Ashley Janke and the White Table series

Ashley Janke has been facilitating international and local artistic exhibitions, showcasings and performances since 2010 through her curatorial practice of the nAbr Gallery (nAbr is an acronym standing for “not a bed-room,” and is pronounced as “neighbor”). In an ongoing project called White Table, Janke expands upon elements of context, event-coordination and platforming by setting a stage for a series of events that belie the conventional parameters of curation, engendering artwork that is experiential, affective and personal.

The concept of the table was the inspiration for the series. Growing up, Janke’s parents owned and operated a restaurant The Steakhouse Depot in Plymouth, Wisconsin. “Hosting” was always natural for Janke, who began hosting dinners out of her home in Riverwest for artist friends, and eventually their extended communities. Janke also grew up with legacy passed down from her Grandmother’s grandmother in the form of an egg bread recipe. Fresh Janke family bread was a staple of these lively events.

In the process of hosting these informal dinners, Janke noticed the centrality of the table as an object, both as something to conform to, and something to come together around, and wondered about its limitations and potentials. She noticed how spaces ended up configuring groups of people and sometimes dividing them.

“Gatherings are a big part of artist culture,” says Janke.

Harnessing the medium of gatherings for new purposes and to create synergistic, productive events became her next task.

“What can happen at a table, and where can it exist?” asks Janke.

The White Table series is a multi-faceted, compounding, character-driven, contemporary answer to this question. The table itself, co-designed and constructed by Ashley and Tim Stoelting, is a lightly varnished wooden table, built as a “mobile, modular platform (composed) of segments.” The table’s placticity has allowed for conferences, dinners, poker tournaments and, on Wednesday, April 18, and Friday, April 20, radio-broadcast events to take place around it.

The LUCKY FELLOWSHIP, a project by Paul Druecke, was an underwritten poker tournament played on March 31 around the White Table. Players were nominated by Druecke and Janke, and the recipient of the winnings was to be an artist chosen by the winning player. Players included artists Oliver Sweet, Khine Hline, Allison Heape, Steve Strupp and Neil Gasparka. The event raised $140, the winner was Khine Hline who chose Tim Stoelting as Fellowship Recipient.

Janke put out a call to friends and artists in the city for the staging of her MIAD thesis, inviting a select group of specific individuals to meet around the table in the gallery space at MIAD, amongst the varied thesis projects of her peers. This gathered group of artists and arts professionals on Wednesday included Sara Daleiden, Xav Leplae, Gary Tuma, Sarah Luther, and Tyler Roberts, among others. The group conversed about the environment of Milwaukee as a habitat for working artists in front of gallery on-lookers. The conversation was recorded and produced by Riverwest Radio and broadcast live over the MIAD PA system.

Janke balks at the descriptor of “artist” to describe her practice. Instead, she sees herself as an Art Director, combining ingredients, in the case of the White Table series, cooking up salon-style gatherings of artists based on her own tastes and resources.

Listen below for the Riverwest Radio conversations.