Digital Extra

  3/19/00
The art of cooperation
The female artists of AS220 say they do not feel slighted by the art establishment, and would rather not be defined by their gender.

By MARIA MIRO JOHNSON
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- They are women. And they are artists. So, all right, that makes them women artists . . . they guess. They're not wild about labels.

Asked whether they, as women, contribute anything different to this funky downtown art commune -- AS220 -- from what the men contribute, they say, Actually, no.

No?

``I don't mean to give you troubles,'' says singer-songwriter Erin McKeown. ``But no.''

She realizes we're trying to do a Women's History Month story here.

But ``if it's a group of women sitting in the Caf drinking beer, I don't think anyone says, `Oh, it's the women of AS220.' It's just our friends.''

Not that they aren't worth celebrating, she hurries to add. Just not in that retro men-versus-women way.

IF THESE young women are typical, they may represent an important development in cultural history.

``Twenty years ago,'' says Mary Ball Howkins, an art historian at Rhode Island College, ``women artists had to work for change on so many fronts: finding spaces for exhibition, having critics take their work seriously, finding out what it was that women wanted to say in their art as women -- or even if they wanted to be identified primarily as `woman' before `artist.' Probably `artist' before `woman' is a step in the right direction.''

Of the AS220 women, she says: They ``don't feel slighted by the art establishment, then it's a register of progress.''

THE NAME AS220 comes from the initials for Art Space and the address of its first home, on Weybosset Street.

Now it's located on Empire Street, in a three-story building that has variously housed shops and factories, and possibly a brothel.

The art center's public face is the cavernous but friendly first-floor Caf , which, with a stage and miles of wall, serves as club, theater, gallery, and idea factory.

At lunchtime, the Caf attracts its share of business types (``They feel like the misfits of the office,'' wagers the manager), who may be unaware that up a narrow stairway are work studios, residential studios, a darkroom, a computer lab, exhibit spaces, and offices -- in short, a warren of creative activity.

The mission of AS220, founded in 1985, is to champion unjuried art: no curator selects what's to be presented from the works that are offered. As a result, the place attracts an eclectic range of visual, performing, and literary artists -- young and old, fledgling and established.

``We're here as a resource for Rhode Island artists in general,'' says communications director Geoff Griffin, a guitarist.

PROVIDENCE HAS long provided fertile ground for such experiments.

Some hundred years before AS220 was dreamed up, a similarly radical organization was inaugurated. Called the Providence Art Club, it was founded in 1880 by men and women equally, to encourage art in the city.

Although it has since joined the establishment, back then the club was on the cutting edge.

Most art clubs of the time -- including the Rhode Island Art Association, founded in 1854 -- had no female members, says Boston art historian Laura Pietro Chesterton, a contributor to the 1997 art anthology Rhode Island Women Speak .

``The Boston Art Club entirely excluded women from membership,'' writes Chesterton. And in Cincinnati, ``with an increasingly prestigious art school and rising art community, the Cincinnati Art Club completely excluded women.''

Providence, by contrast, offered female artists the same advantages that it does today, says Chesterton. They could get training, they had access to nude models, and they could show their work. Downtown had galleries, dealers, and art-supply stores, and the Rhode Island School of Design -- founded by women in 1877 -- offered both learning and teaching opportunities.

Still, for all that, women did not maintain their equal status within the Providence Art Club.

As the club's membership increased, a division along gender lines occurred, with the men assuming the role of serious, professional artist, and the women focusing on ``cultural improvement.''

The women, says Chesterton, had a ``consciousness of themselves as a subgroup, with a differentiable status and distinct relationship to `art,' which was different from men's.''

THIS IS NOT the case at AS220, the men and women there say.

In fact, it has followed an opposite trajectory: it began as an autocracy and evolved.

One local artist who was involved in AS220 in the 1980s still thinks of it as a ``macho'' institution, but says that that's almost necessarily so, because it's been tied up with Mayor Vincent A. ``Buddy'' Cianci's downtown arts development.

``Politics is a man's game,'' says the artist, who asked not to be named. ``If you're going to go to Buddy, you don't bring a woman -- you know what I mean? . . . You plan it, and send Bert.''

``Bert'' is Umberto Crenca, AS220's founder, and he grants that ``there's some truth to that'' -- adding almost apologetically that ``it wasn't our intent to become as politically astute as we have become.''

