Red Dirt Studio: A Community, School, and Home

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Director of Community Engagement Nehemiah Dixon III shares his experience as member of Red Dirt Studio, a new Phillips Collection partner.

A few weeks ago I was invited to participate in a talk with The Phillips Collection’s Contemporaries group. The invitation came from Margaret Boozer, the founding Co-Director of Red Dirt Studio of which I have been a member since the spring of 2015. So I sat with my studio mates and we talked with the Contemporaries about the work we do and the art we make.

What I shared is that the art I make is unquestionably linked to the times we live in. What started as my response out of frustration and grief from the blatant disregard for the life of Trayvon Martin has echoed over the years as an immutable recurring nightmare. My Hoodies represent what others see of me and of the fear I have of navigating a world that does not respect my life. They represent the hollow attempts of mitigating racism, police brutality, implicit bias, and the stereotyping of over policed brothers and sisters I call family. My Hoodies are my pain in the form of sculpture.

Working at Red Dirt on my Hoodies sculptures created with epoxy and resin

Suits of Armour installed in Foggy Bottom as part of the Foggy Bottom Sculptors Biennial

Red Dirt Studio sits on the border of Washington, DC, in a small town called Mt. Rainier, nestled in the Gateway Arts District which is home to many artists, makers, and community shakers. Finding this community has been my school after school and my artist home away from home for over ten years. The education I have gained from friendships and community building that takes place there has been paramount to my career as an artist and administrator.

Red Dirt is where I make art but much more than that it is where we develop each other and push each other to work harder and smarter. It is where we meet on Saturdays to have Seminar (now on Zoom called Zoominar) to share, critique, and create business. It is where—when safe to do so—we hold community events such as our yearly Open Studio Tour, fundraisers, and gallery shows. It is grad school without pocket-busting tuition and an incubator for ideas, projects, and goals. Red Dirt is home for 30 artists, arts administrators, sculptors, photographers, landscape architects, painters, and more.

A pre-covid in-person Seminar

This summer, the Phillips’s Education and Community Engagement Department has been partnering with Red Dirt Studio to present a series of free online workshops every other Saturday called Hands-on with Red Dirt. The artists hone their presentations in Seminar and then meet with the Community Engagement team to further develop the concepts for the event. Each week the series features an artist who walks participants through an activity, which has ranged from creating your own chakra color wheel to creating your own shadow boxes using found objects.

If you would like to experience what being at Red Dirt Studio is like, sign up for a Saturday workshop!

Remembering John Lewis

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Congressman John Lewis visited The Phillips Collection in May 2008 during the whirlwind first months of my tenure as director of the museum. He joined me and curator Elsa Smithgall along with National Endowment for the Arts Chair Dana Gioia to view our installation of Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series. He also generously made time to talk to some of the students with whom we work. What an impression he made on all of us.

NEA Chair Dana Gioia, Dorothy Kosinski, Congressman John Lewis, and Curator Elsa Smithgall with Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series

Congressman John Lewis speaks with students in the auditorium

Congressman Lewis was friends with artist Benny Andrews (1930-2006). We are honored to have in the Phillips’s collection Andrews’s magnificent Trail of Tears, thanks to the incredible generosity of Agnes Gund. Andrews produced collages and ink drawings for the 2006 publication John Lewis in the Lead: A Story of the Civil Rights Movement by Jim Haskins ad Kathleen Benson. Later, in 2013, Lewis wrote a foreword for the catalogue that accompanied the exhibition Benny Andrews: There Must Be a Heaven at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in New York City. Lewis’s words about Andrews capture the ethical compass of his life:

Benny Andrews, Trail of Tears (Trail of Tears Series and Migrant Series), 2006, Oil on four canvases with painted fabric and mixed media collage, 76 x 145 x 1 in., Gift of Agnes Gund, 2019

“You see, for Benny, like all of us who were involved in non-violent direct action, protest is an act of love, not one of anger. Through all the jailings, beatings, protests, and prayers of the Civil Rights Movement, we always had ‘this basic idea,’ as Benny so appropriately put it, ‘that good would overcome evil.’ And it is from that place that we offered our complaint. Our desire was not to condemn, but to appeal to the better angels of all humanity. We demonstrated what was wrong to awaken that divine spark that resides in all of us with the power to build and not tear down, to reconcile and not divide, to love and not hate. This critique is an invitation to build a better world based on simple justice that values the dignity and the worth of every human being.”

