New Podcast Episode! The Art of Installation

Assistant Preparator Drew Divilbiss

 

The Prep Team is a tribe of multi-talented skilled workers who bustle about the museum, sometimes shepherding artworks, sometimes operating machinery or ferrying ladders and work benches from gallery to gallery, but always in motion. 

The Collections Management Preparations team includes preparators whose job it is to carry out all physical movement of artwork and care for the collection. They install and de-install works in the permanent galleries and on the museum grounds, as well as temporary exhibitions. They frame or unframe works as needed for conservation, and are in charge of the packing and crating of artworks going out on loan, and the unpacking of incoming work. They also build mounts or pedestals for artwork as needed.

On this episode of the podcast, we talk with Assistant Preparator Drew Divilbiss to answer all of your questions about what really goes on behind-the scenes. Where do we store the artwork? How is it cleaned? Learn all this and more on Museum Way.

 

Episode Transcript

Stace Treat:
Welcome to Museum Way, the podcast of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. We’re sharing all the ins and outs of the museum from the galleries to the trails, the architecture, and more. You’ll learn the museum way of Crystal Bridges. On today’s podcast we’re talking all about artwork installation. We will meet artists, Alyson Shotz, who is here in town installing her work Scattering Screen in our North forest. We’ll also talk with assistant preparator Drew Divilbiss to talk about art installations and working with artists in the upcoming exhibition, The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Art, so let’s jump into this episode of Museum Way.

Stace Treat:
We’re here now with artist Alyson Shotz. Alyson, welcome to Northwest Arkansas.

Alyson Shotz:
Thank you.

Stace Treat:
Let me ask you this. A lot of people, when they have the opportunity to meet an artist, they are often curious as to how you became an artist. Is it something that you always wanted to do or did you kind of stumble into it? Tell us your path.

Alyson Shotz:
I had a long, well, somewhat long circuitous path, but I always did art when I was little. It was really the thing I did to keep myself entertained, but I didn’t see it as a career and I like science as well. I went into geology originally and studied geology at University of Colorado for two years and I liked it. I still liked geology, but I didn’t like it enough. There was something not there for me. And at the same time as I was doing that, I was taking art classes also at University of Colorado and I kept finding myself going to the art class, taking more and more art classes.

Stace Treat:
Uh-huh (affirmative).

Alyson Shotz:
And finally, actually my mother suggested, why don’t you go to art school? It seems like you really enjoy that. And I transferred to Rhode Island School of Design, but even then, I didn’t think that being an artist was a real career. It was very hard to do that at that time and it’s a little better now.

Stace Treat:
But what changed your mind? What was the path?

Alyson Shotz:
Then that’s when it sort of just took over, where I didn’t almost have a choice. I went to Rhode Island School of Design. Was thinking, Oh, I’m going to do something career-wise. And I was doing textile design for a while because I thought that might be a career. And then I just wanted to make art, but it took a long time. Then I went to graduate school, thought well I’ll teach.

Stace Treat:
Uh-huh (affirmative), right.

Alyson Shotz:
But eventually I realized, I think in grad school I realized or I just I really want to do this. I’m just going to have to support it doing whatever I can do to support it. And so that’s probably where I really became directed, it was in grad school.

Stace Treat:
Great. Your art and I’m going to tell everybody to go to your website so that they can see your art because there’s a wonderful variety of approaches that you take. Can you tell us a little bit about what inspires you?

Alyson Shotz:
It’s really a process of experimentation. I don’t typically start with an idea, I a lot of times may start with a material. I’m thinking specifically of in the past five years I’ve started to work in ceramic and that began with just this kind of passion for ceramics.

Stace Treat:
Yeah.

Alyson Shotz:
And I had gone to Japan and seen these incredible ceramic dishes and tea bowls there, and I just started to be kind of obsessed with ceramics. Then I started to work with it. I taught myself and but also had help, in any studio I would work in, there’d be other ceramicists there I could ask and so that started. But then the material then directed the form.