Many women, he says -- including his wife, Susan Clausen -- were instrumental in creating AS220, and, he says, they have gone unsung. ``I've tended to overshadow a lot of things, a lot of people,'' says Crenca, blaming his ``dominant personality.''

``Women have been more sympathetic to the cause of AS220 than men,'' he says. More than men, he says, they have understood the mission of the place. He worries that it may be sexist to say so, but women seem to have ``a better sense of community.''

They are responsible for the success of AS220, says Crenca, ``in a bigger way, I think,'' than men.

One of the women from the early days is Katherine Valvoda, now director of corporate and foundation relations at Brown University.

Valvoda, 32, was then a 23-year-old RISD grad, living above AS220 when it occupied its second home, on Richmond Street, over the former Club Babyhead. The building was heated with kerosene, and the fire escapes wouldn't have supported ``the weight of a cat.''

``Everything that happened there,'' she says, ``was really experimental -- you could see things that were really atrocious but really courageous, and then you could see really, really incredible artists.''

It was kind of like buying your clothes at Filene's Basement, says Valvoda. ``You could get the high-end, designer stuff.''

At AS220, when she wasn't painting, Valvoda learned how to write grants. In fact, she says, ``I learned most of what I need to do my job at Brown.'' The art group was ``an incubator for administrators, in some ways''; Valvoda and her young colleagues bravely approached high-powered institutions for money because, ``you know, what did we have to lose?''

Her first year as AS220's volunteer grant writer, the group's funds grew from $10,000 to $60,000. Then, for her next feat, Valvoda persuaded some established Rhode Island artists to donate works to sell, to raise money to buy the Empire Street building.

Unlike today's AS220 women, who say they feel as close to the AS220 men as to the women, Valvoda says she relied on ``a really deep sisterhood.''

Was it because of Bert Crenca's leadership style?

``It was definitely like a monarchy,'' she says, but she learned to work within it.

``Bert is a man and Bert is Bert,'' she says of the person she nonetheless reveres as a mentor. ``You have to figure out how you're going to (a) position the place best, and (b) position him in terms of getting to your goals.

``My goal was to raise money. How was I going to manage Bert and create a situation for him where he could be successful and, therefore, where the organization could be successful?

``How're you going to put this guy with a goatee and a bald head who looks like Satan in front of a banker and convince them that this is a good investment for the community?''

In the end, says Valvoda, all of the ``head knocking'' helped create a mellower Crenca.

That, in turn, helped create the AS220 of today, where any high school kid's opinion counts for as much as Crenca's. Decisions are made by consensus -- by whoever shows up to vote. Twenty-five-dollar memberships are available, but AS220 opens its doors to all Rhode Island artists.

``If anyone considers themselves an artist,'' says Geoff Griffin, the guitarist - communications director, ``they're in.''

As far as the gender mix goes, a nearly even balance of men and women runs the office and serves on the board of directors. The studios are rented to female and male artists on as equal a basis as possible, given that all ages, skin colors, sexual orientations, and artistic bents are also desired.

Crenca lists some of the AS220 women with leadership roles:

Kim Kazan, in charge of the art galleries; Lizzie Araujo, running the performance space; Heather Sylvester and Amy Dermot, the cable-TV program; and Jill Colanin, the Caf .

Come to think of it, says Crenca, the place is ``kind of dominated by women!''

THE FEMALE ARTISTS who live and/or work at AS220 share certain qualities.

They are poor. They are happy. They are grateful to AS220. And they would rather not be defined by their gender.

``The issues I face with being myself daily are not based on being a woman, but on being Beth,'' says Beth Nixon, 24, a puppet maker.

Sure, she says, women affect the AS220 dynamic, but ``it's hard to figure out what's personality and what's the fact that they're a woman. Women are really important to AS220; men are really important to AS220. I think the cat is really important to AS220.''

Nixon acknowledges that some women have a hard time in a world ``often dominated or structured by men.'' Still, she says, ``I just feel that's not what AS220 is about. I don't think AS220 is about providing shelter for struggling women.

``AS220 is about creating a cooperative environment of people to live and produce art, and share their art and their lives with one another.''

This is not, says Nixon, to discount the brave work of pioneering feminists.

``I feel grateful'' for them, she says. ``I also just feel like one of the ways to pay tribute to what has come before is to keep on going forth and not continue operating in the mind frame of `versus.' ''

More Women in R.I. history