HumanUfactorY(ng) Workstyles: The Motion Journals of Excerpts from the User’s Guide to Mildred’s Lane. A costume drama of the everyday.

Coming to Chicago as a painter, sculptor and film student at SAIC, J. Morgan Puett made research-based installation projects with film sketches, while her research into costume thrust her into deeper curiosities around clothing and dwelling, eventually leading her to an established career as an innovator in the fashion industry. In the next chapter of an evolving and emergent story, Puett fabricated immersive installations in museums and other sites around the world that brought a reality to our sensory and imaginative connection to cloth and other material objects.

Puett returns again to her Chicago inspiration, this time to the Jane Addams Hull-House and Addams’s Labor Museum endeavor with John Dewey, who also saw growth and creativity as a dialogue between doing and reflecting. Puett’s installation engages this history to present a deep reflection on the doings of Mildred’s Lane—her art-as-life practice going on twenty years—through films, photography, costumes, and belongings, creating a period room that transgresses time and place.

A PROXIMITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS:
ART AND SOCIAL ACTION

At the core of Chicago’s intellectual and creative life stand these influential artists for whom this city itself was a springboard for a new way of thinking about art at the intersection of society. Their work has influenced generations, having made social practice a worldwide phenomenon. Now this exhibition brings their ideas alive through 10 newly commissioned projects. Exhibiting artists: Jim Duignan, Paul Durica and Heather Radke, Pablo Helguera (BFA 1993), Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (MFA 1985), Dan Peterman,J. Morgan Puett (MFA 1984), Michael Rakowitz, Laurie Jo Reynolds (MFA 2000), Temporary Services, and Rirkrit Tiravanija (MFA 1986).

Read about the project

The Labor portraits of Mildred's Lane. Rebecca Purcell in collaboration with Mildred's Lane.            Photography, Jeffrey Jenkins.

The Labor Portraits of Mildred's Lane. J. Morgan Puett. Rebecca Purcell, Jeffrey Jenkins, and Fellows of Mildred’s Lane attending WORKSTYLES Session all in collaboration with Mildred's Lane.

TOUR THE INSTALLATION

Installation view.

Mixed media.

Printed poster, digital monitor and gouache, ink red shale slip on molded canvas.

The orientation room to the installation: the title wall poster and monitor credits for filming, editing, performing, attending, making, presenting, involved and in collaboration with Mildred’s Lane Projects. The Orientation Map of Mildred’s Lane, an ongoing collaboration including J.M. Puett, Katie Bachler, Scott Berzofsky, and other fellows convening at Mildred’s Lane.

2014

Wall installation view.

Gouache, ink, red shale slip on molded canvas with upholstery tacks.

Detail of Map of Mildred’s Lane, an ongoing collaboration including J.M. Puett, Katie Bachler, Scott Berzofsky, and other fellows convening at Mildred’s Lane.

2014

Wall installation view.

Mixed Media.

Various transhistorical samplings of material culture of Mildred’s Lane. Domestic artifacts of the nineteenth and twentieth century household of Mildred Steffens. Documentation portraits of Allison Smith’s Muster at Mildred’s Lane by Bob Braine; tin type portraits by Nick Olsen, Natalie Wilkin, Corey Riddell, J. Morgan Puett; the comfort-o-meter of Mildred’s Lane; Black and white photography by Jorge Colombo, Mark Dion; digital portrait of the Ambassador of Entanglement, j. Morgan Puett in collaboration with Rebecca Purcell and Jeffrey Jenkins (photographer.)

2014

Installation view north; 60’ X 15’.

Mixed Media.

Digital photographs, molded canvas collage on wood panels, wood table, mixed tableware, chocolates and fancy grits ingredients, transhistorical textiles, antiques, clothing apparatuses, home-made furniture, found furniture, aged tarpaulins, textiles, digital motion journals, monitors, projections, tools, the Puett U & I steel hook, bar and shelving system, tailoring-drafting-cutting-office-table-blackboard (The Sartorius Muscle Table #4) and more, including other objects, textiles, tastings, aroma, digital recordings–sight and sound.

