A space to flourish for Guggenheim-winning artist

When Birmingham visual artist Amy Pleasant was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in April, she felt strong emotions, to say the least.

“I almost lost it,” she said. “It was overwhelming. It was a life goal to one day get one.”

For one thing, she would be listed alongside the “many great artists” who’ve been Guggenheim fellows, she said.

And the award is a triumph over geography and cultural preconceptions, according to Pleasant, who makes paintings, drawings and ceramic sculptures.

“I live in Alabama, and when you’re born and raised in place that’s outside the art world, you worry about your visibility or people taking you seriously,” she said.

“I felt so proud to have chosen to live in Birmingham and make my work in Birmingham, and so to receive that kind of honor was incredibly exciting,” Pleasant said.

Recipients of the fellowship are supported financially for a year to focus on their work, and Pleasant’s fellowship year began Sept. 1.

“I’m going to spend the next year making the best work I can make and challenging myself with some new things,” she said.

Pleasant talked to Iron City Ink about why her work gives her such satisfaction, the health and vitality of the contemporary arts scene in Birmingham and the importance of support from institutions like the Guggenheim Foundation for artists to survive and do their work, especially in smaller cities.

A 1990 graduate of Shades Valley High School, Pleasant earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994 and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 1999.

She has presented solo shows at numerous museums and galleries and is represented by New York’s Jeff Bailey Gallery.

The Guggenheim Foundation website says that Pleasant explores “the body and language through repetition.”

“With a limited palette and an economy of line, she draws images like writing a letter, documenting essential, universal motions and human behaviors,” it states. “This repetitive drawing process creates a visual language over time, like an alphabet.”

“My drawing is at the core of everything,” Pleasant said.

She will sometimes draw something 20 times before finding an image she wants to explore in a larger drawing or in a large painting.

“I’m interested in why we make images of ourselves,” she said. “I am interested in the ordinary gestures of the body.”

The images she draws — for example, of a torso leaning back on an elbow — become her “alphabet” or “image bank,” Pleasant said.

Pleasant said that it was nice to get the Guggenheim as validation for her work, especially since it’s hard to survive financially as an artist. “There are moments you have to think, ‘Do I have to stop doing this?’” she said.

It takes organizations like the Guggenheim Foundation to step in, according to Pleasant.

“It’s like they are saying, ‘This is what you are supposed to do, and we want you to keep doing it,’” she said.

Pleasant was also awarded the South Arts Prize for Alabama in 2018 and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award in 2015.

Ironically, when she moved back to Birmingham in the mid-1990s after school in Chicago, she thought “it might be the death of my work,” she said.

“I never intended on staying here, It just happened, but I am so glad I did,” Pleasant said.

In about 1996, she got a cheap studio place on the fourth floor of the Alabama Theatre building.

And in 2009, the late Cecil Whitmire, the theatre’s director, moved Pleasant to another affordable space, this time in one of the theatre’s retail spaces.

“The affordability saved me,” said Pleasant

She has also made a happy home in Avondale with her husband, artist Pete Schulte, in a bungalow she bought in 1994.

She has two kids — a girl, Cameron “Marcie” Henderson, 17, and a son, Ellis, 14 — from a previous marriage.

The contemporary art scene in Birmingham has grown and is now “pretty healthy,” Pleasant said.

“There’s a lot of great artists living in Birmingham and making work,” she said, citing such examples as Merrilee Challis, Byron Sonnier, Clayton Colvin and Jared Ragland.

She praises UAB’s Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, calling it “a really gorgeous exhibition space where artists can do ambitious projects.”

AEIVA also allows students “to see professional exhibitions and interact with working artists,” she said.

In addition, Birmingham Museum of Art is “a great museum” with free admission, she said.

It’s tough for artists to build careers in smaller cities where art galleries also struggle to survive, according to Pleasant.

However, that seems to be changing, in part due to the proliferation nationally of artist-run galleries that are less focused on profit than on showcasing new work.

She and Schulte have an organization called The Fuel and Lumber Company, which doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar space but partners with other spaces around the Southeast to put on shows.

The trend toward artist-run spaces is why there is a healthy art scene in Birmingham and the Southeast, according to Pleasant. “People are supporting each other,” she said.

One problem for artists in Birmingham is a shortage of affordable studio space, according to Pleasant, who said the city needs something like the Atlanta Contemporary, a facility that provides low-cost studio spaces.

“I’d love to see that,” she said. “It really helps (artists) get their feet on the ground and create a network.”

In the meantime, Pleasant — while focused primarily on her Guggenheim year — is staying busy.

She did a residency this summer at the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine.

She has a solo show and is part of a group show this fall in Hudson, N.Y., and Frenchtown, N.J., respectively.

And Pleasant loves her career.

She is “constantly learning” and is  “always being challenged,” she said.

“Going into the studio every single day and making something… to me there is no better way to live,” she said.