The Flow Chart Foundation’s ground floor Flow Chart Space (348 Warren Street, Hudson, NY 12534), in addition to serving as an event space, occasionally features exhibitions of art uniquely at play with language, writing, and reading.
June – August 2024 (with a sneak peek event on May 11)
Creating the Collection—Treasures & Stories from the Ashbery Resource Center
Exhibition viewing on Saturdays, June through August, 11am – 5pm
Opening Event Conversation, Saturday, May 11 at 3pm (open 2pm–5pm)
Rare first editions and related ephemera
When David Kermani met John Ashbery, his future husband, on June 15th of 1970, Ashbery had published only five of his more than two dozen poetry collections, including Some Trees (for which he’d won the 1955 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize), and had worked in Paris as an art critic for nearly a decade. But he was still a few years away from earning the “triple crown” of Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Award (for Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror) that helped solidify his status as the most influential American poet of his time.
According to a 2005 New Yorker profile, Kermani wasn’t particularly interested in poetry at first, but one day, when he was helping to update Ashbery’s bio, he started digging into his papers, “and the more he rooted the more engrossed he became. He decided that the art writing, which Ashbery viewed as strictly work for hire, was actually a key to understanding the poetry, because although Ashbery notoriously refused to discuss his poems, many of the things he said about other people’s work could be applied to his own. Kermani concluded that if only people could see the same connections that he did they would understand the poetry better: what was needed was a bibliography.” So he created one.
When it was published in 1976, Kermani’s John Ashbery: A Comprehensive Bibliography (including his art criticism, and with selected notes from unpublished materials) “listed everything that Ashbery had ever written, down to the smallest introduction or pamphlet; all his published remarks; his translations; recordings of him reading his poetry; his few appearances on film; settings of his poetry to music; portraits painted of him; art works that incorporated his poems; a citation in Webster’s; and mentions of him in poems by other people.” In the process, Kermani, who was once Director of New York’s Tibor de Nagy Gallery, even earned a degree in library science from Columbia University.
This remarkable volume became the foundation for The Ashbery Resource Center (ARC), The Flow Chart Foundation’s physical library, archival repository, and online catalog, which has functioned since 1998 as a reference hub for all things Ashbery. Today, the ARC’s dynamic collection contains not only books and rare publications, but also music recordings that Ashbery listened to while he wrote, numerous pieces of visual art, beloved objects he surrounded himself with (many well-documented in “John Ashbery’s Nest,” a digital project at Yale led by Ashbery biographer Karin Roffman), and a variety of personal ephemera. The importance of the items with which Ashbery adorned his habitat cannot be overstated—as scholar Paul Norris recently wrote, Ashbery was a “domestic poet,”whose work recognized “that the home contains and organizes a plurality of objects, but also a plurality of thoughts, experiences, and social roles.”
Miscellaneous objects that surrounded Ashbery while he worked
As the ARC works to evolve into a welcoming study space and special collections repository—capable of offering rich opportunities for discovery, research, and creativity—The Flow Chart Foundation is sharing a few treasures that represent the scope and breadth of its resources and connections to its bibliographic beginnings. This exhibition showcases a tiny sampling of the ARC’s holdings; anyone interested in deeper exploration of the collections may make an appointment to visit the ARC.
Highlights of the exhibition include:
Rare ephemera and archival materials
Unique collaborative works
An unpublished film script
Ashbery’s collage materials and original artwork
The exhibition is curated by Ashbery Resource Center Archivist Nina Boutsikaris and Flow Chart Executive Director Jeffrey Lependorf.
Below, an informal video tour of the exhibition.
Special “Sneak Peek” Discussion
Saturday, May 11th, 2pm
We offered a conversation about the exhibition and how the collection came to be featuring three Flow Chart Foundation trustees: Ashbery Estate Executor and bibliographer David Kermani and poets (and close Ashbery friends) Dara Barrois/Dixon and Eugene Richie, moderated by Ashbery Resource Center Archivist Nina Boutsikaris.
