In 2009, I had been teaching a public art class at SUNY Empire State College Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies to union construction workers for a couple of years and wanted to combine it with the community work I'd done in the Lower East Side for a long time. Some of the themes of the class concern the historical elevation of art over craft, the worker's skill and labor being rendered ever more invisible, how the built environment (and art itself) has embodied certain value systems that increasingly place profit before people, and a study (and possible creation) of work that counteracts these trends. These projects also delve into who the audience for art can be and the possible impact art can have for them.
"Representations of the Worker" (2010) was a public exhibition that grew out of a question posed to construction worker students in the class, “Given the lack of workers represented in art—compared to the WPA period—how would you represent the worker?” One of my former students, Brian Petrocelli, had started to take a series of photographs on his jobsite that continued to respond to this query after the class was over. We appropriated temporary public space on a pier in the LES for the primary audience of construction workers and their families..
Untitled by Brian Petrocelli
Untitled by Brian Petrocelli
Representations of the Worker
Representations of the Worker