2014

24” X 34” prints on 4’ X 8’ panels

Mixed Media.

Digital photographs direction; Rebecca Purcell, J. Morgan Puett and Jeffrey Jenkins (photography;) molded canvas collage on wood panels, wood table, mixed tableware, chocolates, and antique lamp.

2014

Installation view south 30’ X15’.

Mixed Media.

Digital photographs, molded canvas collage on wood panels, wood table, mixed tableware, lamps, wood desk (updated replication of Jane Addams desk at Hull House), sewing factory chairs (19c.), refrigerator with water from Mildred’s Lane, ingredients for Fancy Grits, Crow Ware by Tivoli Tile works for Mildred’s Lane, the Puett U & I steel hook, bar and shelving system, tarpaulins, Puett designed Clothing Apparatuses, ticking cloth, and more.

2014

Installation detail.

Mixed media.

The Comportment Manual manuscripts from The Journals of Excerpts from the User’s Guide to Mildred’s Lane (including notes, maps, drawings, glossary, zines and more.) Molded canvas portfolio with Leon Johnson of Salt & Cedar. Also, the deed and contract preamble to Mildred’s Lane drenched in beeswax.

2014

Installation view north; 30’ X 15’.

Mixed media.

Transhistorical period room including The Motion Journals of Excerpts from the User’s Guide to Mildred’s Lane; A Costume Drama of the Everyday. Textiles, antiques, clothing apparatuses, home-made furniture, found furniture, aged tarpaulins, textiles, digital motion journals, monitors, projections, tools, the Puett U & I steel hook, bar and shelving system,

2014

Dimensions variable and modular.

Mixed media.

Puett designed modular clothing apparatuses made of cotton, silk, silver, aluminum, reflective tapes, oil cloth, beeswax, notions, etc. installed with the Puett U & I steel hook, bar and shelving system.

2014

Wall Installation view.

Mixed media.

Puett U & I steel shelving system holding artist packages sent to Mildred’s Lane. The Kitchen Laboratory Comforter.

2014

Wall installation view.

Mixed media.

Streaming digital data by chapters, the motion journals of the Digestion Choreography at Mildred's Lane and the town projects and installations at The Mildred Complex(ity) project space, on and over the Kitchen laboratory workbench.

The Johnson House Apron and clothing apparatuses from The Labor Portraits in the foreground.

2014

Installation view north.

Mixed media.

Textiles, antiques, home-made furniture, found furniture, aged tarpaulins, textiles, digital motion journals, monitors, projections, tools, Clothing archives, the Puett U & I steel hook, bar and shelving system, factory chairs, framed cloth napkins of the scramble scrabble algorithmic games, tinctures by Clayton Lewis, Charcoals by Amy Yoes and the Wholeschooling Sartorius Muscle Table #4 (ongoing projects 2012 -2014.)

2014

Wall installation view.

Mixed media; including objects, digital, sound, and aroma.

Digital motion journals of town projects and workhops. Digital image of James Prosek giving a taxidermy workshop and the Animal Stories Settee is collaboration with the non-human creatures of the Mildred House at Mildred’s Lane, who have raided, rearranged and pulled apart for their adaptive reuse.

The foreground still life is the Wholeschooling Sartorius Muscle Table #4 (ongoing projects 2012 -2014,) a tailoring-drafting-cutting-office-table-blackboard. Other monitor is streaming the Social Saturday public presentations during summer sessions at Mildred’s Lane, image of Jorge Colombo lecture playing.

2014

Installation view north.

Mixed media.

Projections of the violin practice by The Supervisor of Entanglement, Lizzie Hurst; The building and landscape portraits as motion journals, of Mildred’s Lane; and a motion journal of a year long collection of blue hours at Mildred’s Lane. Washtubs, cloths, apples, tool chest, antique flour sacs and more.

Washtubs, cloths, apples, tool chest, antique flour sacs and more.

2014

Installation view south.

Mixed media.

2014

HumanUfactorY(ng) Workstyles