"The program was different than a standard art class. Instead of the typical teaching of techniques and art history, students were taught to collaborate with each other and focus on raising the students feminist consciousnesses about their artwork and ways of thinking. For example, students would go around the room, during discussions, and share personal experiences about specified topics such as money, relationships, and family. It was believed that by sharing these experiences, students were able to not only individualize their experience and insert more emotion into their artwork, but also learned about the collective experience among the one another, and empower themselves as individuals and a group. Instead of supporting the typical idea of artists being secluded and working as independent "geniuses," the class aimed to emphasize collaboration. The class was described as a "radical departure," for the time period"
"In Pittsburgh, about 30 buyers arrived on a recent sunny summer evening at Space gallery, a nonprofit that inhabits what was once a downtown video pornography store, to find their shares waiting for them on large tables, in nice brown paper bags with the question “Do You Know Where Your Art Comes From?” printed on the side. (One of the pieces from an earlier share pickup, by the artist Lenka Clayton, took the concept of local to a new level: framed swatches of a plum-colored shirt once owned by Andy Warhol, native son.)"
The Andy Warhol Bridge in downtown Pittsburgh will be decorated with knitted, crocheted and woven blankets through September 6, as part of a public art project called Knit the Bridge.
A bridge needs a blanket like a fox needs a jacket. But adorning one of Pittsburgh’s best-known bridges with 580 knitted and crocheted blankets wasn’t about keeping the 1061-ft. long Andy Warhol Bridge warm. “It is about connecting and bridging communities,” says Amanda Gross, a local fiber artist who headed up the record-breaking public art installation on the 87-year-old, steel suspension bridge spanning the Allegheny River.
"Over the course of four days, she and a team of crochet-efficient assistants took over a massive locomotive in Lodz, Poland, turning the drab train into a psychedelic street-side attraction."
Art New England
Regional Reviews 1984
By Roger Baldwin
John Slade Ely House/New Haven
Points of View:
Kari Nordstrom, Wes Goforth, and Blair Cook
Buy and Sell: Beverly Richey, Paul Rutkovsky, and Jack Harriett
These two shows are quite different in there content and goals-the first a collection of graphics and constructions executed by architects, and the second a wry assemblage of simulated advertising literature, photographs, and installations.
Kari Nordstrom works primarily with wood creating unlikely chairs that seem to hover between utility and sculpture. They are composed of wood slats which exaggerate length or height, and suggest a delicate balancing act of their parts to achieve stability. Blair Cook exhibits low, massive tables composed of thick glass and concrete.
The three-dimensional vision of the architect is reduced to two in Wes Goforth's prints, executed in various techniques. Some feature single lonely buildings, rendered in thick blacks, their elements reduced to a minimum and abruptly geometric. Many of his works are in small series, one motif reworked with different with different colorations, different emphases of structure, mass, and light. As a whole the show lacked a central theme or thrust. Since its participants are practicing architects, comparison of this work to their architectural work could have provided considerable into both, had such a comparison pointed been made.
The thematic looseness here was opposed by the unequivocally singular point of the show in the upstairs galleries. Buy and Sell was an indictment of consumer culture, and more important, the political and economic bases for its rise in contemporary American society. The tenor of the exhibition was sometimes propagandistic, sometimes caustic.
The installations, first of all, defied the notion of "fine art" (itself a captive of that culture). The work was there for its message-verbal more than graphic. The logic of the show was carried through to the hilt; a promotional flyer noted the "Grand Opening," and, continuing the parody "Free Admission with This Coupon." A calendar of events (this show evolved as a continued activity) boasted "Double Coupons Today," "10% OFF everything," and the like, just like the grocery store adds in a Sunday paper. Since the show was to a large degree about media promotion, these cheap Xerox flyers were fully part of it, not accessories.
Beverly Richey's Army Man Series typifies the concept. Tiny plastic packets contained plastic toy soldiers and other tawdry items kids get for a quarter from the vending machines in discount store entrance ways, each object (plastic American flags, for instance) a symbol ready to be read in terms of political economic relationships. These pseudotoys could be bought (another handout) was an ironic, mocking order form) and we were guaranteed that each was "Hand Collected and Hand Packaged."
Richey's humor might seem light and innocent, if she did not force the viewer to make the connection between the tokens of promotion and the sinister and devastating forces that lie behind them. The room was lined with Xerox posters: "Army: Be All You Can Be," They read again and again, with images of tanks destroying a wooden shack. With these, myriad identical images of a soldier, fallen, with a tank beyond. One was strongly brought to realize that especially in light of events in the last few months, consumer capitalism is tied to military aggression, both supported by the state, each feeding the other. Thus the parody of blaring broadsides deepened to an ethical revelation of genuine seriousness, so that Buy and Sell could be seen as life and death.
