What would you do if you encountered a woman standing on the street corner wearing a large pink beehive wig and a flowered pantsuit?

a) Pass her by?

b) Avert your eyes?

c) Ask her for a photo?

d) Call the police?

When thinking of a person “working the corners,” a G-rated image does not generally come to mind. Yet, that’s precisely what June Cleavage did in New York City one dreary morning: she facilitated a meeting of strangers through the creation of a character and an approachable situation. June, with her wacky outfit and sunny disposition, helped to create an environment that encouraged dialogue and discussion about art and life, and the motivating factors behind peoples’ actions. She prompted a coming together of individuals, experiences, ideas, and conversation, all while standing on a street corner. In essence, June was working the corners, but in a very different way.

The Corners

Defining what artists do and why they do it is never easy. When presented with an artistic challenge, there is a tendency to look at the self, the materials, the parameters, the audience, and the purpose, as elements thrown into the mix. In other words, these components can be looked at separately and then together. Think of a corner, for example. Each wall or plane comes together at an intersection creating a corner. The corner could be very complicated with many planes or ideas converging to one point; or simple, with just one or two elements meeting; or a combination of both, joining to form not just a point, but a large area of convergence. Where those planes meet, that line of intersection, is where artistic ideas ferment. That area of intersection is usually not just a point, but a larger surface like a line or another plane. Art ideas take place along that continuum, sometimes moving back and forth along the line, working in, on, and around the corner until a solution is created. Resolutions develop on the cusp, in the corners. In looking at the converging planes, or the multiple parameters that existed when developing the June Cleavage project, it seemed only natural for me to take to the streets.

Artists in my Corner

No one can live without encountering others, in some respect. Artists, too, cannot create without looking at what has come before them. In my artwork I like to involve the viewer as either a participant, or a recipient, by providing the person with something to take away, or touch, or play with. While creating, I find it important to be aware of those encountered and the action or dialogue created. For me, it is largely about the collaboration between the artist and the viewer. I look to Pop artists of the late 1950s and 1960s, with their bright celebration of commodities and consumerism, as influencing the loud, colorful pieces I create and the take away items I like to include. The momento and tangible reminder of a moment are of paramount importance in my work, yet the encounter remembered in one’s memory and retold to another is equally as significant.

The idea of the participatory nature of the artistic encounter is commonly linked to the assemblage, environment and happenings of the 1960s. Assemblage can be explained as three-dimensional collage; environments as three-dimensional collages taking over a whole room (both embracing the random, lively qualities of Abstract Expressionism); and happenings as ‘literalizing’ the action in Action Painting (Wheeler, 1991). Daniel Wheeler in his book, Art Since Mid-Century: 1945 to the Present, adeptly describes these artists as:

exploiting the old Dada principle of chance or accident as an essential spur to creative, unconscious impulse, allowing intuition or perhaps even wisdom to perceive meaningful relationships in the surprising juxtaposition of the most unlikely and incongruous participants – objects, figures, or events – in a given stretch of space or time. (1991, p. 167)

Artists like Red Grooms, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine and Allan Kaprow were a few who played an important role in this time. Kaprow once described assemblage and happenings as, “the passive and active sides of a single coin” (cited in Wheeler, 1991, pg. 177). Kaprow further defined a happening as:

an assemblage of events performed or perceived in more than one time and place. Its material environments may be constructed, taken over directly from what is available, or altered slightly; just as its activities may be invented or commonplace. A Happening, unlike a stage play, may occur at a supermarket, driving along a highway, under a pile of rags, and in a friend’s kitchen, either at once or sequentially. (cited in Wheeler, 1991, pg. 178)

This public display of artistic intent is something that appeals to my performance desires and interest in public participation. Enamoured with floats and, more recently, art cars (see Harrod Blank’s 1991 documentary, Wild Wheels), I am inspired by the spectacle and the effect it has on its viewer participants.

A contemporary counterpart who is influential to my current work is a young artist from Southern California, Shepard Fairey. His ability to alter pop imagery and target the counter-culture youth has made him an icon-making icon. Schooled at the Rhode Island School of Design, Fairey altered billboards and spray painted graffiti images of idolized World Wrestling Federation wrestler, Andre the Giant, before moving into sticker and poster images centered around the same theme.

