The artworks, performances, and architectural projects created as a result of North Carolina’s Black Mountain College (BMC) and it’s artists sought to explore the possibilities of creative collaboration. Through collaboration and the experiential learning community at BMC, students, professors and visiting instructors fostered and established long lasting creative relationships. Whether these relationships were formed at BMC or prior, people in the BMC community helped each other reach creative potential they may never have been able to achieve alone. This environment of close relationships and experimental academic thought through a focus of art in the classroom setting allowed for many joint projects and experimental ideas to emerge and be explored during and well past the college’s existence.

 

In this online exhibition, Interconnectedness and Collaboration, focus is placed on collaborative works and the connections that emerged between those who attended BMC as both artists and equals working together. Interconnectedness and Collaboration seeks to elaborate on the journey taken by through the collaborative artwork created in partnership with peer artists and the lasting relationships and community  of the college, highlighting the explosive energy of Black Mountain College.

 

The college brought together creative minds from diverse backgrounds geographically, artistically, and socially, to congregate in a single place. Unique ideas and opinions  sparked artistic conversations that may not have been previously explored, such as performance pieces that integrated several different mediums or the use of organic materials with common items and artist medium. This resulted in the culmination of collaborative projects made throughout the existence of BMC from 1933 to 1957 and beyond. Black Mountain College not only offered an academic environment through the school’s liberal arts teachings that placed art at its center through its emphasis on a variety of curricula. BMC also became a collaborative project in its own right as students, faculty, and peoples in the surrounding area built majority of the buildings that exist on the Lake Eden campus, the most significant group project being the Studies Building. Structural projects became the largest collaborative effort, integrating students and professionals ranging in specialties from construction crew. architects, painters, performers, and several other BMC members. Students and professors interacted as equals to create and experiment in this academic setting outside of the confines of a typical classroom and time constraints. The community of the college was one of interdependence, where faculty and students worked together maintaining the  farm on campus, providing food for meals, building and maintaining departmental facilities, and other essentials that, in turn, allowed for a creative atmosphere of collaboration to thrive. This cooperation forged relationships between the many participating artists, launching them into professional careers as well as giving others a space to discover and experiment through artistic means.

 

The collaborations explored include work from painters Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly; photographer Hazel Larsen Archer and choreographer Merce Cunningham; and 3-D artist Ruth Asawa and photographer William Albert Lanier, to name several. Other artists included in the online exhibition are Susan Weil, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Kenneth and Neil Knoland, Anni Albers, John Cage, and others.