Jack Harriett's suite of photographs, technically superb large-format studies of furniture for sale in shop windows, roadside antique stalls, and such. approached the consumer theme more subtly, and with a far less overtly political stance. These weary, gross, and often ugly objects the photographer singled out seemed as tired, directionless, and adrift in the world as those people one imagines might buy and use them.
The conceptual direction in which these two artists are working may have been brought into focus by Paul Rutkovsky, the founder of New Haven's Papier-Mache Institute, with which Harriett and Richey are allied. Rutkovsky's contribution to this show was a series of highly colored shaped pieces, each incorporating a commercially loaded word ("Tax," "Get"). For all its exuberance and art-world iconoclasm, Buy and Sell was a dead-serious exhibition. Rarely has the network of forces so devastating to peace, human dignity and simple sanity been so forcefully excoriated.
Shoppers' war is focus of city art exhibit
Journal Courier
January 20, 1984
By Kathleen Mary Katella
SPECIAL OFFER Collect all six of these little plastic green combat men and receive a special bonus package-FREE! Just tape the purchase seals on this card and mail it in. Allow six to eight weeks for delivery.
You can check out this series of combat men in an art exhibit called "Buy and Sell" at the John Slade Ely House thru Jan. 29.
The show, produced by Beverly Richey and two other members of the papier mache institute, focuses on consumerism-which Ms Richey approached in a military fashion. It also features Jack R. Harriet's photographs of "Furniture for Sale" (a flee market, an almost empty furniture store window), and Paul Rutkovsky's painted geometric shapes. (titles include 45 cents,) "Buy," "Get" and "Tax.")
"It's about commodities. It's about war. The reality for us is the social meaning," said Ms Richey, who stopped by the gallery this week to speak for her part of the show.
She said she carefully packaged each of her combat men to simulate the way manufacturers use packaging as a sales tool. She sells them for $1 at the exhibit from behind a glass case. She's also had a grand opening, double coupons, triple coupons, a free Band Aid with a coupon and a 25% off sale.
Ms Richey went shopping for her combat man packages. She picked up cheap little toys to go with them-a tiny plastic bible, a tiny plastic ballerina, a rifle, Bazooka bubble gum, Trident sugarless gum, sugar packets, toy pistol caps.
Ms Richey said she chose a military theme after noticing certain ironies- store rhymes with war; supermarkets speak of "price wars"; There are products with names like Bazooka bubble gum; consumers feel they have to fight prices with coupons.
"It seems to me the basis of our economy is war. It's the consumer thats the soldier out there," she said.
The show has gotten me so involved in consumer issues. A coupon for me is a political issue. It is the saddest way for consumers to save money and the best way for advertisers to promote. When food prices drop, we are bombarded with coupons," she said.
Ms Richey got some of her background in consumerism from consulting friends on Wall Street. She also delved back into personal experiences such as being short changed in the grocery store, or paying more for a product she thought was on sale because the display confused her.
Consumers today have a hard time knowing what they are paying because of confusing displays and because they can't see what the electronic cash registers are ringing up, Ms Richey said. Coupons are equally misleading; retailers give out coupons to avoid bringing down prices, she said.
Some of her packages include instant coupons, which Ms Richey thinks is "a little saner" than the cumbersome coupons manufacturers sometimes give out. Anyone who buys all six of her combat men can send away for a seventh. She said promoters always make consumers feel they have to complete a series.
Visitors to the show have had mixed reactions to the work. Ms Richey stuck paper to the walls for people's comments, and got reactions ranging from "Great Concept" too "GARBAGE."
She said the show's goal involved a little more than aesthetics, however.
"Art for me is to deal with, address and change something. I'm not just doing it to hang in someone's living room. I'd really like this to make a change out there, " she said
'Buy and Sell'
New York Times
Connecticut Weekly Section
Sunday January 8, 1984
By Eleanor Charles
Taking consumerism over the coals is the theme of "Buy and Sell," A new exhibition opening today at the John Slade Ely House in New Haven. Paul Rutkovsky and Jack Harriett usually show their work in the Papier-Mache Video Institute, which they founded a few years ago as "a haven for artists to do transient, experimental, commodity-oriented art," according to Ms Richey, who is the institutes current director. This will be the first time that they have mounted and exibition [sic] in a traditional, conservative setting.
Mr Rutkovsky a professor of art at Florida State University, has exhibited at Real Art Ways in Hartford and at the Kitchen gallery in New York City. Mr Harriett is a printer by trade and Ms Richey's talents are sometimes turned to baking socially significant cakes that are displayed and then eaten.
A large paper mache sculpture of a man sitting in his house watching television is the center piece of the show.
Hours are 1-4 P.M. Tuesday-Friday, 2-5 P.M. weekends. The address is 51 Trumbull Street and there is no admission charge.
Buy and Sell Art Review....
