Why is The Bookstore a great teaching tool for the classroom? It s all about COLLABORATION!

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Barbara Roberts
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Visitors are a part of the artwork, walking through the piece, meeting the characters, and exploring the space.

1 Why is The Bookstore a great teaching tool for the classroom? It s all about COLLABORATION! As visitors to The Bookstore, educators can benefit from Grooms atmosphere, one that sparks creative collaboration with his audience. Visitors are a part of the artwork, walking through the piece, meeting the characters, and exploring the space. Not only are visitors collaborating with the artist and this artwork on a daily basis, but The Bookstore was also created through a collaborative process. The Bookstore was Grooms first sculpto-pictorama to be conceived as a whole for one fixed room and to have a practical use, so Grooms took great care in its planning. After numerous sketching excursions to NYC s Mendoza s Book Company and the Pierpont Morgan Library, he formulated his layout and major ideas using a model, or maquette. He and his assistants, including museum staff, used the model as a guide: they fitted the masonite panels to the wall as they went along and did much of the painting on the spot. After 25 years of use as the working gift shop, the reinstallation of The Bookstore was carried out with the enthusiastic cooperation of Red Grooms, the technical expertise of Tom Burckhardt, an artist and conservator who worked with Grooms for over 20 years, and members of the Museum staff.

A 2008 Interview with Tom Burckhardt about collaboration and The Bookstore Tom Burckhardt was Red Grooms assistant for over 20 years and he was instrumental in the entire Bookstore deinstallation and

2 A 2008 Interview with Tom Burckhardt about collaboration and The Bookstore Tom Burckhardt was Red Grooms assistant for over 20 years and he was instrumental in the entire Bookstore deinstallation and reinstallation, from In this interview Tom discusses how he started working with Red, some issues involved in this project and his own work as a contemporary artist. How did you start working for Red Grooms? I grew up with Red. He and my parents were friends, they used to shoot films together. In 1970, when I was seven years old, Red did a performance piece called Hippodrome Hardware. My job was to collect rotten tomatoes and throw them at him when he came onstage as a bad opera singer. It was very vaudevillian and surreal. I had a great time.

In 1975 when he was working on Ruckus Manhattan I visited his studio. It made a big impression on me and in 1978 he made a film called Little Red Riding Hood and he asked me to play the wolf.

Philadelphia Cornucopia. It was my after-school job and I loved it because I was making art and it felt both fantastic and a little glamorous.

3 In 1975 when he was working on Ruckus Manhattan I visited his studio. It made a big impression on me and in 1978 he made a film called Little Red Riding Hood and he asked me to play the wolf. In 1981 I was a senior in high school and I had completed all of my requirements so I went to school in the mornings and then worked in his studio in the afternoons as he prepared a piece called Philadelphia Cornucopia. It was my after-school job and I loved it because I was making art and it felt both fantastic and a little glamorous. The next year I went to SUNY Purchase to study art but I continued working for Red during the summers, between semesters and whenever I got the chance. When I graduated from college in 1986 I kept working for him while I pursued my own art career. At one point I took a year off to do my own work but I really missed being in Red s studio. I spent a total of 22 years working for Red and I am still involved in his work even though I am no longer his assistant. We have lunch at least once a month and my kids call him Uncle Red. Red Grooms had a big influence on me, both his use of materials such as enamel paint and the way in which he worked was really important. The way he barreled into things and involved me was very exciting. I liked how uncensored he was and still is; his ideas drove me forward and he trusted me. He has a very generous spirit and his heart is very involved in the work he makes. Red s openness and my ability to inhabit a corner of what he does made our relationship tick. We were like-minded and didn t get caught up in the slickness of things. It was very intuitive and he appreciated my artistic role. Some people couldn t handle that, but if you could you were part of his artistic process and that was a lot of fun. I worked in the basement and he was upstairs. That s a good allegory because in a sense I translated his ideas into the structures that had to stand up. What were some of the complications you experienced for this project? Taking the museum s gift shop out of The Bookstore was the real conceptual challenge we faced. When it was conceived the idea was to merge the plebian world of Mendoza s Bookshop with the highbrow world of the Morgan Library. Mashing them together and having the viewer inhabit those two spaces simultaneously was part of the concept. Shopping blurred the divisions between those two worlds. So we decide to compress the re-installation, make the books and characters the central focus and paint the floor to create a new connection between the Morgan Library and Mendoza s Bookstore. In restoring and reinstalling The Bookstore I can see where things were originally being rushed; now I can fix those problems before putting it back together and hopefully it will be more durable.

What was your favorite part about being his assistant? It was fun. Red recognized everyone who worked for him and gave credit to all of his assistants, which was important.

I had to engineer the characters, and carve them out of styrofoam to be cast in fiberglass. It took about one and a half years of commitment. I worked at a very concentrated, sustained level.