He calls his work an “International Experiment,” and since its inception in 1990, more than one million stickers, 8,000 posters, and thousands of spray-painted stencils bearing the image of Andre have made their way into the world. Fairey talks of Heidegger’s phenomenology and “the process of letting things manifest themselves” as a fundamental part of his “Andre the Giant has a Posse” movement (www.andrethegiant.com). Through the creation of his campaign, using stickers, posters, and the internet, Fairey hopes to stimulate people’s curiosity about the relationship to their own, created environments.

Cornering the Materials

I look at the materials I encounter as having a life of their own, a history, of sorts. The decision to use a particular item in an art piece, then, changes the course of events for that material. The scrap of vintage fabric I may use as an art object in a work has a history before I encounter it and the journey it made before it got to me is of great interest. As I peruse through used clothing stores and I see the names of individuals written on the collars of clothes with an indelible marker, I know that this article of clothing has a rich history and would have many stories to tell, if it could. So, I look at these materials as conveyors of meaning and participants in making new histories.

Artists use a variety of materials to create their works of art. Known for possessing an uncanny way of looking at things, artists can see the possibilities of new, created futures in relatively benign pieces of scrap. Scrap can be extended to include cloth, wood, gold, silver, paper, styrofoam, food, glass, paint: anything that one can manipulate or alter – even people.

Cornering the People

Have you ever found yourself on the street or at an airport wondering where the people around you are going? Individuals pass by, sometimes making eye contact, but usually not. Everyone has a story to tell. A personal history. If you were to talk to these people, or give them something, or ask them a question, you would momentarily change the course of their direction. They may never think about the encounter again or they may talk about the meeting with someone else. One never knows.

In Times Square I felt like Pluto at Disneyland. Many people whom passed by wanted their photos taken with me. I was on videotape. Policemen stopped and wished me luck. Smiles, smiles, smiles all around. A few head shakers, too. “Welcome to New York,” I would call out. “Good morning to you,” I would say. “Happy Easter,” I called to some. In meeting these individuals on the streets, my life changed, too. I would never hug a pink-haired stranger, nor approach tourists the way I did, without wearing my June Cleavage persona. Combining my art ideas with the individuals who participated in the event created a momentary connection between us.

“My son,” I exclaimed brightly as I approached a punk rock boy with his real hair dyed bright pink. “Mom?,” he quickly responded with a laugh. A photo opportunity for sure. Just as the shutter was about to click, another stranger jumped into the frame. “I want to be part of it, too,” he called out.

“Can I give this card to my teenage son, or do you take off your shirt?,” inquired an Italian woman. Standing on the corner as June Cleavage I could understand her fear.

“Where is this?,” the pretzel man inquired, pointing to my card with the website address. I hesitated. “On the computer,” I replied. “Oh,” he responded, “I’m not interested,” and he shoved the card deep into his cart.

Cornering the Encounter

On Saturday, April 22, 2000, I dressed in a fanciful outfit, donned a two-foot bright pink wig and platform shoes, armed myself with my website business cards, and headed to Times Square in New York City. My colleague, Lori Kent, photographed me everywhere: in my apartment; at the bank; on the subway; in Times Square; and at a restaurant. Documentation of the event was an important component of its realization. Like the differing encounters I had with individuals on the street, altered by the settings and the circumstances, alternative forms of documentation, other than photographs, also exist: magnets with June’s picture; firsthand stories told by those I encountered; the passing on of these stories to others; the web page I created to hold some of the visual documentation; and follow-up publications. Posters of the June event will also be printed.

The June Cleavage project is a conglomeration of my ideas and my thoughts about life and art and an inside look at what makes me tick. The 1958 ‘John Cagean’ theory about the interchangeability of art and life (Wheeler, 1991) is a credo I live and create by. The theory is fundamental to my artistic belief: art is about living life. I often have difficulty calling myself an artist, as my life is my art. They are interchangeable. Events and the discussion and reflection they generate, along with the impact we knowingly or unknowingly have on others, are issues I try to address in my artwork.

The website is a forum in which to make my private thoughts public. The site is a colorful place with areas for viewer participation where they are invited to take a poll about art education in schools, visit the virtual gallery, sign the guest book, and e-mail June Cleavage directly. I designed the site to mimic the street encounter: the participant can move around freely in the space; communicate with me; and look as long as they like. Stories about June have traveled and visitors as far away as Italy have signed the guest book.