Ellen's Work Blog

Ellen’s Work Blog
January 2023

2022 will go down as a memorable AMP year in every respect for all of us on staff, all our volunteers, and all our kids in every program. From the moment we received our certificate of occupancy for all three levels of the main building in June, there has not been a dull moment in the tremendous space. We have gone way over our visitor projections for the first six months we have been open on the weekends, and we had full sessions for all our programs this summer. We continue to welcome all the kids in our CHAMPS after-school programs during the school year.  

Since we are always looking ahead at possibilities, we have spent the last two months of 2022 planning for new events in 2023. Since we are sitting on an acoustical wonder—the mural building—our first step has been to plan with our music talent team some exciting weekend concerts. From our first big event in 2020 with Paul Winter, Theresa Thomason, and Joel Martin to last fall’s gala with Gabriel Löfvall, Sandra Boynton, and Chorus Angelicus, we have been blown away by the sound of music in the mural building. Since standing ovations are a given at the end of these events, it’s a no-brainer to schedule more of this at AMP. And there is no limit—Gospel, Motown, jazz, classical, and rock—we are planning for all of it. Keep checking on our site and social media for schedules of upcoming concert dates. We want to pack the place. We are also planning special film screenings and documentaries with guest speakers, many of them subjects in the mural, as well as Thursday night jam sessions. And more, more, more programs for kids. 

None of this could be happening if it were not for your continued AMAZING support—not just for everything we do but for everything we look ahead to do in the future.

I see 2023 as breaking all kinds of attendance records at AMP and I am not crazy. I know you are all with us and want more activities at AMP as much as we do.

The possibilities are endless and impossible is nothing!!!

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Ellen’s Work Blog
December 2022

I am starting to feel the holidays in the air as I work to finish assembling a couple projects for the Ramp Gallery that have been in process for the past eight weeks.

There are times when I pull out some of the collaborative project pieces that have been stored away for ten or more years and I just sigh. What was I thinking when I asked kids at HealthCorps fairs to paint these small tongue depressors, all in the spirit of emphasizing healthy diet and exercise in their lives? Hot gluing thousands of these can get repetitive, but then I run into a bunch that are tiny masterpieces. I marvel at the high level of creativity reached by so many of these kids, making full-blown paintings on a ½” x 6” piece of balsa wood. And now these kids are in their teens or 20s and probably doing amazing things in their young adult lives to benefit others. I hope they have not lost their exuberance and zest for life. This is a time for rebuilding and we need all that energy.

It reminds me that there are many things that are so positive and hopeful. They are all around us if we just take the time to look.

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Ellen’s Work Blog
November 2022

I decided last month that it was time to pull out all the giant mailing crates of watches donated by women across the country, who are members of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC). This project pays tribute to the work these women do as volunteers in hospitals, community gardens, and fundraising events in their communities, all to help others in need. When we started collecting watches many years ago, I pictured several hundred watches all pulled together—a terrific visual statement about the hours these women spend helping others. I felt I had a handle on the assembly part of the project. But these women were not kidding around. I am now looking at what appears to be more like 10,000 watches. No matter the method, I know there are many hours ahead to bring all of these together into one giant assembly.

My other project of the month has involved a similar amassing of small objects—in this case tongue depressors painted by kids at health fairs in California, Arizona, and six states in the Midwest and New England. I loved the metaphor for better health and fitness, proper exercise and diet. What blew me away was the artwork these kids managed to create on a piece of wood slightly larger than a popsicle stick. Now it’s in my court—how to bring all of these together and display them in the Ramp Gallery in a way that gives justice to their efforts. 

In both of these projects, there is obviously a built-in tedious component. But there is also a big challenge. In the final execution, both pieces need to properly give credit to thousands of people: kids who are thinking about living healthier lives and are acting on it, and the GFWC women who are thinking about helping others and are spending hours of their own time doing it.

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Ellen’s Work Blog
October 2022

Last month was packed with preparation for our Gala as well as a visit from Brenda Eheart, Carolyn Casteel, and Jeanette Laws, my friends from Hope Meadows, a very special foster-care community in Rantoul, Illinois, where we did an AMP collaborative project in 2005. At Hope, everyone in the community spent four days running around making wax rubbings of everything significant to them—from license plates and brooms to basketball shoes and flip flops. All of these impressions will be part of the Illinois collaborative project in the Ramp Gallery exhibit to open next year. 