4 What was your favorite part about being his assistant? It was fun. Red recognized everyone who worked for him and gave credit to all of his assistants, which was important. It was collaborative, like working on a movie or in the theatre. Tennessee Carousel was the last large project we worked on together. I had to engineer the characters, and carve them out of styrofoam to be cast in fiberglass. It took about one and a half years of commitment. I worked at a very concentrated, sustained level. It was one of my proudest moments working for him. What kind of work are you doing now? I am an abstract painter, but shortly after I stopped working for Red I made an installation called Full Stop. The piece was an artist s studio, which you could enter and be immersed in. It was heavily influenced by Red s work ethic, his loose approach and sense of spectacle. After 22 years working for Red his studio was like home to me and I was deeply familiar with the objects in it. Full Stop was also very different from Red s work, I didn t use distortion or color in it and I incorporated many other aspects of my life in the installation. When Red saw it he was very happy, he could see that I had incorporated his influence into something new. What do you think makes this version of The Bookstore different from the first installation? The first version of The Bookstore had a great run, I think this version is an opportunity to refocus how we look at the piece and to energize the space. We are going to breathe some new life into it. I think it will be many people s favorite piece in the museum. School kids will love it. Most kids don t see how art can work for them or how it fits into their lives. The Bookstore has so much urban energy in it that it will excite young people.

An Interview with Teresa French about Her Collaboration with The Bookstore Teresa French came to the museum as an intern from Bank Street College of Education, where she also held internships in

Her background in fine arts - she holds a B.F.A. in Studio Art from Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee - proved especially effective working with Red Grooms when she first arrived at HRM.

5 An Interview with Teresa French about Her Collaboration with The Bookstore Teresa French came to the museum as an intern from Bank Street College of Education, where she also held internships in second and fifth grade classrooms in the New York City. Ms. French quickly demonstrated her capacity as an insightful educator capable of creative solutions. Her background in fine arts - she holds a B.F.A. in Studio Art from Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee - proved especially effective working with Red Grooms when she first arrived at HRM. Teresa was hired as a full-time educator and has quickly grown into the fabric of the museum and been accepted as a competent educator with our school partners. In April of 2009 Ms. French was promoted to Manager of Youth and Family Programs. Prior to dedicating herself to museum education, Ms. French worked from at Camp Shiloh in Woodridge, NY. Shiloh Inc. is a New York City not-for-profit organization dedicated to equipping at-risk children with tools that build hope, confidence, and the skills to attain their goals. Ms. French continues to volunteer at Shiloh where her husband is Program Director. Her experience working with adolescents at Shiloh, as well as her background in fine arts will be valuable assets for the next phase of the Museum s Junior Docent Program.

What was your role in The Bookstore reinstallation? I helped Tom Burkhart and his assistant paint The Bookstore once it was settled into its new home.

What was the most exciting part of the project? There were a lot of exciting parts to this project.

6 What was your role in The Bookstore reinstallation? I helped Tom Burkhart and his assistant paint The Bookstore once it was settled into its new home. When The Bookstore was deinstalled, there were areas where the paint had chipped or had been damaged because of the tools that were used. I assisted in repainting those areas. What was the most exciting part of the project? There were a lot of exciting parts to this project. At first, I found the experience of being able to work on a piece for such a well-known artist very exciting. As I learned more about the Hudson River Museum, I understood why The Bookstore was so important to the museum and I was very excited to have been a part of this unique piece of artwork. What were some of the complications you experienced for this project? The biggest complication I faced during this project was figuring out which paint colors to use. The Bookstore is so complex and full of a variety of colors. Coming into the project, I faced a table full of already mixed paint colors. Since I didn t want to keep asking Tom or his assistant to explain what color went where, I just kept experimenting with the different colors until I found a match. When did you first learn about Red Grooms? In college, I interned at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee, and learned about Red in their interactive educational art gallery where a work by Red Grooms was exhibited. Did you meet him and if so what was that like? I was introduced to him very briefly. It was my first day at the museum to help paint The Bookstore and I was very nervous. There were a lot of people around the work site as Red Grooms was looking around at the progress. I had just been given an area to work on when he came through and I was introduced to him. We said hello to one another. I am pretty sure that my hand was shaking as I took that first stroke of the paintbrush with him watching me! How has The Bookstore influenced your work with teachers and students? The Bookstore is very approachable and fun. I believe that teachers and students who are hesitant to look at and talk about art forget their reservations when they visit The Bookstore. There are so many connections that can be made in The Bookstore artistic, historical, architectural, etc., so I try to weave different references into any conversation in The Bookstore. I also try to give students a bit of the inside scoop on the parts that I helped to paint on The Bookstore. I take them around and show them parts that I worked on and talk about how nervous I was to work on such an important piece of artwork. What do you hope students will learn from seeing it? I hope that students will find The Bookstore to be a place they can explore and really open their eyes to their surroundings to find new things each time they visit. I hope that they learn that artwork can be approachable. Red Grooms has such a unique style and I hope that it inspires them to try to find their own style.

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