Beverly McIver's "Self Portrait (Tryptych) #3" [Enlarge in New Window]

The Creative Capital Lecture Series at Austin Peay State University

For the 2003-2004 academic year, the Department of Art at Austin Peay State University invited several Creative Capital grantee artists to visit as part of the Creative Capital Artist Lecture Series. Also included in this program was a weekend-long workshop from Creative Capital’s Professional Development Program. In this roundtable conversation, Creative Capital’s Adam Silverman leads a discussion with several key members of this series at Austin Peay: Alyson Pou, Gregg Schlanger, Chris Doyle, and Beverly McIver.

For more information on Creative Capital's Professional Development Workshops, be sure to visit http://pd.creative-capital.org

Adam Silverman: I’d like to welcome you all to our discussion today and thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. I have on the line Gregg Schlanger, Professor of Sculpture at Austin Peay State University and the host of the Creative Capital Artist Lecture Series there. Hello Gregg.

Gregg Schlanger: Hello.

AS: We also have Alyson Pou, Creative Capital’s Associate Director who is the creator and director of Creative Capital’s Professional Development Program, in which she and a cadre of artists travel across the country teaching skills to other artists, helping them create sustainable careers in the arts.

Alyson Pou: Hello.

AS: Finally, we have two lecturers from the Creative Capital Artist Lecture Series, Beverly McIver and Chris Doyle. Chris Doyle is one of Creative Capital’s first crop of grantees from way back in 1999 and is an artist whose public works have been exhibited in the most public of places, including New York’s Columbus Circle, right next door to what has now become the most expensive address in the city. And Beverly McIver also a member of Creative Capital’s roster of grantees is a painter, often of self-portraits, that explore racial stereotypes and relate to her youth in North Carolina. Again thank you all for speaking with me today.

AS: Gregg, maybe you could tell us a little bit about the Creative Capital Artist Lecture Series and how it came about.

GS: Over a year ago, I put together a small committee to arrange visiting artists for the next year. I met Alyson and Chris in Nashville at the Americans for the Arts Conference, where they led a session on Creative Capital. I thought that Creative Capital’s artists might make a great theme for a series; in putting together a lecture series, it’s always difficult to make initial contact to invite artists. It seemed that Creative Capital might help out, and there are a lot of good Creative Capital artists. So that’s where it started.

AP: Gregg, you and I had a conversation about the whole group of Creative Capital artists, and we tried to match particular artists with the niche of your series based on what they had to offer.

AS: I understand the students particularly responded to Beverly McIver in a powerful way.

GS: Beverly had a very strong impact on our students in the work she’s doing, and influenced their thoughts on what art can be. I think even somebody from here met up with Beverly in New York.

Beverly McIver: That’s true – it was William. I spent the whole day with him. We had lunch and went to Pearl Paint and saw a little bit of art and then I took him to my studio.

AS: Beverly, could you tell us any highlights from your lecture and your visit to Austin Peay?

BM: That’s a big question because there were lots of highlights. One of the things that was interesting was that the students were quite diverse. I had a cross-section of students come up after the lecture and share their thoughts with me about their work. One guy was a cross-dresser, and he was touched by the fact that I wear a mask in my artwork. And I also met Bobo the Clown.

AS: Bobo the Clown?

BM: Bobo the Clown is another student who came up to me after my lecture and said “I’m a professional clown.” He was interested in posing with me in some of my paintings as Bobo the Clown. How often does a girl get an offer like that?

AS: Depends on the girl, I guess. Are clowns a theme in your paintings?

BM: Yes. This is what Bobo does: he dresses up and does birthday parties and twists balloons and knows how to juggle. I mean, he’s really more of a clown than I am. But I thought it was really interesting.

AS: A lot of your artwork deals with the relationships between blacks and whites in the American South. Did the students react strongly to it down in Tennessee?

BM: I think so. I always get a very different reaction in the South than I do when I give a lecture anywhere else. I think they intuitively understand what I’m talking about because they are part it. Even if they’re not black, they’re part of that history. One of the reasons why Bobo the Clown, this white male from the South would be appealing would be because he was a Southerner. And I would be interested to see what would happen if I met him in my disguise and he showed up in his. Something magical might happen in the interaction, and I think it’d be worth painting whatever it is.

