"Morningstar and Wheelers were not utopias, by any stretch of the imagination--they were way too raw and disorganized to attempt to develop a better "system" of living, which is what I understand most utopias to be--but they were idealistic, crazy places where you never knew what was going to happen from one day to the next.
And there has to be some sort of value in that."
Cathy Akers' latest works opened last weekend at Emma Gray HQ in Culver City, and will be up until July 13th. Akers' latest works are photographic collages expressing ideas surrounding notions of the historical bliss of realized spaces, personal freedom, and the quests for "better" systems of living. She touched upon these communal ideals in the watercolors from 2009. (see them here), and continues with this latest show.
Her work reminds me of a quote that I have scribbled on a sheet of paper by Buckminster Fuller. As designers & artists, aren't we all simply dreaming of better places to exist in our minds and our physical environments?
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
- Buckminster Fuller
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YHBHS interview with Cathy Akers
I've been thinking about ideas of UTOPIA & Experimental Communities, from historical communes, to places like Burning Man, & Short Mountain Sanctuary. Have you spent any time in these communities and what ideas resonated with you?
Cathy: I have been interested in communal living for a long time. I grew up in a planned suburban community in Maryland that developed out of the '60s ideals of equality and sought to eliminate racial, religious and income segregation. I remember a lot of optimism in the community about being part of this great new experiment when I was little, but by the time I was a teenager, it was like any other suburban community and most of the energy around for creating something new had dissipated. But the idea always stuck with me that it is possible to create a real sense of community among a group of people who have a vision of how the world should be.
My current body of work about communes started around 2006, when I visited Breitenbush in Oregon on a road trip. Breitenbush is a hot springs resort run by a small group of commune members, and it's been around in one form or another since the late '60s. What impressed me the most about Breitenbush was the beauty and uniqueness of the hand-crafted buildings on the commune's property, many of which dated from the commune's early years and I took many photographs of them. In 2008, I visited more '60s-era communes in Oregon and Southern Washington and also photographed their amazing, totally handcrafted buildings. To me, these buildings are enduring reminders of the incredible optimism and DIY spirit of the '60s. I had a great time visiting these communes--they are all on beautiful land and are usually occupied by a handful of the original, usually very friendly, commune members, plus maybe a few new recruits.
The process of your photo collages. Are the photographs taken at these communes? Are the people of images from books & magazines, or are they from your personal collection of photographs?
Cathy: In my collaged photographs, the photos from the communes are the background images, and the cut-out photographs that I've pasted onto them are mainly from archival photos from two '60s-era communes in Sonoma County, Morningstar and Wheelers. Most of these photos can be found online. My interest in these communes began around 2007, and I have spent a good deal of time researching both places--I am lucky enough to have spent some time over the past couple of years with Ramon Sender, one of the founders of Morningstar and its primary archivist.
What interests me about Morningstar and Wheelers is that both communes were places where anything could, and did, happen. They both tested people's ability to cope with complete freedom from any structure; as one commune member put it, "How much bliss can you handle?"
In my past several art projects, including a series of dioramas collectively titled "Hertopia," I've investigated environments that force people to define how much social structure is necessary to function; it seems to me that Morningstar and Wheelers really pushed at the limits of how little structure they could get away with.
Both communes never really had a sense of a unified community, but that it part of its appeal--they never even attempted to be "functional" communes in the traditional sense of being able to complete projects or be self-sufficient in any way. They functioned primarily as a place people to freak out, figure out what was wrong with their lives, and try to move forward in some way. With all of the violence and intense drama of the '60s, it seems to me that places like Morningstar and Wheelers were absolutely necessary as a kind of psychic release valve.
“What I think has emerged here is a very valuable pilot study in the lifestyle of the future… What is really essential about the hippies is that they do constitute the first wave of the technologically unemployable”
– Lou Gottlieb, founder of the Morningstar commune,
from a 1968 interview with the CBC television program The Way It Is.
Cathy: I think we could use someplace like Morningstar and Wheelers today, someplace where pent-up anger and frustrations could be released, and any type of behavior is acceptable.
Morningstar and Wheelers were not utopias, by any stretch of the imagination--they were way too raw and disorganized to attempt to develop a better "system" of living, which is what I understand most utopias to be--but they were idealistic, crazy places where you never knew what was going to happen from one day to the next. And there has to be some sort of value in that.
please stop by to see the show until July 13th...
EGHQ :2600 La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90034
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