Pump up the volume! – Lecture with artists Jane Dickson and Joe Lewis

Imagine the South Bronx in New York in the late seventies; a very much desolated place, however, it was there that one of New York’s most influential contemporary art organizations was created. The organization that was also a community arts centre was called Fashion Moda, and artists Joe Lewis and Jane Dickson was a part of it. Joe Lewis was an artist from the area and became co-director of the organization, and Jane Dickson was an artist educated at Harvard who came to New York in the seventies. Fashion Moda was active up to 1993. Currently showing the exhibition “Pump up the volume!” at the Robert Else Gallery at California State University Sacramento, Jane Dickson and Joe Lewis had a lecture there on January 27.

Jane Dickson and Joe Lewis at the lecture at Sac State. Photo by myself.

The exhibition had opened the same day and an excited audience sat down in the rather small university classroom in the art building at Sac State for the artist talk. After some technical difficulties were solved, the lecture began with pictures from the beginnings of Fashion Moda, and artists Jane Dickson and Joe Lewis told us the remarkable story. The very essence of Fashion Moda was a new concept of art, that art is global but also to keep art local in the Bronx. Fashion Moda redefined what was considered art in the post-modernist era, they worked in medium that wasn’t widely accepted (like garbage bags!) and they also worked with young graffiti artists like Crash and Lady Pink. They wanted to pull away from the well established art world of Manhattan, they wanted to be different and show the world just that. They made their new gallery with the true punk form of DIY; they found and created what they needed for the venue.

A lot of the art at Fashion Moda was about the city, how the cityscape affects us and what it means to live in a concrete jungle. Jane Dickson talked a lot about her artwork “City Maze” (see video) at Fashion Moda. Her artwork contained of large “screens” of cardboard that was placed like a maze throughout the gallery, and different graffiti artists had made artworks on the surface and other art was put up there as well; a common thing at Fashion Moda was art on top of art! A very amusing thing that Jane Dickson told us about was that kids from around the area used to “crash” the gallery and run around the maze! Sometimes the kids broke in and at the same time an artist could have an important meeting somewhere else in the building. That was also a very prominent thing about Fashion Moda; it was for everyone and it was meant for bringing people together, and this was the goal that Joe Lewis had for the organization.

In the planning of the exhibition of “City Maze” Jane Dickson told us that she and the other artists learned so much from the younger graffiti artists (Crash was only around 15 years old at the time) and that was ground breaking, they didn’t see them as kids but as fellow artists. When a question was asked about what Fashion Moda meant for Joe Lewis he simply answered that it was his own work, his baby that he treasured very deeply. And it is very much something to be proud of, since Fashion Moda completely changed the art world.

City Maze by Jane Dickson