It would be an understatement to say that the performance we heard at the Gala was memorable. The combined artistic talents of all the musicians, soloists, and chorus resulted in a perfect AMP collaboration. It was a thrill to be in the space and hear the magic happen, from the first trumpet call to the last notes of Sandy Boynton’s original composition, Amplify. 

Both of these big moments in September reminded me of the excitement we all get when we are doing something special together in perfect harmony.

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Ellen’s Work Blog
September 2022

All summer long there has been nonstop action at AMP. All the kids’ programs came to an end in the first weeks of August, which usually silences the place. This year, we are welcoming visitors Friday–Sunday every weekend, and the general hum and laughter continues. On the few days I have been in the mural building during visiting hours, I have had an absolute blast meeting adults and kids, answering their questions, and asking them for their thoughts on ways to make the experience more fun.

Abigail and Ben, our visitor services staff, together with our amazing volunteers, have been phenomenal. They are all over the place, up and down the three levels assisting visitors. They seem to know far more about the mural than I do.

And now, here comes the Art of Work Gala on Saturday, September 17. I was lucky enough to attend many of the rehearsals, and hearing Chorus Angelicus in our giant brick and steel cathedral is so moving. We are also going to hear the special piece Sandra Boynton wrote and Mike Ford arranged expressly for AMP.

Hope you have your tickets. This one is going to be memorable.

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Ellen’s Work Blog
August 2022

July was spent dividing time between meeting the kids in our camps and continuing to work on plans for installing more of our collaborative projects created across the country in the Ramp Gallery. It is hard to work when so many fabulous things are happening at AMP—admiring the skills of all of our teaching artists as they create murals indoors, make magical music with the campers, plant native pollinating plants, and build new amazing structures outdoors.

As far as my work, I am really psyched about what is happening on the back ramp. Every section Justin and I tackle brings back so many memories for me, some from 15 years back. I am reminded of all the people we have been privileged to meet on this project and all the singular experiences we have had in so many magical places in this country. And the best part of all this is happening now. Every time we hammer up another group of assembly pieces we are including more and more of these experiences and sharing with all our visitors all these faces of America, all these creations, all the contributions others have made to AMP. This mural becomes more robust and powerful every day as more and more of the people all over this country become part of it.

I can’t wait to finish this up so we can unlock the back ramp and share it with everyone.

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Ellen’s Work Blog
July 2022

This past week was one of the coolest weeks ever at AMP. Three programs going on simultaneously—Create @AMP, Outdoor Design & Build, and Digital Story Work—with kids inside, outside, and all over. Abigail and Ben were greeting visitors at the front desk. Ted and Vance were leading the Digital Story Work interns, Morgan and Sam, who were moving around filming on the ramps as visitors came in. Michelle, our education programs director, was alternating between inside and outside programs. Justin, John, and I were making noise that no one seemed to hear as we installed plywood on the back ramp, readying for more collaborative projects to be added to the mural in the coming weeks. And Sam Posey’s voice echoed through the building on a video voice-over for one of our collaborative project videos that visitors were watching in the video viewing room. Our teaching artists, Shana, Christine, and Chip, were just knocking it out all week. I talked to each of the kids in our Create @AMP program, and thanks to Shana’s incredible energy and talent as a teaching artist, these kids were fired up. Teens are not usually given to high energy enthusiasm but, in this group, not one person was tentative at all about telling me what they were trying to create, why they chose the materials they chose, and what they wanted in the final outcome.

If I had one dream about how cool it could be on a given day at AMP, last week was it in spades. “Build it and they will come.”

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Ellen’s Work Blog
June 2022

AMP is now less than three weeks away from our June 18 opening. The projects to complete, big and small, have pushed everyone to the limit but no one is complaining. Jamie from Scope has been heading the construction team, along with Tony and Mike from Vision Electric and all the Action Air guys. Their goal is to finish the upstairs education program room in time for our summer kids’ programs. Herbert’s crew from Premier, having just finished the floors in that space, will be spending the first days of June sanding and putting the finish on all the platform flooring.

As for our AMP staff, they have been working overtime to ready the mill for the opening. Abigail, the newest member of our crew, has been preparing for every possible scenario that relates to welcoming people into the space. Along with Ben, we have an all-star duo out in front. Amy, Shari, Sarah, Mimi, Ruthie, and Justin have been everywhere doing everything while Michelle finishes plans for a full summer of kids’ programs at AMP.

For all of us, this is the moment to celebrate and thank everyone who has worked with us on the building and the mural installation, all the volunteers who have given their time to help us, and people all over the country who have donated to our appeals. Without you, there would be no opening.

