Go slow, reach fast: Using the Archives of American Art

August 25th, 2011 at 09:00am abbey

The Good Guys, 1966. A brooch made by J. Fred Woell using found objects (staples, cartoon figures), walnut, steel, copper, plastic, silver, and gold leaf at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

As we prepared this exhibition we were fortunate to have access to the incredible oral histories, photographs, and papers of the Archives of American Art (AAA). Among their collections, which cover all aspects of American art, are fundamentally important primary resources and records of the Studio Craft movement. Many of the interviews were made possible by a generous gift from Nanette L. Laitman, former president of the board of trustees at the Museum of Arts and Design. They form part of the AAA’s Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America. The oral histories make great reading and I urge everyone to take a look.

For researchers, the oral histories offer exceptional opportunities to hear the artists express themselves in their own words.  Below, I highlight a section of a 2001 interview with J. Fred Woell, a jeweler whose work appears in Crafting Modernism. This excerpt offers an insight into the evolution of Woell’s career — he was one of the first jewelers to work with found objects. It is also a particularly moving statement about the value of persistence and artistic integrity.

Recent photograph of Fred Woell in his workshop. Courtesy of Fred Woell and Pat Wheeler.

In this section of the interview Woell recalls that his silver jewelry of the mid-1960s could not find a market among New York gallerists because they preferred to sell gold.

MR. WOELL: …Well, this really pissed me off, so I went home and I decided to make things that had no value, period; I’d make them out of junk.

And I had collected old bottle caps and things anyway, and my upbringing through my parents, they’re very frugal people, and cheap, so I had that influence. And so that gave me permission just to start putting things together. The irony of that is, that’s what made me famous. That piece I just told you about using bottle caps. The piece that I did first when I came home was a piece just using staples in a board and some broken mirror and a postage stamp of George Washington torn, glued.

MS. GOLD: And this was a jewelry piece?

MR. WOELL: Yeah. It was a little pendant that was probably about three inches square.

[…]

MR. WOELL: There was nothing of value in them. And when you’re having fun at last, that’s a motivator if anything is.

MS. GOLD: Yeah.

MR. WOELL: And especially when you realize that it really is what you are about. And I think when you grow up in a world where you’re always trying to please, as I have been, because I was taught to do that, then you don’t know who you are. You get to a point that who you are has disappeared and all you’re trying to do is make somebody happy. I still have a problem with that to a certain extent, but at least in my art I broke through. And I knew that was me.

And I think it in many ways is the thing that’s saved me emotionally, because I have never let go of that. Since I’ve been able to teach and do other things to keep alive financially, I’ve always allowed what I do creatively just to be as close to who I am as I can. And I always hope people will maybe like it and hope somebody might want to buy it, and it’s happened, but it doesn’t happen annually.

MS. GOLD: Uh-huh.

MR. WOELL: So it’s kind of a long pull. But now after almost 40 years of doing it, quite a bit of that stuff has been sold and has gone into museums and important collections.

So I guess it was the right move for me to make in the long run. You really have to be persistent and just stick to it and not try to figure it’s going to happen if you do this formula of success for business. And I think in a sense, in the long run, if art all becomes an artificial thing in terms of what is popular, then I don’t think historically it’s going to have any real impact to the next generations.

And so I guess I have to look ahead. There’s a Zen comment that I–I don’t know what they call these things in their philosophy, but the comment was, “Go slow, reach fast.” And the way I interpret that is that you just keep working at it, working at it, and then suddenly it happens. But it takes years, and you keep trying to keep consistent with what you believe, and then something happens and you get there.

 The Crafting Modernsim catalogue is available at the Museum store, at www.abramsbooks.com and wherever books are sold.

Entry Filed under: crafting modernism