The Bartlett Project

An ICOSA Sponsored Project Curated & Facilitated By Leslie Moody Castro

The Bartlett Project is as an exhibition between a group of collaborating artists given freedom and license to activate an unused building in the historical downtown of Bartlett, Texas.

For the better part of five months I have been working with four artists to produce an exhibition at 221 East Clark Street. The building has been semi-abandoned for a number of years—possibly decades—and the cycles of decay have certainly settled over the architecture. Layers and layers of dust covered the space and wafted through the air, the plaster sweats off the walls at the most gentle touch. But under the dust, the bones of the building hold the memories of Bartlett.

I invited artists Aimée Everett, Emmy Laursen, Jade Walker, and Mark Menjivar to work in the building. Each built out site specific works meant to live only in this building, for Bartlett, to resuscitate the memories, the architecture, the love that once existed for this semi-forgotten space.

Each artist has tackled their projects in distinct ways, but each of them have returned to the idea of memory, and through their process and the conversations that we have shared, I have continually asked myself: what is a memory, exactly, and what does one do with it.

For Jade, and in Bartlett, the memory is architectural—the physical building itself— highlighted with yellow string and nearly 100 bricks encircling two windows. For Mark, memory means stories, and he has visited Will O’Bell Nursing home to talk with residents about their lives and histories growing up in Bartlett and the surrounding area. These stories will live in the air, over a good old fashioned radio station (kbart). Emmy has painted the grid of a new layer of photoshop on objects she’s collected from multiple abandoned buildings. Hers is a metaphorical gesture of an addition, the invitation of a layer on top of old ones, a turning of the page into a new chapter. For Aimée memory has existed in absence, and her work is a massive quilt focused on the stories of Bartlett's black community, an attempt to reinsert the voices of those who have historically been left out of the story. And we have brought in our references of art history to share with everyone. We have a small library of art books, each is free and everyone is welcome to take one or more.

Together this group of artists have turned a forgotten shell of a building into a space of new memories, new stories, a chapter that respects the previous one, gives it space and acknowledges it. This exhibition is a transition, a betweenness, so to speak, and a place to share, experience, and gather.

- Leslie Moody Castro

*For Leslie Moody Castros series in Glasstire on Bartlett please go here

THE ARTISTS

Aimée Everett

Bio: Aimée is originally from New Orleans, Louisiana. She now lives and works in Austin, Texas.

Intent: Within this residency, I am extending my curiosity and research of memory from my most recent series "Paying Reverence to The Altar of Memories'', to history of the Black community that once lived in the Bartlett area and that continue to live in the area.

M.E.Laursen

Bio: M.E. Laursen, a born 'n raised Texan, is an artist, independent curator, + consultant, and community organizer living in Austin, TX. Previously the Associate Director & Curator at Pump Project, she now contributes to several arts organizations in areas of communications, marketing, and community engagement. Since receiving her BFA in Studio Art at The University of Texas at Austin in 2015, she has focused on leadership development, team communication, and development in various fields. Her experience has reinforced her commitment to advocating for programs and space at the intersection of artists and the community. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Mental Health Counseling. During her free time, she volunteers and work-trades for organizations she aligns with.

Project: Emmy Laursen’s project was two-fold. In her practice she is really interested in both social practice and community work as well as the formal art-making interests that have defined her practice. For this exhibition she worked closely with the school to help develop an art component to summer school, since there is no art program in the school. Our goal was to really provide resources and work collaboratively with Bartlett communities to share resources that we have in order to avoid creating a chasm of disparity within the town. Simultaneously, she also collected objects found in some of the other buildings, all of which had been sitting there for years, untouched, and were metaphorical remnants of the past lives of the town. To add another metaphor—layer, if you will—Emmy hand painted the gray and white photoshop grid on each of the objects. On first glance, they look like they are perfect objects, until you get a closer looks, and you can see the painstaking detail that Emmy put into them, as well as all the imperfections that exist in the objects.

Jade Walker

Bio: Jade Walker is a sculptor who engages with the temporalities of the body through abstraction, narrative, found objects, and desire. Most recently, she has been working on installations that engage with the body’s ways of healing, both individually and as a culture. Walker received her BFA from The University of Florida and her MFA from The University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been included in solo exhibitions at the Austin Museum of Art (now The Contemporary Austin), Blue Star Contemporary Arts (San Antonio, TX), Dimension Gallery (Austin, TX), Lawndale Art Center (Houston, TX), The Museum of Pocket Art (Austin, TX and travelling), and the University Art Galleries at Texas State University (San Marcos, TX). She completed an artist residency and site-specific installation at Facebook, in their Austin, TX offices in 2020. In 2021, she will create an outdoor installation as well as an indoor solo exhibition for the Elisabet Ney Museum. An upcoming solo exhibition will open at Women & Their Work (Austin, TX) in the fall of 2022. Walker lives in Austin, TX.

 Project: Jade was really interested in architecture and access, specifically pointing out the windows as portals and entryways to the space that had so long been closed off to the public. While she was wandering the space the first time, Jade found a brick that was wrapped in brocade and originally used as a doorstop. Covering the brick in brocade was a personal gesture of making an object meant for one person into something decorative and useful at once inspired her larger site-specific piece. She sourced the bricks from one of the abandoned buildings down the street—most of them are historical—and use fabric gifted by Ms Kathy Jones, the director of The Bartlett Activity Center.