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Ellen’s Work Blog
May 2022

April has come and gone with appropriate showers, daffodils, and not so appropriate sleet, wind, and cold. Now here comes May, my favorite month, everything in bloom and a very strong chance for wearing shorts on a daily basis.

I have been working this past month on yet another incredible collaborative project we did in 2005, in Japantown San Jose and Manzanar, California. (For historical reference, Manzanar is the site of one of ten American internment camps where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II, from March 1942 to November 1945.)

This project took more than a year to organize and would never have happened without help from a few key people in both locations.

In San Jose, Kathy Sakamoto took my phone call, listened to my pitch and, miraculously, stayed on the line. She agreed to work with us and began inviting family, friends, and neighbors in Japantown to come to a fellow artist’s studio for the project. Over two long days, people all over town showed up with memorabilia and created personal messages and artwork on our long rolls of rice paper.

In Manzanar, we planned our arrival to coincide with a weekend pilgrimage to the concentration camp site. People came to the desert from all over northern California—many had lived in one of endless rows of barracks, all using communal bathrooms, no stalls, no doors for two or three years.

My sister, Judy, an award-winning photojournalist, took photos of everyone who participated, and a few are up on our website. She brought her daughter Taylor who skipped school to be on the trip. In exchange, Taylor agreed to write a paper on the internment camps. She interviewed everyone—and I know the experience of listening to people describe their lives in the camps is embedded for life.

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Ellen’s Work Blog
April 2022

April—come on spring! As I anticipate work ahead, I want to accomplish way more than is remotely possible between now and when we open the doors to visitors in June. I dream about getting all of our collaborative projects assembled and installed, and I’m confident they will all come together in the year ahead. Now, the flip side.

As I close in on a finish of the Illinois collaborative project, I slide right back to 2005. The project took place at Hope Meadows, a revolutionary foster-care community created by Brenda Eheart as a solution to the overwhelmed foster-care system in which she’d been working. After petitioning the Pentagon for five years, Brenda gained their permission to use the eighty homes on an abandoned Air Force base for the community that is now home to families who agreed to adopt kids who failed to make it in the regular foster-care system. Seniors also live in subsidized housing there, in exchange for six hours of weekly service in the community. The seniors have become like grandparents to the kids.

Our project honoring this work involved doing wax rubbings of anything and everything meaningful to each participant. As I move each piece around to find a suitable fit in the composition, I remember every kid, each teenager, their foster parents and all the “grandparents” in this idyllic community. I remember Ryan’s topsiders, how he struggled to create an acceptable facsimile, and Miss Irene’s birdbath, her broom, her handicapped license plate on the Buick, and her porch swing, all her students running around making rubbings of everything inside and outside her house. And, ta da, Crystal’s flip flop with multicolored ribbons on the toe thong.

Completing a work of art for any artist is the culmination of hours of thought about how to best present their gift to the viewer. In Hope Meadows, every brick, every fern and flower, every spatula, cross-stitch needle, and pair of scissors is art. I included every piece given and, together, they will be a great gift to behold for future visitors.

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Ellen’s Work Blog
March 2022

After two months dyeing border strips and sewing batik pieces together, I put the last seam in the last of 77 kids’ batiks to complete the Indigo Squares quilt that will hang in the Ramp Gallery at AMP. We did this collaborative project over a weekend in 2004 at the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, with students from four schools in the Lowcountry.

These past eight weeks, I have had plenty of time to think about all those kids, their parents, their teachers, and the artists at Penn Center, to remember Arianne’s batik demo for all of us, Randy’s hand-painted pants, Reverend Small’s quiet comments about the magic of the place, the sunlight in the morning through the hanging kudzu, and the sunset on the screen porch where Martin Luther King wrote his “I Have a Dream” speech. All 123 of us were all there together for three special days—and at last we have this 11x17’ quilt, clear proof it was not a dream.

Now, as we head into March, the excitement builds at AMP. John and Andy are back installing third-floor railings, Adam and Amy are working on finishing last details on the mural building renovation plans, and Herbert’s crew is working on the new kids’ program room upstairs.

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Ellen’s Work Blog
February 2022

As we head into February, we are starting to count down the months until spring, then summer, then getting the doors open for visitors who will see the mural for the first time on all three levels. Giant thanks to Cory Violette and everyone at Kone Elevator, Jamie Fox and everyone at Scope Construction, and John Jacquier, Andy, and Matt for all the work accomplished in the last few weeks. The elevator and first floor railings are in and the whole thing is exquisite.