New Haven Register
by Shirley Gonzales
January 1984
The John Slade Ely House on Trumbull Street shows fun and funk in its two current shows. Downstairs, "Points of View" is based on architectural prints by Wes Goforth and furniture designed by Karl Nordstrom and Bair Cook. The latter are innovative, if impractical, and even good looking. In Cook's case the materials are concrete and glass, in Nordstrom's they are slatted wood and concrete. Her Rock-In-Chair looks like an old fashioned wheel chair with its base set in concrete. A round table has a curving split across the middle of the top, split again into curving slits held apart by chocks. Cook's glass suggests more formal and frail compositions.
"Buy and Sell" in the upstairs gallery was organized by Beverly Richey, Paul Rutkovsky and Jack Harriot. It also blends tradition tradition, in the form of Harriot's photographs of shops that sell furniture with what is what is close to a sixties happening rather than an exhibition. Unlike what is seen belowstairs, there is a lack of craftsmanship in evidence, which is probably appropriate considering that most of the show seems to be a condemnation of America as a television-advertising scam and a purveyor of war as a game. Even the refreshments were cakes topped by toy soldiers, American flags and white doves. The materials and techniques are appropriate for the concept.
Under new leadership New Haven's Arts Council attempts to define and fulfill the needs of the city's cultural community
New Haven Advocate Vol.X No 4
September 5, 1984
By Mary Beth Bruno
Since there's no universal definition of what Arts Councils are supposed to do, or be, most of us have only vague notions that they exist to help artists by providing something more than tan, bejeweled arms to pour chilled white wine at opening receptions. What that something more is varies from city to city and state to state. In Columbus, Ohio the Arts Council runs the artists-in-the-schools programs and advises city officials on how to spend money for public art. The Arts Council of San Antonio, Texas provides many services but is most proud of it's weekly showcase on cable TV. The Rockland County New York, Arts Council's annual festival draws thousands of people to see-and-buy the work of local artists. The main stated function of these three councils, and of most arts councils in large cities, is to distribute state and local funds as grants to artists and arts organizations in their area.
In a small state such as Connecticut, such decentralization hasn't seemed necessary. All state arts grants come out of the main office of the Connecticut Commission on the Arts in Hartford. According to Commission spokesperson Tony Norris, only one of the state's 60 regional and municipal arts councils make raising and distributing funds its primary reason for being. That, of course, is Hartford. You don't have to know much about that super-corporate city to realize how large and plentiful philanthropic donations can get before tax time each year. Good thing there's a strong organization up there harvesting money full time for the arts.
So what about New Haven? What are the unique needs of artists and arts organizations in this city? What are their unique opportunities for growth? How can one low-budget not-for-profit organization located in the basement of an old foundry help to answer these questions?
This is exactly what Frances T. Clark - Bitsie to everyone who's ever met her - began thinking about when she took over as executive director of Arts Council of Greater New Haven in the fall of 1983. She assumed leadership of an organization that had, among its definite strengths and problems something of an identity crisis in this lively but bitterly fragmented cultural community. An active board of directors and president were on hand to provide continuity, but it was clear that with so much going on in New Haven, it was time for an active new direction.
The Arts Council had been established in the 60's to work with the city in the development of the Audubon Street Arts Complex-a project that has been brought out and reshelved countless times since. As major development efforts shifted to other areas of the city over the next two decades, the Arts Council began to change and broaden its focus. Audubon Street development ceased to be the only concern of the Council - providing technical assistance and coordinating activities of existing arts organizations and individuals suddenly seemed more important.
When Bitsie Clark's predecessor, Baker Salsbury, resigned in 1983, he a mandate for his successor: to find "a unified voice and commonality of purpose in the New Haven arts community, and to represent them every time the city embarked on a major economic-slash-cultural development project in which the cultural benefits were in danger of getting slashed right out of the plans." Drawing on her years of experience managing Girl Scouts and School Volunteers, Bitsie Clark threw herself into bringing forth that unified voice.
The first sign of progress to emerge was the Art Service Consortium, a committee which brought together representatives from the main arts service organizations in the greater New Haven area. The goal was to eliminate overlap and competition, and to work on complementing each other's efforts. Begun in February this year, the Consortium includes Ruth Resnick of City Spirit Artists a union that works to match artists with paying jobs; Christine Spiesel of Artspace, a relatively new group that plans to turn a piece of downtown real estate into a community gallery and performance space. Debbie Weiner of the Office of Cultural Affairs, the branch of city government responsible for promoting the arts; Lou Auld of the Shoreline Alliance of the Arts, an established and exemplary Arts Council on the shore; and Bitsie Clark. The Consortium is staffed by Robin Golden of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, thereby providing one single contact person for outside groups who want to communicate quickly with all arts service organizations in this area.
Benefits of the inter-organizational cooperation have already been proven by a successful workshop of grant-writing that the Consortium sponsored a few months ago. The potential of this super-arts council - or "megagroup," as Spiesel calls it-seems unlimited. Possible future plans include joint membership fees and joint grant applications for operating funds - possibly even to the NEA. If all goes as planned, New Haven artists will soon begin to know and take advantage of every possible service that Consortium member organizations can offer. "We really want to get the message out on where to go for what," Spiesel explains.
