Synopses & Reviews
andlt;Pandgt;During their decade-long collaboration (1985-1995), Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler produced some of the most influential conceptual art projects of the time. Among their witty and stimulating installations and outdoor projects was Camouflaged History, a house painted in a U.S. Army-designed camouflage pattern using 72 commercial paint colors included in the municipally-approved "authentic colors" of historic Charleston, South Carolina. The commercial name of each paint, commemorating an aspect of the city's history, is also painted on the house, revealing and illuminating the lingering Civil War-era past of the region. Like the Earthwork pioneers, Ericson and Ziegler took the whole country as their working space; but rather than impose a conspicuous work of art upon a site or situation, they devised projects that altered sites subtly, creating a patchwork of poetic narratives and histories to be excavated. The windows rescued from the old National Licorice factory in Philadelphia in the title piece America Starts Here--which takes its name from the slogan used to promote Pennsylvania tourism during the 1980s--are hung according to the location of the original windows in the factory; the cracks in the glass echo the famous cracks in two of Philadelphia's tourist attractions, the Liberty Bell and Marcel Duchamp's The Large Glass.Kate Ericson's death from cancer in 1995 at age 39 made the body of Ericson and Ziegler's collaborative work finite. America Starts Here offers a generous selection of Ericson and Ziegler's work, with much of it reproduced in color, and provides a critical analysis of the artists' still under-appreciated position in the history of twentieth-century art. It accompanies the first retrospective exhibition of Ericson and Ziegler's work.Copublished with The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College and List Visual Arts Center at MIT.andlt;/Pandgt;
Review
Their work benefits more than most from the documentation this book makes so generously available, a book that is sure to make their influence on succeeding generations of artists even clearer. The Boston Globe
Review
...enchanting...hefty catalog bubbles with chatty, thoughtful reminiscences by students, artists, and curators who knew the pair. Christopher Millis - The Boston Phoenix
Review
a must-read in the form of the wall texts and the catalogue.... [I]f you regard the show as necessarily more elusive and renegade, an extension of the catalogue as our only means of recapturing this couple's evanescent art, the rewards, subtle and cerebral and, yes, moral, are many. The MIT Press
Review
andlt;Pandgt;"a must-read in the form of the wall texts and the catalogue.... [I]f you regard the show as necessarily more elusive and renegade, an extension of the catalogue as our only means of recapturing this couple's evanescent art, the rewards, subtle and cerebral and, yes, moral, are many." Christopher Millis andlt;Iandgt;The Boston Phoenixandlt;/Iandgt;andlt;/Pandgt; The MIT Press The MIT Press The MIT Press
Review
andlt;Pandgt;"enchanting... hefty catalog bubbles with chatty, thoughtful reminiscences by students, artists, and curators who knew the pair." andlt;Iandgt;The Boston Globeandlt;/Iandgt;andlt;/Pandgt; The MIT Press
Review
andlt;Pandgt;"Their work benefits more than most from the documentation this book makes so generously available, a book that is sure to make their influence on succeeding generations of artists even clearer." andlt;Iandgt;Publishers Weeklyandlt;/Iandgt;andlt;/Pandgt;
Synopsis
During their decade-long collaboration (1985-1995), Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler produced some of the most influential conceptual art projects of the time. Among their witty and stimulating installations and outdoor projects was
Camouflaged History, a house painted in a U.S. Army-designed camouflage pattern using 72 commercial paint colors included in the municipally-approved "authentic colors" of historic Charleston, South Carolina. The commercial name of each paint, commemorating an aspect of the city's history, is also painted on the house, revealing and illuminating the lingering Civil War-era past of the region. Like the Earthwork pioneers, Ericson and Ziegler took the whole country as their working space; but rather than impose a conspicuous work of art upon a site or situation, they devised projects that altered sites subtly, creating a patchwork of poetic narratives and histories to be excavated. The windows rescued from the old National Licorice factory in Philadelphia in the title piece America Starts Here--which takes its name from the slogan used to promote Pennsylvania tourism during the 1980s -- are hung according to the location of the original windows in the factory; the cracks in the glass echo the famous cracks in two of Philadelphia's tourist attractions, the Liberty Bell and Marcel Duchamp's
The Large Glass.
Kate Ericson's death from cancer in 1995 at age 39 made the body of Ericson and Ziegler's collaborative work finite. America Starts Here offers a generous selection of Ericson and Ziegler's work, with much of it reproduced in color, and provides a critical analysis of the artists' still under-appreciated position in the history of twentieth-century art. It accompanies the first retrospective exhibition of Ericson and Ziegler's work.
Copublished with The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College and List Visual Arts Center at MIT.
Synopsis
Works by public art pioneers and collaborators Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler, whose influential community-based interventions were marked by a poetic combination of conceptual and political ideas.
Synopsis
During their decade-long collaboration (1985-1995), Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler produced some of the most influential conceptual art projects of the time. Among their witty and stimulating installations and outdoor projects was
Synopsis
andlt;Pandgt;Works by public art pioneers and collaborators Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler, whose influential community-based interventions were marked by a poetic combination of conceptual and political ideas.andlt;/Pandgt;
About the Author
Ian Berry is Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs and Malloy Curator at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College.Bill Arning is Curator at the List Visual Arts Center at MIT.