Ensemble 11
over 60? ... may i see your id? ... what is history?
2009-2021
Each drawing: 60"x40"
Tableau: 80"x170"x2"
Three charcoal drawings on canvas with multiple motivations: a performance; a project to launch a creative bridge between people over 60 and people under 25 with the help of everyone in-between; an experience in collaboration and community-based art; an improv theatre production as direct cultural organizing. The first exploration at the 2010 ROOTS Annual Meeting, despite its flaws, had generated enough energy to inspire a full event in Baltimore for the Alternate ROOTS 35th anniversary: “May I see your ID.”
MAY I SEE YOUR ID became CONVERSATIONS WITH TIME (CWT), a one year project, and its culmination.
From there, the team agreed that:
- Some of us are trying to keep EVERYBODY in the loop, others are trying to keep everybody happy, others are making sure thoughts are strongly expressed. We will see art as a journey – not only as a set of skills – to take new steps together toward shaping the world in which we want to live.
- I, as a mark of authenticity: It is a ‘I’, not a ‘MY’.
- YOUTH are translators for elders (RE-say it in a different way) and selectors of what is transmitted. And YOUTH, coming of age in a world SENIORS partly created or survived, have questions.
Over the years ROOTS members and others have shown pride in artistic-activist endeavors, as much as worries about what is passed on, how to pass it on, how it is understood and used, or neglected, or abused. My five old senses encompass artists’ role, media consumption, intergenerational/interracial/grassroots grounds and envision neighborhood generated outcomes. Old age is part of life. Challenges are revealed because COLLABORATION has started. Partnership is a multi-directional quest. If artists never retire, their goals often change as they look at the shrinking time ahead, what’s left or what is leaving the body, its capabilities, its energy.
“I want to be one of the builders of this bridge between the Over 60 and the under 25. And when I will be asked “may I see your ID”, my answer will be: I am 68… going strong”, Jean-Marie said quite a few years ago.
Actually today, just before the end of 2022, he is reaching 80.
The exploration and transformation of ways of collaborating by wrinkled-white-hair vieux-old folks, may question and enrich young minds. Doesn’t exhaustion before old age exist in our unjust capitalist world? Don’t private or public commitments, contracts, money, paperwork get in the way of prioritizing and keeping knowledge, imagination, discoveries, curiosity, access alive? cTOO–>TINYisPOWERFUL’s Community Lab created an alternative place to rest the mind, to play, to challenge the norms that define the arts and skilled trades, to make public two years of work on Tiny Business Culture. Then COVID scrambled everything.
The CHARLESTON CUT events highlighted FRESH CUTS BARBER, UNCLEON BARBER & VARIETY STORE, SHAWN BROWN BARBER, FAMILY BARBERSHOP, BERENICE’S HAIR SALON, LAB THE BARBERSHOP, SMITTY’S SUPER SEVEN/TYWANZA, TOP OF THE LINE BARBER SCHOOL. The REYNOLDS TINY LIBRARY provided much documentation about water and initial thoughts about COVID-19 and Climate Change, thanks to Brian Walter.
The INDIGO batiked shirts (above) were designed by Arianne King Comer with two other tiny businesses (ROSE FLORIST, SUGAR BAKESHOP).
Paintings on folded paper-bags were led by Kit Loney, creating a visual diary of her visits to many tiny businesses (SINGLETON’S PAINT & BODY SHOP, SMITTY’S SUPER SEVEN BARBERSHOP aka TWYANZA, FRESH FUTURE FARM, THE LAB, FAMILY BARBERSHOP, ROSE FLORIST, CHOICE’S GOURMET MARKET & DELI, KARPELES MANUSCRIPT MUSEUM, POKE SAN, ISLAND BREEZE).
Representation of POKE SAN by Markelle Evans with Jean-Marie Mauclet was the first step to TINY CULINARY (See Ensemble 15).
The Lab was also called a Jungle!
Three-dimensional works were built by Jean-Marie Mauclet, Morgan Kinne, Timothy Hunter, Kit Loney, Sharon Cooper Murray, Markelle Evans, Gwylene Gallimard.
BROADSIDES below are from the workshops on monuments “Rehearsing the Past: Looking at the City from Another Direction” conceived by Neill Bogan, as part of “Evoking History: Listening Across Cultures and Communities” co-curated by Mary-Jane Jacob and Tumelo Mosaka for Spoleto Festival USA 2001. The Shoreview project was born there.
Thinking further about INTER-GENERATIONAL in action!
A conNECKted apprentice and docent was told that there was, on the gallery 2nd floor, a lens pointed to the only Charleston trace of Robert Smalls: a small plaque that had been uncovered under a bush by KC Oubre. So did start, in 2017, a Charleston revival of Robert Small’s memory.
The project conNECKted: Imaginings for Truth & Reconciliation acknowledged it, gave it a platform, started a petition. The youth told a teacher. The teacher came to see it. The city talked about it. The memorial by Jean-Marie Mauclet is now at North Charleston High.
IN THE WHORL OF TIME reveals untold parts of history.
The 1,200 pieces of this 3D mandala have been created by artist SONIA OSIO, with educator Pamella Gibbs, conNECKtedTOO artists or apprentices and students of James Simons Public Montessory Elementary School.
They represent a historical timeline of the school and race relationships, 100 years (1919-2019), field-trips to neighborhood TINY businesses by the middle school entrepreneurship class, family stories, wishes for the future, at James Simons Montessori. A staircase site was proposed by now Principal Beth Dillenkopfer. The cable structure, conceived with Olivier was installed by then Principal Chris Ryan. Sonia, Morgan, Gwylene, Timothy hung the 70 or so composite circles. It was ready for the centenary of the school. Covid did not allow any festivities planned for the Spring 2020.
LATEST NEWS: it is still solidly installed and used as a teaching tool (2023).
THE FUTURE IS ON THE TABLE #4 was commissioned by the Mississippi Museum of Art to initiate or deepen collaborations with five regional organizations.
Artist daniel johnson wrote: “JEMAGWGA became “in service” to the participants; artists, educators and their students, administrators, activists. Primarily listening, then reflecting just enough thought and ideas to generate notions and visions in participants. The artists then, at the direction of community members, would build three dimensional blanks and props while also teaching techniques, allowing participants to enter the process. Structures emerged transformed over three months through dialog and the work of many hands. For each of five disparate groups, a sculpture of iconic architecture in their local area resulted – modeled and injected with social, reflective and symbolic meaning.
The sculpture became a vessel to carry the many conversations forward from planning to construction to their “finished” state, which continued to invite interaction and change.
Each group with their engaged teachers, students, parents chose a social touchstone to respond to in their piece – Tougaloo College/Civil Rights, Operation Shoestring/ Education, the Nollie Jenkins Family Center, Rankin High School and the Pelahatchie Attendance Center/ Government & Policy, Farish Street and Smith Robertson Museum/ Arts & Culture, and Midtown/ Intricacies & Possibilities of Urban Renewal…”
