Exhibitions 2013-2014 - National Performance Network

Transcription

VISUAL
ARTISTS K
NETWOR
Exhibition
2013-2014 s
VISUAL
ARTISTS K
NETWOR
Exhibition
2013–2014s
Contents
page 6
Essay:
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Visual Artists Network
Exhibitions 2013–2014
Publication © 2014 National Performance Network.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced in any manner in any media or
transmitted by any means whatsoever, electronic
or mechanical (including photocopy, film or
video recording, internet posting or any other
information storage retrieval system), without the
prior written consent of NPN.
ISBN-13: 978-1501067792
ISBN-10: 1501067796
Design & Production: Big Tada Inc with Ian Hewitt-Woods
Editor:
Alec De León
Additional copies of this publication may be
downloaded in PDF from www.npnweb.org/
resources/ or printed bound copies ordered from
Amazon.com.
National Performance Network
PO Box 56698
New Orleans, LA 70156
504.595.8008 // telephone
504.595.8006 // fax
[email protected]
2
VISUAL ARTISTS NETWORK Exhibitions 2013–2014
on the front cover
John Hitchcock & Emily Arthur
Chemically Wasted Warhorse, 2011
screenprint & drawing
44 x 30 inches
page 9
ns
Exhibitio
page 10
Mazzotta
Matthew
page 14
e ed
nan Rash
a
J
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la
e
e
Kam
page 18
Laser
Liz Magic
page 22
rum
Joe Mang
page 26
s-Tama
José Torre
page 28
er s
Shani Pet
page 32
astaño
Carolyn C
page 34
g
Nin Truon
page 38
bert
Steve Lam
page 42
man
Selina Ro
page 46
hcock
John Hitc
page 46
hur
Emily Art
page 50
enfeld
Erika Blum
page 54
Pozzi
Nathalie
page 54
erman
Eric Zimm
page 58
rown
Gabriel B
page 61
xter
Debra Ba
page 82
Wu Tsang
page 86
ufman
Allison Ka
page 90
rince
Steve A. P
page 94
eyer
Andrea G
page 98
E
arez UNIV
Vargas-Su
page 102
Ian Etter
page 64
ehand
Darin For
page 106
page 66
ndry
Katrina A
page 110
page 70
Castillo
page 114
page 74
sman
Eric Gotte
page 116
page 78
ble
Aaron No
RSAL
ieben
Michael S
ldes
Juana Va
Chuc
Charles “
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Bob Snea
page 118
Akiko Ko
tani
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page 122
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page 123
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page 123
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page 125
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Info
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page 129
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National
Perf
At the time of this writing, the world has been having an ugly year. Russia has invaded
the Crimean Peninsula, perhaps they simply liberated it from Ukrainian rule, depending
on whom you ask, or maybe those Russian soldiers really are just on vacation in fabulous
Donetsk. Racial tensions in Ferguson, MO reached a flash point following the killing of
Michael Brown, an unarmed African American youth, by one of the town’s white police
officers. ISIS has emerged as a terrifying force, reinforcing their ideological goals with
gruesome beheadings, and bloody promises. And, this awful list would be incomplete
without mentioning the Ebola outbreak affecting Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Liberia and Guinea.
Over 2,000 people have already died from the virus and thousands of others have likely
been infected. Is there a way to curb all of this death, destruction, and conflict? The most
definitive answer that can be given is as follows: I don’t know.
But who is to blame? Where is the scapegoat? Everyone
knows that it’s the other political party’s fault, or the other
country’s fault. If it weren’t for their meddling, the people of
the world would be living in a post-war, post-racial utopia. If
it weren’t for Big Oil or Big Pharma, or video games or trashy
reality television everything would be just fine. It is always
good to have the perfect enemy, someone or something
that everyone can rally against. But sadly, that is never the
case. The answer is much more complex: There are no simple
answers. Nothing is black and white; instead things are
varying shades of muddy, dirty gray.
6
It seems that the normal, official powers that are supposed
to be in charge aren’t really doing a great job. The economy is
still shaky, polarizing political rhetoric has never been more
prevalent and money seems to be tainting the democratic
process of this nation. There are a lot of great ways to botch
things, but it is less clear how to improve things, to make
things better. That makes sense, according to the laws of
entropy, which in a nutshell states that disorder and chaos
is easier to achieve than structured, ordered harmony. If you
need a concrete example, release a toddler into a room full
of books on a shelf. Many of those books are going to end up
on the floor. But, great change can occur from continuous,
constant action, even if it is miniscule in comparison to
the obstacle. It took approximately 17 million years for the
Colorado River to carve out the Grand Canyon.
