Berwick program is all part of the process

Meg Rotzel works well in the cold. On a recent Sunday, the volunteer executive director of the Berwick Research Institute sits at a table with her laptop, wearing a brightly striped woolen ski cap that brings out the blue in her eyes. She estimates the temperature in the Dudley Square building where the Berwick is located to be about 55 degrees.

As usual, life at the Berwick is in transition. The heat is off because the nonprofit arts agency, which specializes in nurturing work by noncommercial, cross-disciplinary young artists, is in the middle of renovating.

At the same time, Rotzel is putting together "BRI:AIR," an exhibition at the Boston Center for the Arts' Mills Gallery up through March 27 spotlighting the work of Berwick's Artist in Research residency program. Two other Berwick members, Matthew Christensen and Ben Durrell, hammer and drill at a plywood pod, a portable studio space they're disassembling to take to the Mills.

Adaptability is the Berwick's MO. The group, which started in 2000 as a collective of 10 artists (half of them still undergrads in art school), put down roots in an old whoopie pie factory in Dudley Square.

"We had drag king shows, traveling art shows, dance performances. The space looked different every week," says Rotzel, 28. She rattles off some examples: "A black box theater, an orchestra, a lecture on love. Everything that people in the Boston scene couldn't find a place to produce, we had a space for."

The box office from the events sustained the Berwick -- until the summer of 2003, when the Boston Inspectional Services Department shut the place down.

"We had few violations, but not a permit for entertainment," Rotzel says. "They considered us a nightclub."

The collective was forced to regroup. To pay the rent, they decided to convert their square footage into studio space. That's the renovation going on now. As for the events -- they would produce them at other venues.

Through it all, the Artist in Research program kept up steam. From the beginning, artists inspired by the Berwick's maverick energy wanted to make art there.

Amy Sharp was the first Berwick Artist in Research. She'd been in lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001. She came home to Boston, needing to make work to deal with that experience.

"It was a huge honor," Sharp, 33, says of the artist-in-residence opportunity. The Berwick provided room and time to do her art, as well as community, emotional support, and critiques. Sharp recalls how Berwick members showed up to help her move materials -- 80 aquariums -- from her nearby apartment to the studio. "We made this human chain and passed aquariums down the sidewalk," she marvels. One member, Zach Katz, left her a big box of tea, with the expectation of long chats over warm cups.

"I didn't have to give them anything but conversation," Sharp says. "There was a lot of room for experimenting, and for projects to fail. It was important to not need a show at the end."

Following Sharp's residency, the Berwick formalized the AIR program and received a three-year grant from the LEF Foundation to provide stipends for the artists. What distinguishes the Berwick's program from many others is the emphasis on process rather than product. At the end of a two-month stint, nobody is expected to have work to exhibit.

But three years after her residency, Sharp does have work to show at the Mills Gallery, work that she's done since but that ties in to the theme of grief and loss: a large American flag in shades of black, what she calls "a flag of mourning."

Vaughn Bell, 26, was at the Berwick last spring. Bell specializes in creating portable living landscapes. During her time there, she built an indoor biosphere. Her residency ended with a closing performance, at which visitors could adopt a small piece of earth and take it home.

To be consistent with AIR's process-oriented approach, the Mills Gallery will host rotating artists-in-residence in the plywood studio brought over from the Berwick as well as host performances.

"Some residencies will run there for days. Some will be more like, you come in and I'll do this project with you," says Rotzel, who makes and performs art that hinges on interaction. "We'll have the feeling of the studio within the gallery space."

The AIR show roster is wide-ranging, from Bell's living landscapes to John Osorio Buck's pirate radio station to David Webber's low-tech robotics. What they often share is a desire to reach beyond traditional art audiences, themes and materials. Many of the artists, whose work is documented in the book "BRI*air Volume 1," address issues of personal and community space, of intimacy, loneliness, and connection.

Many alternative spaces grapple with these ideas all the time.

"So many alternative galleries have lost their spaces or have been struggling," says Mills Gallery curator Laura Donaldson. The Oni Gallery, like the Berwick, shut its doors after a failed city inspection last year. Mobius, after decades in its Fort Point Channel space, fell victim to redevelopment.

"The Berwick gives people a chance to help themselves," says Donaldson. "In this city, where a lot of young people out of school have ideas but haven't established the network of support and feedback, it's a great thing."

The Mills, also a nonprofit, is in a good position to show work that is often more about experience than object, and thus hard to sell. Donaldson is excited, and apprehensive, about how the show will be received.

"There are so many performances and happenings," Donaldson says. "John Osorio Buck does an activity/intervention/performance and then documents it. Or Ken Linehan's sound works -- the audience has to interact with his machinery. You feel a little bit nervous with that element of interaction. Even having that studio lab space -- it's so much about somebody working through the idea."

Back in Dudley Square, Rotzel sees yet more solid ground for the Berwick ahead -- despite the agency's ever-ephemeral programming. For one thing, she'd like to see a paid staff.

"We've been around five years. Our structure and identity have really solidified in the last three," she says. "It's time."