Stace Treat:
Okay. Your art seems to deal a lot with space, and the construction of space, or the realization of it, or the investigation of it even. Would you say that the piece that you’ve created, Scattering Screen that you’re installing now is based on that concept?

Alyson Shotz:
Yes. It’s not based on space, but it definitely deals with space. There’s a positive and negative space thing that happens. And negative space is sort of an art term, meaning like all the space around the things that we see.

Stace Treat:
Right, mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alyson Shotz:
It’s not a scientific term, but it’s something that you learn in drawing class 101.

Stace Treat:
Right.

Alyson Shotz:
But that always intrigued me, was all that in between space and Scattering Screen sort of plays with that. The positive and negative space kind of intertwine or makes your eye kind of go back and forth between them. Sometimes the holes look like positive things and the objects look like holes. I like to think that people will start to think about space differently. I also think that it looks… It’s about air in a sense or it’s about solidity. What is mass and what is not, what has mass and what doesn’t have mass. Things like that.

Stace Treat:
Right. Can you describe for our listener what it is? Like sort of the shape it is, the form it takes.

Alyson Shotz:
It’s kind of screen like it’s sort of flat, which is also unusual for a sculpture. A lot of times I’m in my work, I try to play with that idea of what we expect sculpture be. Instead of being this. I mean I make three dimensional sculptures as well, but this one is very flat and it’s made of lots of little stainless steel circles that have been punched and they’re all tied together with stainless steel wires by hand.

Stace Treat:
Okay.

Alyson Shotz:
Me and my assistants did all that.

Stace Treat:
How long did that take?

Alyson Shotz:
A while. I don’t remember but I feel like it could be a year maybe, it was a long time. We usually work on lots of projects at the same time, so it’s hard to be specific.

Stace Treat:
Sure.

Alyson Shotz:
Right away, that’s a different way to make outdoor sculpture than I’ve ever seen. Any outdoor sculpture I’ve seen has been welded steel, or it’s been some kind of plastic, or whatever it is, but more like a solid thing. I’m trying to investigate the idea of how do you make sculpture in a new way? Outdoor sculpture, especially with this work.

Stace Treat:
It sounds like it’s rather light and maybe permeable and-

Alyson Shotz:
Right, exactly.

Stace Treat:
With the air component you mentioned.

Alyson Shotz:
Right, right. And most sculptures are not like that.

Stace Treat:
How have you enjoyed the working in the forest environment?

Alyson Shotz:
It’s been nice. It was a little windy yesterday. It was really windy, but today is not windy so it’s been great, but it’s been nice to just be outside for such a long time.

Stace Treat:
Yeah.

Alyson Shotz:
I’m usually in my studio or-

Stace Treat:
In Brooklyn. Is that where you live, yes?

Alyson Shotz:
Yeah. I briefly go outside to get on the subway. But it’s nice just being in the woods for such a long period of time. It’s great, and now the dogwoods are coming out.

Stace Treat:
It’s very beautiful. What kind of projects are you working on right now?

Alyson Shotz:
The very next thing, there are two things that are coming up immediately. One is the Frieze Art Fair.

Stace Treat:
Right.

Alyson Shotz:
I’ll have to participate in these art fairs. And I want to, I have a ceramic piece that’s like a wall piece that’s going to be in that. And right after that I have a 50 foot sculpture suspended that’s going into NYU Kimmel Pavilion. It’s a new building at NYU.

Stace Treat:
That’s pretty exciting.

Alyson Shotz:
Yeah, it’s a big thing.

Stace Treat:
Yeah. Well, I should say, I mean we should take a moment to just let our listeners know that your work is all over the world.

Alyson Shotz:
Yeah, that’s true.

Stace Treat:
You’re in Sweden, Tokyo, Switzerland, China, India. These are all some countries that I’ve heard you’ve exhibited in.

Alyson Shotz:
Right, that’s true. Yeah, I was going to say, not China, but I have, yeah.

