Miami University Art Museum ~ Welcome to America Exhibition Gallery Guide

GALLERY GUIDE | AUGUST 30–DECEMBER 17, 2016

ince 1600, more than 60 million people have immigrated to the United States. Women make up less than half of this demographic. Immigrants made the journey to enjoy the “freedoms” America offered — more jobs, educational opportunities, and religious and political liberties. However, their home country’s cultural traditions continued to constitute a large part of their identities. This is especially true for women, as scholars have noted the important role of immigrant women as cultural conservers and mediators.

Why had they come so far, leaving the Old World that was so familiar for so many generations?

Why did they make the journey to a new place where they were faced with assimilation and new traditions? Industrial changes brought about new jobs. There was political and religious unrest in their home countries, and America provided a future for immigrants with a promise of possibility. America became a beacon of hope, a symbol of great potential for those looking for a new start.

Artist Carol Hamoy.

Photograph provided by the artist.

New challenges arose as a result of blending old-world customs with new-world opportunities.

As a first-generation American with Eastern European parents who emigrated through Ellis Island, Carol Hamoy struggled with this clash of cultures first-hand. She wanted to take advantage of new opportunities for women that were not offered to her female family members in the Old World. Ironically, similar social dynamics were experienced in America. Men were the breadwinners, while women tended to the homes and their families, maintaining a sense of identity. Many immigrant families carried old-world traditional gender roles to America because they were accepted and seemed essential to creating a structured family and community unit.

The complex interplay of gender, social class, religion and ethnicity shaped the ways many immigrant women participated in the economic, cultural, spiritual and political life in America.

Even as immigrants shared a common heritage, living spaces and values, women constructed a community separate from the organized community of immigrant men. As the only girl of three children, Hamoy experienced gender bias common at the time. The artist was not afforded the opportunity to attend a traditional academic college, as was given to her brothers. Yet, in search of her own identity and overshadowed voice, Hamoy was determined to do something expressive of herself — create art.

Hamoy’s academic studies began at the Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art in Manhattan, New York, a school founded in the 1930s. The rigorous program required each student to pass an exam in order to gain admittance. Days were long with intensive 3-hour studio classes, in addition to traditional academic studies. There, she was introduced to painting, printmaking, ceramics, drawing and color theory. A full semester was dedicated to each technique, allowing “us [to] find our voice in a particular creative method.” Hamoy recalls that, “Painting was my passion, and in my senior year I devoted myself to learning various techniques — underpainting, mixing colors, glazing, using a brush/palette knife.”

Hamoy also learned the importance of preparing her substrate, the surface upon which she expresses her creative vision.

After graduating from the High School of Music & Art, Hamoy attended the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art. There she studied “commercial art techniques, creating maquettes/ dummies, preliminary presentations, advertising, various commercial reproduction techniques, type spec’ing and design.” Following her time in Newark, she entered the famed Art Students League in Manhattan. Hamoy continued her studies in painting, working from a live model for the first time in her formative years. By the late 1980s, Hamoy “became disinterested...in the flat surface of the canvas and started to adhere objects (photographs, fabric, containers) to the canvas.

Gradually I [moved] away from 2-D work and [began] working in 3-D, where I sometimes, not always, use textiles as a primary media.”

describe how the garments were made [for] the wealthy women who were walking towards us. That was like fun to them.” The relationship between women and garments remained a central theme throughout Hamoy’s work. “I grew up thinking about clothing and how it was made. Making a dress as a foundation for telling the story of a woman was a very natural thing for me...in my use of fabric, lace and articles of clothing as my media, I maintain the memory of my immigrant family’s participation in the garment industry.”

What began as an investigation into her own family’s immigration story evolved into a larger study of the complex relationship between female émigrés and their arrival in the New World.

Hamoy spoke to 200 immigrant women, finding a particular connection between these immigrants and their stories of strength and adventure. The conceptual transformation of the collected stories into “dresses” was a later development for the artist.

Hamoy is not the first artist to use the dress for artistic exploration. While examples appear as late as the 19th century, the use of garments as a means of personal expression extends even earlier.

In the article titled, Mark My Words: The Subversive History of Women Using Thread as Ink, freelance writer Rosalind Jana writes, “For as long as women have been sewing, they’ve been using embroidery to tell their own stories—often in societies that refuse to hear them otherwise.”’ This statement resonates with Hamoy’s intention of giving voice to women often overshadowed or ignored as a result of societal and generational norms.

Pink Family Alter from the series “Alters,” 1985.

Photographs, fabric, beads, feathers. 25x16x6 inches.

Photograph provided by the artist.

It is possible that Hamoy’s love for fabric originated earlier in life. The artist recalled, “My entire family— my patents and my cousins and my uncles—were in the garment industry. [On] Sunday afternoons, my uncles would take the children to Fifth Avenue... [as] they walked down the street with us they would speak in their [native] language... they would

Examples of the marriage between clothing and the written word mentioned in Jana’s article include a German seamstress named Agnes Richter. In the 1890s, Richter created a jacket cut and assembled from a hospital gown during her stay at an asylum. She cut and tailored the gown, then stitched her life story into an autobiographical piece. Perhaps more well-known is Sonia Delaunay, a Ukrainian-born French artist, who explored the relationship between words and visuals with her robes poèmes (poem dresses) in the early 20th century. More recently, Debbie Talanian’s “Howl” skirt (2012) pays homage to writer Allen Ginsberg with lines from his work sewn onto the fabric. All four

artists honor the tradition of women stitching words onto clothing with the intent of storytelling.

Each artist’s work reflects upon the desire to provoke questions while also preserving histories.

Agnes Richter’s Jacket.

Embroidered linen, 1890s.

Hanz Prinzhorn Collection at the Universitaetsklinik Heidelberg, Germany.

The “dresses” in Welcome to America were not made with the intent of being worn. The creation of the “garments” is akin to the preparation of the

canvas on which a painter applies pigment, or the production of paper upon which a writer pens a story. Further distinction of Hamoy’s garments is the application of the text across the front of the textile, and often on the back as well. Although similar to Richter, Hamoy constructed her dresses from unassuming materials: wedding dresses, tablecloths and bed linens. Although her mother taught her to sew with precision at a young age, Hamoy chose to leave the seams of her “dresses” raw. This is a stylistic choice the artist made to distinguish her work from wearable fashion. Instead, they are art.

Hamoy hopes the “dresses” will prompt viewers to think about their own traditions and their family origins. “My intent is to capture the viewer visually, to seduce them and draw their interest to the content of the piece. My work seemingly deals only with issues of central importance to women, both past and present. However, if one looks deeply at the work, they will note the matters being discussed are really beyond gender and politics. My works are actually explorations of tradition and identity.”

Preparation for first installation of Welcome to America at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, 1996. Photograph provided by the artist.

Gallery Guide co-written by Jason E. Shaiman & Frances Connolly (‘16), Curatorial Intern. Exhibition graphics by Sam Summerlin, Graphic Design Student. Cover image courtesy of the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, St. Paul, Minnesota; Carol Hamoy, Welcome to America, 2007.

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