On my watch – Visiting the Extraordinary Art World of the Knox Family with Amie Knox’s New Film “Time and Other Materials”
By Anne W. Semmes
There’s a family in town excelling in the arts, the Knox family. Perhaps most evident is Page Knox, whose prowess in addressing art comes from her serving as adjunct professor in the Art History Department of Columbia University, when not giving talks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and elsewhere. But her brother-in-law Bob Knox is a noted painter, having solo shows across the country, with his earlier fame of clever “New Yorker” covers. Then came to town her sister-in-law Amie Knox, a Denver, Colorado film maker. Page would introduce Amie at the screening of her new documentary film featuring five women artists – to air on PBS.
It was a full house at the Bruce Museum auditorium on June 16, with some folks knowing that Knox family, including the late mother of these Knox children, the noted educator Amie Knox, a “committed math teacher,” and Dean of Students at Greenwich Country Day School – and an “enthusiastic athlete in her 70’s.” This writer was privileged to have met her.
“If you grew up in Greenwich in the 60s or the 70s, my sister-in-law Amie needs no introduction,” began Page Knox. “She was a phenomenon on the tennis court, the squash court and on the hockey field,” having received “12 varsity letters” at Princeton. Page would meet up with Amie after her graduating from the Yale School of Management, marrying husband Jim Kelley, and working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Office of Film and Television, making “phenomenal movies … including one on Frederick Remington.”
But then came that move to Denver, Colorado, continued Page, where Amie would become, “as you would expect, a very important member of the Denver art community… specifically the Denver Art Museum. And she started her independent film company, A Bar K Productions “making amazing movies… with many of them shown on PBS.” “But more than anything else,” Page added, “I appreciate the way that she lives her life with a sense of graciousness, with an incredible sense of understatement, and with an effortless ability to make everything look easy and beautiful.”
“Time and Other Materials” debuts
Amie would introduce her new film, “Time and Other Materials” with the why she made the film – “I’m really intrigued with this group of women… They all live in Colorado, and they all practice different kinds of art.” What especially drew Amie was, “They have an informal collective where they get together three or four times a year to talk about various challenges that they’re facing in their art, whether it’s marketing stuff or technical stuff or installation or whatever.”
Amie would confess to being “a little intimidated,” being in “awe” of these women artists, with two of them Kim Dickey and Martha Russo as professors at the University of Colorado in art history. But “They’re all mothers and have families, and they’ve devoted themselves to the practice of their art and it’s a brave thing to do… Particularly in these difficult times we are living in, in our country, and in the world – art is a great salve and salvation for us all.”
The first scene was in artist Kim Dickey’s studio where she’s hosting a dinner for the group –“ one of many they host over the year,” Amie told. “And the closing scene is at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art where they were all part of a group show.”
At that dinner, each of the five would address their investment with their art. “What keeps me going,” said Martha Russo, “is all of these women – their extraordinary gifts bolster me. It reminds me it can be done, without complaint or suffering, just quietly, heroically done.”
“Each of these creative women who I consider close friends,” said artist Stacy Steers “lead with their heart… They tend to have a lot of confidence. They don’t feel terribly competitive. They’re at ease with the choices they’ve made.”
For Rebecca DiDomenico, “One of the things about being a woman you’re always supposed to be giving energy going out of you… that’s what being an artist is, being of service in the world. That can be a beautiful thing.” But “You need some of the energy flowing in the other direction.”
Ana Maria Hernando addressed, “the importance of this group of women” over the years. “I’m grateful for how intensely caring each of them are, how important it is to have friends. I can share the vulnerabilities of making art, to talk – having that language is essential in my life.”
With Kim Dickey, one of her professors had told in a class, “You need to make your art long enough until you start believing in it, then others will start believing in it too. The importance of our group is we all believe in each other. We know we can give each other unfettered support, get honest, smart criticism and advice and delight in being together.”
Amie visits the artists studios
Amie would then visit each of the five artist studios, to learn more about their art.
“I make experimental animation,” began Stacey Steers. “I take images out of silent films, usually images of women from the silent era, actors like Lillian Gish… Mary Pickford, I’ll take image sequences and repurpose those images and put them into collages. So, I make thousands of physical collages… in combination with engravings and illustrations from the 18th and 19th century and I create these new narratives essentially. They’re not necessarily obvious narratives, but for me there’s a kind of thread that moves through the story.”
Rebecca DiDomenico shared in her studio, “I make things out of mostly natural objects… that have to do with multiples. So, there’s a lot of different little, tiny things that make up one whole piece. I think of it as a challenge. What’s the next material that I fall in love with?… For instance, I made a cave out of mica and butterfly wings and bits of trash. I pressed all the butterfly wings inside the mica and all the trash inside the mica and then I sewed them together in 60,000 scales… “My idea was you treat both of those materials with the same reverence.”
Martha Russo would share discovering ceramics “very early on as a 12-year-old. It literally had a physical impact on me. It changed my demeanor.” Asked once, “What is the central issue behind your work?” she answered immediately, “Intimacy.” “What art has allowed me to do is …be able to come into the studio to be alone and to let my heart break in the making of something while thinking deeply about the people I care about…I also teach fulltime. My most important role as a professor is to grant permission… Go for it, do it.”
Kim Dickey found her way to ceramics as an undergrad… I was addicted to making things…I was always looking for an oddity. I’m attracted to burls on trees, primarily because something has disrupted the growth on the outside of the tree…It’s been turned into this strange beauty.” Finding two mice drowned in her glaze bucket she would add other glazes then fire it all producing “this perfect tiny skeleton… It looks it could be some kind of fossil…A lot of what I use are just detritus for life…You have to really make your work for yourself. That’s the start.”
Ana Maria Hernando grew up in Buenos Aires. “Color is one of the big things that made me want to be an artist…Color is emotional…The seasons and times in my life, I see them in colors…. My work is a lot about the power of the feminine. In choosing my materials. I have been working a lot with tulle. Tulle is very soft. It’s translucent… I used enormous amounts of it to talk about power. It can be soft, but soft does not mean weak. It can be soft and very strong.” There was much more extraordinary sharing between the five artists as gathered in the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art with their art on display. All available to be seen when that film, “Time and Other Materials” debuts on PBS!