Speaking of large, obstructionist bodies,
perhaps it is time to address government.
There are different schools of thought
about government and how involved it
should be in the lives of its people. On one
end of the spectrum, government should
be involved very minimally, providing
protection from foreign invaders, criminals
and little else. On the other end, the
government should fund the military,
police, firefighters, healthcare, schools,
roads, infrastructure and the arts. Other
views of government suggest that a moral
authority should censor movies, songs and
books. There are so many variations of the
ideal; it is no wonder that things get stuck
in the middle, log-jammed. Remember the
government shutdown of 2013? That was
a real hoot. However, in the absence of
solutions from government, it is up to the
people to act, to chip away at the problems
that stand in the way of progress, well, if
they feel like it. And well, that is exactly what has been happening. Everyone,
whether they have money, power, knowledge, skills or
none of the above, can help change the status quo, bit by
bit. Compassion, kindness and understanding don’t cost
anything, but can go a long way. And then, things start
to happen: goals start aligning, solutions gain traction,
momentum builds and all of a sudden, change occurs. In
fact, it is up to everyone to do what they can.
It appears that this is happening to the Visual Artists
Network (VAN). VAN was established in 2007 because
there was a vacuum in the visual arts world; no one else
seemed to be doing the work that needed to be done. The
National Performance Network (NPN) had existed since
1984, and it served as a model for what VAN could be. NPN
created a forum where performing artists, curators and
presenters could come together to talk shop, share resources
and knowledge. It allowed dancers from the Midwest to
connect with curators on the West Coast, playwrights
from Appalachia to meet colleagues from New England.
A fundamental characteristic of this network was its
egalitarianism. All were treated as peers.
VAN was born from NPN. It was hoped that VAN could
replicate what NPN had done for the performing arts
world. So far, it seems to be working. VAN started out pretty
simply as a pilot project. At first, it consisted of seven arts
organizations or “VAN Partners” and seven artists. Art was
exhibited. Artists were paid! The participants were invited to
meet and discuss the merits and challenges of the program.
The results of the experiment were positive and encouraged
further growth. Beginning with these small steps, and the
support of dedicated funders, now, eight years later, there
are 17 VAN Partners and over 100 artists have participated in
the VAN program.
VAN has also been growing in ways that are not describable
in quantitative terms. Key goals of the program include:
To help artists expand their careers, to provide a source for
peer relationships to develop and to strengthen the visual
arts field. There are many examples of artists who have
been proactive and use the opportunities that a network
can provide. Artists like Jorge Rojas, Steve Lambert, Leticia
Bajuyo, Marina Zurkow, Theodore Harris and the Bridge
Club collective have exhibited their work at multiple VAN
and NPN Partner sites. Bajuyo was recently elected to the
NPN/VAN Board of Directors. Artists like Katrina Andry,
Colette Fu, Castillo, Benjamin Volta and Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle
have exhibited their work at recent NPN/VAN Annual
Meetings, which are the main networking events for many
contemporary artists and arts organizations.
Essay
7
However, VAN is not just about exhibiting artwork. The artists and organizations that
compose VAN are trying to make changes in society. They are a force for good in a world
that is indifferent and they work to address issues that affect the world outside of their
studios. So, within in the pages of this catalog, you will find artists such as Ian Etter and
Vargas-Suarez Universal, who are trying to inspire future generations to have an interest
in science and technology by using space exploration imagery. Artist Liz Magic Laser
raises awareness about the propaganda and rhetoric that politicians use to forward their
agendas. Steve Lambert takes uncomfortable questions and brings them out into the open
for people of many different backgrounds to discuss, and makes it fun. Shani Peters and
Juana Valdes dive deep into their respective multi-cultural backgrounds and examine how
their heritage is shaping their future.
It would be overly ambitious to say that art will save the
world. But from their corner of the world, the artists in
this catalog are making a difference by creating work that
is intensely personal, yet connects to others. If the Visual
Artists Network continues on that path it has begun, there is
reason to believe its impact will be deep and profound.
8
VISUAL
ARTISTS K
NETWOR
Exhibition
s
9
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Open H2, 2o012u& November 4 – 11, 2012
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Coleman
York, AL
Matthew Mazzotta holds a BFA from the Art Institute of
Chicago and a Master’s of Science in Visual Studies from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has completed
residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and
Sculpture, Peer Group: Portable Artist in Residency in Smalle
Ee, Netherlands, and at Gyeonggi Creation Center in Ansan,
Gyeonggi, Korea. In 2007 he was awarded the Americans
for the Arts Public Art Network Year in Review by jurors
Miwon Kwon and Larry Kirkland. His work has been shown
nationally and internationally and his recent The Park Spark
Project was widely discussed on NPR, CNN, and the BBC.
