Artists! Document your work to preserve your art story. Archiving your artistic output is critical to establishing your voice and your place in the art continuum. It might feel like a daunting task or peripheral to the work in the studio, but it is an important responsibility of an artist and can be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet or running lists in a journal. It is never too late and certainly never too early to begin this process.
Basic documentation includes creating an inventory of artwork, photographs, exhibition records, and scholarship on the work. Other key items include correspondence (personal and business), ledgers, sales records, lists of public and private collections that house your work, and exhibition documents such as shipping records, catalogues, announcements, publications, and written reviews. Videos and electronic assets such as online exhibits and virtual artist talks are also important to preserve.
To bring this process alive for Hand Papermaking readers, I conducted interviews with three art professionals to share their experience. What follows are excerpts from the individual interviews with artist Claudia (Aziza) Gibson-Hunter; paper conservator Ingrid Rose, and archivist Jen Sheckels. All interviewees work and live in the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Maryland (DMV) area.
an artist perspective
Claudia (Aziza) Gibson-Hunter is an African American artist living and working in the District of Columbia. She has documented and created her legacy with basic materials, consistency, and perseverance.
In today’s modern society, do you think it is important to preserve artistic output as a valuable legacy?
I am going to speak as an artist of color, FIRST. When I was in school, at Tyler College of Art, it was as if African American artists did not even exist. The books we had were of traditional African art. I knew about Charles White because my friend’s mother introduced me to his work. Family members made me aware of Jacob Lawrence, but there was so little. I had the posters from the Black Panther papers, and my parents made me aware of Barkley L. Hendricks, and Emilio Cruz, but the books where a young artist could learn about their life trajectory as an artist was just not anywhere that I knew about. Too many times, even when the information is found, which artists are spotlighted and what aspects of their work and career are discussed, as well as the parameters of the discussion of the work, was stipulated by whites. That is a problem. We can keep our own records. We can discuss our work with OUR vocabulary. We can choose what aspects of our work are most important to us, and why. These insights are legacy, and they are important for future generations. From these life lessons, insights, experiences, new foundations are formed to inspire, further develop, even cast off, so something else can be created.
Archiving of works of art are created using an Excel spreadsheet, archiving software, website, and journals. What is your documentation process?
I would have loved to have been able to purchase software, but quite frankly, if I had money it was going to purchase paper, paint, or other supplies, classes or workshops. I began with a ledger, and it was good enough. There I listed the title, media, size L x W x D (many artists do not understand that dimensions need to be in this order), and date. Spreadsheets are fine, but I believe artists should keep a hard copy. I also think that keeping a journal is essential. My students must keep a journal. Again, this is particularly true of artists of color. Because I was a printmaker, I would also list the process: linoleum, etching, silkscreen, etc.
Is it important to advocate collective and regional efforts to support artist archives? What would you do to support the artist archive?
Absolutely. I teach artists how to keep amazingly simple records and encourage the keeping of journals and sketchbooks. I have personally encouraged dozens of artists to open files at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and offered the museum information about Black female artists for their archive. I have done the same for the files at Martin Luther King Library here in DC. BADC [Black Artists of DC] has created catalogues for many of their exhibitions, though I wish we could have afforded to do more, but most of all, BADC under the skilled hands of Mr. Daniel Brooking created Jembe, a researchable online document of the annual activities of BADC members.1
Some of your works are related to papermaking. Is it worth advocating the development of common terms related to papermaking so that the archives of artists engaged in papermaking can “talk to each other” in similar languages?
Shared terminology would get everyone on the same page (no pun intended). This would be helpful to scholars and young artists researching methodologies, technical information, even materials.
Do you have any good suggestions for artists of your age?
MAKE A WILL and give your family some directions concerning your work. It will live longer than you.
What do you think is the biggest benefit of promoting the archiving of ‘art stories” in the art industry?
For Black artists it gives us some control over the narrative. I have really seen other people screw up an artist’s narrative.
a conservator perspective
Ingrid Rose is a paper conservator located in Washington, DC. She describes her work as preserving and stabilizing the material while retaining as much of the original material as possible.
As a paper conservation expert, can you share some art stories with us? When and why did you focus on paper conservation?
As to when and why I became a paper conservator: It was not written in my destiny. Unknowingly, the ground was laid when my husband Milton and I, shortly after our arrival in Washington in 1967, discovered and fell in love with the infinite world of prints. The spark occurred when we discovered the treasures of American printmaking during the interwar period, most artists forgotten, superseded by the New York abstract/non-objective era after World War II. Membership in the Washington Print Club broadened our appreciation, knowledge, and understanding of works of art on paper, and made us aware also of the need of sound matting and framing to protect the artwork.
