Ensemble 14
Crossing Land and Water?
1996-2021
Each drawing: 60"x40"
Tableau: 105"x180"x24"
On Ensemble 14, the flow of hand-transferred images on canvas is a river. An imaginary river from Alaska to the Low Country (SC), symbolizing the Charleston/Atlanta/Alaska Challenge.
Two Arpan Collective craftswomen (from Thane, India) came to Charleston as participants in the Future In The Table #3, thanks to MarketPlace India. They were collaborating with Arianne King Comer on a large wall hanging inspired by Indian festivals. Batik, Indigo and embroidery.
While in Charleston they knotted, Macramé style, the end fringes of the river on canvas. which shows work weaved and dyed by Kit Loney, Arianne King Comer and their students. They did the same to a heavy blue cotton scarf my late Colombian brother-in-law had sent me. Sunanda Shashikant Junior and Sharda Hanumant Ghadge felt these artworks were really unfinished. Yet my Colombian family did not approve. Erin Clary aka ERCL completed some work.
There is a potential parallel between discovering the Last Frontier(s) and discovering the adventure of contemporary arts.
All the projects I have been part of involve social exploration, collaboration, some feminism and a criticism of the general “world of the arts”. Lately, involving targeted audiences has dictated the process and the product – It also dictated a large part of the perception – It is a road, a dream or a necessity, for an artist, to inventory new territories – and share them with others – where the status of art and that of the artist, the destiny of the work, where or with whom it is produced, are part and parcel of its creation.
1996: Louise Graff aka LOGR, is looking for a partner to paddle the Yukon river. I pass the test! She has paddling experience. I have determination. 2000 miles. The row becomes also a fundraiser for Happy Days & Special Times.
1998: The Atlanta/Alaska Challenge is initiated thanks to Rebecca DesMarais of the Atlanta Youth Art Connection: a week to acquire the skills necessary to survive in the wild at Camp Kiwanis, followed by the building of an art installation/ environment, using my canvases of the Yukon venture as backdrops. Thank you to both staff, and naturalist/camp counselor Lee Fox and the Boys & Girls Clubs youth.
“This we know. The earth does not belong to man. Man belongs to the Earth.”
Indigo artist Arianne King Comer and weaver Nancy Basket dye a kudzu waterfall in indigo. This idea had developed from meetings at the Discipline School with teacher Dana Brown. Ceramist Cathy Murdaugh built the water vat.
Thanks to John-Paul Huguley we installed the Charleston/Atlanta/Alaska Challenge at the Old City Jail. There he had created a place destined to become the School of the Building Arts, as an attempt to save the Old City Jail from becoming one more tourist hotel.
This art program/art installation was contemporary, environmental, participatory. The fictional river and its environment, was created by 16 classes or community groups and an Americorps team. Each specific program was designed with one teacher and one or two artists. In May each class or group visited the Old Charleston City Jail, something very special since it had been an abandoned building for 60 years. They all participated in organizing their collective project. They also added their own link to a very large dreamcatcher-like structure, hung between two live oaks. A group of Ojibwe youth also brought an authentically made dreamcatcher.
Each participant also fabricated an origami paper boat, altogether forming a flotilla of 108.
A catalogue of the Charleston/Atlanta/Alaska Challenge was written with Darryl Wellington, a writer I met at Alternate ROOTS. This started the beginning of a long friendship.
2004: Jean-Marie with Marlo Sutphin aka MASU built 56 stools to initiate a gift exchange. This launches The Future is on the Table #3 (see Ensemble 10). Their seats are cut from a world equal-area/azimutal/gpolar map painted on a 4’x8′ sheet of plywood. The same map is also stitched across the three canvases of Ensemble 14. Each of the 56 three legged stools actually represented a piece of a ‘puzzled up’ world. When they arrived in England, France, South Africa, India, the US South, in bundles of 5 or 6, they became center cores for workgroups, circles, rhizomes, as well as tools for unexpected art projects …
Three years later, the artists who had chosen to accept the stools converged to the departure point – FOLLY BEACH/CHARLESTON – with the seeds of a common art story. Such a diversity of talents, trades, origins, expectations-fed performances, sculptures, photographs, videos, plans, encounters, Capturing the Moving Mind, together inspired new local collaborations with schools, musicians, youth groups, an architectural center, Fast & French; and activated a unique collaboration between local art institutions. Yes, the idea of stools is simple. But it took 56 of them, 56 art objects to create a new spontaneous, long-term, collective and deeply inspiring process.
