Alison Knowles
Encyclopedia
Alison Knowles in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 visual artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 known for her soundworks, installations, performances, and publications. Knowles was very active in the Fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...

 movement, and continues to create work inspired by her Fluxus experience.

She has created work that incorporates performance
Performance
A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...

, radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

, and sound
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...

, papermaking
Papermaking
Papermaking is the process of making paper, a substance which is used universally today for writing and packaging.In papermaking a dilute suspension of fibres in water is drained through a screen, so that a mat of randomly interwoven fibres is laid down. Water is removed from this mat of fibres by...

, and printmaking
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...

. She briefly attended Middlebury College and graduated from the Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...

 in New York with an honors degree in fine art. Knowles was married to the Fluxus artist and prominent intermedia theorist, Dick Higgins
Dick Higgins
Dick Higgins was a composer, poet, printer, and early Fluxus artist. Higgins was born in Cambridge, England, but raised in the United States in various parts of New England, including Worcester, Massachusetts, Putney, Vermont, and Concord, New Hampshire.Like other Fluxus artists, Higgins studied...

, from 1960 to 1970, and again from 1984 until Higgins' death in 1998.

In 2000, Knowles began casting flax paper to make musical instruments. The Bean Turner, Rattles, and Wings and Drums use beans for sound with the aid of text, toys and silence.

Knowles studied with the painters, Adolph Gottlieb
Adolph Gottlieb
Adolph Gottlieb was an American abstract expressionist painter, sculptor and graphic artist.-Biography:Gottlieb was born in New York to Jewish parents. From 1920-1921 he studied at the Art Students League of New York, after which he traveled in France and Germany for a year...

 and Josef Albers
Josef Albers
Josef Albers was a German-born American artist and educator whose work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the 20th century....

 and maintains a studio in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. She has twin daughters, Jessica Higgins, a New York based intermedia artist closely associated with seminal curator Lance Fung
Lance Fung
Lance Fung is an art curator who has been responsible for several major exhibitions including "Snow Show" at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy.In 1999 Fung founded Fung Collaboratives, an inter-disciplinary arts organization.-External links:*...

, late Fluxus gallerist Emily Harvey, The Artists Museum's Construction In Process and having performed and collaborated as a youth in original Fluxus related events and Hannah Higgins
Hannah Higgins
Hannah Higgins is an American writer and academic living in Chicago, Illinois. She is the daughter of the Fluxus artists, Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles.-Biography:...

, a writer and art historian residing in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

.

In 2006, her The Time Samples exhibition traveled from Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. In 2008, she performed three Event Scores at the Tate Long Weekend in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. Her Make a Salad exhibition drew an audience of 3000 people.

Knowles' Event Threads series appeared at Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York and traveled to Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

 and Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. She performed in Bern and Zurich in 2008. In 2009, she exhibited and performed in The 3rd Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 at the Guggenheim Museum. In 2010 she participated in the art project Trust Me, by Gema Alava
Gema Alava
Gema Alava is an artist who lives and works in New York City. Her work, in the form of installation, drawing, photography and art projects, deals with what she calls "contradictory truths", and the capacity to "create a maximum by reversing a minimum." She has received a M.F.A. from the San...

, in company of artists Ellen Fisher, Jessica Higgins and Jason Schmidt (photographer)
Jason Schmidt (photographer)
Jason Schmidt is a portrait, fashion, interior, and advertising photographer based in New York City.Jason Schmidt graduated from Columbia University in 1991 with a degree in Art History.- Professional Work :...

.

Knowles was appointed guest professor at Documenta X in Kassel
Kassel
Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...

, Germany. She also taught at Sommerakademie in Bochnia
Bochnia
Bochnia is a town of 30,000 inhabitants on the river Raba in southern Poland. The town lies approximately in halfway [] between Tarnów and the regional capital Kraków . Bochnia is most noted for its salt mine, the oldest functioning in Europe, built circa 1248...

, Poland in 1990. Knowles was an Artist-in-Residence at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard is an educational institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one of the semiautonomous components of Harvard University. It is heir to the name and buildings of Radcliffe College, but unlike that historical institution, its focus is directed...

 at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in 2009.

Book objects and loose page sculptures

In the early 1960s, published by Something Else Press, Knowles composed the Notations book of experimental composition with John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

 and Coeurs Volants and a print with Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...

. She also traveled and performed throughout Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

 and North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

. In 1963, Knowles produced one of the earliest book object, a can of texts and beans called the Bean Rolls. In 1967, Knowles and James Tenney produced the computerized poem The House of Dust. A sound installation for a House of Dust public sculpture was produced by Max Neuhaus.

