NYE FFARRABAS: Truth IS A Verb

Curated by Mark S. Waskow, President
Northern New England Museum of Contemporary Art (NNEMoCA)

Nye Ffarrabas, formerly Bici Forbes Hendricks, although creating art almost as soon as she was conscious, came to be a public-facing and engaged artist at a particular time and a particular place. The time was the early and mid-1960s, and the place was New York City. At this point in time, New York was the epicenter of the experimental and creative laboratory that was Fluxus. Fluxus encouraged the view that life and art were inseparable, and in some respects, one and the same. Art was not an end-product, an object, but a creative energy; a creative process. Many Fluxus works focus on this process and are scores to perform or kits with which to engage in specific activities in order to enact certain events. Fluxus was one of the most recent major postmodernist art communities. Nye was in the center of this heady soup and contributed to it in many major ways, yet her work is still being ‘discovered.’ She may be one of the most historically significant UnderKnown artists ever!

Nye worked amongst many of the well-recognized contemporary artists at the time. She had ongoing correspondence and frequently collaborated with: Allan Kaprow, Ay-O, Yoko Ono, Claes Oldenburg, Dick Higgins, Bern Porter, Iris Lezak, Ben Vautier, Carolee Schneeman, Mieko Shiomi, John Cage, George Brecht, Robert Filiou, Al Hansen, Ray Johnson, John Lennon, Jackson Mac Low, Wolf Vostell, Peter Moore, Nam June Paik, Ely Raman, Robert Watts, Emmett Williams, Charlotte Moorman, George Maciunas, and of course, her former husband and partner, Geoffrey (Geoff) Hendricks, and many others. These artists have become household names. Their places in the art historical cannon have been ensured. The cultural continuum is still ‘gelling’ around Nye and her work.

Using one body of work, Mailing Cards, it is possible to see the spirit of shared interest and energy within this large group of artists. Beginning in 1965 and continuing through at least 1968, Nye (as Bici) and Geoff Hendricks had koans, aphorisms, and other small phrases printed, often with bold imagery on small cards crediting the writer. This practice started with their own work, individually, jointly, and with other family members joining in and being acknowledged. It expanded to include seven artists, and comprised at least nineteen cards, which were published and distributed. Interestingly, many, many artists responded to these mailings by either attempting to answer the often-rhetorical question(s) posed on the card, or in some other way acknowledging its effect, including suggestions for other card designs and phrases. Often the responding artist would send the recently received card back to the sender (Bici) with their thoughts written directly on it.

As Jon Hendricks[1], the artist, curator, political activist, manager of the basement Judson Gallery at the Judson Memorial Church – the nexus of Fluxus activities in New York City in the mid-1960s and the site of Nye’s first public exhibition, and since 2008, the Fluxus Consulting Curator of the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection at the Museum of Modern Art – said in a written contribution to the catalogue accompanying the ambitious 50th Anniversary Retrospective of Nye’s work, created and presented by the C.X. Silver Gallery here in Brattleboro, VT, “Nye Ffarrabas: a walk on the inside” in 2014:

“It’s about time! The art world has been asleep for 50 years, dreaming of market amazements and petty talents. There has been so little effort to look back, to look up, to look down, to look forward. Perhaps it can be rationalized in some bizarre way that they didn’t see at the time when it was first done, but what excuse is there to take 50 years to uncover the important body of works of Nye Ffarrabas. Careers have been made on the backs of her pioneering art works,….”[2]  

A few quotes from the recently published, “A Pocketful of White Noise: a cat door in to The Friday Book”, also from the C.X. Silver Gallery[3], will help the reader to better understand the depth of this artist and her commitment to an anti-capitalist approach to visual art, which drew great strength from the human spirit and creativity, constantly visualizing a world made better through art’s contributions.

“What is the function of art in all of this? The function of art is ever-educative and always non-didactic!

It reacquaints us with truths which our environment and our own pressing needs have forced us to ignore, distort, and suppress. 

It puts us in touch with our own ways of knowing, and its methods are nonrational, oblique, defying analysis.

Art is dangerous, because it threatens the foundations of our assurances; irreverent because it challenges our myths.

Art is devious, because it works in us by surprise.

Art is sacred, because it can compel us to be honest.

Art is subversive, because its insights can cause changes in our lives.”[4]

“The viewer is an active partner in a process, not an inert or passive ‘object’ that is acted upon by outside forces. And art is the process, not an object, either.

Perhaps it is this misapprehension of art-as-object, with a market value, and quite separable from its function as catalyst of consciousness-which has led to confusion about the propriety of “an art of destruction.”

Perhaps it is the fear of our own impermanence, which is dramatized by an impermanent art form; a refusal to admit the reality of change.

Perhaps it is our conditioned fear of diminishment (as an object melts, or is broken apart), and loss of restraint: (breaking is so “negative” and “violent”). 

We insist that artistic subject matter should be “clean” and “seemly,” and its effects “beautiful” – or at least “pretty”! But our world is one of shipwreck and decay, as well as pleasure.”[5]  

These thoughts were summarized and extracted into this book from the “Friday Book of White Noise,” a conceptual sketchbook maintained primarily by Nye (as Bici), beginning in 1962, to record her creative output and initially that of Geoff Hendricks as well. Nye’s contributions continued for most of the following decade.

A decade after her 50-year retrospective, and at the age of 92, Nye is still quite active and creating artwork! It is intended that rather than cover the same ground so thoroughly explored by the comprehensive exhibition mentioned previously, this one will focus on the activities of The Black Thumb Press, primarily founded and developed by Nye (as Bici) and with some contributions from Geoff Hendricks, in 1965, to expand visual and verbal stimuli, encourage exploration, investigate new forms of intermedia, and to generally serve as an engine of change in the world, all the while not falling for the catchy or the trendy in either art or society at large. Also, it is the desire of this exhibition to demonstrate through various related works and ephemera, and the reactions of the art world at the time, that the significance of Nye’s work is made clear through its context in the cultural zeitgeist.

Nye has been searching for Truth for her entire life. This is the type of quest that can certainly last for ages, as truth is a rather enigmatic and subjective idea or quality. It is in fact, just like art, not an object. Truth is an action. Truth IS a verb!  

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1 Wikipedia Citation

2 Silver, Adam, ed., Nye Ffarrabas: a walk on the inside-50 year retrospective, C.X. Silver Gallery, LLC, Brattleboro, Vermont, 2014, Pg. 17. 

3 Ffarrabas, Nye, A Pocketful of White Noise: a cat door in to The Friday Book, C.X. Silver Gallery Press, Brattleboro, Vermont, 2024. 

4 Ibid, Pgs. 142 and 143 

5 Ibid, Pgs. 143 and 144