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Birds rustle and chitter in
the birch tree that overhangs the alleyway entrance to the Cortland
Jessup Gallery in Provincetown, located in
what might be called Gallery Central, a small intersection in east end
Commercial Street. The
gallery, which celebrates its 11th season this year, wasn't located
here originally. It began as
an overnight venture, when, visiting P'town in 1990, Jessup saw an
empty shop space at the Courtyard in the center of town. In
three weeks, she was open for business, with six artists scheduled
for exhibit, and before long, she had occupied most of the lower Courtyard. An
art gallery wasn't really Jessup's ambition. It
was simply another turning point in her long career as a creator, promoter,
and collaborator in the arts. Another
manifestation of Lamia Ink [la mia,
feminine, singular, mine -- loosely translated, "my thing" or "my
work" and Ink for both its literary reference and "incorporated"],
the non-profit arts organization she created to make art happen in
diverse "alternative" formats. Indeed,
her extraordinary ability to produce the opportunity and the conditions
for collaborative art-making is Jessup's own art.
That passion began in Joplin, Missouri, where in
high school Jessup was thoroughly seduced by the theatre. Acting, singing, writing, producing, the competitions,
the winner's kiss from Bob Cummins -- she loved everything about it.
It's a familiar tale in that way. In
1966, right out of college, Jessup headed for the bright lights of
the New York with two college
chums. One got out of the car
before the car got out of Joplin; one returned home after two weeks
in the city, but Jessup was there to stay. "I
felt like a duck in water," she says. "I knew I was home." She arrived
with $25.00 in her pocket and a Texaco credit card, which got her a
room at Howard Johnson's in Times Square. Within a week she found a sublet in the Village
and a waitressing job, and had immersed herself in the theatre community
and the incomparable life of a NY artist.
In 1973, Jessup left New York to attend
grad school in LA. She had discovered
she didn't really want to be on stage; rather, she wanted to write
and to produce, "to instigate". It
was this practice of collaborative creation that grounded her roaming
spirit. Now she was writing
lyrics, collaborating with a composer. In
school in LA, she supported herself doing TV commercials. Her residuals were ample. With that money in
pocket, she opened her first gallery; really, a gallery-performance
space, for she was interested in exhibiting/producing whatever people
were creating. There was visual art, theatre, dance, poetry,
musical performance -- all in the risky alternative genre of collaborative
work, of "relationship," that fired her imagination and passion. She called it Art Arbor West, thinking that
perhaps she would be bicoastal, with an art space both east and west. The money was good in LA, but after five years,
she had to admit to herself that she just didn't like the place. She wanted to be back east.
Jessup returned to New York and took up
a series of jobs that built on her skills as a catalyst and producer. She worked as an arts administrator and an
art publisher, among other jobs, all the time writing plays and poems,
a novel still in the works, and continuing the Lamia Ink projects -literary
happenings, readings, a magazine. She
knew how to work with artists. So,
although it wasn't a thought-out plan when she signed the lease on
the P'town gallery space in 1990, she had done the footwork, and her
feet had taken her to that cobbled courtyard.
When Jessup talks about the early years
of the gallery, her voice slips into a higher gear, her hands take
to the expressway, and the listener is transported, via her animation,
to what she calls, "a creative high."
"We
created happenings, events, performances. It
was the early '90's. The recession. It
couldn't be about making money, so we could afford to take chances.
You know, the pressure to succeed, to make money, squeezes out experimentation. We
had one space called The Darkroom. There were wonderful installations
there. Patrick Clarke Fussell's MakeShift Salon was in
the same courtyard, and we often did things together. I must say, there was no clear "vision" worked
out. We didn't have time to think of a vision, a mission. I
knew just that I wanted to associate with living, working artists. Emerging
artists."
