then the street lights–like a warning bell

From June 23–September 1, 2017, Assembly’s public storefront gallery will host and then the street lights–like a warning bell, a project by Sable Elyse Smith consisting of constellation of works that simultaneously reference sites of play and enclosure. Similar to Recess’s seasoned Session program in Soho, which allows artists to pursue works in progress in a public setting, Assembly grants participating artists the opportunity to activate and add to the space cumulatively, working toward an evolving installation rather than a static exhibition.

and then the street lights–like a warning bell trains its attention on the significance of two sites of fantasy: the landscape and the playground. Smith considers these sites as they relate specifically to prison environments, where landscape murals commonly adorn visiting room walls, vast swaths of land often serve as a background to the campuses, and the contentious interior spaces give rise to complex emotional landscapes for those imbricated in the system. Through works that present landscape in varying forms, Smith will investigate the ways in which multiple modes of image making and production feed into or push against common narratives of incarceration. For example, the Polaroid photos taken in prison visitation rooms in front of murals capture choreographed moments of intimacy between inmates and their visitors but do not reveal the micro-economy and unspoken negotiations embedded in the creation and circulation of these photos—which must be purchased with many hours of labor by the inmates. By presenting textual and depicted landscapes in the gallery space, Smith will invite visitors to engage with the images—perhaps even by featuring them in their own gallery snapshots—while also interrogating the ways in which the subject matter is loaded with reference to embedded power structures.

In addition to her work on and then the street lights–like a warning bell in the gallery space, Smith will participate as a guest teaching artist during the educational diversion programs, and she will collaborate with lead teaching artist Leonardo to incorporate material from her project into the program’s curriculum. Smith will also guide program participants in creating a final project that, once complete, will appear alongside her work in the storefront gallery.

During this cycle, Melanie Crean will serve as the Assembly Research Artist. She will investigate issues that underlie the workshop curriculum—including the use of visual storytelling, and embodied learning and revisualization through media, to mitigate stress and promote agency. She will also work with Smith to prototype different methods during the program, while contributing to the larger curricular work that they are co-authoring as part of a collaborative project with Assembly Lead Teaching Artist Shaun Leonardo, entitled Mirror / Echo / Tilt.

In January 2017, Recess launched Assembly to serve as an artist-led alternative to incarceration while empowering young people to take charge of their own life story and imagine a positive future through art. Through the 40-week Peer Leader program, our young people are exposed to various mediums of art making, careers in the arts, and internships at arts and culture spaces around the city as a pathway to a career in the arts. A guest artist joins each new cohort of the program and collaborates with youth on a project in our public storefront gallery.