Stace Treat:
Yeah, and not to mention the cities large and small here in the United States.

Alyson Shotz:
Well, one of the nice things about being an artist has been seeing the United States through my work. Coming here, never been to Arkansas.

Stace Treat:
Well, welcome. We’re delighted to have you for sure.

Alyson Shotz:
Thank you, thank you.

Stace Treat:
Since we are a podcast, I’m curious, do you listen to any podcasts?

Alyson Shotz:
Yes.

Stace Treat:
Which ones? What do you like?

Alyson Shotz:
My most recent favorite is, I don’t remember the official name, but it’s Preet Bharara.

Stace Treat:
Okay.

Alyson Shotz:
He was a US attorney in New York, and he talks about politics and legal issues in politics. I think it’s like Today with Preet or something like that.

Stace Treat:
Uh-huh (affirmative).

Alyson Shotz:
Also Ezra Klein, I’ve been listening to. A lot of political ones.

Stace Treat:
Yeah. Well, it’s a political year, right?

Alyson Shotz:
Right.

Stace Treat:
Let me ask you this. You said you started out as a scientist, a geologist. How much does that still influence your work as an artist? Do you think it does at all?

Alyson Shotz:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I think it does a lot. And all this stuff about space, that’s all science related. When I was at University of Colorado doing that, attempting to do that degree, which I didn’t finish, I was required to take physics and I found that, I loved that and that was where my interest in space started. I took astrophysics 101 or whatever it was, and this was a long time ago, this was like 1982 or 1983 or something. But the teacher that I had was teaching us about black holes, which was something unheard of at that time.

Stace Treat:
Right.

Alyson Shotz:
And I was completely fascinated and ever since, I just read about it as a non-expert, but I read a lot about that stuff.

Stace Treat:
Right, I can almost say that looking at a lot of your work, you can see some scientific influence, at least impression that some of your wire sculptures for example, that seemed to be very almost ineffable but yet they take these beautiful shapes or forms and also I think your work seems almost meditative. Like have you gotten that kind of feedback from people who’ve seen your artwork before?

Alyson Shotz:
Yes. And that’s also intentional. Even with Scattering Screen, the piece that’s installed now or will be soon at Crystal Bridges, it’s meant to make the viewer slow down and watch the passage of light and time through the piece. And the more you sit with a lot of my work, the more stuff you see. If you just kind of walked by it, you’re going to see one very quick view of it. But if you let yourself sit with it, you’ll notice changes, just subtle changes in the light, whatever the color, I mean certainly a lot of these works like the outdoor works change with the seasons as well.

Stace Treat:
Yeah, I was just thinking were definitely a four season region.

Alyson Shotz:
Right.

Stace Treat:
And our forest also has different types of light play based on the time of day.

Alyson Shotz:
Right, right.

Stace Treat:
I would expect your sculpture could look different all day long.

Alyson Shotz:
It will. Right. If you came in the morning and you came in the evening and then if you did that in the winter versus the fall or whatever, in summer it’s going to be quite different. Yeah.

Stace Treat:
Do you have any thoughts about how it might be lit at night?

Alyson Shotz:
I think it has to be subtle, whatever we do. And I was thinking maybe from the ground up, but not even hitting the piece directly. Just creating kind of light around it because if you hit the work directly with light, it’s just going to bounce back at the viewer.

Stace Treat:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alyson Shotz:
It has to be very subtle kind of in front, way and maybe four feet in front and-

Stace Treat:
Make it a little more-

Alyson Shotz:
Gently lighting.

Stace Treat:
Ethereal effect of sorts. Yeah.

Alyson Shotz:
Yeah. That’s my guess.

Stace Treat:
Alison, it’s been a pleasure talking with you.

Alyson Shotz:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Stace Treat:
Tickets are on sale now for our Forest Concert Series. Spend your summer Saturday evenings from June 16th to August 11th with Crystal Bridges. This music series merges national and local performances in our beautiful North forest. Bring your own lawn chair or blanket to enjoy music and dancing each Saturday night this summer, a food truck and a cash bar will be available throughout the night.

