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Merger of artistic minds yields fresh ideas
by Dickson Mercer
There will be no artists’ statement for “Merge/Emerge,” the new guest show at Artworks@7th . If there were one, though, the seven featured women might put it like this:
This is not about the art on the walls; it is about the experience that put it there. What we knew, we shared. What we learned, we shared that, too. This was more about the importance of failure than it was about success, more about breaking than making, more about playing than executing, more about energy than selling. We made a community. We smashed things. We took things apart whenever it made sense–which was always. The worse a piece looked coming out of the kiln, the easier it was to convert it to shards.
“We have clientele that want the stuff they are used to, or like,” painter-sculptor Mary Ida Rolape said one recent evening. “This stuff over here, we don’t know if it has any sale-ability.” The stuff in question happens to be hanging tile mosaics, a collection of colorful signposts that now fill Tammy Vitale’s backyard in Lusby. Peel back the layers of recycled materias–glass, pottery and other thrifty things–and you’ll find a plywood board.
Rolape, Vitale and the five other local artists who will display mostly new work in “Merge/Emerge”–Rose Beitzell, Joan Humphreys, Deb McClure, Conni Leigh James and Linda Rosenthal–made the tiles in one day. It was a get-together that, based on their descriptions of it, was more playful and less formal than a workshop. What they have created, they said, is more like a salon.
The salon started out, however, as a “mastermind” group, an alliance of people who meet regularly to support one another in achieving life goals.
“A couple years back I felt like I needed a community around me,” explained Vitale, a full-time artist who has experience with community organizing. “I felt like I didn’t have one.”
Vitale invited everyone on her email list. Five people, including Rosenthal, James and Humphreys, showed up.
Rosenthal’s goal was to start making art. James said she wanted to learn how to “play.” Humphreys, who has created everything from paintings to jewelry, said she was “goal-setting.”
Six weekly meetings later, the members of the artist-heavy group voted to transition from a mastermind group to a social one. In time, Rolape and Beitzell, the former co-owners of Heron’s Way Gallery in Leonardtown, were absorbed into the group. What’s more, the focus naturally shifted toward art–specifically, the process of making it. “You just can’t put artists together without something happening,” Vitale said.
Typically, one artist in the group will volunteer to lead an art-making session. [Rolape], for instance, has taught the group a metal etching technique; James, a graphic designer by day, has lots of collage-worthy paper to share; Vitale, who creates wall sculptures, has plenty of clay to dole out.
“We all bring different art to the table and we work togehter,” Vitale said. “And when we work together, everyone is influenced by what the other person is doing.”
James added, “All of these diverse mediums are emerging into new art forms now.”
But members of the yet-to-be-named group also occasionally attend receptions at area galleries, and still get together just to get together.
“The thing that I think is different about our group,” said Rosenthal, a self-taught practictioner of “no-technique” art, “is that a lot of the artists belong to the Calvert Aritsts’ Guild, or they don’t. Other than taking classes or going to art guild meetings, there’s no socialization like we’re doing, that I know of.” Some of the women are members or former members of local galleries. Others are neither. For James, a former member of North End Gallery in Leonardtown, the new group provides accountability sans pressure. Her graphic design work, she said, comes with frequent deadlines. In such an environment, other projects can easily get pushed aside. “My stuff was never due,” she said.
At the same time, the salon these artists have created is less about gaining control than losing it. They are all trying new media, all while embracing the idea that failure early on is what feeds success later on. More so, they seem to be having lots of fun.
Internal competition is not allowed. Plans, it seems, are not allowed either. “We think this time next year {the group} could be completely different,” James said.
Wylde Womens Wisdom
Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead
