(upbeat abstract music) - Hello again, and welcome the Monograph.

I'm your host, Jackie Clay.

Today, we're in Space One Eleven in Birmingham.

Space One Eleven is a visual arts organization that has been in service to its community for 35 years.

Before we start here, let's visit with Adrienne Darnell, a self-taught photographer and the creative producer from Dothan, Alabama.

(upbeat funk music) (upbeat abstract music) - Everyone always wants to know, like, how did you come from, you know, the Southeast corner, right above the Florida panhandle to working on these multimillion dollar campaigns and all these big clients?

I never hide who I am.

And I feel like that's what makes me good at what I do.

(upbeat jazz music) I didn't even have any really creative hobbies growing up.

I was just like (laughing) I went to school to be an English teacher at Troy Dothan.

Found a bunch of old cameras that were my grandfathers.

They were really cool, like old box cameras, some like little brownies.

And I just thought they were beautiful and I didn't wanna have them sitting around.

So I started looking up YouTube videos and taught myself how to clean them and restore them.

And then eventually started shooting with them.

They're 120 medium format.

There were some large format too, and that was just kind of it.

I said, "This is fascinating and beautiful."

And then there was like a connection to my grandfather who had passed before I was even born.

(upbeat music) I started really diving into like alternative methods of shooting and processing.

Whether it be putting like a prism filter onto a lens or like glossing the lens over with like sunscreen.

Which is like hazy and beautiful.

What I really love, and I've done a lot, and you can see in my work, and I feel like it's very dreamy and ethereal, is soaking.

So like I'll soak like the whole canister of 35 millimeter in like dish soap.

And something acidic like lemon juice or apple cider vinegar.

And it also is like a labor-intensive process.

So it's not an instant gratification thing, which kind of makes you become attached to the process and the film itself.

Or for me, it does.

It's like a labor of love 'cause you have to let it soak for a couple of days and then you have to rinse it.

And then I let it dry in the window sill for usually around a month before you can even shoot it.

(laughing) And then you're shooting this film, but then when it comes out, you don't know what you're getting, who knows.

And it can be really sticky and grows and nothing is there.

And then you get yelled at from the lab.

Or it's just really beautiful, and it's something special and you have no idea, but no one else can replicate that either.

And it looks like something that came out of a dream.

(upbeat music) I went to New York to visit my sister in my third year of school.

And it just like, it clicked, like, this is my place.

I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I just, I have to go.

And I dropped out of school (laughing loudly).

And packed up everything, couch surf for three months, and then found my first job as an admin at an advertising agency.

I worked for the head of a creative department as her assistant.

And she was just really sweet and open and would ask my opinion on things, even though she didn't need it.

And she saw my personal photography work one day.

She just like, I don't know how, but she, when she got to my website and she saw my personal work, she was like, "What are you doing?

Like you have a great eye, you have great taste.

You should be an art buyer.

I'm gonna help you get there, because I know that there's potential here."

And I was like, "I have no idea what that is."

(laughing) Growing up, I was told like, "Hey, you can be an accountant.

You can be a nurse, be a school teacher."

And that's kinda really all I remembered.

I was like, "I don't know what an art buyer is, but it sounds cool, and I love art.

Like, let's get it."

So I started helping the production department look for stock imagery.

(laughing) That's like, that's the first step into production and advertising.

It's just like purchasing stock photos, right?

Which is kind of boring, but you still have to have an eye for it.

You have to find what doesn't look super fake, but might look more natural.

And I think, you know, the ultimate goal for advertising is like, yes, they're trying to sell stuff.

But, essentially, you really need to make some sort of emotional connection.

Then I started searching for photographers, and directors, and just trying to insert myself in every project.

And I was like, well, maybe I know somebody 'cause I've been in the photography community constantly looking for inspiration from my own work.

I already have this Rolodex of people that I loved, and I thought were amazing.

I'm like, "Okay, maybe these are more fine art photographers because that's what I love.

But why can't this be applied to advertising?

Why does everything have to look so adie?"

(mid-tempo music) When a client sends us a brief, they usually are just giving us their goal.

And what they wanna get out of it and their market.

And I look at the creative and then determine who was the best person.

It's like, okay, this photographer could turn this into something that's really high art and feels like fashion.

Or maybe this photographer.

He was also a director and we could do a few motion pieces for it.

And maybe this will be a more fun and poppy way to do it.

And then everybody looks at those lists and thinks about the different ways to execute it.

Not many people get to do this and like literally love what they do every day.

And get to be constantly inspired by finding new photographers, finding new directors and artists, and being able to work with people that are just incredible and inspiring.

I never thought that I would be shooting a commercial and art directing and producing stills with Harmony Korine.

I was an admin up until literally six years ago.

It's humbling.

(mid-tempo music) What makes my job really fun is bringing my like innate passion and love for art and photography and making sure that that's integrated into my advertising work, not just my personal work.

I want everything to kind of have a little bit of my stamp on it.

Like the Darnell stamp (laughing).

(mid-tempo music) I am a creative producer because I think it's important to embrace who you are.

If you want to be a creative and you want to find what you're really good at and passionate about and integrate that into a lifelong career, then you have to embrace the person that you are.

It might take a minute to find it.

It took me a minute to figure out who I was, but then really dive into it because people will love it.

You will find the industry or the person that latches on to that.

That is like this type of freak that you are is important and is cool.

And this is what you should be doing.

And lean into what kind of things you're bringing to the table that might be a little bit different.

(mid-tempo music) - Hello, we're here in Space One Eleven with CEO and Co-founder, Peter Prinz.

So Peter, tell us about your Space One Eleven origin story.

How did it begin?

- Well, Space One Eleven was founded in 1986, by some artists.

We were founded out of cultural isolation.

Really didn't have any kind of space, like a Space One Eleven here in town, where, you know, we could show art.

We had one of our first exhibitions at what I call the old Space One Eleven, which is over on 111 and 21st Street South, hence the name.

And then, you know, as we always said, 500 people showed up and they never left.

It's because it was such a need.

- So what are some of the normal day-to-day programs at Space One Eleven?

- We are visual arts organization first, but we also have an after-school summer camp arts education program.

So we have a visual arts exhibitions that are thematic in nature.

And then our afterschool program is gonna start here in the fall.

And we just completed our annual summer camp.

- So just doing a little bit of the math, it seems, are you in, what is, is this the 35th year?

- We're in our 35th year, yes.

So 35 years of art making.

- And is there a special programming associated?

- Yeah, actually we are going to have our first exhibition that's associated with that 35th coming up here in September.

It's gonna open on the 17th.

We have going to have a second exhibition that's gonna open in November.

And then a third exhibition, it's kind of a culminating event that's gonna open in March or April of next year.

We are inviting as many artists as we can that have shown here before in Space One Eleven.

- So the Birmingham Urban Mural, I think I'm familiar with it, but tell us a little bit more.

- It came about in early nineties.

The Birmingham museum of art just finished a renovation.

It was the Eastern facade of Boutwell auditorium.

In our clay program, we had created these tiles.

And so somebody suggested we just, you know, clad the side of Boutwell with these tiles.

And we said, "Great idea."

Since in our education program, we always were teaching concept to completion.

Gave us a really a project to walk the kids through.

With, you know, budgeting process, model building, meeting with the client.

And then, they made a presentation to the mayor.

And he said, "Yeah, let's go for it.

Let's do it."

So it was about a $500,000 project over five years, that, you know, we could do here at space One Eleven and created 25,000 individual tiles, that's now sitting on the Eastern facade of Boutwell.

It's about 150 feet long by about a 60 feet tall mural.

- Who made the tiles?

- Yeah, so the tiles were made by the community.

We had what we call our original citizen artists and the kids who were here learned about, you know, clay, how to make it.

And then we went out to festivals and those original citizen artists were able to teach other kids how to make art, draw it to the clay.

And then, you know, we took the tiles around and kids drew in them.

And we brought them back fired and glazed it.

And so it's really, it was a community project.

- We're both art administrators in the state of Alabama.

And we also get to work together, both for the Coleman Center and Space One Eleven with the Verdun Fund.

I, we're, you know, I think folks are interested in hearing how you, how Space One Eleven gives to artists directly, and as far as artists to practice.

- Yeah, so Space One Eleven from day one, we've always paid artists to exhibit in our shows rather than where we had asked artists to submit work and they had to submit three slides and pay 20 bucks.

We always said, we are not going to do that.

So again, from day one, we paid artists to exhibit at space One Eleven.

And then we also, when we, artists who teach in our summer camp, we also pay artists to teach.

We always, of course, always advocated for fair living wages, but, you know, with some of the funding, it was a long process to get to the point to where you can offer paid.

I mean, living wages to artists.

And also, you know, we don't need to forget the art workers, who also need to make, you know, living wages.

Health insurance, you know, and there's just not much of that structure available.

I think in funding structure available or funding for arts organizations in our state that can access funding like that.

- Well, thank you so much, Peter, for sharing the history and future of Space One Eleven.

- I wanna thank you all so much for coming to Space One Eleven.

And I'm always excited to talk about Space One Eleven and share that with the community.

Thank you.

- We'll learn more about Space One Eleven in a moment.

But first, we'll hear from Missy Role, a Birmingham based artist, whose passion for the artistic process finds her making whimsical and striking handmade rugs.

- I'm always interested in the process of things.

I love just figuring out the nuances of how to get from a to B. I'm like a hobby hunter.

Creativity is like, it's like sports.

There's basketball, there's football, there's gymnastics.

There's, there's all these things underneath the header of sports.

And so with creativity, it's the same thing.

You know, there's painting, there's photography, there's film, there's dance they're, you know, there's music, there there's everything.

But they all live like under these two, these two different umbrellas and you don't know why you play basketball, but you love it.

And there, you know, you look forward to it.

It makes you really happy.

And you're gonna wonder why you do a lot of things and why you're attracted to a lot of things.

And there might never be an answer to that.

But half the fun is really just the thought process and the journey and the what ifs.

(upbeat music) And so I think sort of like, I don't wanna say dumbing down, but like dumbing down my approach, and sort of getting back to the basics.

Like the fundamentals has, it's completely changed my experience with creating and making and identifying with being creative.

(upbeat music) It's just become this more cathartic, comforting experience.

At this place where I'm at right now, it's like, it's something that just like, it just makes me happy.

(upbeat music) I got started with rugs, originally, it started with needle punching.

But it all starts out with just kind of elevating my doodles.

(upbeat music) So it always starts with some kind of drawing and who, I'll be honest, I have no idea wherever any of the ideas might actually come from.

Sometimes they're relevant and sometimes they're completely irrelevant.

And I love the idea of taking these doodles and giving them something a little more important.

Like rugs throughout history have always been incredibly expensive and almost untouchable.

And the same thing with porcelain.

So getting to use those mediums that have this sort of like pinkies out boujie kind of feel to them.

And then just doing something like, I don't know, something really filling.

It's what is something that I look forward to within the work.

(upbeat music) For the most part, if it's gonna be a rug that is on the floor, I'm gonna use this a wool from New Zealand.

It's incredibly durable, it's ethically sourced.

And, and then the dyes aren't super harmful either.

And so that's gonna have an incredible amount of durability opposed to like a cotton or something synthetic.

(upbeat music) It always looks awful until like you're almost done.

And so to be able to get so excited about seeing it finished and then to cut it out and then to get it on the floor.

Like, it's, it's an incredible feeling.

(pulsating music) - I'm here with Nick Tisdale at Space One Eleven in Birmingham, Alabama.

Nick, how are you doing today?

- Doing good.

- Tell us a little bit about arts education at Space One Eleven.

- Yeah, so space One Eleven, our arts education program has been going since about 1989 is when the City Center Art Program started.

