5x5

Workingman Collective 

Working as Backup Band

 for 

 Ben Ashworth's 

5x5  project

 Finding a Line

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities’s temporary public art project

For the next several months we will be working with Ben and others at Bridge Spot, DC

.

We'd also like to give a shout out to Laura Roulet 

WMC + Ashworth    2012

n(y)o͞o ˈlōgō

Swing installed at (e)merge art fair

September 22 - 25, 2011

Washington DC

Prospects and Provisions

Workingman Collective
June 18 - August 20
Hemphill Fine Arts

Exhibition Images and Text

Swing, 2011
steel, fir, powdercoat, clay pots and assorted houseplants
selected from Environmental Scientist, Bill Wolverton's study
of plants that clean air of V.O.C.'s, Volatile Organic Compounds.
108" x 110" x 115"

Pack, 2011
fir, oak, waxed canvas, steel, copper
30" x 15" x 8"
Edition of 7
Pack canvas fabricated by Wendy Downs

Swing, 2011
detail
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Table
cherry, elevated steel track + G scale train, chalkboard,
"Lunch"
9 one hour scheduled conversation socials every Wednesday
June 18 - August 20
photo by Max Hirshfeld
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Table


Lunch #9
Ben Ashworth



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Barrel, 2011
55 gallon container, drain spouts, spigot, custom label, wooden base
52" x 32" x 24", Ed. 7

Watering plants
Ben Ashworth Suzanne Codi
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Lloyd "Trapper" Nelson Original Backpack, c 1924
(U.S. patent #1,505,661)
Pack, 2011
(detail installation)
fir, oak, waxed canvas, steel, copper
30" x 15" x 8"
Edition of 7
Pack canvas fabricated by Wendy Downs

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Prospects, 2011
letterpress, silkscreen, and hand coloring on paper
24" x 18", Ed. 15


Cover, 2011
letterpress and digital print on paper
15” x 18”, Ed. 15
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Champion, 2011
installation: 1/2 ping pong table, DVD,
32" video monitor, 6 plants
64" x 50" x 60"


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Handshake Ping Pong, 2011
ping pong ball dispenser, 100 matte black ping pong balls
17 1/2" x 8" x 8"
purchase of work includes dispenser, balls, consultation and conceptualization
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Contract, 2011
7 notebooks bound and silk screen, handshake
1 1/4" x 3 1/2" x 5 1/2"
Ed. 7
purchase of work includes notebooks, consultation and conceptualization
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AN EVENING OF SWING POETRY
Thursday July 21
A group of DC poets take over the installation of Swing for a lively and informal reading.
Jessica Cebra & Casey Smith
Katy Bohinc & Adam Marston
Kady Ashcraft & Jim Beane
Emilia Olsen & Christopher Cunningham

Organized by
Casey Smith PHD, visual-vocal artist
Faculty in Arts and Humanities
Corcoran College of Art + Design, Washington, DC.
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Exhibition Wall Text

By Casey Smith

The motto of Workingman Collective (WMC), “Your Ideas Are Ours,” is the first indication of the gentle provocation at the center of their project-based work. The four simple words are radically declarative, almost obnoxiously so. The key word, of course, is ‘ours,’ which refers not to the three members of WMC, Tom Ashcraft, Janis Goodman, and Peter Winant, but to a universal ‘we.’ Unsurprisingly, the WMC Web site is administered by an entity with the name ‘Us Are We.’

This inclusivity is apparent in all of their work, starting with Five Mile Line (Butte, 2006) and here in their newest exhibition Prospects & Provisions (WDC, 2011). In fact, whether you like it or not, the fact of you reading this text and entering this gallery makes you a member of WMC. The invitation is implicit.

In art terms we could reference historical movements such as Surrealism and ‘Pataphysics, also more recent fashions and trends such as relational aesthetics and social practice, but that would miss the point. Like all of their work, Prospects & Provisions offers spaces of contemplation and reflection, but not in individual isolation. It’s not a coincidence that tables, places where people come together socially, feature in so much WMC work. Tables make things happen. Work gets done at tables. People talk, drink, eat, argue, and laugh at tables. The table is an invitation. A ping-pong table is also an invitation. A plant-covered swing is an invitation. What you (we) do with these invitations is your (our) business. WMC makes objects, that’s for sure. But the objects are never ends in themselves, they act as catalysts for the construction of social experiences, not merely aesthetic delectation. Their work is characterized by an open sense of play and a denial of the supposed split between craft and concept.

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Fixing to get ready to

Prospects and Provisions

We are preparing for an exhibition at Hemphill Fine Arts,

Workingman Collective: Prospects and Provisions

June 18–August 20, 2011

Public Reception
Saturday, June 18, 2011, 6:30–8:30pm.

please come by

below are images and an excerpt from the gallery's press release

Workingman Collective: Prospects and Provisions

June 18–August 20, 2011

Washington DC—Hemphill opens Workingman Collective: Prospects and Provisions on Saturday, June 18, 2011, with a public reception from 6:30–8:30pm.

The exhibition at Hemphill will include a double swing set covered with numerous steel arms that hold potted plants capable of removing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the air. Titled “Swing,” this work entertains and physically mobilizes the viewer while cleaning the air. The plants will be watered daily by a team of volunteers using water from rain barrels situated outside 1515 14th Street. These rain barrels, emblazoned with Workingman Collective’s logo, will become a permanent fixture on the property as both a relic of the project and a reminder of water conservation issues.