We mourn Congressman Lewis’s passing and honor his lifelong work for and devotion to equity and justice.

I Miss Canyon by Helen Frankenthaler

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The Phillips Collection galleries have been dark and empty and our staff and visitors have been missing our beloved collection. In this series we will highlight artworks that the Phillips staff have really been missing lately. Manager of Museum Evaluation & Data Analysis Kristen Paral on why she misses Helen Frankenthaler’s Canyon.

(LEFT) Helen Frankenthaler, Canyon, 1965, Acrylic on canvas, 44 x 52 in., The Phillips Collection, The Dreier Fund for Acquisitions and funds given by Gifford Phillips, 2001 (RIGHT) My re-creation of Frankenthalter’s process

Have you ever missed something so much that you tried to re-create it? When the pandemic hit, I found myself longing for, and trying to re-create, many aspects of my pre-COVID life. I missed my friends and so I arranged Zoom happy hours, which were unsatisfying compared to in-person conversations. I craved for all my favorite restaurant staples and so I learned to cook my own edition of crab cakes, refried black beans, crusted flounder, miso soup, and Greek hummus. Finally, and most poignant, I missed being surrounded by art.

I work at an art museum not only because I enjoy art, but because I believe it is central to our human experience. There is much that I can live without, as this pandemic made apparent, but I cannot live without art.

Within one week of the quarantine beginning, I kept glancing at an empty wall in my bedroom. I needed more art in my life and Helen Frankenthaler’s Canyon kept popping into my mind. So, like my favorite restaurant foods and happy hours with friends, I decided to re-create it.

Frankenthaler used her trademark soak staining technique to create Canyon in 1965. Soak staining is a combination of Jackson Pollock’s pouring technique with Frankenthaler’s innovative method of significantly diluting oil paint pigments with turpentine. Together the techniques yield an ethereal, watercolor-like effect.

My makeshift studio

The first challenge I faced in beginning the project was figuring out how to soak stain using acrylics; I couldn’t use fume-emitting oils paints in a studio space shared with children and pets. Next, I needed to set up a studio space. Frankenthaler created her artwork on the floor, where she poured and, pushed her diluted pigments into glorious abstract formations, often representing landscapes of the seaside near her studio in Provincetown, Massachusetts. I tried placing my canvas on the floor like Frankenthaler, but my back and knees ached; plus, I couldn’t keep my dogs away! So, I set up my studio on a table instead and completed a couple of studies. This experiment reiterated the point that to truly capture the effect of Canyon, the canvas must be laid flat, as mixing paint on canvas with a brush did not yield the signature of effect of Frankenthaler’s soak staining.

The first time that I poured diluted paint on my canvas, chills went down my spine. It felt all wrong! I quickly grabbed a paper towel in a panic and worked to rescue my canvas, but my frenzy dissipated as the magic began.

My experiment pouring diluted paint on a flat canvas.

I pushed and pulled the paint with a palette knife and paper towel. Suddenly the yellow blob of paint began to transform. I rushed to mix and dilute the red-orange color and poured it on the center of the canvas. Once again, I felt like I ruined my painting and so I returned to controlling the process with paint brushes. I alternated back and forth between the two techniques and somewhere along the way, an amalgam of Frankenthaler’s style with my own emerged from the swirls of paint.

Looking at the painting on the table versus on the easel.

I relished the crispness of my clean lines and divisions of colors, but admired Frakenthaler’s ability to make colors float together with seeming intention using soak staining. However, this edition of my painting was unbalanced and I didn’t understand why until I changed my perspective. I propped the painting up on my easel and the solution immediately came to me.

My version of Canyon was too controlled. With each harsh transition in color that I created by using a paintbrush and mixing on canvas, I forced myself to dilute pigment and pour it directly on the canvas to soften the edges. The process of pouring became more natural feeling as I worked. Finally, the painting was complete. But it wasn’t a true replica of Frankenthaler’s, nor was it an original artwork of mine. It is, instead, a process piece representing a journey of healing inspired by art.

My final piece!

I don’t like letting go of control and the pandemic has been testing my sense of having dominion over my life. I clung to my preferred methods of painting because I needed to make something work the way I expected it to. By forcing myself to use Frankenthaler’s soak staining method, I found peace in chance. I found truth in what is, instead of what I can make happen. I discovered a piece of myself that wanted to just let go and accept beauty wherever it can be found.

For now, this journey continues at home and I look forward to the day that it extends back into museums. Until then, I will continue to miss Frankenthaler’s Canyon.