Our City Center Art Program is kids second, all the way up to high school.

We have adult range classes for our art fix program, and we've even taught 50 classes for like 55 and better.

Our program has always been about access as broadly as we can get it.

So we usually have like a free and reduced scholarship option for most of our students involved with our classes.

In terms of programming, we have all year round, we have our afterschool program.

So our City Center Arts one and two.

And then through the summer we have our summer camp program.

- You started working at space One Eleven during or the beginning of the global pandemic.

What was that like?

- I'm gonna say like March through May was pretty tough, just because everybody was kind of like influx, tryna figure things out.

Summer camps, we were able to like have them back in person, but our numbers were a lot lower, just 'cause everyone was kind of still figuring out like what the virus was gonna look like.

And it wasn't until fall of last year that we were able to like get our online platform going.

We were able to actually like get recording equipment.

So it wasn't just kind of like snapshots and screenshots.

So we could actually like have one-to-one kind of like connections with our students during a set time.

So for awhile there was pretty rough, but it eventually smoothed out.

- So talk about it a little, you know, you're talking about your education background, like what drew you to arts education, and what is unique about arts education at Space One Eleven?

- My family is just like full of educators.

Like my wife teaches in the public school system, my brother and sister-in-law do.

But one of my favorite things about art ed is like problem solving and like making connections, and then passing on like those skills to students.

So when I was first like figuring out more about like Space One Eleven, their approach to arts ed is a whole lot different.

So sometimes there's you'll see and like other institutions it's like, you're kind of like bound by like time constraints, as well as like physical constraints.

But here the students are treated like artists.

They have like multiple hours to actually investigate with the piece.

They have like really large wall spaces.

They have like entire like supplies that they just can access on their own.

'Cause like, one of the biggest draws to this is like the studio is actually kind of like a collaborator, like a partner or a teacher in itself.

And I figure like that actual idea of students coming into a studio space and like learning through their own interest is like really refreshing in terms of like some of the things that you've seen art ed.

- I think a lot about the arts ecosystem in the state.

What are some of the things you hope for it?

And like, what are, you know, the young students that are like the seed for that future ecosystem.

What does, what does it look like?

- So one of the things that I hope that kids, when they kind of like leave here is, we try to give them the tools to just talk about art.

One of the, like the biggest challenges that we'll often hear, and I'll often hear this from my parents is, you know, this is a good activity that they can do on the side.

But like, you know, this isn't something that they can do for like a career.

We try to bring like actual, like working artists to come in and like talk with the students or actually like serve as teaching artists.

So the students that leave here know that this is a viable option.

Like if I wanna pursue a creative path, I can do this.

And to like give them the ability to like communicate their ideas, both visually, as well as like advocate for themselves.

Because we can advocate like all we want.

But if the next generation of students that like leave here we're able to like affirm for themselves that I want to be this, this is why I want to do it.

That's gonna hold a whole lot more weight going forward.

- Nick, thank you so much for your time.

This has been totally lovely.

Learning more about the programs at Space One Eleven.

- Thank you, it's always great to talk.

- To close out our show, we're gonna learn more about Chris Lawson.

He's a Birmingham native working and living in new Orleans, Louisiana.

(upbeat abstract music) - It's almost not fully conscious, I think.

I think it's so deeply ingrained within me, object making and storytelling, that I'm just doing what I do.

I'm just doing what I am.

(upbeat abstract music) I started as a writer, as a poet.

The visual arts seemed just kinda like writing in another language.

And then it stuck.

I still write, but, and still published.

But I realized that I had different things that can manifest in different ways.

I always feel like there was a narrative underlying most of my pieces.

Even if it is obscure, maybe it's not readily apparent, but that's the structure kind of, or the armature that I would build, that I build the compositions on.

It guides me, it might have dream logic.

It might be counterintuitive, but it's persuasive enough.

At least to me personally, that I see the through line.

And I know, you know, where I wanna go.

And it's become more diverse in terms of the materials I use and the genres that I cover.