The original map had become a tool for understanding and liberation. Maps open the mind to distance, separation, the unknown, potentials… They flow and flood in all directions. Zoom was not existing at the time. The gifts developed the connections.
Rajni Shah writes about her experience:
The stools remind me of what I stand for. They remind me of what is important. And thus, they are a mixed presence in my life. They are a wonderful, powerful symbol, and they bring me together with other artists across the world. But they are also a reminder of how much there is to do, how we need effort and commitment to create this space in our world. I gave mine away, continuing the chain of giving, to artists and audiences at a London performance of mine. People loved them. I attached a long handwritten letter to them, hoping that people would write back (I asked them to). No-one wrote back. This was disappointing. But in a sense, it brought me back to one of the first things Jean-Marie wrote to me: “Hello, The stools are only a symbolic offering, to you first, as an introduction to The Future is on the Table.” Rajni Shah
MarketPlace: Handwork of India requested that we cut the legs of the stools to be sent to the Arpan Cooperative in Thane (India). We could not accept fully and provided six stools each at a difference height.
Michele Waquant filmed portraits of the craftswomen seating on a stool of their choice, and explaining why.
At a station in Mongolia with artists and academics in an Ephemera conference in the TransSiberian: Management & Movement in the Age of Permanently Temporary War “Capturing the Moving Mind”.
Below Guest Speakers Linda Frye Burnham and Alice Lovelace facilitate conversations in the Gibbes Museum courtyard. Passang Chokey aka PACH translates Hindy and with artist/notetaker extraordinaire Ruby Thorkelson and Arpan members Sarah & Sunanda embroiders the batiked piece prepared by Arianne King Comer to celebrate an Indian festival.
The input and drawings of Omari Fox aka OMFO lay the ground for open mic sessions.
Created by Arianne with Khary Oscar King and Kebe, this tree tells history with many stories.
Led by Phinias Chirubvu with Sarah Ferguson (Gibbes Museum), Pamella Gibbs and La’Sheia Oubre (Fraser Elementary), the kids built their homes AND a village.
Sarah and Sunanda installed a mandala and opened a store. The Arpan Cooperative work includes a bi-lingual handmade book “Future on the Table Festivals.”
Hundreds of quotes – all starting with “The Future …” have been painted on Arches paper.
Multiple seats propose some special perspectives or places to rest.
Rajni Shah initiates “Across the waters: a Gift Exchange” with Fast & French staff and customers.
Wok Marcia Kure creates “Burqua as Shelter” with youth (Chanequa, Althea and Sarah) and Dona Cooper Hurt. This generates stories about personal choices to wear or not to wear the burqua and exposes very conflicting opinions.
On the opening day BRLA, BRDU, COHA, LAWA offer $1 bills to wanderers in the park. “… I soon perceived a relationship between this accepting of a gift and the beginning of a conversation, i.e., to accept a gift is to begin a conversation on some level.” (Rajni Shah)
Most pictures were taken at the Charleston City Gallery at Waterfront Park.
A group from the Clemson Architecture Center in Charleston (CAC.C) and their teachers expand on a proposal of Delphine Ziegler to create “A Phreatic Shift”.
Imagine “Tropical Ice” (Aurore Gruel & Delphine Ziegler, w/ musicians Bill Carson, John Holenko, Nathan Koci, Hazel Ketchum, Sam Sfirri, Ron Wiltrout and Mustafa Walker.) Aurore, a classically trained dancer-choreographer, partners with a block of melting ice under Charleston’s tropical August sun: 40 minutes at 100 degrees Fahrenheit!
A FEW CATALOGUES OF “THE FUTURE IS ON THE TABLE” IN THREE PARTS – BEFORE SHOW, AFTER INSTALLATION, AFTER CLOSING aka LAUNCHING (INTO THE FUTURE) – ARE STILL AVAILBLE. CONTACT US AT JEMAGWGA@GMAIL.COM