In 1967, Knowles created the Big Book, an 8 feet (2.4 m) book of environments organized around a spine, which opened at the Frankfurter Buchmesse and toured through Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. The book was eventually destroyed. In 1982, with the help of Franklin Furnace, Knowles produced a second large-scale book called The Book of Bean. Several pages of this book can be found at Museo Vostell in Extremadura, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

. In 1985, Knowles created a smaller book of tactile languages called A Finger Book of Ancient Language. This book consisted of seven 11 inches (279.4 mm) pages all in braille and was shown at the Lighthouse for the Blind in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. She has also produced and written several books of experimental text and poetry.

Knowles' 1983 book Loose Pages, originally produced in collaboration with Coco Gordon, consisted of pages made for each part of the body. In her other page sculptures, the audience physically stands in the page and enters it with one or more body parts. Her 1989 Mahogany Arm Rest and 1992 We Have no Bread invited the viewer to engage directly with their four to five meter pages.

Sounds

Knowles has been active in sound since the late 1960s. In 1968 she designed and co-edited John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

's Notations, a book of visual music scores, for the Something Else Press. The book and exhibition was performed at the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 in 2005. Her 1971 Bean Garden consisted of the sounds of people walking over a large platform covered with beans when visiting Charlotte Moorman's Annual New York Festival of the Avant-Garde. In 1982, Knowles was awarded the Karl Sczuka Award for best radio work from WDR for her sound work Bohnen Sequenzen (Bean Sequences).

Silk screenings

In 1960, Knowles began producing silk screen paintings. From 1963 until the middle 1970s, Knowles used print to express her process-based concerns. In 1963, she collaborated with Robert Watts
Robert Watts
Robert Watts is a British film producer who is best known for his involvement with the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film series. His half brother is Jeremy Bulloch, who played Boba Fett in the original Star Wars trilogy.-Chichester University Visit:...

 and George Brecht
George Brecht
George Brecht , born George Ellis MacDiarmid, was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer as well as a professional chemist who worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Mobil Oil...

 in the Scissor Brothers Warehouse show to make an eighteen inch square printed painting consisting of three images chosen by each artist. This image appeared on everything from canvas to bathing suits and hair brushes and were sold for random prices at a special sale at the Rolf Nelson Gallery in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

.
She collaborated with George Brecht again on the 1983 book The Red, the Green, the Yellow the Black and the White

In 1973, Knowles produced a series of prints called Identical Lunch Graphic, which showcased many of her friends and Fluxus colleagues consuming the Identical Lunch. The prints included a Starkist logo which was withdrawn due to copyright infringement. Since 1978, Knowles has published limited print runs of found and manipulated graphic materials with Italian publishers Francesco Conz and Rosanna Chiesi.

Recently, Knowles has experimented with light sensitive chemicals that produce photographic prints on paper and cloth which can be manipulated by hand. The most sustained of these was her Bread and Water cycle of palladium prints and cyanotypes, which inspired a sound work and book.

Exhibitions and installations

  • The House of Dust (1967)
  • Coeurs Volants (1967)
  • Notations (1968)
  • The Big Book (1969)
  • The Book of Bean (1983)
  • Seven Indian Moon (1990)
  • In the Spirit of Fluxus (1992–1995)
  • Indigo Island (1995)
  • Out of Actions (1998)
  • Seachange (1998–1999)
  • The American Century (1999–2000)
  • Footnotes (2000)
  • Paperweather (2001)
  • By Way Of Correspondence (2003)
  • Do-It-Yourself Fluxus (2004)
  • October Leaves Falling (2004)
  • IN-FLUX (2004)

Books

  • The Bean Rolls (1963)
  • The Four Suits (1965)
  • The House of Dust (1968)
  • Journal of the Identical Lunch (1970)
  • The Identical Lunch (1973)
  • Women's Work (1975)
  • Gem Duck (1977)
  • Natural Assemblages and the True Crow. (1980)
  • the red, the green, the yellow, the black, and the white (1983)
  • Seven Indian Moons (1990)
  • Spoken Text (1993)
  • Bread and Water (1995)
  • Footnotes (2001)
  • Tamashi (2003)
  • Book Symposium (2004)

Awards and residencies

  • Guggenheim Fellowship (1968)
  • NEA Residency Grant (1981)
  • Karl Sczuka Award (1982)
  • DAAD Residency Grant (1984)
  • NYSCA Grant (1989)
  • Sommerakademie für Bildende Kunst (1990)
  • Richard Florsheim Grant (1993)
  • Documenta Guest Professor (1996–1997)
  • Women's Studio Workshop (2002)
  • College Art Association (2003)
  • Anonymous was a Woman (2003)

External links

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