The work ahead is already more than I can accomplish before our summer opening moment. I continue to unearth collaborative projects, created across the country, packed away for years, every one so expansive and suggesting possibilities. How do I organize all these pieces so visitors will see the places we have been across the country, wonderful friends we have met, and the invaluable contributions they have made to AMP?

As I assemble these projects, I think back on the diverse groups we’ve worked with—both kids and adults—and how our goal from the beginning has been to create these pieces together and honor working Americans across the country. For the last two decades, we’ve brought together different people and groups who may not have had the opportunity to meet one another otherwise, to solve challenges, experience new perspectives, and discover that art forms a connection to one another and the community. There’s much more of this to come in the months and years ahead with our education programs and future collaborative state projects. I can't wait.

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Ellen’s Work Blog
January 2022

I am soooo psyched for 2022.

Like almost everyone I know, we have worked the whole year safely dodging ongoing frustrations and difficulties due to Covid and its variants. Even with all of these challenges, AMP is moving ahead. We are still on target for opening with regular hours this summer. The elevator goes in this month, as well as all the first-level platform railings. We have a staff fired up and planning for all of our spring and summer programs. And, best of all, we have our favorite guys coming back to the mill to help us get this building finished and ready for visitors.

For the next six months it will be an awesome reunion at AMP. Happy New Year and thank you so much for supporting this giant effort.

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Ellen’s Work Blog
December 2021

In November there was so much going on for all of us at AMP. Michelle was honored by the NWCT Arts Council for her outstanding leadership on all of our education programs over the last 18 months of the pandemic. I was so proud to be in the audience at the Warner Theatre when she received her award from Representatives Michelle Cook and Maria Horn.

Shari and Ruthie somehow got 1,200 handwritten envelopes out for this year’s appeal with help from our stalwart volunteers. TYTYTY, Hank and JoAnne, Carol, Tara, and—always there for us—Riker!

In the meantime, Amy is pushing all the right buttons making steady progress on our goal to finish all remaining work on the mural building. I can’t believe that visitors will soon be able to come in and wander around on all three levels.

In the last few weeks, Mimi and I have had a lot of fun meeting some fascinating new people and introducing them to AMP. There are so many ideas for the future of our education center and grounds, so many possibilities to do marvelous things with kids in our programs. I see many wonderful partnerships ahead for all of us.

Sarah, who manages AMP’s marketing, has had uncanny patience. She has some hugely exciting ideas and has never given up hope that I will get even half the information she needs to trace a 22-year history of workers depicted on the mural, as well as all the kids’ projects we have completed on the mural.

On those projects, I am psyched as I start organizing sections for the back ramp gallery. There is so much to assemble here in the studio before we can install them on site. This space is going to be a lot of fun for visitors. Thousands of kids have contributed their work on collaborative projects across the country. It is like an early Christmas to go up to our attic storage space and unearth projects we did with students across the country, sorting pieces out and planning for their assembly.

While I am working, I am thinking about future field trips to AMP, students arriving to spend a morning or afternoon with us, working with teachers on lesson plans based on their visit up the ramp through this jungle of art.

As usual, so much going on at AMP.

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Ellen’s Work Blog
November 2021

In October, as leaves started to fall and temps dropped a bit, I began to think about the big job still looming: getting artwork contributed by 10,000 kids up on the back ramp in the months ahead. This is really about creating a long (110 feet), narrow, three-dimensional display on two sides and above. Some of the collaborative projects have already been pulled together into one or more large pieces. A couple of these are major installation challenges. I would seriously disappoint the install crew if they could not come back to figure out a few impossible lifts and stabilization issues. Problem solving on a giant scale is their thing. When a new piece has “never-before-attempted” written all over it, this really gets them excited. My first step was asking John (Posey) and Justin (Truskauskas) to help me move the 26-foot-long helix down from our warehouse and into the mural building. Filthy dirty, it took a few days to clean and de-spider around every rivet and small corner. Originally created at Mark Grusauski’s Wingworks, this is a piece that required help from many people and many businesses, trucking giant pieces of Makrolon from Perotti Plumbing’s bender to Mark’s airplane hangar, where we finally had to hang it from the ceiling like a giant slinky in order to finish it.

And a story for next time: the hundreds of Japanese Americans who contributed pictures, memorabilia, and artwork in San Jose’s Japantown and Manzanar, California.