Marketing Mondays: In The Ghetto

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Stuck in a ghetto? Artists don't have to be

Ghetto is an Italian word—probably from borghetto, meaning “neighborhood” or “enclave”—to describe the area of Venice where the city’s Jews were forced to live in the 16th Century. Given that unjust beginning, ghetto has always had a negative connotation, one of confinement, where enclave has not. Beverly Hills, for instance, is an enclave but nobody calls it a ghetto.

So, a ghetto is not where you want position yourself if you want a larger place in the world.

And yet, artists create ghettos for themselves all the time. I’m not talking about the physical neighborhoods that can be very helpful for us in terms of critical mass for living, working or both (until the developers move in, jack up the rents and drive us out). No, I’m talking categories into which we willingly jump—or into which we allow ourselves to be pushed: women artists, black artists, fiber artists, paper artists, encaustic artists and the like.

I’m not  for a moment suggesting we deny our sex or race or the medium we work with. And I'm not suggesting we never participate in exhibitions or events in which a particular element of our identity is a unifying theme; indeed, the embrace of a community can be nurturing and safe. But a community can be as constrictive as it is supportive. So I'm suggesting we think about how we identify ourselves or allow ourselves to be identified. I’ve talked about the issue at greater length here and here but I think it’s worth mentioning again because artists continue to limit their options by a simple adjective.
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Ask any "fiber artist" how many exhibitions s/he has participated in outside of the fiber world. Often, it's not many. On the other hand, I don't see the any of the artists in Textility straining under the yoke of such a label. Why? Because they don't use it. They employ or reference fiber and fabric in their work--indeed, that's why Mary Birmingham and I selected them for the exhibition--but they are painters and sculptors. And make no mistake, there's a longstanding tradition of painters and sculptors using fiber, from Robert Rauschenberg and Lucio Fontana to Sam Gilliam, Fred Sandback and Louise Bourgeois. 

Textility at the Visual Art Center of New Jersey: No "fiber at" here. The medium is fiber, the result is art

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I deal with this issue regularly. When someone introduces me as an “encaustic artist,” I counter that my esthetic, which embraces lush color, rich surface and a reductive sensibility, translates into the work I do in other mediums as well. Recently, digital prints). I love the materiality of wax paint, but I'm a painter, not an "encaustic artist." I myself am not made of pigmented beeswax; that would be Madame Tussaud’s Joanne Mattera.  And to my knowledge that Joanne does not exist.

Now here's an encaustic artist: wax Picasso at Mme. Tussaud's

I'm writing this as I work on the Sixth International Encaustic Conference, which I founded and direct and now produce in cooperation with the Truro Center of the Arts at Castle Hill on Cape Cod in June. It’s a fabulous experience for artists who work in the medium—not “encaustic artists” but painters, sculptors and printmakers who have found their voice largely through a demanding but richly rewarding material. This is a professonal gathering—an enclave—where we get together once a year to hear from dealers, critics, curators and conservators, as well as artists at the top of their field, to learn, share, show our work, and have a great, tax-deductible time. This year our keynote is Edward Winkleman, owner of the Chelsea gallery that bears his name. He neither shows nor is made of wax, but I expect he will offer much for our conferees to consider.

I modeled the multi-event structure of the Encaustic Conference on that of the the annual College Art Association Conference, which took place recently in Los Angeles. We all need places to convene and confabulate, to talk shop, to hang out with those who get what we do, to show to and with one another. We just don't want to be stuck there. As with the CAA, we want to be able to go back into the larger art world, invigorated, to participate in a broader forum--no adjective, all noun.

Now, over to you:
. Have you found yourself in an art ghetto?

. What kind of art ghetto were you in?

. How have you gotten out?
. Was it / is it a problem to find opportunities "outside"?
. Have you/do you continue to enter and leave the ghetto at will?

. If you're happy there, what does it do for you?


A reminder: Anonymous comments are OK if they add to the conversation. But if you have something negative to say—to me, about the topic, to a commenter—have the courage of your convictions and identify yourself. I’m not providing a forum to cowards

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