AS: Now Chris, when you were at Austin Peay, you not only gave a lecture but you also created a public art project. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Chris Doyle: For two weeks leading up to the lecture, I made a project called “Search Engine.” First, I asked the students at the university to go with me into the library after it closed, late at night, wearing cave-exploration headlamps. They carried digital cameras and digital video cameras and recorded what they found moving around the library with flashlights. While they were doing that, I was recording them. What they ended up collecting, a form of “search engine,” was shown in part in the gallery space for a month. Then the footage of them in the library was edited together, somewhat abstracted, and projected onto the façade of the library the weekends during my lecture. So it was a multi-part, fairly complicated use of public art in which I got to know the students there for a couple of weeks and then finally present the lecture. By the time I did my presentation, I felt like I knew my audience well.

AS: And in that way you came to each other on equal footing as artists.

CD: Absolutely. When I make public projects, I’m very interested in involving communities, and just how that involvement takes place has evolved in my work over time. I’ve always been sensitive about the way that I involve people, and I’ve been dissatisfied with some of the models that I had used in the past because often I would ask people to participate by just videotaping them. It always felt like it was a one-way relationship. I think the projects done at Austin Peay were different in the sense that the students were performing an activity that was of interest to them. They were basically making their own art, and my work was almost a byproduct of what they were doing. And rather than have a room full of people who are all working on my project, they were on their own tracks, making their own work while I was making work about them.

AS: Another feature of the lecture series was the Creative Capital Professional Development Workshop which many people might not know about because it’s just leaping off the ground at this moment. Alyson, could you tell us what the Professional Development Workshops are and how that worked at Austin Peay?

AP: In April we completed our pilot year with the Professional Development Program. We have done eight weekend workshops around the country partnering with different organizations. So it’s been an exciting period of time developing the curriculum for the program and taking it on the road for a test drive.

The program itself is generally based on the activities of the Artist Services program of Creative Capital, and very specifically on some of the things we’ve learned from working with grantees to help them develop their careers and push their funded projects forward. The Professional Development Weekend Retreat offers this information to a broader community of artists around the country. It focuses on strategic planning, grant writing, financial management, marketing and public relations. The leaders are consultants from the field who have twenty or more years experience in these topic areas and the Creative Capital grantees who are participating in the program as leaders and facilitators. We’re building an artist-to-artist peer model of sharing information and assembling the tools artists need to have successful careers and successful lives.

So that’s what we’re up to with the Professional Development Retreat. As Gregg and I were talking about the lecture series, I mentioned that we were working on the Professional Development Program, and that additional partnership developed out of those conversations. We talked about the workshop and agreed that it made sense to open it up beyond the faculty and staff at Austin Peay to offer it to other professional artists around Tennessee. And Gregg, you had people from a broader regional area apply and participate [from Kentucky and Virginia]. I think it worked out extremely well and that the group of artists was diverse. We had a graduate student just finishing up school and entering his career, people who had international careers and reputations, tenured faculty. And the group ended up recognizing each other as a positive resource, making great relationships with each other aside from what they were able to gain from the workshop.

GS: I was amazed at the end, since I didn’t know what to expect coming in to this. Things with titles like “Professional Development Workshop” are often feel-good sessions where nothing really gets accomplished, and I think others were also skeptical. In the end, though, everyone – myself included – walked away from this going “Wow!” I think that all the twenty-five participating artists were amazed at how much they gained from this, from the very professional to a water color painting grandmother who lives in a little town twenty miles outside of Clarksville and hasn’t really ever exhibited.

AP: And Chris, you were one of the workshop leaders, so maybe you have some thoughts about your experience of it.

CD: Many of the artists came up to me and said that they had heard about it via email, and were amazed that this lecture series was happening in Clarksville, Tennessee. And so they immediately wanted to be part of the workshop as well. As Gregg said, people always come into it with a certain degree of healthy skepticism. What’s really interesting to me is the idea of being able to talk directly to people about developing their careers. It doesn’t really matter at what point you are in your career; we can help people who are just starting out, who need to get back on track, who have been working for a long time and are operating at a high level in their career and still want to ratchet things up a notch. One great thing about the workshop in Tennessee was that we were able to exhibit the flexibility of the program. Also, though Clarksville is a big city, the area around it is pretty rural; in a place like that, people are open and looking for information and wanting to start a dialogue.

AP: Chris, I have a question for you. As an artist, what do you get out of being a workshop leader? What makes you want to be part of the program to help other artists?

