Best Gallery Trend, The Short Show
Baltimore City Paper, Posted 9/17/2008EVER SINCE CINDY REHM SHUTTERED the Spare Room gallery space in her Waverly home in 2006, we've missed the smart yet off-the-cuff art show, the one-night-only or weekend-only event that felt so special because it was so fleeting. Luckily, some new visual vanguards have rekindled that impulse, from the Current Gallery's In Home: In Response last March to Gallery 2219's Polaroid show last May to the weekend show Erin Cluley curated in her Creative Alliance residency living space this past summer. Here's to looking forward to more short-lived inspiration in the future.
PEEK Review interview with Cindy Rehm, January 2006.
PEEK: How did you get started?
Cicadas are back, but now they're art, A short-lived exhibit includes their wings
Cara Ober, Art US, May-June 2007
PEEK Review interview with Cindy Rehm, January 2006.
PEEK: How did you get started?
Cindy Rehm: I’ve nearly always had my studio in my home. In the summer of 2003, I began using an empty room across the hall from my studio as an additional workspace. As I worked in the space, I realized I could install the work in the room where it was created. I liked that the work would grow in the space and then be exhibited there. I also started thinking about the limited opportunities to show installation work in Baltimore. After my project was done, the room would be empty again, so Idecided to open it up to other artists.
I asked Charnan Lewis and Lauren Bender to become part of the review panel for spare room and we put out a call for installation proposals. I asked both Charnan and Lauren to do a project that fall while we waited for the proposals to roll in. In the spring of 2004, we showed our first series of installations selected from the artist proposals.
I asked Charnan Lewis and Lauren Bender to become part of the review panel for spare room and we put out a call for installation proposals. I asked both Charnan and Lauren to do a project that fall while we waited for the proposals to roll in. In the spring of 2004, we showed our first series of installations selected from the artist proposals.
PEEK: Why did you choose Charnan Lewis and Lauren Bender to work with? How did the selection process work?
CR: I respected both Charnan and Lauren’s work and I knew they both had good critical sensibilities. Mid-way through the spare room shows, Charnan left town, so I asked Bill Sebring, my fiancé (who also shares his private space with spare room) to join Lauren and I on the review committee. I thought it was important to have at least three voices on the panel and everyone had an equal weight in the decision making. We would put out periodic calls for installation projects. After the deadline, we would sit down and review the proposals. We weren’t so concerned with the artist’s prior experience making installation works, but we did seek proposals that would be temporary projects. I would use the term site-specific, but it doesn’t really apply to all the projects.
PEEK: One of the most innovative things about spare room was its freedom, gained by the way it circumventing the usual alternative gallery "system"-one that is always bogged down by financial concerns and bureaucracy. Was this your plan from the beginning? Did you receive grants or donations or did you take on all financial responsibilities yourself?
CR: I’ve always had a sort of do it yourself attitude. It’s something I encourage in my students…if you have an idea, you can’t always wait around for an institution to come to you, just organize and do it! Money is always a concern, but there are lots of things you can on a small budget. Spare room didn’t cost much. I didn’t have to pay rent on the space, so my only other costs were promotion, opening costs and general installation materials. Spare room was not established as a non-profit, so we weren’t eligible for grants. We did a benefit the start of the second year. We sold artist made matchbooks for twenty dollars a pop. It was a great show and we made nearly five hundred dollars! That money went to the production of a general spare room postcard and helped to defray opening costs. I covered the costs of opening beverages and the artists supplied the food.
PEEK: One of the most innovative things about spare room was its freedom, gained by the way it circumventing the usual alternative gallery "system"-one that is always bogged down by financial concerns and bureaucracy. Was this your plan from the beginning? Did you receive grants or donations or did you take on all financial responsibilities yourself?
CR: I’ve always had a sort of do it yourself attitude. It’s something I encourage in my students…if you have an idea, you can’t always wait around for an institution to come to you, just organize and do it! Money is always a concern, but there are lots of things you can on a small budget. Spare room didn’t cost much. I didn’t have to pay rent on the space, so my only other costs were promotion, opening costs and general installation materials. Spare room was not established as a non-profit, so we weren’t eligible for grants. We did a benefit the start of the second year. We sold artist made matchbooks for twenty dollars a pop. It was a great show and we made nearly five hundred dollars! That money went to the production of a general spare room postcard and helped to defray opening costs. I covered the costs of opening beverages and the artists supplied the food.
PEEK: Can you speak to the history of "parlor" arts performance/installation/discussion spaces. Particularly the role they have played in Baltimore.