March 2024 – April 2024: “if recopying is to author”
New Paintings, Fabric Works, and Books by Jill Magi
Exhibition viewing on Saturdays, March through April, 11am – 5pm
Above, “that of january,” 2023, a poem in nine 4’ x 12’ hand-painted banners
“if recopying is to author” presents new paintings, fabric works, and books by Jill Magi. “If recopying is to author” is a line from artist/poet Jill Magi’s poetry collection, SPEECH (Nightboat 2019). It also reveals the poetics underpinning the exhibited sequence of paintings, embroideries, hand-weavings, and handmade books. In both her poetry and visual work, Magi’s method is to copy and recopy, juxtapose, and enjamb. This revives the western pre-modern definition of writer as scribe and text as a drawn line that moves, where what’s centered is the physical endurance of writing a page to be read aloud, communally, and presented as a field to wander through rather than a map with a fixed arrival point. In her studio practice, Magi also copies and recopies physical gestures, moving them from one medium to another. For example, a mark made via action painting becomes a pattern for an embroidery; the checkered grid of strip-weaving becomes a template for hand-lettered banners; a bound book gathers handmade weavings rather than paper pages. Presented together, the works—seemingly endlessly citational—foster and celebrate “textility,” a disposition where concerting with materials, words, and humans is privileged over adhering to blueprints, genre boundaries, and pre-set messaging. To this end, Magi will preside in the space for a number of Saturdays (all but March 16th), copying and recopying the texts of others, including John Ashbery, as well as other guest poets (stay tuned for announcements!) who will join Magi in the space, resulting in a new fabric work whose form will invite disruption and emerge over the course of late winter into spring.
The exhibition opened on Saturday, March 2nd with a special reading by Jill Magi with poet and Nightboat Books publisher Stephen Motika at 3pm.
Jill Magi is a poet and artist based in southern Vermont after eleven years living in and learning from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. She has had solo exhibitions at Abu Dhabi’s 421 gallery (formerly known as Warehouse421), Grey Noise gallery in Dubai, Tashkeel in Dubai, the Southern Vermont Arts Center, and the New York University Project Space in Abu Dhabi. She is the author of six full-length books of poetry, and her handmade books are collected by the University at Buffalo Poetry Collection. Jill has held residencies with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Brooklyn Textile Arts Center, and her visual work is in the permanent collection of Art Jameel and in private collections in Boston, New York, Kentucky, and elsewhere. For ten years she ran Sona Books, a community-based chapbook press, and she is a co-founder of JARA Collective, an Emirates-based publishing project. For her work in publishing, she was named as among the most inspiring authors in the world by Poets & Writers magazine. A dedicated educator, Jill has taught writing, art, cultural studies, and theory for over twenty-five years at public and private universities, small liberal arts colleges, and art schools. She is currently at work on a dissertation at the European Graduate School: a poetics that reframes “literature” and “experimental poetry” via textile practices, specifically, and via textility, more broadly.
Stephen Motika is the author of the book of poems, Western Practice, and the chapbooks Arrival and at Mono, In the Madrones, and Private Archive. He is the editor of Tiresias: The Collected Poems of Leland Hickman and coeditor of Dear Kathleen: On the Occasion of Kathleen Fraser’s 80th Birthday. His articles and poems have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, At Length, BOMB, the Brooklyn Review, the Constant Critic, Eleven Eleven, Maggy, the Poetry Project Newsletter, Poets & Writers, Poets.org, and Vanitas, among other publications. He has held residencies at the Lannan Foundation, Marfa, TX; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace; Millay Colony for the Arts; and ZK/U in Berlin, and taught at the Indiana University Writers Conference, Lehman College of the City University of New York, Naropa University, and the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. He is the director and publisher of Nightboat Books.
November 2023 – January 2024: OF THE SIGN: Art of Marjorie Welish
Paintings . Artist Books . Provocations
Exhibition viewing on Saturdays: November 4 & 11, December 2 & 9, January 20 & 27, 11am – 5pm
Special Events:
– Opening Reception and Walk-through: November 4th at 3PM
– In Conversation with musician/composer David Grubbs (with a musical performance): November 11th at 2PM—see video below
– In Conversation with Granary Books publisher Steve Clay: January 27th at 3PM—see video below
Plus, a Portfolio of works from the show that appeared in Artforum, along with a video Artforum interview with Alex Jovanovich, both appearing February 2024.
