The exhibition opened Saturday and runs through January 18, 2010 in the IMA’s Star Studio. I spent my Tuesday lunch in the exhibition. The students’ video works and the film documenting the process with Dash drew me in. I was also tempted to add my own daydream to an IMA Flickr set shown in the exhibition as a slideshow. But my stomach was growling so I’ll have to go back.

I was delighted to sit down with Julie for a quick chat earlier this year.

Interview with artist Julie Dash

Was there a recent experience that led to the title for the exhibition, Smuggling Daydreams into Reality?
That’s something that as an artist I’ve been doing all my life and career. It’s not always easy being a visual artist. Creative ideas can be fragile and sometimes you have to protect those ideas at the same time you are developing them. We’re born creative beings. As you get older people demand that you be less creative, less imaginative and more pragmatic so you learn to protect and nurture your imagination. I’ve learned to smuggle my dreams into reality.

What do you hope visitors to the exhibition will take away from their experience?
First, it’s a way of giving a public voice to my students. Second, it’s a way for visitors to see and hear and interact with the students. And for me, it’s a great experiment with teaching and nurturing creativity. This is the first time I’ve worked with students in this way. I was presented with the opportunity and said “I can’t turn this down.” For the students, myself and the community, I hope we will continue this experience on some level.

The exhibition title also serves as a theme for this year’s Museum Apprentice Program. How do you hope the students in the program will be impacted?
I hope they will have fun smuggling their creative ideas, and at the same time they will unmask themselves. Everyone walks around with some mask on. This is the perfect venue to talk about unveiling because you have access to art and experts in one place. The students went into the galleries and looked at African and Asian masks and then video blogged about their experiences.

As a filmmaker, your daydreams would seem to be wonderful breeding ground to explore new stories, plots and characters. How have your daydreams found their way into your craft?
You’ll always see some of my daydreams in my films. If given an assignment or a script, I have to dream it from beginning to end before I make it. Dreaming comes in handy. It’s really just a more romantic way of saying “visualize.”

Are there ways you might recommend people to access and record their banished fantasies or deferred hopes?
Video blogging – it’s private and easily done with a flip camera and tripod. You can sit with yourself and talk about experiences.

Tell me something about yourself you think readers would like to know.
Before a filmmaker, I’m a mother. My daughter just graduated from college. So you could say, first I’m a mommy.

Note: this interview was also published in the fall issue of Previews membership magazine.

I’m obsessed with making something that matters. I’m obsessed with working. And I believe that it is only through hard work that good work is made.

One of the most important things to me has always been to keep my hands moving, to keep making things. I worry about what I make and what it means after I make it.  I also used to think that talking about art, especially your own art, ruins it. That’s partly why I dropped out of art school. But I’ve softened on that in recent years, which is maybe a result of having gone to art school. I do talk here and there about my work and hope it won’t ruin anything, but instead reveal a bit about the way I’m thinking, at least in the moment.

Overhead shot of "Whole"

For my show at the IMA I wanted to make sculptures that could stand on their own. I had previously created pieces that were sprawling and boundless and all consuming, the structures of which relied heavily on the spaces they inhabited. But this time I attempted to make sculptures that were contained, pieces that had a beginning and an end. And pieces that could be here, there, or anywhere but are themselves wherever they are and that rely only on themselves to be what they are.

There are nine stacks in the show. I used the most reductive forms of building to create mass-accumulation and repetition. My intention was to simplify my obsessive process into its most basic elements in order to reveal it, to expose the layers of building and to create a texture that is purely based on the movement of my hand making the knots.

Corner detail

People ask me if making my work is relaxing or meditative. It’s not. Working with these ropes is physically challenging. They are big and heavy and clumsy. I sweat, I curse, and I feel like I’m wrestling with an octopus.  There is a sense of accomplishment in overcoming a physical challenge. It is through endurance, and an intense level of psychological commitment and invariance that we push through the toughest of times. There is always a struggle and there are always challenges. I am fueled by the desire to overcome them.

Orly and Joe

We all have a need to flex. Whether it’s showing off our biceps and inflating our chest or wearing high heels and feathers in our caps, we want to be bigger. We want to be better.  My work attempts to deal with the hyperbolic nature of this survival tendency. Each stack is named after a different Mr. Universe champion from the ‘60s and ‘70s. They are not my heroes, but they are big men.

There are also moments of lightness, of fragility and gentleness. I like to pretend I am a boxer dishing out a bloody beating followed by a ballerina dancing with my toes barely skimming the ground.  And then I like to imagine that my work is the product of these two people falling in love. There is precision and there is rawness. And there is the combination of the two that creates the tension that I am attracted to.

But nothing I say matters all that much. It’s what I do. I believe in action. In what I choose to leave behind. In what I take the time to devote myself to. In the end it’s the work that matters.

Danny Beyer, sporting the new IMA Blog t-shirt

The IMA joined Flickr a little late in the game, but I feel like we are really starting to use it in some interesting ways.  My colleague Despi recently created a set featuring the new IMA blog t-shirts.  You’ll be hearing more about that.  Our conversation department has been active creating individual case studies on art objects.  You can learn about a recent Thornton Dial acquisition here (complete with video), or the treatment of a Saarinen Sideboard.  It’s an interesting glimpse into some behind-the-scenes action at an art museum and a new way of discovering engaging content.  Look for more of these conservation case studies in the very near future.

2009 will bring lots of activity to the IMA, especially in 100 Acres: The Virginia B.  Fairbanks Art and Nature Park.  The Nugget Factory will be working very closely with the contemporary department to document the art installations, capturing artist interviews and developing new visitor experiences.  On Flickr, we created a set dedicated set to Type A’s involvement in this space, here (I recommend the videos).  Under development, is the official 100 Acres Flickr group.  We’re still tweaking it, but please feel free to join and contribute your photography.

IMA’s Horticulture department was kind enough to place some new signs across the beautiful IMA campus.  We often spot photographers walking our grounds and we would love to see their perspective.  I hope these signs encourage or inspire our visitors to go online and shape IMA’s presence on Flickr.  I mean that.

We really want you to get involved in Flickr

IMA blogger Noelle, also just completed a Flickr article in PREVIEWS, the publication for members of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  I told you we love Flickr, perhaps a little obsessed.  If anyone is interested in a copy, leave a comment and I’ll send you one.

And finally, Museums and the Web will be hosting their annual conference in Indianapolis next April.  They’ve created a group requesting images of Indianapolis.  It will give conference attendees from all over the world (Australia, Japan and Holland) a chance to discover our city and check out the new airport.

I’m all Flickr’d out.  Have any Flickr ideas?  Let me know.