Stace Treat:
We’re here with assistant preparator Drew Divilbiss to talk about installing artwork. Welcome Drew.

Drew Divilbiss:
Thanks for having me.

Stace Treat:
Yeah, so I have to tell you, probably one of the most common things that we get questions about at the museum is a lot about behind the scenes things and you are probably one of the… Your team in fact, the preparators and the collections are probably among the most behind the scenes crew we have. Tell me a little bit about what you do as an art preparator. What is that?

Drew Divilbiss:
We basically just handle all the artwork. It’s a very busy job, but it’s a very exciting job. There’s something new every day. We go into the museum, we do a lot of work, mostly when the museum is closed. If we’re open during the daytime, we’re usually doing other things, preparing for other exhibits. But it’s really exciting and every day has a different project, different demands and challenges. And we spend a lot of time working with the artists and their assistants, and they have sometimes very specific demands on what they require and what they expect out of our team. We just do our best to help facilitate their creative process and also just try to take care of the artwork.

Stace Treat:
Okay. Who are some artists that you’ve been working with lately?

Drew Divilbiss:
Right now we’re working with multiple artists and we’re doing a lot in the North forest, a lot of sculpture 3D art and also working in a gallery for a show going up, it’s called The Garden. And then we have an artist that’s actually installing a lot of paperwork and it’s kind of exciting because I’ve never really been able to work with that, and it’s a different medium. It’s actually more meticulous. And it’s kind of nice to slow down and stay a little bit more focused.

Stace Treat:
And you’ve been working with some artists in The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Art show.

Drew Divilbiss:
That’s correct? Yeah. We have some people coming in. This’ll be more of a mural, I think the mural is I think expected to be about 30 feet tall.

Stace Treat:
Right by Louise Jones.

Drew Divilbiss:
Correct, correct. And it’s exciting. I’ve done a lot of the mural work in the past and I’m excited to work with the artists. They all have different processes, especially when it comes to a mural. They spend a lot of time focusing on their process and their content. This’ll be a new challenge for me and I’m looking forward to it.

Stace Treat:
Well, it’s interesting because a lot of the folks on the prep team, as we call it in the museum, are working artists yourselves. Can you tell me a little bit about your team?

Drew Divilbiss:
Yeah, it’s correct. Everyone on our team, they are creators, or makers, or artists themselves. We’re all a little bit different. We have different focuses and mediums, materials we like to work with. We all have a background in education and fine arts, mostly studio art and it’s interesting being an artist and even going to art school, we work a lot with a just a studio based learning, and it’s kind of the process we work with as a team in the prep department and we will learn a lot from one another and it’s just constantly evolving throughout time with whatever projects come up.

Stace Treat:
Does that help you all in actually your jobs and working with the art and handling art.

Drew Divilbiss:
Most definitely when we work with an artist and they come in we’re usually there to listen and just do whatever they ask. Sometimes it’s very simple things and sometimes it’s a little more complex. Sometimes it requires a lot more physical activity. We try to take care of ourselves and put ourselves in good positions as far as keeping the artwork safe and keeping ourselves safe.

Stace Treat:
What are some of the specializations that you all do down there? I know that you’ve got, there’s carpentry, there’s framing. Tell me a little bit about what you all do.

Drew Divilbiss:
Every person on the team has a skill set that’s very specific. We all have very unique roles on the team. We have custom framers people that manage the collection inside the vault, moving the crates around and managing the collection because onsite we have very limited space, so we have to spend a lot of time coordinating the art movement and also the art storage. My specialty is fabrication. I have a background in a lot of design builds. Usually when we have a sculpture or something that needs to be moved to another gallery or be put into storage, I’m the one who measures and fabricates the mount as we call it, and it either goes offsite or onsite and it’s pretty unique. We have to work as a team. There’s a lot of communication, a lot of planning that’s involved.

