The Academy Blog

By Aleah Chapin (MFA 2012)

In 2005 I stood at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, WA staring at a canvas by David Schnell. I remember feeling as if I could step one foot forward into the vast expanse of line, color and space. Now, 6 years later I’m sitting in a spacious industrial room with tall ceilings and large windows on the 3rd floor of an enormous brick building in Leipzig, Germany, where David Schnell has his studio. This room will be my home and studio for the next 7 weeks.

I’m one of 4 very lucky Academy students who will be spending the summer at LIA, an international artist residency. The program is located at the Spinnerei, an old cotton mill that has been converted into a thriving artist community with incredible live/work studios, galleries, a theater, cafe and an amazing art store. Leipzig is a beautiful city. Slightly crumbling at the edges, it is full of parks, lakes and gorgeous architecture.

There is so much history here and yet it has a feeling of freshness and infinite opportunity. Over the last week we’ve explored the city on wobbly bicycles, set up our studios, and excitedly, if also slightly nervously, confronted white canvases. Sometimes life throws you places you would never have imagined being in. I’m finding it fascinating to be exposed to such a different art scene than what I’m used to in NYC and I’m eager to see what I can learn from a style so different from mine. It’s impossible not to be inspired in Leipzig and I’m looking forward to soaking up every bit of this incredible experience.

By Alexander Barton (MFA 2012)

Nic, Aleah, Holly and Alex in front of the Spinnerei

Acres of rescued brick mills at the Spinnerei supports a fertile artistic community and has informed the success of this cultural collective. Complete with artist ateliers, an art store, galleries, bars, a cafe, businesses, a theatre, resident artists, and from bikes to Porsches, the Spinnerei is a self-sufficient artistic epicenter. This niche of Leipzig thrives on and is influenced by its historical relics and charm. Stone, brick, tracks, broken windows, graffiti, and rubble is coupled with humble renovations to make for an inspiring artistic terrain. Like rings on a tree you can count back the years by the layers of chipped paint in our studios. What is the appeal of this grit to artists? It seems for me absurd to even create work in a clean, plastic, or naïve environment, one who embodies not history, weight, and failure and therefore, potential. Sacrificing comforts for creative faculties, I have been living in mills like these since 2002 and have been evicted three times. The buildings, this tactile character and this evidence of life harmonizes with my purpose. Like that of New York, the rugged physical architecture we climb and dwell in fuels our practices. The scars in the floors and stains to the ceiling offer a great dialogue to creative minds. In the courtyard of the Spinnerei, a massive clock on building #21 has stopped at 10:10. The ghosts of the Spinnerei answer back our efforts in tact. We create with interests of progression, potential and production, however; I hope this stopped clock keeps my time and the Spinnerei’s energy preserved at this 10:10 stage forever.

Bleib dir treu Leipzig!

Aleah

Alex

Holly

Nic

By Holly Ann Sailors (MFA 2012)

Cliffside Cotton Mill, North Carolina

Four thousand five hundred and six miles away from Leipzig Germany there sits a sister town. A town that understands what it means to feel empty, abandoned, and overworked. This place once existed as a busting Mill town. Now the community looks back, nostalgic about the days of cotton spinning. I was raised in a Cotton Mill town in Cliffside North Carolina; and this place becomes reminiscent of home. Falling bricks, peeling paint, cracked cement, tufts of grass. Roots and earth pushing its way through cumbersome stone that once represented the livelihood of a town. I sit in a studio, a heavy expanse of brick, steel, and cement that contains my painting supplies and me. This place once filled hardworking Mill employees. I sit in this studio; brush in hand wondering “Does my labor of love compare to the unrelenting work of the cotton spinners? Am I filling a void in Leipzig?â€

Loading cotton, Spinnerei, Leipzig Germany

During the 19th century, global demand for cotton had risen dramatically. Leipzig Germany and Cliffside North Carolina were busy spinning their way into the Second World War, clothing and employing communities with cotton, and putting food on tables across town. Generations pass, and times of war and cotton commerce soon fade. Towns sit, barely clinging to the economic culture they once had, moving forward to new ways of life.

Spinnerei workers, Leipzig Germany

The Century-old Cliffside Cotton mill closed its doors in 2003, leaving many of my own family members unemployed. In 1993 the Leipzig Spinnerei was sold. An age has ended. This giant Cotton Mill in Germany has been transformed and now exists as a Mecca of creative productivity for local and international artists. I have the pleasure of gracing this incredible space. Images of women toiling over their work linger in my mind as I push wet pigment onto cotton canvas. My studio fills with the passion and dedication of the past and present people who have called the Spinnerei home.

I shall plan and work and wonder,
When the days grow dark and somber,
As I slowly trudge the upgrade of the hills;
Oh, the good day that is coming,
I shall look so sweet and stunning

– Excerpt from Ida Watkins poem about her Cotton Mill Work; 1926