Innovative collaborations: Harlem Textile Works nurtures a generation of designers - opportunity for students to learn graphic deign and textile art at New York, NY program - includes information about the Children's Art Carnival school, New York, NY - Cover Story

Maxine Gayle, a promising 28-year-old fabric designer, had not seriously considered an arts administration degree prior to working at Harlem Textile Works (HTW). However, her rich experience at the studio, under the guidance of director Kerris Wolsky, taught her that she has an affinity for project development, as well as a desire to encourage young artists. She now has a master's degree and is the acting fund development supervisor at the Valley, a social service youth agency in New York City.

Gayle joined HTW in 1990, at a time when the school was beginning to receive new recognition. In a recent collaboration, Co-op America, a mail-order catalog in Washington, D.C., had featured HTW products, boosting sales and press coverage of the youth organization. Gayle had the opportunity to realize the full range of skills necessary for working in a design studio. She stayed with HTW for two years, handling everything from sales and proposal development to silkscreen demonstrations and exhibition design. During her tenure, she was introduced to many artists and vendors and to exhibition spaces hospitable to textile works.

But it was Wolsky, a former sales representative and freelance designer, who helped pave Gayle's career path by offering her a position as her assistant. "Maxine Gayle was looking for a way to get more involved in the community," Wolsky recalls, "as well as retain her activity in the arts, so we were able to provide her with an environment in which she could flourish and then gain access to other community institutions."

HTW, a subsidiary of the Children's Art Carnival (CAC), is this year celebrating 10 years of providing employment and training to local artists. Housed in a loft in East Harlem, HTW has remained the sole independent design studio in Harlem. Wolsky vividly remembers the days when only a small team of students worked through the HTW internship program. That program, which has recently doubled its number of interns to 20, has since become nationally recognized for its innovative arts programming. (In April, interns were featured in a segment of ABC World News Tonight on HTW's 10th anniversary.)

Arriving afternoons after school, HTW interns receive training in their fields of interest from professional artists. In the process, they create T-shirts, shower curtains, and other home textiles and accessories. These students (many are also enrolled in visual arts high schools and undergraduate programs; others come from CAC's communication arts program) are able to apply the techniques used in their classes to the work being done at the loft.

In addition, HTW has sought to create an environment in which students not only employ the basics of textile design, but also have the opportunity to learn sales, marketing, and effective negotiation of licensing agreements and other business contracts.

Jamila Swift, a 23-year-old Syracuse University student who began working at HTW three days a week while finishing her studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, is most excited about her latest possibility: developing new designs at HTW for license to Springs Industries. Swift heard about HTW during her junior year and decided she wanted to spend her last year of college working there, conducting workshops, aiding fund-raising efforts and performing clerical duties. Her decision was soon well rewarded.

HTW has become known for its series of Afrocentric T-shirts and home textiles manufactured and distributed by Springs Industries for J.C. Penney. "Elo" (1994), a new design for Springs that was released in July, was inspired by tie-dyeing techniques used in Nigeria.

It is the innovative work of HTW's interns that has channeled a shift in the studio's design concepts. "Our ability to create the 'now-so-popular' Afrocentric designs makes us an attractive resource," Wolsky explains. "Corrupted Calligraphy" (1994) will, as she puts it, "begin to expand [our] designs and lead us in a new direction."

Created by 17-year-old Janhoi Reid, "Corrupted Calligraphy" is an impelling configuration of black, abstracted characters on a white background. The passage from multicolored patterns based on African visual culture to this monochromatic formation is a testament to the urban environment in which HTW finds itself, an environment that the students cannot ignore.

And it is an environment that businesses won't ignore. The skills of HTW's students were recognized last year, when, for the first time, HTW paired up with Hallmark to create Kwanzaa cards that feature the students' textile designs. "Even though Hallmark has the world's largest creative staff," says the card company's design manager, Ann Ottewill, "the strength and spirit of the designs created by the young people at Harlem Textile Works was extremely inspiring to our artists."

Wolsky met with Hallmark this August to lay out plans for the coming Kwanzaa season and beyond. "Hopefully," she says, "during the next year we'll see more products and better distribution of the Harlem Textile Works designs on Hallmark cards." More products means party items, such as paper plates, napkins and gift wrap.

According to Wolsky, Hallmark is making an effort to "create a better interest in diversity and humanity." Emphasizing a fact that is often overlooked, she adds, "Our designs go beyond those products that are geared toward African Americans."

The recent success of licensing contracts with both Springs Industries and Hallmark Cards has given HTW a needed influx of earned income. While this income covers approximately 30 percent of the school's annual budget, Wolsky plans to pursue new markets. With the HTW name now printed on all of its work, Wolsky has received more and more mail-order requests, and she would like to start an exclusive HTW catalog. "As a marketing handle," she says, "our project and name can be easily recognized by African-American consumers and customers who want to give back in a socially responsible, creative manner."

After 10 years of work with HTW, looking toward the future and exploring new directions for its programs, Wolsky is still as dedicated as ever to her students, and she keeps track of them. She is especially proud of Wilda Gonzalez, who left HTW in 1990 to teach at CAC and is now the recreation coordinator at the Hub, a recreation center in the South Bronx that is an agency of Planned Parenthood.

Many of Wolsky's students have continued to work in the field, finding positions as creative directors at other youth agencies. "I can relate to them in a way where I see them as almost a reflection of myself when I was their age," she explains. "Some of them come from or go to the same schools that I went to. Many of them have the same challenges that I did in terms of trying to link their creative talents with vocational objectives."

Some students will take what they learned at HTW to help guide them along new paths. Hamis Abdul-Hakim, a 17-year-old student at Fiorello H. La Guardia High School for Music, Art and Performing Arts, has been coming to HTW since he was in the eighth grade. "When I first came, I did odd jobs, delivery," he says. "I couldn't wait to get my hands on the shirts. And then one day I did."

Since then, he has been involved mostly in production, printing the fabric for shower curtains and many of the T-shirts that HTW sells. But his focus will remain on his first love, health services. "Art was always just a hobby," he says. As he continues his studies in physical therapy at Hunter College this year, he will value his time at HTW for helping him ease the pressure of his school-work, a privilege of which he often has to remind himself. "Sometimes I forget how fortunate I am to be at a job with people who make it fun," he says.

For the next generation of students, HTW will continue its six programs--fabric design workshops, art services to organizations, internships, licensing, exhibitions and tours of its loft space. Wolsky, however, has remained conservative in the choices she has made, expanding slowly while keeping the most effective programs intact. In a city like New York, where businesses often expand beyond their means, this might be her most innovative programming idea of all.

The Children's Art Carnival (CAC),

founded in 1969 as a community outreach program of the Museum of Modern Art, became an independent, nonprofit art school in 1972. Directed by Betty Blayton-Taylor, CAC is a pioneer in integrating art activities into other curriculum areas and for that reason has been cited as a model for the nation.

CAC is located in Harlem and serves minority youths, ages 4 to 21, in the greater New York area. Many of CAC's students have gone on to specialized high schools and to colleges and universities, but its success can also be measured by the pride that its graduates take in themselves and their abilities.

In 1984, Blayton-Taylor established Harlem Textile Works as a subsidiary of CAC. Under the direction of Kerris Wolsky, children ages 15 to 21 work alongside professional artists and graphic designers to produce designs rich in African-American heritage.

Currently, the school's students produce T-shirts, table linens, shower curtains, decorative pillows and accessories. Fabric by the yard is also available. For more information, contact Harlem Textile Works at (212) 534-3377.

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