On October 10th, 2024, members of ARK sat around the wooden table featured in the exhibit Colour Theory with artist Pallavi Sen and curator Roz Crews. ARK spoke to Sen, an assistant professor of Studio Art at Williams, and Crews, WCMA’s Assistant Curator of Programs, about their ten-year-long friendship, approaches to collaboration and curation, and experience putting together the show. Karthik Tambar, sophomore who works with Roz, and Genevieve Randazzo, senior and TA for Pallavi, were compelled to organize this interview, seeing the collaboration foundational to Colour Theory as parallel to their own one-year-long friendship and the community ethos of ARK. The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

I don't want these external things to be the reason why I can do what I do. A lot of the things I used to make were things that I knew I could use in my house, because I didn't have a separate storage space, so they all had to be functioning within the home. And so initially, when we were thinking about the exhibition, it was zoned into different parts of a home. Maybe in my initial plan, I wanted it to be maybe more populated with things that are similar to this bed and this table. But, I became so excited about working on paper that it took precedence. Now, it's still divided into these domestic zones. This is a very initial birth, when you're young, and these are things that you're looking at or studying in schooling. Then, things literally from Skowhegan from the summer. These are more arrangements of how you organize your day. Then you're moving into your family. Then a bedroom, with those two paintings—the two flowers on each side—almost like bed stands for this bed, and this is a changing screen. Then moving into more decorative patterns or clothing and textiles, where you get ready, and then you march out for your day. So this is a gallery, but it’s truly a room. It's a pretty ideal apartment, if someone was to have one. I like the life of works outside of their temporary exhibition time, and so I'm trying to make that happen while the exhibition is also going on.

ARK: You spoke about involving students and working together, reminding me of ARK. I’ve never seen an exhibition where the artist is showcasing that other people helped their process.

Pallavi: For most of my life, I had to make my own work. There was no need to involve other people, unless it was something like a collaboration that we wanted to do. For this project especially, it was just a scale of work that I felt I definitely could not do by myself, at a pace that I could not manage while working full-time. It’s from the moment you wake up to the moment you sleep. So it was really nice to not just have students help me make my work, but to have work that was fully formed by them, in the way they would make it.

Roz: I’m interested in collaboration for a lot of reasons. My background is as an artist, and I studied a field of art called social practice, where artists collaborate to create context-specific projects and performances that engage directly with a place, rather than being shown in a gallery. When I had the opportunity to work with Pallavi on this project, it was exciting because we already had a background of collaborating. When we met, we were fellows-in-residence at Mildred’s Lane, an artist residency with an emphasis on collaboration. It was founded by a couple who created a space where people could work, learn, and think together, all while living in a shared domestic space. This setup prioritized domestic living, with work emerging from that shared experience. So I guess this project feels like it’s harkening back to that a little bit.

ARK: How were you drawn to different mediums like crayons?

Pallavi: One reason is this painting behind me took me about a month to paint because it’s very easy to become obsessive with watercolor. I find it an annoying tendency in myself to keep going and keep adding things. In reaction to that, I made a much looser work. But really, I was just short on time, and I knew I wanted to make a lot of large work. I realized I could no longer do it in watercolor the way I usually do and I didn’t want to feel upset doing something that’s such a lovely thing for me. If I’d imagined as a child that this is what I’d be doing 30 years later, I would have been overjoyed, and instead, I was feeling miserable doing so much of this work.

At Skowhegan, an artist residency, where I go in the summer, every morning when I wake up there, I make a bulletin board outside the office where I write all the things that are going to happen. I’d always make a drawing to go along with it, and it felt so fun. So why couldn’t my own work feel that enjoyable? 

At the same time, I don’t think all art-making should be therapeutic or enjoyable. It’s work, it’s rigorous, it takes something out of you, and there are times you may not enjoy it. But it also shouldn’t feel torturous all the time. So, I thought about other ways of making, quicker ways that could feel pleasurable, but maybe have more longevity. I wanted something immediate, without feeling self-conscious while doing it. That’s when I started making more crayon drawings and since I don’t usually work with them, I don’t have any high standards for myself. There are high school students who make incredible colored pencil drawings because they’re into that level of detail, but I’m not trying to get there. This show became an opportunity to try things I hadn’t done before, instead of trying to impress myself with what I already know.

Roz: Can I pick up on the thread of doing things that aren't intolerable? I think that’s an important thing to carry with you through life as you move into areas of work and pleasure. It’s about figuring out what doesn’t make you feel bad when you’re doing it. This project with Pallavi showed me how pleasurable it can be to work with your friends. Sometimes, if you have the opportunity to decide what you’re going to do—which you don’t always have—you need to choose to do something with people you like.

Pallavi: You know, there are so many ways of being engaged in art that are not necessarily hiding in a studio forever. There are so many ways of doing this. I've always admired Roz’s approach, which has always involved many people, and was never just Roz. 

Roz: I was always making colored pencil drawings, pinch pots, painting, working on collages on my floor, and making magazines with my friends. Eventually, I started thinking I should try to professionalize that practice and figure out how to get paid as an artist. I ended up figuring that out, but it meant taking on commissions to do big projects that met a lot of needs. For example, a university would invite me to create an artist residency program that touched the lives of all their students and created interdisciplinary connections between science, art, math, and more. 