CR: Hmmm…I’m not really familiar with a history of informal spaces in Baltimore. There were a series of performance works in private spaces, when I was a graduate student at Towson. In some ways, a more significant precedent to the spare room was the 1970’s project Womanhouse. A group of feminist artists staged a series of installation and performances within a house they had collectively renovated. While Womanhouse was more of a singular event, I was inspired by their use of a private and intimate space for showing art.
PEEK: How active was your role as curator. Did the artists have total freedom to pursue their project once it was accepted? What kind of work was presented over the three years? Did your concept of the space and how it worked change with time?
CR: Once the proposal was selected for spare room, the artist had complete control. Part of my inspiration for spare room was drawn from Virgina Woolf’s Room of One’s Own. So, once they had the space, they were free to let the work grow in response to the environment. Spare room showed a diverse range of materials and processes. There were works based in painting, drawing, sculpture, fiber, glass, photography, performance, and sound art. There is an archive of past spare room works at http://userpages.umbc.edu/~rehm/spareroom/ The site hasn’t been updated in the past few months, but there is some information there, for folks who may be interested. When I started the space I was a bit idealistic about how much time the artist would spend physically inhabiting the space. Some of the artists did make work in the room, while others fabricated pieces which were later installed.
PEEK: Besides being an innovative arts project and altruistic action, did you hope spare room would embolden others to follow its example and open small spaces. Do you know of any who have done so.
CR: Yes! I hope other will follow my lead an open art spaces in their basements or hall closets! A few people have contacted me for support in starting their own spaces, so I am hopeful this will happen. Who decided that artists could only show work in the white cube? I think it’s important to question and expand upon the places where art can be shown.
PEEK: There was a great "buzz" surrounding spare room and wide knowledge of what was happening there each month. How did you make sure the word got out and how would you describe your audience?
CR: Much of the press for spare room was done via e-mail. We didn’t have a budget to do mailings, so we relied on our audience to spread the word. We did have nice reviews in the Urbanite and Radar and picks in the City Paper helped too.
The audience was always an interesting mix of regulars, strangers and folks who came specifically for the artist on view. There were usually a group of wide-eyed students amongst the more initiated art crowd. The openings were always very lively. I feel very lucky to have had such a supportive audience.
The audience was always an interesting mix of regulars, strangers and folks who came specifically for the artist on view. There were usually a group of wide-eyed students amongst the more initiated art crowd. The openings were always very lively. I feel very lucky to have had such a supportive audience.
PEEK: Tell us about your own background as an artist and why this kind of endeavor would appeal to you.
CR: My art practice has become pretty diverse over the years, from drawing to performance, video. and installation. I’m very interested in art as an experience, as opposed to art as a static object. I often make art in private spaces. I’ve filmed video works all over my private residences over the years, including my bathroom closet. I rarely make work in my sanctioned studio. Normally I’m spread out all over the living room. Working that way just feels more organic to me. The thought of going to a neutral studio space isn’t terribly inspiring. The same is true for installing work. I’ve been most satisfied responding to found spaces as opposed to making an installation in a neutralized gallery space.
PEEK: You are closing spare room for the time being, correct? Can you explain why?
CR: Yes, sadly spare room is closing. Last fall I started a tenure track teaching position at Middle Tennessee State University. I’ve been splitting my time between Baltimore and Murfreesboro (just outside Nashville) so, it’s become increasingly difficult to maintain the spare room. I’m very grateful to Bill for picking up some of the slack while I’ve been away! I hope that I may be able to pull off a few projects at spare room in the near future, but I need a more flexible timeline. Also, I’m working with a group of artists in TN to start an artspace or series of projects there.
Alice Ockleshaw, Urbanite, #7, January 2005
Cicadas are back, but now they're art, A short-lived exhibit includes their wings
Annie Linskey, The Baltimore Sun, Dec 4, 2004, 4.D
Jessie Lehson's newest work pays homage to cicadas, those noisy, flighty creatures that last summer emerged after having spent years underground. So it is appropriate that, like those short-lived insects, her art will have only a brief time in the light.
Lehson's piece will be on view tonight only at the spare room on Greenmount Avenue, an exhibition space that is dedicated to single- day works of art. A new creation is displayed each month. The space is really an unused bedroom in a home owned by Cindy Rehm, who teaches art at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The temporary nature of the installations adds to the excitement of viewing art, Rehm said.
Lehson's creation is an elongated sculpture built of narrow strips of handmade paper embedded with real cicada wings. The work, which stretches the length of the installation space, is shaded in hues of green from forest to leaf. The wings are bare and untreated, and Lehson has no idea how long they'll last. Called Cicada, the sculpture begins at a coat rack in a tiny closet. The papers, glued together in a band, flow to the ground where the sculpture widens and moves across the hardwood floor to an oversized window. There -- seemingly defying gravity -- the paper travels up about a foot to the window sill. The effect is eerie -- like a creek bifurcating a room.
