Now Available for Purchase: Prints by Mierle Laderman Ukeles

One Year’s Work Time II (1984/2016) was a major component of the Queens Museum’s exhibition Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Maintenance Art (2016). Originally conceived for her 1984 exhibition Touch Sanitation Show at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, the work presents an entire year of 8-hour work shifts, at five days a week—as Ukeles says, “a great humane U.S. invention.” The color choices come from conversations with the sanitation workers Ukeles met during Touch Sanitation Performance (1979-80). Clock faces are layered over work-related forms from Sanitation offices.

The background color of the screen-prints varies by season, starting with spring green, merging into summer blue, shifting into autumnal maroon, and abruptly jumping into snow emergency red-orange. Re-conceived in 2016 for the Queens Museum’s Large Wall, the full-scale work loomed over and around viewers, visible in a single glance, with a strange colorful layering of natural and human time.

“This work has another name,” says Ukeles. “It is ‘Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.’ Psalm 90:12. I treasure it as one my father’s favorite sayings.”

The From One Year’s Work Time II series are prints that were made for One Year’s Work Time II but not used in the installation. A group of four includes one print from each of the four seasons. Two groupings of three are also available, one capturing the movement from spring to summer, the other capturing the movement from summer to fall.

To purchase a print or for any further inquiries, please email Victoria Pittl at vpittl@queensmuseum.org

$4,000 From One Years Work Time II: Seasons, 1984/2016 (set of 4, unframed)

$2,500 From One Years Work Time II: Summer/Fall, 1984/2016 (set of 3, unframed)

$2,500 From One Years Work Time II: Spring/Summer, 1984/2016 (set of 3, unframed)

Mierle Laderman Ukeles is represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts

Image: Mierle Laderman Ukeles, One Year’s Work Time II, 1984/2016