"There's a lot of networking happening this year," adds Ruth Resnick. "Bitsie has opened doors and people feel it. They're making an effort to work together.... There's a healthy atmosphere in the arts in New Haven."
Other results of the Art Council's commitment to maximizing assistance to artists are the establishment of Arts Assist and Business Volunteers for the Arts. Both programs are directed by Robin Golden. The first makes the expertise of Arts Council employees available to members who need help setting up boards of directors, researching grants, or organizing publicity campaigns. The second program, Business Volunteers for the Arts, will make the legal, financial, and promotional expertise of many members of the business community accessible to artists for little or no money. That resource program, which has been hugely successful in other cities, will get underway this fall. Golden says, "The more services we off, the more reason there'll be to join the Arts Council," says Golden. "We'd like all artists to join."
That would be more than a symbolic coup-it would mean a substantial increase in income. Currently, individual and organizational membership dues account for one-third of the Arts Council's annual $200,000 income for operating expenses. Another third comes from grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the New Haven Foundation, and various corporations. The Arts Council raises the remaining third through its programs.
"We'd like to steadily decrease the amount we receive from the New Haven Foundation and increase the amount we earn," Golden says. That would go half way toward pleasing critics in the community who believe not only should the Council not be competing with arts organizations for foundation grants, but it should be earning enough off real estate and other projects to actually grant funds to artists, as arts councils in larger but perhaps less wealthy states do.
Golden believes there are other solutions to the problem of limited funds for the arts in the New Haven area. Members of the business tell here that there are many corporations willing to donate money, but they just haven't been asked.
Doing that asking is one of the tasks the Arts Council has ahead of it. And it's not the only one. Membership data and renewal procedures have to be updated; currently the Council has no accurate tally of how many paid-up members it has. The computer system has to be effectively installed and utilized. Staff turnover has to be stabilized. "We're trying to prioritize," Clark says. "This organization tends to think big-there are many things to be done at once."
Meanwhile, plans for large open forums for artists, smaller closed ones for specialized groups (such as all large performing arts producers), and various other new projects continue to roll through the halls and glass doors of the newly remodeled Arts Council Office. Bitsie Clark eternal troop leader, manages to keep a clear head. She's aware of the passionate, but often conflicting, needs and opinions of the various members of this richly diverse arts community. "We're not interested in the Arts Council being all things to all people," Bitsie says. "We're interested in hooking people up.... If we're doing our job, we'll pull it all together."
New Haven Advocate Vol.X No.4
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."
New Haven Advocate Vol. X No.15 November 23, 1983 By Mary Beth Bruno
Face it. In the next year we are going to be barraged by articles, segments on TV magazine shows, lectures and discussions about how the real 1984 measures up, or down, to what George Orwell described 34 years ago in his novel 1984. Before you get sick of it all, take a look at the 1984 Big Brother calendar. Now on Sale at Atticus, Foundry, and other local bookstores. It's a serious look at "240 not-so-great moments in American history marking government intrusion into our lives," or so the package says.
It's not, however, as dreary as it could be. As journalist Nat Hentoff points out in his introduction to the calendar, the very fact that such a calendar exists proves that we still live in a relatively free society.
1984 began early in New Haven when 700 people waited in the cold to weeks ago to see a multi-media art show based on the themes of Orwell's novel. Sponsored by the Papier Mache Video Institute, the show was held in a large industrial loft off Hamilton Street. By most accounts, it was a smashing success. It certainly wasn't just another white wine and cheese affair...
Immediately upon entering the exhibition space-after the fire marshal finally deemed enough bodies had left to make room for more- a muddle of noises, colors and motions bombarded the sense. In one corner, two dancers shrouded in blue gauze were swaying to melodious cords inside a blue gauze cage. The cage was like a giant baby's playpen, and in their institutional blue swaddle cloth, the dancers represented innocence in a trance-moving but unable to live within their confined world.
In another corner, a lighted fountain gurgled atop Beverly Rithie's [sic] military wedding cake. The two story confection was iced with green-on-chocolate camouflage frosting and decorating with fallen plastic soldiers, silver candy bullets and mine fields.
Grouped together in another wing of the loft were several of the shows most successful installations, including Andrea Rossi's grouping of stuffed, white corpse-like figures, captioned "They used to be us." Near by was Phillip Chamber's small but stunning sculpture of tiny figures walking en masse. At first glance, they looked like something along the lines of a medieval beggars' procession. But after closer examination, trappings of times present, and future become apparent, and the pieces' connection to the shows theme become clear.
Almost directly above the tiny figures, three Walkman sets of earphones hung at head level from the ceiling. Passers-by were invited to stop and listen to Tyranny in the Scrapyard: 1984 in Music, Words, and Noise. The sounds were created by Roberta Chambers; the installation by John Trainor.
