Anne Arrasmith

Anne Harper Arrasmith (born February 20, 1946; died February 1, 2017 in Birmingham) was an artist and curator who lived and worked in Birmingham. She co-founded the non-profit Space One Eleven art studio and gallery with Peter Prinz and served as its director.

Arrasmith graduated from Shades Valley High School and was a student of Edith Frohock while at University of Alabama at Birmingham. She and Prinz founded Space One Eleven with a mission to present significant, provocative exhibitions that confront ideas in a southern context or framework.

Under Arrasmith, Space One Eleven made it possible for inner-city children to participate in the creation and exhibition of visual arts. Perhaps the most dramatic projects for Space One Eleven is the Birmingham Urban Mural, freestanding mosaic panels immediately east of the Birmingham Museum of Art made from thousands of clay tiles fired by children. The organization received support from the Birmingham Museum of Art before it began receiving grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Arrasmith served on the steering committee of Birmingham Art and Music Alliance and was a participating member of The NEA Tapes through the Eidia House in New York City, along with other notables Edward Albee, Jane Alexander, Ed Asner, Ron Athey, Chuck Close, Karen Finley, Agnes Gund, Alex Katz, David Moos, Tim Robbins, Andres Serrano, Kiki Smith and Lawrence Weiner among many others. Arrasmith works with Creative Capital as a recommender helping to determine grant nominees.

Curatorial work

• Jon Coffelt was the inaugural artist at Space One Eleven when it was founded by Arrasmith and Peter Prinz, opening in 1989.

• UpSouth, partially funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts was curated and organized by Arrasmith and traveled to several venues across Birmingham in one day, including Space One Eleven, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the Visual Arts Gallery of University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Agnes. It showed the work of artists Emma Amos and Willie Birch and writer bell hooks, as well as Ann Benton, Priscilla Hancock Cooper, Karen Graffeo, Lee Isaacs, Mary Ann Sampson, J. M. Walker and Marie Weaver.

• In 2000, Arrasmith curated "House and Garden: Twists on Domesticity," at Space One Eleven through a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts. The exhibition included the work of Karen Rich Beall and Jon Coffelt. This exhibition also included a catalog with a foreword by David Moos. In this exhibition, Beall exhibited realistic tableau life-size sculpture while Coffelt hand-sewed more than 250 miniature garments that were exhibited as memory sculptures.

• “Art on the Inside” a self-portrait exhibition of prisoners who are part of the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Program incorporating drawings, paintings, poems and stories. This arrangement to exhibit this work is as much educational as it is artistic, but don’t think this is simply an exercise in kindness.

• "BAMA" curated by Arrasmith in 2004, included the works of Amy Pleasant, Annie Kammerer Butrus and Jane Timberlake. The exhibition showcases three of Birmingham's most promising artists.

• "Suspended in Conflict" in 2005 was the work of three established artists that was created based on introspection and the intense questions raised by a rapidly changing Southern culture. This exhibit curated by Arrasmith, provided Darius Hill, Larry Jens Anderson, and James Emmette Neel with the opportunity to experiment and to present new works that challenge myth and reality. This exhibition was funded by a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

• "Politics, Politics: Nice Artists Explore the Political Landscape" curated by Arrasmith and Peter Prinz of Space One Eleven was funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and included Pinky Bass, Clayton Colvin, Peggy Dobbins, Randy Gachet, Binx Newton, Arthur Price, John Trobaugh, Paul Ware, and Stan Woodard. This exhibition featured the introspective works of nine artists, both established and emerging, as they explored the personal and social impact of political events and trends. Those explorations, in turn, become universal statements on the impact politics has had on environment, sports, religion, race, and government in the South.

Since 1987, Anne Arrasmith has included numerous artists' books into her exhibitions including the works of Sara Garden Armstrong, Larry Gens Anderson, Pinky Bass, Jon Coffelt, Edith Frohock, Anne Howard, Lee Isaacs, Joni Mabe, Mary Ann Sampson, David Sandlin, Joel Seah and Marie Weaver along with many others who have worked in field of book arts.

Books and Catalogs

• House and Garden: Twists on Domesticity, foreword by David Moos
• UpSouth by bell hooks, Emma Amos and Antoinette Spanos Nordan, University Press, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1999, pp 70-73
• White Graphics: The Power of White in Graphic Design (Paperback), by Gail Deiber Finke,included many examples of Marie Weaver's work for UpSouth.
• BAMA catalog, Space One Eleven, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, 2004

References

• Space One Eleven (Official website)
• Innereye
• UpSouth
• Anne Arrasmith on Wikipedia.org
• Artist's Books