Ellen's Work Blog

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Ellen’s Work Blog
March 2022

After two months dyeing border strips and sewing batik pieces together, I put the last seam in the last of 77 kids’ batiks to complete the Indigo Squares quilt that will hang in the Ramp Gallery at AMP. We did this collaborative project over a weekend in 2004 at the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, with students from four schools in the Lowcountry.

These past eight weeks, I have had plenty of time to think about all those kids, their parents, their teachers, and the artists at Penn Center, to remember Arianne’s batik demo for all of us, Randy’s hand-painted pants, Reverend Small’s quiet comments about the magic of the place, the sunlight in the morning through the hanging kudzu, and the sunset on the screen porch where Martin Luther King wrote his “I Have a Dream” speech. All 123 of us were all there together for three special days—and at last we have this 11x17’ quilt, clear proof it was not a dream.

Now, as we head into March, the excitement builds at AMP. John and Andy are back installing third-floor railings, Adam and Amy are working on finishing last details on the mural building renovation plans, and Herbert’s crew is working on the new kids’ program room upstairs.

Ellen's Work Blog

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Ellen’s Work Blog
February 2022

As we head into February, we are starting to count down the months until spring, then summer, then getting the doors open for visitors who will see the mural for the first time on all three levels. Giant thanks to Cory Violette and everyone at Kone Elevator, Jamie Fox and everyone at Scope Construction, and John Jacquier, Andy, and Matt for all the work accomplished in the last few weeks. The elevator and first floor railings are in and the whole thing is exquisite.

The work ahead is already more than I can accomplish before our summer opening moment. I continue to unearth collaborative projects, created across the country, packed away for years, every one so expansive and suggesting possibilities. How do I organize all these pieces so visitors will see the places we have been across the country, wonderful friends we have met, and the invaluable contributions they have made to AMP?

As I assemble these projects, I think back on the diverse groups we’ve worked with—both kids and adults—and how our goal from the beginning has been to create these pieces together and honor working Americans across the country. For the last two decades, we’ve brought together different people and groups who may not have had the opportunity to meet one another otherwise, to solve challenges, experience new perspectives, and discover that art forms a connection to one another and the community. There’s much more of this to come in the months and years ahead with our education programs and future collaborative state projects. I can't wait.

Ellen's Work Blog

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Ellen’s Work Blog
January 2022

I am soooo psyched for 2022.

Like almost everyone I know, we have worked the whole year safely dodging ongoing frustrations and difficulties due to Covid and its variants. Even with all of these challenges, AMP is moving ahead. We are still on target for opening with regular hours this summer. The elevator goes in this month, as well as all the first-level platform railings. We have a staff fired up and planning for all of our spring and summer programs. And, best of all, we have our favorite guys coming back to the mill to help us get this building finished and ready for visitors.

For the next six months it will be an awesome reunion at AMP. Happy New Year and thank you so much for supporting this giant effort.

Ellen's Work Blog

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Ellen’s Work Blog
December 2021

In November there was so much going on for all of us at AMP. Michelle was honored by the NWCT Arts Council for her outstanding leadership on all of our education programs over the last 18 months of the pandemic. I was so proud to be in the audience at the Warner Theatre when she received her award from Representatives Michelle Cook and Maria Horn.

Shari and Ruthie somehow got 1,200 handwritten envelopes out for this year’s appeal with help from our stalwart volunteers. TYTYTY, Hank and JoAnne, Carol, Tara, and—always there for us—Riker!

In the meantime, Amy is pushing all the right buttons making steady progress on our goal to finish all remaining work on the mural building. I can’t believe that visitors will soon be able to come in and wander around on all three levels.

In the last few weeks, Mimi and I have had a lot of fun meeting some fascinating new people and introducing them to AMP. There are so many ideas for the future of our education center and grounds, so many possibilities to do marvelous things with kids in our programs. I see many wonderful partnerships ahead for all of us.

Sarah, who manages AMP’s marketing, has had uncanny patience. She has some hugely exciting ideas and has never given up hope that I will get even half the information she needs to trace a 22-year history of workers depicted on the mural, as well as all the kids’ projects we have completed on the mural.

On those projects, I am psyched as I start organizing sections for the back ramp gallery. There is so much to assemble here in the studio before we can install them on site. This space is going to be a lot of fun for visitors. Thousands of kids have contributed their work on collaborative projects across the country. It is like an early Christmas to go up to our attic storage space and unearth projects we did with students across the country, sorting pieces out and planning for their assembly.

While I am working, I am thinking about future field trips to AMP, students arriving to spend a morning or afternoon with us, working with teachers on lesson plans based on their visit up the ramp through this jungle of art.

As usual, so much going on at AMP.

Ellen's Work Blog

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Ellen’s Work Blog
November 2021

In October, as leaves started to fall and temps dropped a bit, I began to think about the big job still looming: getting artwork contributed by 10,000 kids up on the back ramp in the months ahead. This is really about creating a long (110 feet), narrow, three-dimensional display on two sides and above. Some of the collaborative projects have already been pulled together into one or more large pieces. A couple of these are major installation challenges. I would seriously disappoint the install crew if they could not come back to figure out a few impossible lifts and stabilization issues. Problem solving on a giant scale is their thing. When a new piece has “never-before-attempted” written all over it, this really gets them excited. My first step was asking John (Posey) and Justin (Truskauskas) to help me move the 26-foot-long helix down from our warehouse and into the mural building. Filthy dirty, it took a few days to clean and de-spider around every rivet and small corner. Originally created at Mark Grusauski’s Wingworks, this is a piece that required help from many people and many businesses, trucking giant pieces of Makrolon from Perotti Plumbing’s bender to Mark’s airplane hangar, where we finally had to hang it from the ceiling like a giant slinky in order to finish it.

And a story for next time: the hundreds of Japanese Americans who contributed pictures, memorabilia, and artwork in San Jose’s Japantown and Manzanar, California.