Perhaps the most popular work in the show was Haircut'84, a performance piece by Boston-based artist Tim Conant and R.J. Doughtey. It consisted of two New Waved Costumed figures singing their way through a haircut. The cutter snipped and primped, while the customer hammered out a comical, but a philosophical rap tune, repeatedly returning to the refrain:
Haircut '84
Everybody hit the floor
Dance, dance, dance, dance in your pants
Take a chance.
Slapped onto walls all around the room, tying the various works together were big brother's favorite slogans: "Ignorance is strength," "Freedom is slavery," "War is peace," Art in the shadow of double speak: it worked.
Now that the show is over, the Papier Mache Institute is working on it's next project: finishing their incorporation papers so they can gain non-profit status. A lot of time is also being spent dealing with calls from people who now want to know how they can become involved with PMVI "New Haven didn't know were were around before," Co-director Ritchie [sic] muses, and now even the Arts Council wants to see what they can do to help.
“Art Exhibit Studies Roots of Feminism” New Haven Journal Courier, May 12, 1983 by Kathleen Mary Katella staff reporter Women get out your dust rags. "Spring cleaning" is the title of the feminist art exhibit opening today at 817 Chapel Street. On Sunday, a two-foot-high cake that looks like a big Comet can, baked by Hamden artist Beverly Richey, will be among the highlights at a reception from 2-5p.m. (Yes, you can eat it.) Susan Orange of New Haven will use a scrub brush and lemon-scented cleaner to wash down her old canvases, virtually throwing away artwork she produced when she was a younger artist. This is the first exhibit in New Haven sponsored by the new local chapter of the Women's Caucus for the Arts, a national organization for women, according to member Betsy Haynes. It will run Thursday through Saturday from 1-5 p.m. until May 28th, in a second-floor room owned by the feminist Theater Light and Shadow. The show will include local contributions to an art genre Ms. Haynes said achieved popularity in the 1960s. "Feminist art is basically art done by women," she said, adding that women artists have never achieved as much notoriety as men for their work. She said the genre includes everything from women's paintings to the way women decorate their houses. "Just about anything, I say a woman makes is a woman's type of art." This exhibit's title signifies the need for women to get back to the basic reasons for the feminist movement, Ms. Haynes said. "The women's movement needs to get back to its roots," with a basic concern for "maximum personal freedom as people. Art has been a way of expression," she said. Artists at this exhibit pursue spring cleaning on an intellectual level. Ms. Haynes, a 33-year-old photographer, is including in the exhibit a collage of photo [sic] of women from around the world. Ann Langdon, who organized the artists in the exhibit complimented her pieces with this definition of spring cleaning: "Discarding what is no longer useful or relevant... Readjusting clutter so that it fits into containers... Getting rid of a functional superstructure in order to see and appreciate an introspective structure...) Simply, getting in touch with what she considers personally vital for women.
The pursuit of any art is at once solitary and collective. The formulation of idea, the form-rendering of the object most often demand the temporary of the isolation of the studio. Yet the entry of the results of that lonely genesis into the public arena of looking and reacting and persuading and challenging must be a task accomplished only by the many. It must be so because it is the point at which institutions (by their nature socially organized) cross paths with art and artists (by their nature singular). But in these times-by necessity - artists have shown and increased willingness and eagerness to band together, not so much out of shared ideological or aesthetic concerns (such as had been the case with the century's avant-gardes) as out of a need to deal with the pragmatics of survival, with the power structures around them, with the extra artistic issues of exposure and political and economic rights.
Strength in numbers; speech with a collective voice. And no less important, Self-made opportunities to air new work, test new ideas, be seen. Starts with a seed; grows idea, joining in, momentum, result.
When there is a dearth of institutions that can be utilized, or when those present are not responsive, artists find it incumbent upon themselves to fill, by their own institution creating power, the gap between private creation and public exposure. Witness two cases in point, in New Haven.
The Papier Mache Video Institute, founded several years ago by Paul Rutkovsky (currently on a teaching sojourn in Florida) has evolved into a shifting and protean congregating point for the area's most conceptually advanced and daringly experimental artists. PMVI is housed in an old factory building in and industrial district of the city. The huge dingy rooms have just that touch of romantic seediness that Soho had before it was raped by the bourgeoisie. Lately there has been an attempt to improve portions of the rambling building by subdivision into separate studio lofts. How successful-and even how necessary-this is, still remains to be seen.
PMVI doesn't conduct "exhibitions" in the conventional sense. Rather, every few months there will be an evening-long event. These events intermix work on the walls with temporary constructions and assemblages, with performance pieces, and with film and video. Just as PMVI is a democracy of artists determining for themselves the scope, guidelines, and contents of their events, so it is a democracy of media, creative energy assigned a higher value than the material means of its manifestation. Most of the participating artists (so fluid is the alliance that participants always change from event to event) work on their own, banding together when, if, and as a mutual momentum is recognized and shared in their current work. Thus each event arises virtually from scratch and arises naturally, organically, as part and parcel of the creative impulse. This artist-created and artist-run institution, then, integrates itself fully into the process, flows out of that process, and is not the stumbling block or source of pressure a conventional gallery can often be.
