“Collectivity” Opening at Bakehouse Art Complex (BAC)

FIU Honors College students reading their reflections on the Hay Installation they worked on at the Bakehouse Art Complex (Photo © Alejandro Chavarria)

The Birth of Collectivity
By Isabella Marie Garcia, ASC2018 (spookyrose.wordpress.com)

The dichotomy of well-known art collectors and artists within the Magic City, their gowns and suits and everything in between standing next to the dusty grains of hay, scattered but clumped together to form a stage.

It’s the opening night of the “Collectivity” exhibition at the Bakehouse Art Complex (BAC), where more than 300 of Miami’s art scene gathered together to meet and view the artists in residence at BAC.

For the FIU Honor College students of Art, Society, Conflict (ASC), who had worked on the Hay Installation present at the exhibition with Robert Chambers, the artist behind the idea, the chance to enter this hidden part of the art world manifested itself into reality in great part to Bakehouse Art Complex‘s generosity and Professor John Bailly‘s encouragement.

During the evening, guests were allowed to meander in and out of artists in residence studios that are scattered down the corridors of the first and second floors of the complex, and personally meet with the artists in order to fully understand their mediums and the key messages that drive their works. At the commencement of the Hay Installation poetry readings, US presidential inaugural poet and FIU Honor College professor Richard Blanco initiated the readings with “One Today,” the work that launched his voice to a nation’s crowd as a call to come together as one.

One Today
By Richard Blanco One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores, peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies. One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story told by our silent gestures moving behind windows. My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors, each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day: pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights, fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper— bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us, on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives— to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did for twenty years, so I could write this poem. All of us as vital as the one light we move through, the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day: equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined, the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming, or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain the empty desks of twenty children marked absent today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light breathing color into stained glass windows, life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth onto the steps of our museums and park benches as mothers watch children slide into the day. One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane so my brother and I could have books and shoes. The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs, buses launching down avenues, the symphony of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways, the unexpected song bird on your clothes line. Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling, or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open for each other all day, saying: hello / shalom, buon giorno / howdy / namaste / or buenos días in the language my mother taught me—in every language spoken into one wind carrying our lives without prejudice, as these words break from my lips. One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands: weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report for the boss on time, stitching another wound or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait, or the last floor on the Freedom Tower jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience. One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes tired from work: some days guessing at the weather of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother who knew how to give, or forgiving a father who couldn’t give what you wanted. We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home, always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop and every window, of one country—all of us— facing the stars hope—a new constellation waiting for us to map it, waiting for us to name it—together

Following Richard Blanco‘s reading, the students of Art, Society, Conflict (ASC) were able to activate the space and share their reflections about the process of constructing the Hay Installation together as a class. Shalenah Ivey, one of the students in the inaugural class of Art, Society, Conflict, noted, “It was wonderful to be in the presence of such talent and artistry as well as people with a love for art. Being able to converse with the artists about what inspires them and their process was a real honor.” One of the artists in attendance at the event, Andrea Reyes, was thrilled to see the material of hay being used as the structure for the installation, stating, “I was delighted by the Hay Exhibition. I recorded a few minutes of it because the environment, especially the scent of hay, reminded me of that soothing and beautiful energy I get when I visit the barn and my horses. I recovered the material from the exhibition, I’m SO happy about it! I’m planning on including that in a short film that I’m working on for the future.”

On behalf of the students of Art Society Conflict, we would like to thank Robert Chambers and the Bakehouse Art Complex for allowing us the opportunity to attend the opening of “Collectivity,” and to Professor John Bailly for guiding us through the project.

For more information on the evening’s events and artists, please visit http://worldredeye.com/2018/11/collectivity-open-house-preview-at-bakehouse-art-complex/. For more information on the Bakehouse Art Complex and similar exhibitions like the Hay Installation, please visit http://www.bacfl.org/. For more information on the Art, Society, Conflict course as taught by Professor John Bailly of the FIU Honors College, please follow @artsocietyconflict on Instagram or visit https://johnwbailly.wordpress.com/asc/.

ASC 2018 Student Reflections on the Hay Installation at Bakehouse Art Complex

Gallery from “Collectivity” Opening at Bakehouse Art Complex