September 5, 1984
By Mary Beth Bruno
It has to be a good sign when an arts council actually gives an artist a job. When the new employee is an observer and manipulator of popular culture like experimental artist Beverly Richey, and the job is Arts Council public relations director, you know unusual things are going to start happening fast.
Richey stepped into the full time job-her first outside the home in several years-in the middle of the summer. The first time I saw her acting in an official capacity was on the sidewalk next to Whitney Avenue one humid day in July. She was out in the hot sun to hand out leaflets (original design) about a noon-time concert at the near by Audubon Street Park of the Arts. She wore an oversized T-shirt made by friends and silkscreen artists Phillip and Roberta Chambers that said "Enforced Leisure" in day-glow letters. It was five minutes before noon. "Look" Richey said pointing to a tiny gathering crowd. "There's hardly anyone there. And it's a free concert."
Frustration and amazement filled her voice. She hated seeing everyone pass up a chance to see something that could be good. "I believe art should be returned to people, not kept closed in galleries," she told me later. When there's no practicing, showing, interacting, art stagnates, she believes. While growing up in a uniquely New Haven neighborhood at the end of Prospect Street (Between the black and the Blue)," is how she describes it" she made some important observations about class, art and life that are still prevalent in her work. A recent color xerox [sic] "Touch the Blue," is about this community, she thinks-"about the need for one culture to wake up another," as well as share its privileges.
Two years ago, after having run an experimental art group called Papier Mache Video Institute for half of her adult life Richey decided she wanted to enter the mainstream for a while. She got appointed to the Arts Council board of directors so she could learn how to run an organization. She served on four committees discussed and argued issues, and became genuinely interested in the Council's potential. Bitsie Clark impressed her as an "outrageously wonderful person, someone who really wants to build and arts community." When the public relations position opened up last summer Richey applied and was hired. She immediately resigned from the board and set to work.
It hasn't all been easy. Richey quickly found out that producing the monthly newsletter, monthly calendar, and assorted publicity pieces could be quite tedious and taxing. But she knows she's bringing creative energy into the office. "Bitsie stops me when I go too far," she says. And from her experience with experimental art, she's learned not to be afraid of failure. It just means growth. "I love when people correct me,"she says. "Especially my daughter."
During the years she worked at home her kitchen became her studio. She worked in cakes and edibles because that was what was around her. She marveled at the power of packaging in the grocery store turning wedding cakes in anti-materialistic manifestos and made all sorts of simultaneously subversive with and about food.
Now that she's in an office, she's fascinated with the passing of papers over her desk, the accumulation and disposal of trash, the alchemical powers of office machines. Her office has become her studio. A recent work, "Waste" consisted of the packaged scrap paper and refuse she produces at her desk. "We're all offended by waste," she observes "We like to think we don't make it." But everyone does and Beverly Richie [sic] makes it art.
As for the job, she really thinks it's great. "It's perfect for me. I'm learning to do things I needed to know... I've been through the alternative system, gone so far in that direction, now I want to combine." She throws out a stream of ideas. "Maybe I'm not a real artist... maybe promoting artists can be an art." It's a lot of questions but Richey can handle it.
"My art is about questions, confusion, not understanding, and how to go about exploring it."
INTERESTED IN OTHER ARTICLES ABOUT RICHEY'S WORK / CLICK HERE