The latest PMVI event, in November, was built around the theme of 1984 (a la Orwell) and consequently took on a political tone related to current as well as future governmental abuses, like the nuclear build-up and the increasing militarism of present foreign policy. Four performance pieces were included and many of the works invited in one way or another direct participation from the visitors. The atmosphere was free and relaxed, despite the intervention of the local fire marshal with restrictions on attendance. (Even so, at least 500 visited this kaleidoscopic program before the evening was out.) Among the twenty-sum participating artists were Beverly Richey, Janet Lehman, Tim Feresten, Beverly Eliasoph, and Andrea Rossi. Works were seldom identified as to their makers, emphasizing the project's communal spirit.
While the PMVI acts as a focal point which can be utilized from time to time another artistic adventure in New Haven arose practically out of nowhere as an ad hoc effort to bring public awareness to the many painters and sculptures working in the city. Artists Working In New Haven was an exhibition held for a week at the end of October in the downtown business district. Ethel Berger, John Boorsch, Anna Bresnick, Jennifer Crane, Norman Nilsen, and Kathy White were the artists who organized themselves to create, fund, publicize and install this show of nearly forty city artists, who were selected and invited by the nucleus of six. A number of local businesses and cultural organizations were enlisted for support, most notably the Fusco Corporation, who made an attractive space available to the group through the interest of Lynn Fusco.
Accompanying the show was an "open studio" program in which many of the artists participated, thus making more work available to view and helping to break that public-private boundary line between audience and artist. The exhibition itself, handsomely and professionally installed, witnessed a steady flow of enthusiastic visitors through out it's run, while the artists took turns minding the gallery and discussing the works with visitors.
The work in this show was hardly as radical as that of PMVI, yet the quality was high. There was a blend of abstract and figurative work and some work that reflected strongly the New Haven environment. Richard Carleton's large etching, for instance, captures perfectly the mood as well as the topography of the dismal areas adjacent to the downtown sector-the lonely railroad overpass, deserted commercial building, and message less sign post.
Constance Lapalombara, on the other hand, creates mysteries of light and atmosphere. Her small oil "Pomeriggio" shows a bare room as a beam of light from the right picks out and radiates the curving contours or a white chair.
Among the abstractionists represented were Greg Little, whose violently aggressive handling writhed within highly angular shaped canvases. John Boorsch, who showed two small works with collaged fragments on a yellow field of variously inflected squares, and Kathy White, whose large and stark abstraction build of overlapping and interpenetrating triangular shapes evidenced a strength in execution and refinement of color that made it stand out. Ed Askew turned to the history of figuration in his large painting Figure Group, in which the figures seem to satirize the formal conventions of past movements and artists. Askew's personal emulation of cubist conventions, Shahn, Matisse, and perhaps even Bomberg, and the Vorticists all coexist.
Notable among the more modest selection of sculptures were Christine Gist whose untitled construction of black painted wood and glass generated an eerie feeling that an execution was about to take place as one looked through a small window to see a bowed figure in outline criss crossed by a red capital x. Anna Bresnick's construction from wood with encaustic and acrylic suggested house and home by its toy-house shape, yet explored sculptural concepts of space, gravity, and structural tension with the projecting wood slates that swept about its core.
From this year's improvisational base, something more durable can result for the New Haven community of visual artists. Already there is talk of an annual event the spirit, energy, and know-how of the areas artists have proven themselves, and the lesson has been learned: when nobody's gonna do it for you, do it yourself.
New Haven Journal Courier, Nov 4, 1983
by Kathleen Mary Katella
It is a cold day in April 1984. At least that's what Winston Smith thinks. The last time he remembers having a firm grasp of time was in the 50's. Now the world is different. He walks up the stairs to his cold London flat (heat, like chocolate, is rationed). A telescreen dominates one wall. It watches him as he watches it, and it cannot be turned off. Outside, the thought police hover in their helicopters; those who defy them disappear without a trace. Winston works at the Ministry of Truth, altering recorded history to better suit "the party." "Big Brother is watching," read posters everywhere. And the party slogan; "War is peace, Freedom is slavery; Ignorance is strength."
It's almost 1984.
In a huge old space once used to store World War II Air Force equipment, a group of artists is throwing and early party of sorts.
Beverly Richey is making a huge military wedding cake and re wrapped Hershey Bars. Andrea Rossi is making soft, bound maggot-like sculptures. Beverly Eliasoph is putting together a series of photographs symbolizing a man getting swallowed into what's happening in his television set. The screen is filled with war images, an oil company's logo, Alexander Haig.
The artists, members of the Papier Mache Video Institute, an improvisational group dedicated to "art activities of a transient nature," are preparing "the First Show of 1984," a project they started last year in honor of the fact that George Orwell's famous science fiction novel, published in 1949, is finally coming of age.
