Art Review: Project weaves industry and art

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

By Mary Thomas, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Artist-in-industry programs are the results of forward-looking corporate policy decisions that can be a win-win for both host industry and participating artists.


	Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Ken Beer's triptych appears in "Artists + Industry Pilot Project #1 Dielectric Solutions," an exhibition at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. The print was inspired by a process employed by Kittanning-based Dielectric Solutions that transforms glass marbles (top) into fiber suitable for weaving (bottom). Click photo for larger image.

The prestigious Wisconsin Kohler Arts/Industry program, founded in 1974, first invited ceramists to work with in-house technicians and the oceans of porcelain that their upscale "plumbingware" manufacturing generated, then expanded access to the company's iron and brass foundries.

"The value of the Arts/Industry program to the factory can be assessed from both a personal and business standpoint," Kohler's Web site says. "For some, the experience of meeting artists from all over the world is the most important aspect. For others, it's the bottom line. Over the years, design ideas generated by artists have been translated into innovative new products offered by the company."

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha began as an artist-in-industry program in 1981 and now is an internationally known artist-in-residence, exhibition and community arts center. And some readers will know sculptures by the late Pittsburgh ceramist and educator Jerry Caplan that were created in residence at a regional sewer-pipe manufacturer.

Now Associated Artists of Pittsburgh has dipped its toes into the water to test the feasibility of organizing a local program, somewhat patterned upon Kohler's. The eye-catching results of the "Artists + Industry Pilot Project #1 Dielectric Solutions" are exhibited at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts through March 18.

AAP board members began discussing the notion last summer and had a ready host in Dielectric Solutions of Kittanning, a manufacturer of woven fiberglass used in products as varied as printed circuit boards and armor plating for military vehicles. Company vice president Ken Beer, currently AAP treasurer and at the time president, brought the prospect to his partners. The company's customers are global and it operates business to business, he says. "We thought it would be nice to do something for the community."

Beer then invited interested artists to tour the facility, where 3/4-inch-in-diameter green glass balls made to company specifications are melted, tons at a time, and spun into fabric. Fibers may be as fine as 5 microns in diameter. The looms are computerized but must be threaded and maintained by weavers and technicians.

"You could see the artists' minds flying a mile a minute" as they walked through, Beer says.

Artists were permitted to select material from the company's "waste stream" -- seconds or material destined for recycle -- to work with in their home studios.

The material for this pilot was appropriate because the exhibition was to be the kickoff event of a Pittsburgh yearlong celebration of glass, participating artist Adrienne Heinrich says. It's also part of a larger glass-themed AAP exhibition, "Vitreous." (Due to some organizational glitches, the glass year has been slow in starting, but we should be hearing more about it soon.)

Heinrich, AAP vice president and co-chair of the 2007 Annual exhibition, says the intent of the center exhibit is to "show some of the possibilities and our excitement over the material ... which has so many textures and weights ... from cheesecloth to very coarse, dense, heavy fabric."

Individual artworks are interspersed within a display of raw materials and cascading sheets of fiber, some of it given dazzle by colored lighting. The overall effect is experimental, but that's the point.

Heinrich, for example, has launched translucent ships into ethereal space by suspending them in the darkened rooms of past installations. Here a similarly constructed sculpture, covered by glass fabric, snuggles against a gallery wall like a pupa in waiting.

Beer, who is married to artist Terri Perpich, says that he was on his way to becoming an "art widower" because his wife spent so much of her free time in the studio. As other spouses might do on a golf course, he tagged along and got involved. Somewhat unexpectedly, he's proven himself to be an accomplished printmaker, and his triptych stands out in the show, all the more so when it's studied. Its inspiration was the Dielectric Solutions glass-fiber fabric manufacturing process, from the marbles in the top panel to the yarn beginning to cross into a weave in the bottom.

Other participating artists are Hilary Shames, Pati Beachley, Jane Ogren and Anna Marie Sninsky. (Beachley, assistant professor of art at Seton Hill University, Greensburg, recently was elected to succeed Beer as president of AAP).

The project will continue this summer as AAP artists work with students at Seton Hill. Resulting work will be exhibited at the school in the fall.

The "outreach, mentoring component is really an important part of it," Heinrich stresses. "We do want to keep exploring new directions. We don't want to be self-serving as an organization," she says.

The AAP hopes this is the beginning of a program that would rotate through various local industries.

Whether or not the arts organization returns to Kittanning, Beer sees possibilities in continuing to make Dielectric Solutions material available. For example, some of the fabric rolls are 12,000 feet long, he says. Referencing artists who work on the scale of Christo, he says he can "picture where [artists] only do an installation for a weekend in a park and then it's gone."

Art events

This week presents several significant art-related events:

Today -- 4 p.m., Diane Samuels talks about her installation "Mapping Sampsonia" at Harlan Gallery, Seton Hill University, Greensburg (free; 724-830-1069 or 724-830-1071).