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.