about these pieces. Fish by Ted Pope, Harper Lee bookmark(BMC Museum workshop), Red Meander, Cut-up, Jacob Lawrence, John Dewey on reason.
The larger show in which my pieces take part is a fascinating duel show with a historical collection and a contemporary collection of visual artifacts. Shana Dumont Garr, curator at Fruitlands, explained the overall premise of the exhibit: “To look at New England in two specific time periods: the 1840s and 2019-2020. And to explore how print and design helped express peoples’ worries and their desires to make the world a better place.” There is a local feature article here. I hope to make it to the show to see printing from the time of my favorite Transcendentalists, and see some creativity from my fellow artists in the show.
Fish, A Broadside by Ted Pope
Ted Pope is a stalwart and beloved performer who features at the annual Black Mountain College conference held every year by the BMCM+AC on UNC-A’s campus. His presentation of his poetry is unmatched in creative delivery – from crumpling each piece after reading and tossing to the audience to lying prostrate while reading to whipping a deerskin as warm-up. The Paper Plant is proud to announce the publication of a broadside of Ted’s poem Fish. This broadside is offered in celebration of Ted’s inclusion in Appalachia Now!, the show that opens the newly renovated Asheville Art Museum.
The broadside will be available in the museum’s gift shop and is also available from The Paper Plant.
I look forward to Ted’s performance and much more at this year’s BMC conference.
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portrait by Guillermo Velasco
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