Stace Treat:
We get a lot of questions from guests and we have through Museum Way as a matter of fact, that are probably questions that you can answer, so I’m going to throw one at you. One of them is about cleaning and taking care of the art. You guys do that right?

Drew Divilbiss:
Somewhat. We’d like to maintain the artwork as best as we can. We also work a lot with what you call a conservator. The conservators come in and they actually help focus on the longevity of the life expectancy of the artwork. Sometimes if there’s a question of damage or anything like that, they come in and they kind of help do their best to preserve the artwork. Oftentimes the artwork needs to be packed up and shipped off and it takes some time to get that taken care of. It’s a very detailed and very delicate process, but we actually bring people in usually to take care of our work inside of our institution because we’re still very young and growing at the same time, so we’re looking to maybe incorporate that in our future development.

Stace Treat:
Great. Another question that a lot of people often have is how do we store the art when it’s not actually on view in the museum?

Drew Divilbiss:
We basically have a vault that we keep all of our artwork in. We have 2D and 3D vault. The 3D vault is strictly 3D work. The 2D vaults are not limited to only 2D, it also has 3D work in there. And if a 3D piece comes off of work, that’s where I come in and take measurements and very specific dimensions on the artwork and then it’s stored on the mount, and then taken into the vault, and then kind of sealed up because we want to keep dust off of it. And oftentimes we want to keep the light off of the work as well. The 2D art is stored on very large racks. The racks are basically mounted on a roller system and the racks are pulled out 2D art is stored on both sides of it. There’s a lot of space and a lot of artwork.

Stace Treat:
And each painting gets its own little space on the rack that’s then recorded and it’s almost like a library, right?

Drew Divilbiss:
That’s correct.

Stace Treat:
You know exactly where everything is at all times.

Drew Divilbiss:
Exactly. Yeah. That’s when the other half of our department, we’re all in collections management, the registrar office they manage and take care of the location, the art movement, the conservation, they document everything. And then my team, the prep department we’re the second half of collections management, we handle all the handling, the movement, and oftentimes we’ll have a registrar there to kind of help guide us if we have any questions. And it’s a very specific type process, but all the racks in our vaults are labeled and numbered. And we keep track of the exact location of every painting in our collection.

Stace Treat:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Almost as good as chipping an animal, right?

Drew Divilbiss:
That’s correct.

Stace Treat:
Drew, how did you actually become a preparator? How did you come to Crystal Bridges?

Drew Divilbiss:
That’s a really good question. I started out in my undergrad as an architect and I worked at a firm for a little while, and I just kind of hit a wall with it. I still really love it, but I felt kind of restricted as a creative person. And I was already working on an art minor, so I decided to switch over and which I knew it was going to be an uphill battle. My parents had a lot of questions about that decision, but-

Stace Treat:
What are you going to do with an art degree?

Drew Divilbiss:
And a lot of people ask that question a lot, like what do you do? And it’s interesting, but I think that it’s really important to be a creative person in a lot of different fields when there’s problem solving involved, you want to be creative in every aspect.

Stace Treat:
Right.

Drew Divilbiss:
And I decided to pursue the arts and I just decided to get it, dive in headfirst and I create my own artwork. I’ve worked with galleries and museums all throughout the Southeast and I made my way up to Northwest Arkansas to go to grad school. And just stuck around the area and decided to see what was going on with the Crystal Bridges. A lot of talk. And I’ve been there for over two years now. And it’s nonstop. Crystal Bridges time is very fast, very fast paced. And I love it. I love to work in the high pay, high traffic, high volume of high quality artwork. And it’s an ongoing thing, but I love it. It’s exciting.

Stace Treat:
Yeah. One of the fun things about the prep team is, is we see you guys all over the grounds. We see you everywhere and have these wonderful memories or images of you all wheeling art from the gallery to the vault or vice versa, and how exciting that is for people when they get to see the art kind of moving around, and changing places, and being installed in new ways. Did you work on the new re-installation?