CD: I think that’s a really interesting question in the way that it’s changed since I’ve started doing it. Originally I was so grateful, I guess, to Creative Capital facilitating a certain kind of information in my life that I didn’t have before. And so I had an urge to turn around and take it back out to as many other artists as I could. Over time, that’s changed a little bit. One of the same things that the participants get out of the workshops is what I get out of it also, which is this intense experience of meeting more people and finding out more about work all across the country that isn’t particularly New York–centric. That broadens my view of the way that people are making art, that people are getting along and surviving as artists. In many ways, I get a lot of the same things out of doing the workshop as people who participate in them.

AP: Beverly, you’re on the Strategic Planning Team with Colleen Keegan, and you’re going to be leading one of the workshops that we’re doing in New Jersey with Aljira. What’s it been like for you? I know you haven’t been out on a workshop yet but you’ve been working with Colleen quite a bit right?

BM: For me, it’s funny because some of the skills taught – like keeping a journal and having a dialogue with yourself ­– are things that I’ve done all of my life. I always make “to do” lists and things like that. I don’t know where I picked up those skills but it was wonderful to have Creative Capital validate it and say “This is a good thing to do.” But it was extended as well; Colleen suggested that I make a picture book because I’m a visual artist, in addition to writing things down, to involve pictures of things. And that was wonderful for me because it really hit home and brought some wonderful items into my life like my car – my new BMW.

AP: So you were able to accomplish some concrete goals by doing that right?

BM: Absolutely. So the good thing for me is to be able to share it with other artists and say, “I’m not your typical artist, given my background, and you would never expect me to have that little BMW sports car that’s totally not artist-friendly in that I can’t store anything in it, but it makes me look good.” It’s great to be able to share that with other artists, to say “If you envision whatever it is you want, you can have it.” I love being able to share that with other artists who believe that they could never have something, from that to grants to the cover of Art in America to whatever they want. So I’m excited about getting out there and continuing to spread the word and share the wealth with all the artists.

GS: In my classes, I’ve found that in finding the right questions to ask my students, I’m finding questions to ask myself. It helps me develop and grow as an artist. In presenting this, in bringing all this information together, you must find yourself in a similar position as a workshop leader.

CD: Surely, teaching enriches you in these ways that are really unexpected. You have these amazing encounters – in the same way that Beverly talks about meeting Bobo the Clown, you have things that actually change your work. And I think that the more you open yourself up to that truth by getting out there and talking to other artists, the more chances that that’s going to happen.

AP: I’ve been at every workshop, and in each one I’ve learned something for myself. Gregg, you not only sponsored the workshop and partnered with us to do it, but you also participated. Have you had any concrete results or anything happen for you afterwards?

GS: Since then, I’ve had two people on my payroll every week now; I’m getting a lot more done, and it’s paying for itself. Colleen said to me that getting help would pay for itself, and it’s made a big difference. All of a sudden, I’ve got all these projects going on and all these possibilities. I’m even considering taking next spring off without pay if it all kind of falls into place, so I won’t have such a crazy life as I did this year. At some level, without sitting down and doing the paperwork, the workshop has changed my attitude, my approach, and my proposal-writing. All of a sudden, a lot of things are falling into place. It’s wonderful.

AP: One of the things that appeals to people about this workshop is that it isn’t about telling you to do a certain set of exercises. I mean, they’re there if you want to do them, but it’s more about how to identify your own vision and your own voice, and then follow that and find the ways that you want to do that for yourself effectively. It’s very individualized.

GS: There was both new information and things that I’d done years ago that I don’t do anymore even though I need to. I think that once school ends next week, I’ll just sit down for a day and pull out all my notes and start to set up more of a plan. So I’m still in the winding down stage of it.

AP: We should mention the other artists who were part of the Creative Capital Artist Series at Austin Peay: James Luna, Franco Mondini-Ruiz, Mel Chin, and Hirokazu Kosaka. Gregg, how do you think it has affected the community there at the University to bring all these different points of view and different artists and have you seen an effect?

GS: Maybe it’s too soon to say, but definitely there are students in whose work I can already see changes. I think it definitely has an impact. And in the region – I was just in Memphis two weeks ago, and when I ran into someone who teaches sculpture down there, he came up and said “What do you guys do in there? What’s this lecture series?” Anyway, having Chris here for two weeks was fantastic. The involvement of students and the numbers of students that got involved was great.

AS: Terrific. Well, this has been a really great and interesting conversation. Thank you all for joining us today.