nothin CAW Makes New Shows Visible | New Haven Independent

CAW Makes New Shows Visible

On Thursday night artist Margaret Roleke smiled from her home in her garage studio, at an audience of 20 who had gathered virtually to hear her talk about her art practice and her show at Creative Arts Workshop — the first installment of CAW’s Made Visible” series.

I didn’t set out to be an activist artist,” she said. I was creating work just to make people think.”

Roleke was talking about the large works she had installed in the enormous windows of Creative Arts Workshop’s gallery and on its walls — overtly political cyanotypes, interspersed with large bolts of mylar, so that viewers could see themselves viewing the pieces.

Anne Coates, executive director of Creative Arts Workshop, explained that with the Made Visible” series, CAW wanted to explore issues of our city, time, and region” through the exhibits in its gallery space. The gallery space itself is closed to the public due to the pandemic, but because it also has two stories of glass facing the street, that meant that artists could install works people could see from outside the building. We wanted our windows to be lively, vibrant and relevant,” Coates said. CAW put out a call to Connecticut-based artists to apply. Roleke — work affirms the importance of Black and Brown lives,” Coates said — was the first artist to be selected; her show finishes its run on Oct. 25. Artist Shaunda Holloway will have the space in November, and in December the gallery will be turned over to Anne Sailer.

On Thursday night, Roleke began by saying that CAW’s windows are amazing” as an exhibition space for what is essentially an outdoor exhibit. For Roleke, it was a chance to her to show new cyanotypes she had been working on since the beginning of the pandemic — the first time she had been working in that medium.

Cyanotypes, she explained, employ a photographic process,” like a blueprint, involving light and chemicals. I never did cyanotypes until 2019,” she said, when she did a workshop on how to make them. During Covid, three of my kids moved back home. It was kind of crowded, but I have a barn. So I decided to experiment, and I just kept experimenting,” she said. She took to the form.

Basically, this is my yard,” Roleke said, in explaining how she went about creating her pieces. She first coated the paper with light-sensitive chemicals. Then she placed different objects on it, without a completely clear sense of what image might be produced. In previous forays into printmaking, she said, anything goes” — an attitude she carried over to her newest work.

My cyanotypes are more about process,” Roleke said. I don’t know what’s going to happen and I love it.” She has used everything from toy houses, chains, and acetates of animals to lengths of chain-link fencing, lettering, and caution tape.

I don’t have a lightbox,” she said, so I have to use a sunny day.” She leaves them exposed for a few minutes, until the chemicals on the exposed parts of the paper turn pink. She then takes the paper into the barn for a water bath in a tub. This turns the pink into (in the case of longer exposures) a deep blue. The paper then gets hung up to dry. To make bigger pieces, she has done the water bath in a kiddie pool she had. To make the very large pieces in the CAW windows, she sent smaller pieces to a banner maker in Oklahoma, who then sent her back her images in the dimensions she wanted.

She created one cyanotype of all the things we were trying to have in the house” — toilet paper, cleaning fluid, gloves. She also worked on collaborative pieces, one for the traveling show in support of the U.S. Postal Service currently at Ely Center of Contemporary Art. A fellow artist in upstate New York sent me this beautiful watercolor of red and blue triangles,” Looking at the painting, she thought, I don’t want to wreck this piece.” So she glued a cyanotype to it and added red to her own image to match the first one. In another collaboration, she sent an artist an cyanotype for the other artist to print another image on.

Roleke’s activism was on display from the first cyanotype she made, celebrating New Haven’s status as a sanctuary city. She created a piece designed to be able to hang from a home or an apartment entrance for a show in Jersey City, N.J. with the theme of creating a prayer for the pandemic.” Another piece of hers ended up on a billboard in Detroit. She has made prints taking on the current president’s mendacity, and the depredations of his immigration policy. She got a piece in the Institute Library’s exhibit about the complicated legacy of the suffrage movement. The show she curated for the Ely Center of Contemporary Art — Now” — is likewise overtly political. Roleke also took part in the local protests following George Floyd’s killing.

Both the art and the activism came into play for the CAW show. In addition to the cyanotypes, Roleke has installed mylar in some of the windows so that the show reflects back” what is happening on the street.

It’s a very active place,” Roleke said, even during the pandemic. That stretch of Audubon Street still gets a steady trickle of foot traffic, bicycles, and cars, from students and residents to dog walkers. People can see” her images, she said, but they are also reflected in the windows. So the whole piece changes constantly, which I love.”

I love doing things that aren’t in a gallery,” she continued. She recalled doing a piece in a garden in the East Village, during another time when people were wearing masks on the street due to an anthrax scare. She said that, unlike doing a show in a gallery, people commonly stopped by to talk to her. I love the accessibility of artwork outdoors because your audience is everybody,” she said.

The same thing happened when Roleke was installing the show at CAW. People standing in the street helped them in seeing whether the pieces were hung straight. I love that these men may not have walked into CAW for a gallery show, but if they see my work and me, then I’m approachable, and we can talk,” she said.

Did she always think of herself as an artist-activist? one participant asked.

Really, I’m more of a sculptor,” Roleke said. When her children were young, she said, she did pieces about motherhood. But when her children were grown, she turned to other things. I had more time in my life to think about other things than diapers,” she said. She did a project making seating for day laborers in Brewster, N.Y. She did another piece about fallen soldiers in Iraq, and others about gun violence. Regarding addressing social issues, she said, my art has evolved to that.”

Margaret Roleke’s work for Made Visible” runs in the window of the gallery at Creative Arts Workshop, 80 Audubon St., through Oct. 25. For more information on Creative Arts Workshop and further installments of Made Visible,” visit CAW’s website.

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