The show, a one-night affair scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Saturday, at 133 Hamilton St. is open to the public for $1.
Orwell's book tells the story of Winston Smith, and his life in 1984, a time of eternal warfare, in which "the Party" keeps itself in power by complete control over man's thoughts and actions. Smith and a lover named Julia, tried to evade the thought police and joined the underground opposition.
The group decided to do the story a year ago, and everyone reread the book several times, Richey said. A year later, many have decided that Orwell's glance into the future was not all that improbable.
"We're seeing signs and similarities," said Tim Feresten, who is working on a small room with a chair and a television set in it. Everything will be gray. The television set will be switched onto scenes of protest demonstrations. The sound track will include Buddist [sic] monks at a "die-in" in Groton.
"I'm a news addict," said Feresten, who notices a parallel to Orwell's '1984' in the crimes he hears about from New York City. "We're on the way," said Ms Eliasoph, " a politically minded person" who has found herself surrounded by parallels. She mentioned the MX missile being touted as a peacemaker (an idea reminiscint [sic] of Orwell's "doublethink") suppression of knowledge by the government and IRS records on people.
"If you watch a lot of TV - as I do you get a feeling of brainwashing," she said.
"This 1984 business is very much with us in a lot of ways. I hardly feel that any art can show it stronger than what it is in reality," said Ann Bresnick, who is making a series of skeletons of houses-all exactly the same and made from the cheapest type of wood.
"The whole condo thing..." Ms Eliasoph said.
"The whole idea of redevelopment..." Ms Rossi said, adding that such projects are pushing out the people who can't afford it.
"The whole idea of planning for our society ... profit is the bottom line," Ms Bresnick said
Other artists were less literal.
"To me the most important thing in the book was that everything was dusty. Nothing was clean anymore," said Ms Rossi, who plans to use that idea in her piece.
Ben Westbrock is making two big paper mache pieces simulating a metal cage (the Ministry of Love trapping Winston). Janet Lehmann, has a ten foot painting of the capitol building in Washington D.C.; her husband Bob made a sculpture called "the seventh deadly sin: rage"- a seven-foot high charging boar.
Rebecca ------ a sixteen-year old student from Wilbur Cross High School dressed a mannequin in a white "safety jacket" made of band-aid boxes with religious symbols and other such items sticking out. She said she wasn't as into "1984" as she was into "On The Beach," a book by Nevil Chute Norway, about the survivors of World War III.
"I have trouble thinking about the future. I have trouble thinking about my future," Ms Doughty said.
Ms Richey said the artists were more worried about the future when they started the project. "Now the general feeling is it isn't that bad," she said, adding that the artists have gained optimism from their ability to at least express themselves.
The exhibit will also include an "artificial store," featuring T-shirts and post cards by Roberta Chambers.
"If enough people of different origins come to it I think it could be a consciousness raising show," Ms Eliasoph said. "An entertaining way of giving people a jolt."
The New Haven Advocate
by Bruce Shapiro
September 1983
The New Haven Green gets a slice of "dough raising" - community action style.
It was a protest and fund raiser-or, more accurately, a dough-raiser; Banana Republic Creme Pie... Reaganomics crumb cake... pentagon sponge cake... breadline pudding... all were featured at the Let Them Eat Cake Sale, held around the green last weekend. "Let them eat cake," of course, was Marie Antoinette's callous response to concerns that 18th-century French peasants might not have enough bread.
Sponsored by the Coalition for People, Office Workers of New Haven, and the Peace and Justice Action Center, the Let Them Eat Cake Sale was part of a national campaign involving community-action groups in more than 100 cities.
Food and politics mixed freely at a press conference before the sale. Local attorney and flour fortune heir Charles Pillsbury, on the national, Let Them Eat Cake advisory board, said he was making a Pillsbury-mix Bundt cake. "It symbolizes Reagan's 'safety-net,'" he explained, "because it has a big hole in the middle."
Reagan's trickle-down theory is like saying we get the crumbs dusted off the table," said the Coalition for People's Steve Weingarten. "But it is about time we started throwing the crumbs back. We have a right to the food on the top of the table."
One of the nice things about cake explained local food artist Beverly Ritchie [sic] is that unlike the economy "everyone gets an equal piece." Ritchie [sic] baked a Trident Submarine Cake-decorated with pieces of Trident gum (made with saccharin, which is carcinogenic, "just like radiation from the Trident Sub") and edged with bleeding hearts.
Paul Hodel of the Peace and Justice Action Center even found a politico-culinary precedent. "This is consistent with American tradition," he said. "Think about the Boston Tea Party."
New Haven Register
Tuesday, January 22, 1985
David Hessekiel
NORTH HAVEN-Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec frequented the seamy nightspots of Paris for inspiration. Edgar Degas observed graceful ballerinas for artistic stimulation. When Beverly Richey wants to get her creative juices going, she makes nocturnal trips to the 24 hour Waldbaum's Food Mart.
