A discussion with JoAnne McFarland
and Sasha Chavchavadze
By Gerald Wagoner
Culture and Media Correspondent for Indolent Books
SALLY: An interdisciplinary exhibition conceived by JoAnne McFarland and Sasha Chavchavadze, opened on October 26, and will be on view through January 26, 2020, Fridays, 3 pm – 6 pm or by appointment. The exhibition encompasses three distinct venues: The Gowanus Dredgers Boathouse, Artpoetica Project Space, and Old Stone House & Washington Park.
This is an ambitious exhibition of 21 women artists whose work is installed in one or more of the three participating venues: Lauren Frances Adams, Meredith Bergmann, Deborah Castillo, Sasha Chavchavadze, Maureen Connor, Katya Grokhovsky, Robin Holder, Jee Hwang, Tatiana Istomina, Fabiola Jean–Louis, Carole Kunstadt, Paula Lalala, Nancy Lunsford, Jennifer Mack–Watkins, JoAnne McFarland, Elizabeth Moran, Amanda Nedham, Ann Shostrom, Marisa Williamson, Philemona Williamson, Hong Chun Zhang.
On a recent revisit, I re-examined the work in each space, curious to know more about the women who curated this collection with such sensitive attention to the relationships and breathing room among the pieces. Sasha Chavchavadze and JoAnne McFarland, the co-curators, agreed to disclose the criteria and the skills they harnessed to realize SALLY.
While Chavchavadze and McFarland came to this collaboration by different paths with different histories, they had known each other and had worked in the same building for a number of years. The two began their creative collaboration after discovering that they shared a vision about life and art. Each woman is an experienced curator and artist in her own right, and each has a history of creating projects that present art in a unique environment. Chavchavadze’s long-time space was Proteus Gowanus, McFarland’s is Artpoetica. Their first collaborative project was called Sediment. SALLY is their second project together.
While both have many year experience curating alternative space galleries, they bring their individual sensibilities to this collaboration. As artist and curator, Chavchavadze excavates women forgotten to history, and explores how past reveals present. “The importance of artifacts and documents is that they are talismans of meaning—a lamentation, an empathetic cry of pain for who or what was lost,” she said. An active facet of her art making has been manifested in yearlong thematic projects that involve community building. “The SALLY project is an extension of my practice as an artist. I’m painting with a broader brush by engaging a community of artists and others in a theme that inspires me personally. I think of SALLY as an ongoing project that JoAnne and I are creating as artists in collaboration with other artists. I get creative satisfaction from this process.”
McFarland asserts that the artist’s work is a world, and that every world has value. “I see art as a way to organize experience, so I relate to a range of artworks,” she said. “My mission as a curator is to arrange a group of worlds so that each is accessible to the viewer. Every artwork is a map of someone’s interior world. As a curator, I look for the passion behind the work; the sense of what is compelling the artist. When I succeed, every artist feels seen, and the viewer feels that their time looking, being receptive, has been rewarded.”
Chavchavadze told me she initially envisioned the project as an extension of her Proteus Gowanus practice, which de-emphasized visual art, focusing on other disciplines. The SALLY exhibition, Sasha said “is truly an exhibition of visual artists riffing on forgotten history through a hands-on visual process.” Text in the exhibition, whether poetry or short historical biographies, serves to enhance the power of the visual work.
McFarland is intrigued by how the human drive for connection and intimacy has impacted women’s lives and professional careers. “For me, the union of Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father, and Sally Hemings, slave woman, became a metaphor for questioning contemporary valuations of blackness/whiteness, youth/age, male/female,” said McFarland. “SALLY was a way to examine how women use art-making and other creative endeavors to thrive. It was a way for me to explore whether every world indeed has value; to assert that all worlds, all experiences are equivalent and magical. The SALLY Project also became a way to address new attacks on women’s autonomy. In military terminology, a sally is a sudden charge against the enemy out of a besieged place. I see violence and creativity as diametrically opposed—art making thwarts violence’s aim to destroy.”
There are, of course, differences between the collaborators’ individual sensibilities. Chavchavadze explained that she leans “more towards work that references specific historical women, which is again related to my own art practice; my project about Margaret Fuller for example. JoAnne, on the other hand, brought to the project her broader idea of including artists who were working on a metaphorical level”.
McFarland noted that while Chavchavadze was particularly focused on how SALLY related to historical women whose lives had been erased or forgotten, McFarland herself tends to gravitate more to the aesthetics, and get excited about what creates visual impact. “I’m passionate about space and see spaces as energy portals,” McFarland said. “When I say energy portal, I mean that a space can be organized to facilitate interaction. For instance, Hong’s scroll is integrated into the space so that the wall and the artwork merge,” she said, referring to a piece in the exhibition by Hong Chun Zhang. “It isn’t that the artwork is sitting on a dead wall, as I often see the typical gallery space. The walls, ceilings, windows are animated by the art and vice versa. This interactive exchange, especially in settings perceived as safe, can set the stage for explosive change.”
SALLY is installed in three different venues, about which McFarland stated: “We were not creating one show that happened to be in three places; rather we wove a theme through a series of community and living/working spaces that fall outside traditional art venues. SALLY’s three venues, gave us the opportunity to break one theme into three distinct modes that would flow through each other to form one complex, cohesive exhibition.”
Chavchavadze elaborated, saying that SALLY is “an exhibition consisting of one general theme realized in three separate iterations and spaces. Old Stone House, a Battle-of-Brooklyn oriented venue, emphasized the historical aspects of the show. Artpoetica gallery focused more on the metaphorical, and the Gowanus Dredgers Boathouse exhibition included imagery of shipwrecks, boating, and fiddler crabs, reaching out to the community that uses the boathouse.”
McFarland and Chavchavadze both value skilled, hands-on visual art making; both share an interest in building community through collaboration; and both aim to weave themes through non–traditional art venues. This process, they believe, revitalizes the art which compartmentalization has cut off from its potential impact on the viewer.
Both curators have a strong sense of what it takes to work day to day in an art economy that can be hostile and market-driven, rather than focused on social issues that matter. Their aim is to use community and shared goals as leverage against aggression and encroachment. “I’m protective of my own and others’ ability to work.” McFarland says, “Women in particular have a tendency to either de-value or undervalue the artifacts of their lives, evidence of their histories.” Their belief in a culture of generosity rather than a culture of scarcity, make McFarland and Chavchavadze a good team as they create new collaborative creative communities.
Gerald Wagoner is a former Studio-in-a-School-Artist and New York City elementary and secondary English teacher. Born in Pendleton Oregon, he holds a BA in creative writing from the University of Montana, and a MFA in sculpture from the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY). His artwork has been exhibited at The Drawing Center, The Queens Museum, and PS 1. In 2018, Wagoner received a six-month visiting artist residency at the Brooklyn Navy Yard (sponsored by the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation). During this residency, he wrote a series of poems inspired by the Navy Yard’s history, and by the people who labored there. His poems have appeared in Right Hand Pointing. Wagoner has lived in Brooklyn since 1984.
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Recent work by Bruce Robinson appears or is forthcoming in Mobius, Pangyrus, Spectrum, The Menteur, Common Ground, Connecticut River Review, and The Maynard. He lives in Brooklyn.