Her
life began to shift. Summer
- Provincetown, Winter - New York. It seemed a good fit. In the second season, one of her artists, who
had lived in Japan, suggested
she invite a Japanese artist to exhibit. That
artist came and brought slides from others. Next, two from that group came. One stayed three months and became a member
of Jessup's family. Thus, began
the amazing Japan Art Bridge. Jessup made her first trip to Japan in 1991. "Again," she
says, "I felt absolutely comfortable. It was as if, in another life, I were Japanese." A
plausible kinship, she suggests, for she is Oklahoma Cherokee, "and
there might just be shared genes." Whatever
the explanation, her spirit felt increasingly drawn to Japan.
By
1994, Jessup had organized a formal exchange program. Since then, she has traveled to Japan many
times, bringing a changing group of American artists to exhibit there,
hosting Japanese artists who exhibit here. As Jessup envisioned it,
she would divide her energies three ways: Cortland
Jessup Gallery in the summer season, Lamia Ink in NY in winter, and
in the spring, the growing Japan Art Bridge projects.
1994
was an important turning point for other reasons, as well. That season she moved to the Commercial
Street space. You could say it was an act of God. In
September, the heavens opened up and it rained for days, flooding the
entire courtyard, the water rising to Jessup's knees as she tried to
rescue the artwork. "I had to move. It was a disaster. I
didn't have flood insurance, and couldn't get it in that spot (since
then, drainage work has been done). She
had a string of problems in that space. She
laughs. "The address there was 234 Commercial,
here we're 432 Commercial. I
think my angels were lost. They
got it backwards. We haven't
had a single problem here.
Jessup
continued to refine her artistic goals - to make art more accessible
to the community, to foster provocative work that mirrors our global,
collective soul, and to create opportunity for reflection on the
world we are creating. Then,
in 1996, Jessup's Commercial
Street lease ran out. The condo went up for sale and she couldn't
afford it. But she had commitments,
artists were depending on her, and she had to find an exhibition space. Desperate, at the end of November, she signed
a lease in New York. Then, on New Year's Day, with everything packed
to move, the UHaul in the driveway, ice on
the streets, she got the message that a group of friends wanted to
help. "My angels said, 'you're not going anywhere.' That
kind of support is what makes Provincetown so special." Jessup
was able to purchase the space, and began the crazy commute required
to keep it all going.
It's
been three more years now, and each of the three projects has grown
into needing her 100%; each is becoming a full-time, year-round job. And two mortgages, the additional pressures
of two galleries -- all has taken its toll. "The
pressure is so intense. I can
hardly come up for air." Anyone
who has been in this art town very long knows that the art market has
skyrocketed and the heat is on. Alternative
spaces have disappeared. There
are increasing commercial measures of success; artists and collectors
have different expectations of a gallery. "I never wanted to be
a shopkeeper," Jessup explains. The
past season, with all the extra energy and financial resources called
upon in the 100 Years of Art celebration, felt like "the last
gasp" for Jessup, even though it was a very successful year, widely
noted in the art press.
Jessup
feels the need to refocus her energies. This
winter she closed the New York gallery and
put the Provincetown gallery up
for sale. She wants to give
herself space to make new choices, "to take the best of what I've
learned here, and to create a new practice." Jessup
has commitments to exhibit Japanese artists in the fall and winter. These exhibitions will take place in an interim
space, project by project, at Gallery 1100 at Madison and 83rd Street. In March, she'll take another group of artists
to Japan. If it doesn't
sale, perhaps the Provincetown gallery will
reinvent itself. This season,
the new sign outside reads "CJG Projects."
"Japan is a new frontier
for me. The Japan Art Bridge project was
an international launching point for me, and it has been very successful. I want to pursue this cross-cultural exchange
in a bigger way. I want to go
back to grad school in Asian Studies, to really immerse myself in the
Japanese language and culture. I
know that I am learning through this relationship what I'm meant to
know in this life. I want to go the whole way, and come back full
circle.
Sifting
through the twists and turns of her career in the arts, Jessup has
come to see that all of her work is about what she knows, in her deepest
self, is the essential, humble work of bridge-building. It
is, in the Native American tradition, her path. It's obvious that she is answering that call,
wherever it takes her. "This has always been my work, to create
dialogue across [her hands come up in front of her; her fingers make
a bridge] in support of each one's expression." |