The Flow Chart Foundation’s newly accessible space will be featuring the work of artist and poet Marjorie Welish. The exhibition—Of the Sign—features selections from an ongoing series of diagrammatic works that address the questions: Can the sign of barrier tape be an actual prohibition that shifts to that of permission? What is the semiotic of this undoing and remaking?
Acrylic imitating tape is the material simulation, undergoing iterations more and more altered—altered through procedural moves: sliced and splaying, and so reoriented slantwise, off-course; folded, hence obscuring itself; or with fragments of the tape as remainders, etc. Meanwhile, fugitive cultural knowledge emerges from alignment and realignment, overlap and obscurity: a slipping glimpse of chevron or harlequin emerges and disappears in the rippling distortions that have been induced; selvage quilting or sawtooth cubism can be glimpsed otherwise, as intertext. Given the signage of yellow/black, is only barrier tape productive of potential sense?
The exhibition includes paintings and artist books, as well as continuous running video moving through a book work. Visitors will receive a set of provocations—questions to ponder while viewing the show, specially created for this exhibition.
Projects by Marjorie Welish with Granary Books:
This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, as well as with funding from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, Spark of Hudson, and Friends of The Flow Chart Foundation.
A Two-Minute Tour of the Exhibition
Shown on the video tour:
Two diptychs from Series A
Small vitrine: Between Sincerity and Irony (Marjorie Welish and Dan Walsh)
Two diptychs from Series A
Two diptychs from Series B
Two diptychs from Series C
Rectangular vitrine: Project X (Marjorie Welish and Gracia Khouw)
Framed works on paper: After Oaths, and After Oaths
Cubical vitrine: OATHS? QUESTIONS? and THE NAPKIN AND ITS DOUBLE (Napkin, Buzz Spector; double, Marjorie Welish)
[glimpse of “Open Book: Marjorie Welish” video (Monira Foundation 2023) ]
Three special events accompanied the exhibition:
Artist reception and walk-through of the exhibition: Saturday, November 4th at 3PM
Marjorie Welish in Conversation with musician/composer David Grubbs: Saturday, November 11th at 2PM
Marjorie Welish in Conversation with Granary Books publisher Steve Clay: Saturday, January 27th at 3PM
On Saturday, November 11th, artist/poet Marjorie Welish was joined by composer/musician David Grubbs for a conversation that concluded with an improvised performance combining music and a recitation from OATHS? QUESTIONS?, an artist book created by Welish and James Sienna.
On Saturday, January 28, 2024, artist/poet Marjorie Welish was joined in conversation with Granary Books founder and director Steve Clay.
Artist/critic Marjorie Welish received her first solo show thanks to Laurie Anderson, then curator of the Whitney Museum Art Resources Center. She has exhibited most recently in New York, Paris, Vienna, and Cambridge, England. Welish has received many grants and fellowships, including: Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, The Fifth Floor Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and Trust for Mutual Understanding (supporting an exchange between the International Studio Program, New York and the Artists’ Museum, Łódź, Poland). In 2006, she received a Fulbright Senior Specialist Fellowship to teach at the University of Frankfurt, where she also worked on a limited-edition constructed art book, Oaths? Questions? in collaboration with James Siena, published by Granary Books in 2009 (and now in the collections of the Beinecke Library at Yale, Columbia University, the Getty Center, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art). In 2010 with a Fulbright, she was at Edinburgh College of Art. In 2015 she was nominated for the award Anonymous Was a Woman. Writing on her work may be found in Of the Diagram: The Work of Marjorie Welish (Slought Foundation), which assembles papers given at a conference on April 5, 2002, at the University of Pennsylvania. Welish’s collection of art criticism is Signifying Art: Essays on Art after 1960 (Cambridge University Press). Marjorie Welish, a member of the board of the International Studio and Curatorial Program, writes art criticism for Art Monthly [U.K.]. In addition to multiple private and corporate collections, public collections of Welish’s work include: Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT; Bowdoin College, Brunswick, MN; British Museum; Brooklyn Museum, NYC; Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK; Colby College Museum of Art, MN; Columbia University, New York (Rare Books); Davis Museum, Wellesley College, MA; Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, NY; Getty Library, Los Angeles, CA; Koehnline Museum, Oakton, MI; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson New York Public Library, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Rutgers (University) Archive for Printmaking Studios, New Brunswick, NJ; Smith College, Northampton, MA; U.S.Department of State: American Embassy, Armenia; and American Embassy, Moldova. Her work is represented by Emanuel von Baeyer (London).