Also on display will be an original backpack designed and patented by Trapper Lloyd F. Nelson in 1924 (U.S. patent #1,505,661) and once owned by a train conductor and adventurer named C.D. Beebe. The backpack served as the launching point for Workingman Collective’s creation of a variety of provisions for the modern adventurer, including a custom designed backpack based on the original Trapper Nelson patent. Fabricated at the MOOP studio workshop in Pittsburgh, PA, the waxed canvas backpack has been made in an edition of seven. An HO scale train set on an elevated track, and a single-sided ping pong table that allows the player to compete against a video projection of a ping pong champion, are just a couple of the contraptions and products in this exhibition. In each case, the objects on view are a suggestion of the relationship that might unfold between idea, object, action, and interaction.

Shake

one - two - three - agree

Dancing Table

The Dancing Table was designed to accompany Fuse Ensemble's performance of Gina Biver's composition Usina Mechanica at the 2010 Intermedia Festival in Indianapolis, Indiana. Since then the table has gotten it's groove on at the Cabaret [re]ReVoltaire, Washington D.C., has performed with actor, Ken Elston and with George Mason University dancers. The piece is one of a series by Workingman Collective that addresses the dynamic of the space of a table, as social force, locus of ideas and negotiation.

Prospect: a moving conversation, 2009
Prospect Park, NYC
Monday, June 22
in collaboration with Floating Lab Collective

An economy is built upon an exchange of value that occurs between parties. Prospect is the second iteration of a proposed, long term series of engagements that explore the relationship of cause and effect inherent in the idea of exchange and the definition of value.

The initial work was composed of four tables and eight chairs, covered with blackboard paint, that were installed on the walls of a gallery. They were periodically taken down during the course of the exhibition to become a locus for inclusive discussions premised upon the intrinsic social function of art. Chalk notations were made; responses were added as well as erasures.

A table and chairs are a neutral site until occupied. When we sit at a table, we activate it as a social space where the full spectrum of our personal and interactive selves are put into play.

For this piece and exhibition, a rocking, sled platform was constructed as a transportable territory for a table and two chairs. They were brought to Prospect Park and were pulled along a path, and passers-by were asked for help. The question of the value of help and of work was posed to the participants, and exchanges were proposed, including currency created by the Floating Lab Collective.

currency created by Floating Lab Collected for Prospect Park

Chalkboard Talk, 2009
Katzen Museum, Washington University
in collaboration with Floating Lab Collective

A series of meetings occurred around blackboard tables. Tables were displayed on the wall and taken down in order to hold the meetings. Participants assembled an appropriate table arrangement based on the size of the meeting. Participants left notes and traces of the meetings using chalk to mark the tables. After the meeting the tables were returned to the wall. The action activates a space of reflection and memory, the traces of which become the object.

Meetings
Sept 20 Connecting Cultures in a Mobile Society
Oct 4 Silence As Presence
Oct 18 Strategies for Art & Social Engagement

Building a Mobile Community Center, 2009

Falls Church, VA
In Collaboration with Floating Lab Collective

The genesis of this project came after a series of meetings with people from Tenants and Workers United. Participants discussed how community centers had been dismantled in some areas as a way to disperse and restrict the Hispanic population, and expressed the need to regain infrastructures like community centers and reorganize Hispanic groups. In this action, community centers are transformed into a battleground and place of organization that leads to empowerment.
The project was executed in collaboration with representatives of the Day Workers of Culmore in Falls Church, The Working Man Collective, and the Floating Lab Collective. A prototype for a mobile community center was created, including the principal elements of the table, the basic structure of collective equality and shelter, and the protective structure.

MISSION, Site/Cite/Sight (NC), 2008
The Museum Park,
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC



Public Artwork Installation Engagement
Workingman Collective: Tom Ashcraft, Janis Goodman, Peter Winant

Project:
The installation of Mission, Site/Cite/Sight (NC) on the grounds of the North Carolina Museum of Art is a continuation of the project, which was first installed on 14th St NW in Washington DC in June 2007 (also posted on this blog, below). In April 2008, fifteen birdhouses and signs were installed along a 100-yard stretch of the Museum Park Woodland Trail. The issues present in the urban site, habitat, attraction, inventory, migration and participation, resonated differently in the woodland site. The irony of placing birdhouses in woodlands shifted the locus of the language and significance of the work relative to its context. The allegorical content of the work, while having overarching themes, became site specific relative to its urban or rural setting.

Research:
Workingman Collective, working with the Migratory Bird Center, National Zoo, Washington DC, identified all songbirds common to the region that have been decimated by West Nile Virus and urban growth. The birdhouses were built specifically for three species of songbirds hardest hit by the virus: The Eastern Bluebird, Black Capped Chickadee, and Downy Woodpecker. The birdhouses provide a habitat while the signs refer to "place" and are an awareness signal. Site/Cite/Sight, NC connotes an active social engagement that has purpose and sustainability.

Synchrony, 2008

Delaplaine Visual Art Center, Fredrick, MD
Workingman Collective in partnership with the Shenandoah and Potomac Garden Railway Club.
Project installation volunteers Chelsay Anderson and Ann Cummins.

This piece addresses themes of coincidence and the ironic possibilities of random patterns of visual events. Our world is in motion. Intersections and divergence of time and events are revealed in the most commonplace of our constructions.

Workingman Collective constructed parallel platforms in the two large rooms of the Delaplaine Visual Arts Center, Fredrick MD, exhibition space, creating autonomous areas that reveal their architectural structure and allude to a performance stage. Simple props; chairs and tables specifically designed and built for the exhibition occupy the platforms, attached to windshield wiper motors and set in a constant, infinitely variable tug of war motion. A fifteen-foot oval train track with locomotives circling underneath each platform and 100 clocks, set simultaneously at the start of the exhibition keep their own time, and reflect the constant cycle of time as a motion of opposing, symbiotic forces.