'Cause I've worked not only just like in two and 3D assemblage, collage, or painting.

But also, you know, in film and production.

and sound sculpture.

That's across genres.

It's kind of filling is really sustaining, and guiding that I'm making a narrative.

(abstract music) - It's so interesting 'cause he does so many different kinds of things.

You know, I first was aware of Chris as an artist with his songwriting.

And then he also let me know that he was writing a lot of poems and essays.

And, and only later did I come to understand that his main thing was visual art.

And then I began to see some of the stuff that was hanging in his living room and in his kitchen.

And he told me it was his own stuff, and I was really blown away.

It has an improvisational quality in that he is working whatever is at hand, you know, whatever the sounds are, you know, so to speak.

Whatever the pieces are that he's got in front of him.

And then he's honing in on, let's say a, the sort of template of a human face or a human form of some kind as sort of a loose structure that he's going to be referencing as he brings these things together.

Just like a jazz musician would have a, have an idea of the melody kind of floating around in their head as they assemble these chords and sounds and progressions.

I was once talking to Chris about his music.

And he said that when I do my music, I have one foot it's all Alabama, He said, it's all Alabama.

One foot in Hank Williams, the other foot in Sun Ra.

I thought, man, those two names have never been used in the same sense, much less to define what you're doing.

And I think that that's kind of how he lives his life.

It's kind of, he's got one foot in Hank Williams and the other foot in Sun RA, and it's all Alabama.

(abstract music) - Alabama was really, really special as a artists and as a whole person.

Not only gave me a great launch pad for, for writing and art.

But also, you know, in terms of nurturing artists so that I could have the support to pursue a lot of different things that were really compelling to me, including travel.

When my dad was at University of Kentucky working on his masters, there was a big subculture of Sikhs from Punjab, India, who were interested in human values, and art, and film, and stuff like that.

And so my parents friended them, and they would gift me with, you know, things that they had from when they used to have lived in India.

It became really important to me one day to go there.

So I was making a trip to India, and a friend of mine who had married the Australian ambassador to Cambodia said, "You're gonna be so close."

It's not that class.

She said, "You're gonna be so close.

You should just pop on over."

I got to Phnom Penh and it was so powerful.

If you consider like the things that the Cambodians had been through in terms of the genocide and Phnom Penh was a sleepy little town at this time in 1996.

I remember they were farming roosters and pigs at the post office, at the main post office, out in front, but it was just a really, really sweet place.

And I had been in India for a couple of months.

Cambodia was such a good place to kind of decompress after India.

And I felt like that the Cambodian people had a beautiful spirit and with a little bit of a twisted sense of humor.

Kind of inherent in their national persona.

Perhaps it was really, really a compelling place.

And I met an emerging Cambodian artists and we started collaborating.

So that was the first of 17 trips to Cambodia and a culmination of maybe two years of my life there.

My dad was, you know, a therapist and a visionary administrator for corrections.

And my mom was an artist.

So I feel like I just, it just came right on down the pipe.

I've been working with different nonprofits for a lot, a lot of years.

I worked in public education in Fairhope, Alabama.

But even before that, I had worked with different nonprofits in Birmingham.

And then when I moved back to Birmingham, I was either Artists in Residence or Art Director at Studio by the Tracks.

And then now I've been here almost 10 years working with at risk, formerly homeless young people.

In total, it's been over 25 years that I've been working with different nonprofits and or in public education.

You know, the pay wasn't really great, but I felt good about the work.

And I felt like that was my kind of calling.

And the thing is about, it's not that I was helping them in terms of when I've worked with like at risk kids or homeless kids.

They helped me too.

So that that's a two way thing.

I mean, the stories that I've gained access to and the people whose lives have brushed against mine, that's invaluable.

- He's kind of a Renaissance man.

He's got his hands in so many different ways of working and thinking visually and verbally.

And he's just a dynamo.

He's just a force field, he never stops.

- I think if I can keep embracing, change, that I'll consider that it's been a pretty good ride.

(abstract music) (Chris laughing)