Steve Clay is the Founder and Director of Granary Books, as well as an editor, curator, archivist, and writer specializing in literature and art of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. He is the author or editor of several volumes including, most recently, Intermedia, Fluxus, and the Something Else Press: Selected Writings by Dick Higgins. For thirty-five years, Granary Books has brought together writers, artists, and bookmakers to investigate verbal/visual relations in the time-honored spirit of independent publishing. Granary’s mission—to produce, promote, document, and theorize new works exploring the intersection of word, image, and page—has earned the Press a reputation as one of the most unique and significant small publishers operating today.
David Grubbs is Distinguished Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of Good night the pleasure was ours, The Voice in the Headphones, Now that the audience is assembled, and Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording (all published by Duke University Press) as well as the collaborative artists’ books Simultaneous Soloists (with Anthony McCall, Pioneer Works Press) and Projectile (with Reto Geiser and John Sparagana, Drag City). Grubbs has released fifteen solo albums and appeared on more than 200 releases, and is known for his ongoing cross-disciplinary collaborations with poet Susan Howe and visual artists Anthony McCall and Angela Bulloch.
April – June 2023: CARVING WORDS: Woodcuts by Antonio Frasconi
Second and Fourth Saturdays of Each Month, 11am–5pm
Additional day added! — Saturday, July 7th, noon–6pm!
Opening April 8th, 11am–7pm, with a special performance at 6pm by Miguel Frasconi & Jeffrey Lependorf—live streaming on WGXC (“Radio for Open Ears”)
The Flow Chart Foundation announces its first formal exhibit in our Flow Chart Space (348 Warren Street), to showcase woodcut prints by Uruguayan-American artist Antonio Frasconi (1919–2013) featuring poetry and other texts. The exhibition will be open to the public on the second and fourth Saturdays of April, May, and June, from 11am–5pm. On opening day, April 8th, it will also be open on from 11am–7pm, with a free 6pm performance by Miguel Frasconi (the artist’s son) along with Jeffrey Lependorf, Executive Director of The Flow Chart Foundation, for Hudson’s “Second Saturdays” gallery crawl. The performance will also be live-streamed through WGXC (“Radio for Open Ears”). The exhibit may also be viewed by appointment.
Frasconi lived in three languages—Spanish, Italian, and English—and had a lifelong love of literature. Much of his woodcut artistry illuminates the work of favorite poets and writers, including Lorca, Whitman, Poe, Thoreau, Hughes, Machado, Mario Benedetti (a childhood friend), and many others. Much of the exhibition features work demonstrating Frasconi’s strong anti-fascist literary leanings.
Hand carving each individual letter of text, as a master of color and composition, Frasconi’s way of working with wood and text is nothing short of astounding. In a 1963 interview he said, “Sometimes the wood gives you a break and matches your conception of the way it is grained. But often you must surrender to the grain, find the movement of the scene, the mood of the work, in the way the grain runs.” Frasconi also produced a number of books for children featuring woodcuts with texts in French, Italian, Spanish, and English.
Born in Montevideo, Uruguay of Italian immigrant parents, Frasconi moved to the US on a scholarship in 1945. At the end of World War II, his talent was already recognized, and he went on to become the artist that Time magazine called "America’s foremost practitioner of the ancient art of the woodcut.” His work represented Uruguay for the 1968 Venice Biennale, and is included in national and international collections including the National Museum of Visual Arts Uruguay; the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art; the New York Public Library; the National Gallery of Art; the Smithsonian; and the National Portrait Gallery, as well as many other institutions.
