The Labor Portraits of Mildred's Lane
J. Morgan Puett, Jeffrey Jenkins, Rebecca Purcell
and Fellows* of Mildred's Lane
in conversation with
The Maslow Collection*
The Maslow Study Gallery for Contemporary Art
at
Marywood University / Scranton, Pennsylvania
WORKSTYLES* of Mildred's Lane
Artist Talk / J. Morgan Puett / October 20, 2021 / 4:00 pm / Comerford Theater
Opening reception following.
Marywood University Art Department and The Maslow Collection present thirteen large-scale color photographs depicting some of the creative practices ongoing at Mildred's Lane, PA– WORKSTYLES – an active systems aesthetics created by J. Morgan Puett with countless collaborators convening over two decades in a working-living-researching project.
Overall, eighteen labors of Mildred's Lane attempt to reframe histories of women's work in the domestic environment for the twenty-first century. These photographic portraits on view were initially commissioned for an exhibition in Chicago titled A Proximity of Consciousness, (2014, Curator, Mary Jane Jacob.) Within the production, J. Morgan Puett's art installation is complexly titled HumanUfactorY(ng) Workstyles: Excerpts from the User's Guide to Mildred's Lane. A Costume Drama of the Everyday. The portraits are part (yet, independent of) a section of the installation referred to as The Hall of Labors. The Labor Portraits live amongst the collections/installations of Mildred's Lane and have traveled to multiple venues worldwide.
J. Morgan Puett and Ryan Ward (artist and curator of The Maslow Collection) make selections from The Maslow Collection in conversation with The Labor Portraits of Mildred's Lane. The Maslow Collection's featured artists' work includes; Berenice Abbott, William Bailey, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Harry Callahan, Mark Cohen, Robert Cumming, Hamish Fulton, Jane Hammond, Karla Knight, Wendell MacRae, Friedrich Meckseper, Will Mentor, Wright Morris, Joan Nelson, Ellen Phelan, Ed Ruscha, and Robert Smithson.
Additional to the salon installation, the gallery cases feature select ephemera, papers, cloths, and books from the archives of Mildred's Lane.
Note/ Importanly, there are other collaborating artists working on this ongoing project in more detail at www.mildredslane.com.
Installation view, 2021.
*About The Maslow Collection
The Maslow Collection is the largest and most comprehensive collection of contemporary art in Northeastern Pennsylvania, with over 500 works by 150 artists. The most significant part of the Maslow Collection is devoted to paintings by newly established or emerging artists working (or exhibiting) in New York during the late 1970s through the early 1990s. The Collection of Marilyn and Richard Maslow was housed initially at Intermetro Industries; it is now on long-term loan to Marywood University.
*From the Glossary of Mildred's Lane
Work•styles (short version) werk-stīls / noun or verb
1. the embodiment of any practitioners' work-live-research environment as a rigorous, aesthetic, intellectual, economic, and civic engagement with every aspect of life centered on new modes of being in the twenty-first century. 3. evoking social and political entanglement questioning our relationships to, a) the environment, b) people, c) systems of labor, d) dwelling, e) design apparatuses, f) inventive domesticating – composing ethics of comportment – being as practice.
Origin: neologism of Mildred's Lane. See Gesamtkunstwerk, (German: [gəˈzamtˌkʊnstvɛɐk],1827, literally "total artwork," frequently translated as "total work of art." A work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so. The term is a German loanword accepted in English as a term in aesthetics; notes from Wikipedia.) See System Esthetics, Jack Burnham, Art Forum 1969. See The Discipline of DE, William Burroughs' The Exterminator! 1979, and film, Gus Van Sant 1982.
Top Image / from The Labor Portraits of Mildred's Lane / Land Steward / Archival Giclée, 24 X 34, 2014. Limited Edition.
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The Mildred Complex(ity) / 37b Main Street / Narrowsburg, NY.
Other News / THE MILDRED COMPLEX(ITY) Project Space
CURRENTLY ON VIEW / OCTOBER
Apicultural Curiosities from The Grafter's Shack at Mildred's Lane
UPCOMING / NOVEMBER
SILVER–IRON–LIGHT
Works on view from Fellows of Summer Sessions 2021 at Mildred's Lane.
Opening November 6, 2021