"This is a departure for me and my work, I almost always work with grids," said the 25-year-old artist as she surveyed her efforts. "But the architecture of this room provided a grid," she continued, gesturing to a tall radiator in the corner and a single oversized window.
Lehson, who graduated in 2002 from the Maryland Institute College of Art, made the paper used in this project from weeds and grass near her home in Hampden. "I walk around collecting bags of weeds, I get funny looks, but surprisingly few people say anything," she said with a laugh. The Ellicott City native often creates art that uses weeds, dirt and garbage -- substances society disdains. She's used gum wrappers, plastic bags and Styrofoam cups. But this is the first time she's added bug parts to the mix.
"Cicadas were such a huge part of my summer," she said. "I spent so much time whacking them off of my tree. They became the bane of my existence."
They also became her focus. In June, when she began designing this piece, she recruited an 8-year-old neighbor to help collect the insect parts. The two spent days seeking the transparent wings.
"They were everywhere, I mean the grass was littered with these little wings," she said. "I tried to litter my work with them the same way the grass was littered with the bugs."
After gathering the debris, she boils it in batches for three hours. The resulting gooey substance is stuffed into a blender, strained and set on a mold to dry. Because Lehson has only one mold she can make only one sheet of paper at a time. The wings disintegrated rapidly and disappeared into the fiber as she made it. So the artist saved several hundred in a box and stuck them in clumps on the paper as it dried.
"It seems like an inordinate amount of work for a one-day show," she admitted.
But it's not the result that she really cares about.
"I do try to do pieces that are visually interesting, but it is these really laborious processes that interest me," she said.
Rolling up this piece of art after one night seems right. Lehson's work illustrates how beauty can grow from patience and that anticipating the ephemeral can be worthwhile in itself.
Jessie Lehson's newest work pays homage to cicadas, those noisy, flighty creatures that last summer emerged after having spent years underground. So it is appropriate that, like those short-lived insects, her art will have only a brief time in the light.
Lehson's piece will be on view tonight only at the spare room on Greenmount Avenue, an exhibition space that is dedicated to single- day works of art. A new creation is displayed each month. The space is really an unused bedroom in a home owned by Cindy Rehm, who teaches art at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The temporary nature of the installations adds to the excitement of viewing art, Rehm said.
Lehson's creation is an elongated sculpture built of narrow strips of handmade paper embedded with real cicada wings. The work, which stretches the length of the installation space, is shaded in hues of green from forest to leaf. The wings are bare and untreated, and Lehson has no idea how long they'll last. Called Cicada, the sculpture begins at a coat rack in a tiny closet. The papers, glued together in a band, flow to the ground where the sculpture widens and moves across the hardwood floor to an oversized window. There -- seemingly defying gravity -- the paper travels up about a foot to the window sill. The effect is eerie -- like a creek bifurcating a room.
"This is a departure for me and my work, I almost always work with grids," said the 25-year-old artist as she surveyed her efforts. "But the architecture of this room provided a grid," she continued, gesturing to a tall radiator in the corner and a single oversized window.
Lehson, who graduated in 2002 from the Maryland Institute College of Art, made the paper used in this project from weeds and grass near her home in Hampden. "I walk around collecting bags of weeds, I get funny looks, but surprisingly few people say anything," she said with a laugh. The Ellicott City native often creates art that uses weeds, dirt and garbage -- substances society disdains. She's used gum wrappers, plastic bags and Styrofoam cups. But this is the first time she's added bug parts to the mix.
"Cicadas were such a huge part of my summer," she said. "I spent so much time whacking them off of my tree. They became the bane of my existence."
They also became her focus. In June, when she began designing this piece, she recruited an 8-year-old neighbor to help collect the insect parts. The two spent days seeking the transparent wings.
"They were everywhere, I mean the grass was littered with these little wings," she said. "I tried to litter my work with them the same way the grass was littered with the bugs."
After gathering the debris, she boils it in batches for three hours. The resulting gooey substance is stuffed into a blender, strained and set on a mold to dry. Because Lehson has only one mold she can make only one sheet of paper at a time. The wings disintegrated rapidly and disappeared into the fiber as she made it. So the artist saved several hundred in a box and stuck them in clumps on the paper as it dried.
"It seems like an inordinate amount of work for a one-day show," she admitted.
But it's not the result that she really cares about.
"I do try to do pieces that are visually interesting, but it is these really laborious processes that interest me," she said.
Rolling up this piece of art after one night seems right. Lehson's work illustrates how beauty can grow from patience and that anticipating the ephemeral can be worthwhile in itself.
