Martin Roth
martinroth.org
Martin Roth with Time In
In the early winter of 2002, a few short months after our world had been turned upside down by 9/11, HiArt! took over a studio in the still rather run down Starrett Lehigh building that had been housing White Box's Annex, Juan Puntes still had a lot of art stored in the back room.
One day, a very short time after we moved in, White Box’s intern, a thin, rather fragile looking, young man, came into our studio to move some of art out for Juan. We were in the middle of teaching, so we didn’t pay much attention.
However, an hour later the “mover” returned to ask if he could intern for us as well, and so it happened that a 24 year-old Martin Roth, became HiArt!’s first intern.
Martin understood and loved children in such a profound way. Overlooking the Hudson, our HiArt! land was one of of infinite possibilities. There were extraordinary young artists, luscious opera, burgeoning Chelsea and endless hopefulness.
Christine Frerichs and I would often fret that Martin looked run-down, that he wasn’t feeling well - we did at some point find out that he had been in a serious accident as a teenager - we worried about this girlfriend or that, and that he was bartering art to pay his doctor because he didn’t have enough money, but whatever the worries and mysteries of life with Martin were, he was always present and his “real" life never interfered with his devotion to children.
As HiArt! grew - and Martin grew up - he began teaching his own classes: workshops that rocked the minds of his students forever. There is a beautiful picture that I have yet to rediscover - but it’s somewhere - of Martin and Joanna Penna dressed as Diego Rivera and Frieda Kahlo teaching a Holiday Camp at the Guggenheim Museum.
I seem to remember that Martin had a pillow under his shirt to look more Diegoish. And I remember Adam Caplan as a young Martin Roth acolyte printing up his own fake dollars, and Zoë Greenbaum working on wild installations in Martin’s sculpture and installations workshop.
These were simply unspeakably beautiful and creative days that changed the lives of so many children, and, frankly, of all of us.
Martin Roth
Throughout everything, Martin was making art: wonderful, price-sticker obsessed, politically-conscious art that called out a late-capitalist consumerist economy with tongue-in-cheek humor, inspiring all of us to keep on keeping on.
Zoë Greenbaum as a student in Martin Roth’s Installation class at HiArt! & TimeIn’s studio in the Starrett Lehigh Building circa 2006.
On October 3, 2006 Time In began. If there were ever a project made to order for someone, Time In was it for Martin. It combined his love of children, his inordinate generosity of spirt, his incredible willingness to work selflessly, and his commitment to kindness and generosity as the antidotes to prejudice, racism and classism.
Time In’s tireless little band was made up of Martin, Christine Frerichs, Sydney Chastain-Chapman (Navarro), Danielle Garcia, Jazzminh Moore and a few friends and workers who had not the least doubt that we really could change the world.
Everything that we had cut our teeth on in HiArt! was now poured into making this extraordinary, interdisciplinary arts-immersive experience into a normal part of the school day for some of the city’s most vulnerable children.
Martin Roth Selling Out
Martin Roth Selling Out
With the blessing of Sharon Dunn at the DOE 30 PK and K students from PS 241 in Harlem began a new life at the center of the art world.
They were bused out of school every week to HiArt! In the middle of their school day every week. They came either to the studio or they would meet us at galleries or museums. They had no clue that every NYC public school student wasn’t doing exactly the same thing.
“Time In gave meaning to all of our lives, not just kids’ lives.
And as I reflect on how Martin’s work became involved with growth, nurturing, performance and transformation, I realize just how much his many years at HiArt! and Time In were an integral part of that shift. ”
Martin’s ducklings at Hunter, learning how to comport themselves in the world, are a very short step away from the nurturing that was at the core of Time In.
The idea that one could create permeable walls between worlds and that the inhabitants could shift from world to world as they realized their potential for change, is very much part of the magical thinking that was at the heart of Martin’s later work.
Martin Roth in july 2015 I shipped debris from the syrian border to use as bird litter, 2015
