MISSION, Site/Cite/Sight (NC), 2008
The Museum Park,
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC



Public Artwork Installation Engagement
Workingman Collective: Tom Ashcraft, Janis Goodman, Peter Winant

Project:
The installation of Mission, Site/Cite/Sight (NC) on the grounds of the North Carolina Museum of Art is a continuation of the project, which was first installed on 14th St NW in Washington DC in June 2007 (also posted on this blog, below). In April 2008, fifteen birdhouses and signs were installed along a 100-yard stretch of the Museum Park Woodland Trail. The issues present in the urban site, habitat, attraction, inventory, migration and participation, resonated differently in the woodland site. The irony of placing birdhouses in woodlands shifted the locus of the language and significance of the work relative to its context. The allegorical content of the work, while having overarching themes, became site specific relative to its urban or rural setting.

Research:
Workingman Collective, working with the Migratory Bird Center, National Zoo, Washington DC, identified all songbirds common to the region that have been decimated by West Nile Virus and urban growth. The birdhouses were built specifically for three species of songbirds hardest hit by the virus: The Eastern Bluebird, Black Capped Chickadee, and Downy Woodpecker. The birdhouses provide a habitat while the signs refer to "place" and are an awareness signal. Site/Cite/Sight, NC connotes an active social engagement that has purpose and sustainability.

Synchrony, 2008

Synchrony, 2008
Delaplaine Visual Art Center, Fredrick, MD


Installation,
Workingman Collective; Tom Ashcraft, Janis Goodman, Peter Winiant, in partnership with the Shenandoah and Potomac Garden Railway Club. Project installation volunteers Chelsay Anderson and Ann Cummins.

This piece addresses themes of coincidence and the ironic possibilities of random patterns of visual events. Our world is in motion. Intersections and divergence of time and events are revealed in the most commonplace of our constructions.

Workingman Collective constructed parallel platforms in the two large rooms of the Delaplaine Visual Arts Center, Fredrick MD, exhibition space, creating autonomous areas that reveal their architectural structure and allude to a performance stage. Simple props; chairs and tables specifically designed and built for the exhibition occupy the platforms, attached to windshield wiper motors and set in a constant, infinitely variable tug of war motion. A fifteen-foot oval train track with locomotives circling underneath each platform and 100 clocks, set simultaneously at the start of the exhibition keep their own time, and reflect the constant cycle of time as a motion of opposing, symbiotic forces.

Cause and Effect, 2007

“Where ever you smell, there you are”

One thousand custom individually wrapped installation engagements with an aromatic pine scent.

Created for

flow

The Dorset Hotel, Miami Florida
December 5 - 9, 2007

Miami Invitational Art Fair, Miami, Florida

MISSION, Site/Cite/Sight (DC), 2007

MISSION, Site/Cite/Sight (DC), 2007
Washington,DC

Public artwork.
Workingman Collective: Tom Ashcraft, Janis Goodman, Peter Winant

30 bird houses and signs were installed in/on 30 trees along 14th street NW between P and U, in Washington, DC. The work addresses issues of habitat, attraction, inventory, and migration, specific to the 14th street corridor and a broader social context. Workingman Collective, working with the Migratory Bird Center, National Zoo, identified all songbirds common to the Northeast region that have been decimated by West Nile Virus and urban growth. The 30 bird houses were built specifically for three species of songbirds hardest hit by the virus: The Eastern Bluebird, Black Capped Chickadee, and Downy Woodpecker. The bird houses provide a habitat while the signs refer to "place" and are an awareness signal. Site/Cite/Sight, connotes an active social engagement that has purpose and sustainability, which is also an affirmation of the Central Union Mission, one of America's oldest social service ministries and located in the center of the 14th street site, and it's role in the community, "serving the needs of hurting people throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area."

PINE 2007

PINE, 2007
Public artwork and social space project, Workingman Collective: Tom Ashcraft and Peter Winant.

Regulation sized ping-pong table with bench seating surround, 30’ x 18’, constructed completely from southern yellow pine, and located on the campus of James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA. After several site visits we proposed to create a social space for activating an area of a barely used campus quad. Our research involved social diagramming, park settings, local vernacular architecture, and historic bridge truss design, which was incorporated into project concept/design. East Coast Sculpture Exchange program, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA

Five Mile Line, 2006 Butte, Montana

Five Mile Line 2006

Temporary, Performance/Site Responsive public work, Silver Bow Arts Foundation, Butte, Montana.
Workingman Collective: Tom Ashcraft, Janis Goodman, and Peter Winant

Workingman Collective used E-bay as a source of community inventory and to generate contact with members of the community. This piece was inspired by a 1914 map, found on E-bay, of mine tunnels and fault lines below the city indicated by red and blue lines. The work focused on the activity of snapping continuous red and blue chalk lines on five miles of main street sidewalks. A primary construction tool, the chalk line represents commitment, delineates territory and marks what’s cut and what’s kept. Documentation in over 1,600 photographs and in video recordings shows the relationship of the line, as an object and gesture, to the existing structures and to the commerce of business and people in Butte’s fragile old city center.

What is Workingman Collective?

We are a collaborative group of artists and other professionals whose membership, goals and missions change with each project.

We are interested in process, invention, chance, and the public.