Mark Menjivar

Bio: Mark Menjivar is a San Antonio based artist and Assistant Professor in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University. His work explores diverse subjects through photography, archives, oral history and participatory project structures. He holds a BA in Social Work from Baylor University and an MFA in Social Practice from Portland State University.

Project: Mark wanted to visit Bartlett’s past, and he worked to collect stories from the Will O’Bell Nursing home. He met with and talked with residents there and interviewed them. He also recorded himself reading the “local and personal” section of the paper, which basically was the section of the newspaper that listed out the banal and quotidian things happening in the town every day. He also interviewed residents like Ms. Kathy Jones (who gave Jade fabric for her project), as well as Mr. Paul Schlessinger, the editor of the newspaper. All these interviews were collected and his piece in the building was a metal pole which turned the building into an antenna for an FM radio station (kbart) where he has been adding the collected stories.

THE CURATOR

Leslie Moody Castro

Bio: Leslie Moody Castro is an independent curator and writer whose practice is based on itinerancy and collaboration. She has produced, organized, and collaborated on projects in Mexico and the United States for more than a decade, and her repertoire of critical writing is also reflective of her commitment to place. She is committed to creating moments of artistic exchange and dialogue and as such is a co-founder of Unlisted Projects, an artist residency program in Austin, Texas. In 2017, she was selected as Curator and Artistic Director of the sixth edition of the Texas Biennial, and was recently the first invited curator in residence at the Galveston Artist Residency. Moody Castro earned a Master’s degree at The University of Texas at Austin in Museum Education with a portfolio supplement in Museum Studies in 2010, and a Bachelor's degree in Art History at DePaul University in Chicago in 2004, and has been awarded two grants from the National Endowment of Arts for her curatorial projects (2016, 2017). In addition to her firm belief that the visual arts create moments of empathy, Moody Castro also believes that Mariachis make everything better.

Curatorial Assistant

Juliette Nickle

Bio: Collage Artist  following in the footsteps of her ancestors. Born in St.Louis Missouri around thick brick buildings piled everywhere, here I fell in love with creating large abstractions. Finding myself in Austin Texas a decade later studying art at Austin Community College.  Expressing  the human condition through means of visual communication til death is my life long goal.

Press

Sighthlines “ICOSA Collective launches art project in small town of Bartlett” March 23, 2021 By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin

San Antonio Report “Get Outta Town: Bartlett offers ghostly glimpses of the past with visions of a different future” June 24th, 2021 By Nicholas Frank

Texas Monthly “In Bartlett, An Art Exhibit Revives an Abandoned Building ” June 24th, 2021 By Morgan Pryor

San Antonio Report “Get Outta Town: Bartlett offers ghostly glimpses of the past with visions of a different future” June 24th, 2021 By Nicholas Frank

Sighthlines “Review: In Bartlett, building from the past” July 6th, 2021 By Barbara Purcell

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

BARTLETT BOOK DRIVE:

Over 950 books collected from connections in Houston, Austin, and Dallas, gifted by both individuals and arts organizations across the state and Half Priced Books. These books were free for Bartlett residents to take and 5oo books were gifted to the Bartlett Public Library and the Bartlett ISD Library upon the completion of the run of show. 

BARTLETT OPENING RECEPTION:

Attendance of 200 people, including Bartlett residents and visitors from places such as Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and Mexico City. Opening events included three panel discussions, an architecture tour of downtown buildings, a whiskey tasting, a walking tour of the town, and an outdoor movie screening. Events on Sunday started with a breakfast at the American Legion, a second architecture tour, and a luncheon at the Bartlett Activities Center

VISITING ARTISTS / BARK PROGRAM:

“I learned there wasn't a year-round arts program at the school district. I am coordinating, scheduling, and facilitating a roster of visiting artists to put on an arts-related activity/instruction during a segment of their summer camp called Bark Camp (go bulldogs!). This is an effort to build a foundation of a relationship between an ongoing arts presence in Bartlett with the school, to hopefully see a permanent visiting artist program there. I am inviting a variety of artists, from different mediums, backgrounds, and methods.”

-M.E. Laursen 

List of visiting artists who offered classes to Bartlett summer school students via the Bark Program:

Mark Menjivar, Jonas Criscoe (ICOSA), Juliette Nickle (ICOSA intern), Mercedes Singleton, Mai Gutierrez (ICOSA), Rebecca Milton/East Side Pot Shop, Amy Scofield, Ana Treviño, Riley Reed/Woke Beauty

DONATIONS TO THE BARTLETT COMMUNITY:

The Bartlett Chamber of Commerce, the Bartlett Activities Center, and the American Legion each received  $200 donations. Additionally, we patronized the local Red and White Grocery store in the amount of $433, for catering in sandwiches, as well as local Perez BBQ in the amount of $134 to cater food during the movie screening.

Based on M.E.’s work with the Bark Program, HEB contributed $2000 to support the continuation of arts education and an art library in Bartlett.