Milton’s posting to the American Embassy in Warsaw (1978–81) gave me the freedom and time to learn Polish and get to know my new city. At that time the United States Information Agency (USIA) was traveling an exhibition of American paintings in the capitals of Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe. On a hunch, I had taken along a group of unmatted prints from the National Museum of Art exhibition “American Landscape between the Wars.” The print exhibitions provided a continuum on paper and were well-received. Given my preoccupation with and awareness of conservation, I visited a paper conservation lab, headed by Wanda Glowacka. Wanda put me to work...[and] independently, I trained with retired conservator Jerzy Maniewsky, browsed through antiquarian bookshops, and found plenty of relevant conservation/restoration literature in French. While traveling outside Poland, I visited conservation labs in Vienna and Munich for more insight. Once I returned to Washington in late 1981, just before Martial Law was imposed in Poland, and with advice from experts in the conservation field, I planned to open a workshop. An urgent call from art dealer Franz Bader in December of 1981—our furniture still unpacked in the living room—about a shipment of damaged prints accelerated my decision-making. It was “swim or sink”...[but] fulfilling. The combination of sun and water without which there would no paper (nor life!) is greatly beneficial in treating paper and resuscitating the elasticity of the paper fiber network.2 Managing the countless varieties of paper made me realize that at times paper tended to behave like a “capricious” master.
Which archiving method do you think is the most convenient and practical?
The intervening decades of working with paper-based artifacts have been very satisfying and as to “preserving artistic output,” there is no question that we, as a society, are the custodians of the creative output of our time. As we derive joy, knowledge, inspiration, and more, from past creativity, we owe the same to future generations. We cannot know the importance to future generations of a given artifact. Life is full of surprises, and what has no meaning today may be of great cultural and historic importance to future generations.
In regard to an “archiving method,” there are vendors who offer almost everything needed for proper storage, in the form of solander boxes, 100% neutral rag board, archival backing board, neutral and buffered tissue paper (BTP), the latter very useful for “passive deacidification” of artifacts made from wood pulp, e.g., newspapers, pulp fiction that acidify/embrittle over time, depending on fluctuating ambient conditions, high relative humidity and heat being the main culprits.
As a paper conservation expert, do you think it is worth advocating the development of common terms related to papermaking so that the archives of artists engaged in papermaking can “talk to each other” in similar languages?
As to terminology, a goodly amount of literature exists in our field in the form of books, abstracts, papers. The members of the International Paper Historians publish in English/French/German and explore the history of papermaking and watermarks.
a studio perspective
Jen Sheckels is Archivist of Pyramid Atlantic Art Center located in Hyattsville, Maryland. Pyramid Atlantic employs archiving software to document their collection of over 350 works.
How does Pyramid Atlantic document and archive the works in the collection?
The works in Pyramid Atlantic’s collection are comprised of prints, pulp paintings, and artist books created and acquired between 1981 and 2007. In 2017–2018 Pyramid evaluated these works, then cataloged them with plans to produce a digital library for research, reference, and inspiration.
For ongoing cataloging, each piece is carefully reviewed, front and back, to determine what information is specifically available on the piece itself including artist name, title, media, edition size, creation date, and its specific dimensions. Clues such as where the artist’s signature appears also aid in determining orientation for the more abstract works. Once processed, the work is then photographed and moved into a protective sleeve or covered in a layer of glassine, then finally organized into the archive flat files for proper storage. Each flat file is labeled with the names of the artists housed inside, while additional layers of interleaving labeled with the artists’ names are used to organize within the individual flat file. Information that is gleaned from the piece itself is then compared to older records and inventory lists in the hopes of filling in any gaps, including the original value of the piece. All the gathered information is then entered into a digital database called Artwork Archive, which allows for maintaining a permanent visual record, notes about each individual piece, and artist contact information. The next steps in documentation include more research and collecting narratives from those who collaborated with the artists and know the works best.
Additional goals for the collective archive include more in-depth artist research, particularly to develop biographical content and collect contact information for the artist and/or their representative. We are also developing a new inventory system to better identify, and more easily sort, the works. Each piece will ultimately be labeled with this inventory number using a soft lead pencil on the reverse so it can be more readily identified when there is no additional information on the piece itself.
All three interviewees bring their distinct perspectives and insights to the practice of archiving artistic output. Claudia (Aziza) Gibson-Hunter presents a clear example of how an artist can accomplish this process simply, without the use of expensive software. Conservator Ingrid Rose reiterates that central to archiving an artist’s story is to make sure that the artwork is archivally housed. And Jen Sheckels notes the importance for a collaboration studio to record as much information as possible about each work and its artist so that others can learn from and be inspired by its art story.
As an artist myself, I am now in the process of uploading my archives to the Academic Commons Columbia University.3 I am using archiving software called Embark, which is the same software used by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. But you do not need this software to begin the process. An Excel spreadsheet, journals, or a website that houses all your work is a great place to start. It is also worth investigating locally for artist archiving resources. There is an institution in Washington, DC—the Martin Luther King Library—where DC artists can preserve their archives for free. If something like this does not exist in your area, consider pitching the idea to your state or regional arts agency.
Your story, your legacy, your art is dependent upon your ability to organize and document your work. It is an integral part of your art practice.
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NOTES
1.
Jembe annual documents are available to download at https://blackartistsofdc.com/jembe/.
2.
Ingrid Rose notes: “We owe the rediscovery of sun treatment to the late Keiko Keyes and her presentation at the 1982 American Institute for Conservation meeting in Cincinnati.”
3.
To see an example of an artist’s archive on the Academic Commons Columbia University, go to https://academiccommons.columbia.edu, and search for “Cheryl Edwards.”