The cavernous store contains many meanings and messages for the iconoclastic Richey, who's art often focuses on the manipulation of consumers. Packaging and displays often reveal cultural secrets to her analytic eye.
"I like them to show me what I need to have. What the American dream is about," Richey said with a wry grin as she entered the store's warmth and fluorescent glow on a cold, windy winter night.
Seasonal motifs (she said pointing out a valentine display) tell us what holidays are coming up-and who we ought to buy something for. Tantalizing coupons and store specials tell us what is cheap today and often lead to unnecessary impulse purchases as we stroll the aisles.
Studying this supermarket, where one can buy everything from vinegar to videotape, Richey said she learns a great deal about what is happening far beyond its electronic doors.
"You can tell what is going on in the world. Say raisins are expensive. That means there's been a drought in California. Citrus is high; that's a frost in Florida," she said. Coffee and sugar prices reflect the economies of third world nations. The check out counter magazines shout the names of whoever is famous this week.
Richey's supermarket forays have lead to such works as portraits of Cascade dish washing powder and Comet cleanser; series of Richey coupons; and an ongoing series called "Let Them Junk," meetings at which Richey feeds people junk food.
Just as the source of Richey's inspiration differs from that of conventional artists, her concept of art contrasts sharply with establishment ideals.
If a gallery wants to mount a Richey retrospective someday, it will have a hard time finding examples of her work. Art, to Richey, is not something to simply be hung on a wall, a commodity to be bought and sold. "Art is an integrity, it's a way of approaching life."
The average Richey artwork-if there is such a thing-is a multimedia event combining traditional and untraditional art materials such as food, plastic, paint; a site; spoken and written words; and, most of all, people.
One example is "Eat Audubon Street," A junk food model Richey created last September as a comment on the proposed development of that street by the Arts Council of Greater New Haven. Employed as the council's public relations director since last summer. Richey says she is deeply concerned with the direction of that Street development. Audubon Street's emphasis should be on space for art and artists, not high priced boutiques, offices and apartments, she said.
Richey presented "Eating Audubon Street" at the Long Wharf Awards Ceremony in order to catch the eyes of many of New Haven's art patrons. The desktop-size piece "involved people participating by eating, taking and packaging, junk food together," said Richey
Built over an architectural plan of the Audubon Street proposal, the model was built with $125.00 worth of junk food, purchased by Richey.
"It contained Chunkies, Junior Mints, Sugar Daddies, Fireballs, and any other kind of junk candy you can imagine," said Richey. "The neighborhood music school had prunes on top. the (proposed) office building had a base built out of Top Choice dog food...People understood that I was making a statement about the arts center."
Presented with mock Monopoly cards describing escalating Audubon Street real estate prices (rents rose depending on whether Audubon Street held an office building, boutique, or parking garage), the piece "was designed to help people understand that Audubon Street belongs to the people," she said.
"Children, artists, and patrons all ate Audubon Street together," she recalled. "All of them were eating but because they are all human beings, none of them could hold on to it. They would all have to let go it eventually."
Because her creations are so transient, Richey considers documentation critical. she maintains an archive of photographs, video tapes, and reviews of her work because they are often the only things left over once her shows close.
Richey's commitment to stretching herself and her thoughts has lead her to adopt unconventional grooming and dressing habits.
The styling of her extremely short hair, for example, exhibits no rhyme or reason. "I cut it myself whenever I like and I never comb it," she said with a laugh. At times, Richey highlights her hair with fluorescent blues, oranges and other colors.
She did not always have that "devil may care" appearance while growing up on Prospect Street and attending Hamden High School. "I can remember waking up when I was a teen-ager and moaning; 'why can't both sides look alike!'" On the other hand, Richey believes she "always looked at things a little differently."
Some people may find Richey's approach to art threatening, but the artist does not consider herself an angry rebel. An articulate and humorous speaker Richey exudes enthusiasm when discussing her work with art conneisseurs [sic] and curious by standers alike.
"My work is not about rebellion. It's about options, alternatives, freedom," she said. "I suppose I love everything that is considered wrong. When you realize how often we limit ourselves to one way you begin to think how boring it is."
"Sold Out" Richey's last show of 1984, exemplified her provocative, convention-stretching approach. The artist plaster a section of downtown New Haven last October with signs and graffitti [sic] exhorting the public not to miss "Sold Out; Official Opening of the '84 Shopping Season." Richey, her friends, and who ever they could recruit, passed out free tickets to the show and encouraged people to see it.
When viewers finally found the gallery at the top of several flights of stairs, there was no Richey work to be seen. The artist's message! "I had given all I could in 1984 and was sold out.
Having explored consumption for three years, Richey is moving into new artistic territory in 1985; fashion. A group project slated for this spring will study "what covers the body instead of what goes into it." Richey vowed, however, that she will continue her late night visits to Food Mart in pursuit inspiration.