Drew Divilbiss:
I did, yeah. We just now completely redid and overhauled galleries two and three and it’s interesting when we have these art movement that you mentioned, it’s a challenge sometimes because we have to work with the architecture. It’s a very unique structure, so it’s very important for us to be very mindful and thoughtful of the path of the artwork. Sometimes we’re really limited on space. Sometimes the openings aren’t sufficient or maybe they’re too small, too large that you have a lot of traffic of other employees at the museum, and we just try to first and foremost put the safety of the artwork as make it number one.

Stace Treat:
A lot of people probably don’t know this, but in the back corridors of Crystal Bridges, there are signs that say yield to art in transit.

Drew Divilbiss:
That’s correct. Yeah. We work on that. It’s a new concept we’re trying to implement more and more. Sometimes we have people that are running behind and they might have a cup of coffee in their hand and we want to make sure that we take every precaution not to danger any of the artwork or much less we don’t want anybody else to have any problems either.

Stace Treat:
Right, right. Do you have any fun stories about working with artists that you would like to share?

Drew Divilbiss:
Yeah, every artist is a little different. They all have different demands. Again, sometimes they have a long list of materials, they know what they want and they get in there and they grind it out and they work really hard. They’re on a mission, they’re here to do the job and they get after it and sometimes they’re also really real people. They like to hang out and they’re very relatable. You can really sit down and have a conversation and oftentimes they become lifelong friends. I continue to develop relationships with these people and they’re good people to know. And they definitely sometimes bring some characters through. But it’s interesting, it’s that weird diverse process, and that creative process, and working with different people that have different ideas about what art should be, and especially when it’s more contemporary, it’s exciting to work around.

Stace Treat:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I’m sure they all come from very diverse backgrounds and experiences.

Drew Divilbiss:
They do, with our museum, we have a lot of artwork that moves from all over the place, comes from all over and some of these people I’ve heard of and seen only in books, so when I get to work with them and work with their artwork it’s very surreal. And even now I think back about memories about things and I can’t believe I was ever a part of something like that. It’s nice to be a part of history and also see it come alive. And I think above all is having a wonderful museum and institution like this in this area that not only enriches our community, but also attracts people from all over the world. And just to be a part of something like that, it’s amazing.

Stace Treat:
Yeah, it’s really something special. And I had mentioned earlier when we were talking with Alyson Shotz that I really encourage people to visit her website so that they can get a sense of just how accomplished and amazing an artist that she is and so many others that come here.

Drew Divilbiss:
That’s correct. Yeah. We’re working with her right now and it’s a beautiful weather outside. We’re doing an outside installation and it’s nice to see how she works. It’s interesting for her because it’s still a very new piece of artwork for her. You see her kind of troubleshoot through the process and it’s exciting because we kind of help her develop a new way of understanding the way she installs the art. We’re kind of a part of diagramming and documenting the process itself so she can take it further in the future. And also it can be used for our record and at the museum.

Stace Treat:
Well Drew, it’s been a real pleasure talking to you today.

Drew Divilbiss:
You as well Stace, thanks for having me.

Stace Treat:
The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Art opens May 26th, a selection of O’Keeffe’s most important works will be the centerpiece for this unique exhibition. Alongside these iconic artworks. The exhibition will feature 53 works by a select group of 20 contemporary artists who evoke, investigate and expand upon Georgia O’Keeffe’s artistic legacy. This exhibition gives a fresh look at Georgia O’Keeffe through the lens of contemporary art. Learn more at crystalbridges.org. Thanks for tuning in to Museum Way. We hope you enjoyed the episode. Tune in each month to hear more. Don’t forget to head over to our social media channels and leave a question or comment about what you’d like to hear on future episodes. I’m Stace Treat and I’ll catch you next month, right here on Museum Way.

 

Crystal Bridges Interpretation Manager Stace Treat is the host of Museum Way. New episodes of the podcast are launched each month! Subscribe to be the first to listen, and head over to our social media channels to let us know what you’d like to hear on future episodes.