Before, I was doing collaborative projects with lots of people around the country, and I didn’t get to sit in one place and work with the same individuals. What I'm noticing now in my work at WCMA, is that I get to work with the same people repeatedly, and try out ideas with each other and think about our working style and how we collaborate. That’s really nice because it feels like a daily practice. I often work with students, but at those colleges, I wasn’t really part of the community. I would just go in and do something.

Then there's the part about the identity shift from artist to curator. A curator has power in a certain way, while an artist has power in a very different way. I'm really interested in power dynamics and how people work together when there's not a hierarchy, but there always is, right? Because you're dealing with cultural capital, social capital, and emotional capital, you’re inevitably dealing with power dynamics. It’s interesting to see how an artist has a lot of control over what happens in a space. I have pretty much all the control. 

The way I think about curating is, it's created a platform for an artist to do whatever they want. That's my dream version of curating. A lot of people disagree with me about that, and a lot of people feel that what ends up in the gallery or in the public space is a reflection of them as a curator. My perspective is, yes, it’s sort of a reflection of me, but it’s more of a reflection of a relationship with an artist, and then it's really the reflection of the artist. And so there's something really gratifying about swapping those roles, for me to help Pallavi have that kind of power and experience is really rewarding. And then the kind of power that I feel, is getting to be in an institution and hand money or space over to the artist. 

ARK: I've always felt like the way to talk about art and the way I make art are really different. Last year, I wrote an essay about my favorite artist, and when he read it, he said he hated it. It feels like this flesh and spirit of making art versus talking about it or curating it. Over the past couple of years, I've come a little closer to them being in agreement. Do you feel like you have experienced a synthesis of sorts? 

Roz: It’s probably true that you have to want and be motivated to write about art too, and care about art in general to engage with it that way. I can start by saying the way this partnership began in the museum is that Pallavi asked me to write an essay about her work, and then we started making the publication for the exhibition. I have a little bit of history writing about my own work, but when I started writing about other artist’s work, I was like, I really hope they like it. And I often send it to the artist before I send it to the editor, because I'm like, “do you like this? Is it working for you?” Which is so not what most people do. They're writing from the perspective of, I'm the critic, I'm the art historian, I'm putting my stamp on it. But I think because I'm an artist, I want them to know what it's going to say, because I want to know if they understand where I'm coming from. I was thinking about that a lot when I was writing, and then I sent it to you, and what did you think?

Pallavi: It was about our friendship and about all the years that we had known each other. It was really lovely to be able to see how thoughts that I would not immediately have about my own work were still true, or things that—and this has happened every time that we've talked about our work together—Roz will say certain things that completely run true when I hear it, but I need another person to come and say it and see it, for me to recognize that as something that's true within my own work. 

Roz: And so my point is that writing about art doesn't have to be divorced from the art, and it doesn't have to be divorced from this experience of being an artist, or the experience of being a curator. I think what I'm hearing you say is that there's this sort of, like, theory about art or art history, and then there's the making of art and the experience of embodying it.

ARK: I could very easily write about people's art, but it would have nothing to do with my own practice. That gap has been getting smaller though. For you, it sounds like the gap is almost non-existent. 

Pallavi: I think there's also something that happens with a lot of art writing, unfortunately, that the language is obscure, or feels as if it's trying to trick you into believing that something is something else. Sometimes a viewer may not know either the artist or the work well, but they understand language. Is the artist or museum being deceitful? Or are we reaching for bigger ideas than what's actually present? But that's just one way and one style of writing and thinking about work. You can absolutely have ways of making which speak about the uncertainty or the unknowing, or the process of making something as quite different from the rest of your life. Or that your work is tied to ideas or concerns not yet visible. But I think it is honest writing or honest conversations around one’s work that make room for ideas that have not reached maturity or nascent thoughts or questions without answers.

Roz: I have very little interest in writing about artists that I don't know. One of my inspirations is Chris Kraus, one of the coolest art writers because she really dives into an artist and their life. Maggie Nelson also thinks about being intimately connected with the subject that you're writing about. 

I also want to say the kind of writing I do is criticized as being too close to the subject, and that can do a disservice to the work. I think Chris Kraus is also criticized for entangling yourself into another artist's work in a way that's maybe self-centered. But also, I think that the work you're seeing here in this room is very intertwined in domestic life and friendship and love. And so it felt appropriate to do that in this case. 

ARK: For your writing, your turning point is wanting to know an artist, and then for curating, that point is wanting to display the artist you've gotten to know. How do you figure out who's worth getting to know? Do you start with a person? Do you start with work that catches your eye? 

Roz: That's a great question. It gave me chills, because I care so little about how things look, and am so much more interested in the spirit of the artist. That's why in this project, I said, "do whatever you want and put whatever you want on the wall." Because to me, what matters is you creating an installation that represents your interiority or your exteriority, whatever you're trying to go for. Some people think of curating as, I go into Pallavi’s studio, and it's extractive. “I really like this one. This is really working for me." And I use the word extractive because to me that feels like an extraction of somebody else's life and livelihood in a way that doesn't appeal to me. So I'm person-driven, and the artists that I find myself championing in my life so far are people that I've met and sort of instantly had some kind of relationship with. 

Lots of artists are different from Pallavi too. They'll just maybe make a series of drawings and be, "Here you go, curator, put them up, write about them. Do whatever you want." So we're sort of exhibiting one way of being that is a little atypical. Probably.

Pallavi: I think that is actually something that's really exciting about being in ARK and also working with somebody you're so familiar with. You can really see how far you can go before somebody tells you you can't do something. And how far can you extend it, especially when an institution with rules is concerned.