ARTWORKERS
Peter DuBeau
Gary Kachadourian
Gerald Ross
Jan Razauskas
Guest Curator Lyle Kissak
November 27, 2007 - February 2, 2008

How do they do it these ARTWORKERS?
All day long, everyday they do what I do; research, prepare, present, write about, and promote the art work of others and yet at the end of the day they return to the studio to make their own work. The need they have to create has drawn me into their world but I shall never be one of them, not really.

Diane DiSalvo, arts administrator

"It is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as for cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying. Perhaps immortality, too is part of the quest."

--Studs Terkel

When we picture an artist 'at work' on a piece of art, we presuppose the work in question to be their own. Images stream forward, associations cascade: the lighted studio walls, the littered tools of the trade. But the icon therein - the solo practitioner plying their wares into the wee hours - is only partially believable. The business of art is not the solo gig we imagine but a sequence of actions taken by a great number of individuals who concerted efforts amount to the viable aesthetic experience we've come to expect of a gallery situation.

The Artist is Not Alone

Behind the scenes and out of view, but holding at the ready, stand the artworkers.

These are the people who deliver the goods, quite literally--serving what artists hope are their best efforts up for public viewing, with correct signage and perfectly level alignments. They dot the i's, crop the edges, assuage the doubts and spec the grants, toiling in the gaps to ensure a seamlessness to the experience of viewing someone else's inspiration.

To the artworkers, art is much more than a job.

This exhibition highlights the work of 4 such individuals. Collectively they have clocked more than a century of engaging with others' artists' work. In capacities too numerous to list, they have helped to create what we take for granted to be the 'local art scene,' and have given of themselves in ways far too easily glossed over. Their impact on the careers of countless other artists is impossible to gauge, but not so difficult to imagine.

The artworks make art when their work is done.

It comes as no suprise that this art should feel at once fervent, curious and reflective. It springs from the center of industry. Any connections to be drawn between the look of these pieces and the incidental influences of upon them is negligible at best. A probability exists, however, that they are tempered by contact with vast quantities of art, and that a sympathetic understanding of how art actually works gives these pieces a particular resonance.

Lyle Kissak
November 2007

Peter Dubeau received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1983 where he is Associate Dean in the Division of Continuing Studies. He was Director of School 33 Art Center in Baltimore and has served as curator, juror and panelist for a wide variety of organizations including the Flashpoint Gallery, Trawick Prize and the Maryland State Arts Council. As an artist, he has exhibited his work at Maryland Art Place, Goucher College, Arlington Arts Center, and most recently at the College of Notre Dame.
Gary Kachadourian is currently making drawings and low volume Xeroxed and ink jet printed publications. His publications are carried by Printed Matter and Cinders Gallery in New York and Quimby's in Chicago. His most recent show in Baltimore was at Area 405. Mr. Kachadourian is the Visual Arts Coordinator for the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts where he manages and curates exhibitions for Artscape and varied city wide site projects and manages the city's grant program for small arts organizations and individual artists. From 1990 to 2002 he managed the Baltimore Mural Program.
Jan Razauskas is an artist living in Baltimore. Much of Razauskas' work explores the vagaries of perception, and the connection or "trace" of time between static objects and linear events. Formerly Exhibitions Coordinator at School 33 Art Center, she continues to be involved with exhibit work, and currently teaches at Hood College.
Gerald Ross was born in Laramie, Wyoming and raised in the Rocky Mountain West. He attended The Kansas City Art Institute where he earned a Bachelor's Degree in Painting and was a Yale Scholar. For the past 15 years he has worked for museums including the Phillips Collection, The National Gallery of Art and the Walters Art museum in art transportation, installation and handling. He is currently the Director of Exhibitions at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
Lyle Kissak is an artist, muralist, teacher and musician. He received a BFA from The University of Texas and MFA from The Maryland Institute College of Art.