Open House, Mazzotta’s collaboration with the Coleman
Center for the Arts, received numerous awards including the
Public Art Network 2014 Year in Review Top Choice Award
and an Architizer A + Jury Award. In January of 2011 Matthew Mazzotta began working
with the Coleman Center for the Arts (CCA.) Adopting the
CCA methodology of developing projects through social
engagement, Mazzotta invited area residents to join him
for a creative discussion about public space in an “outdoor
living room.” Sitting in an outdoor living room nestled inside
of orange cones on the middle of Avenue A, area residents
brought items from their homes to lend to the outdoor
living room. The conversation that followed highlighted
participants love for York but also their frustration with the
community’s loss of public space, the spread of blight and
the lack of racially integrated and secular social spaces. The
conversation served as an impetus for Open House which
has transformed a blighted property into a public outdoor
theater in downtown York.
10
Open House is a sculpture in the shape of a house that
transforms into outdoor seating for 100 people. The
project transformed a blighted property in York — a
private space negatively impacting public space — into a
public space now used for movie screenings, community
meetings, performance, celebration, dialogue, fellowship
and community.
The foundation of the work is made of locally sourced
railroad ties, and on top of this sits the central row of
seats — five church pew style rows graduated in height.
When closed these rows are covered with ten symmetrical
sections, five on each side, that unfold into flanks of seats.
Custom designed industrial hinges anchor the sections to
the foundation that open with the help of a marine winch
crank and enough man power to counter balance the hefty
structure. Concealed compartments store various jacks and
tools needed for the transformation.
Matthew Mazzotta
Open House, 2012
dimensions variable
beginning transformation
photo: Shana Berger & Nathan Purath
Exhibitions
11
above
Matthew Mazzotta
Open House, 2012
dimensions variable
opening event movie
12
top right
Matthew Mazzotta
Open House, 2012
dimensions variable
opening event
bottom right
Matthew Mazzotta
Open House, 2012
dimensions variable
existing blighted property
Exhibitions
13
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– July 18,
2013
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Real Art W
Hartford,
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Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a photo-based conceptual
artist, archivist, writer, and youth educator in Brooklyn,
New York. She is the co-founder and curator of Mambu
Badu (mambubadu.com), and a Senior Editor of Art &
Photography at Specter (www.spectermagazine.com), a
magazine publishing literature, art, and photography from
emerging and experienced artists. She has exhibited her
work nationally at spaces including The Center for Book Arts,
The Hague Museum of Photography, and the Museum of
the African Diaspora.
Rasheed describes her mixed media collage series, No
Instructions for Assembly, as “containing multiple pasts in
the present,” created as a way to “explore the fractured
state of memory and the layered nature of autobiographical
narratives.” Rasheed organized eight “Excavation” sites
by using the gallery as a space to examine and connect
hundreds of items from her personal archive. By creating
this history without “instructions for assembly,” Rasheed
wove together materials intentionally gravitating
around eight portraits of her own family members. Her
exhibition included found photographs, images recovered
from estranged family members, advertisements and
articles torn from 1970s magazines, and Rasheed’s own
photographs printed on large glossy paper. The impetus to
carefully hoard these items stems from perhaps the most
authentic part of her collection—her family’s 10-year bout
of homelessness, evidenced in a set of salvaged, waterdamaged photographs. Each excavation of unearthed
and repurposed materials also becomes an investigation,
in which Rasheed revisits these items from her past “to
conjure her family back into existence.”
14
During her VAN residency, Rasheed worked with a class at
Capital Region Education Council’s [CREC] school Greater
Hartford Academy of the Arts. Rasheed led students in
creating assemblages of personal objects and images,
which they later photographed and incorporated into books
using a Japanese-style stab-binding method. This project
investigated the ways in which objects extracted from
an original context might be reassembled to create new
personal and collective histories.
Rasheed also spent four consecutive days directing a
project for local high school students offered at Real Art
Ways. Students learned to create assemblages and to use
collage and photocopy transfer techniques. Students were
then challenged to create an accordion book from a tightly
curated set of supplies.
Rasheed holds a BA in Africana Studies and Public Policy
from Pomona College and an Ed.M. in Secondary Education
with an emphasis in English Literature and History from
Stanford University. She is a Visiting Teaching Artist at
the Brooklyn Friends School and the Brooklyn Museum
Gallery/Studio Program. Selected residencies, fellowships
and honors include: Vermont Studio Center (2014),
Working Classroom (2014), Center for Book Arts (2013), The
Laundromat Project (2013), Juror for Center for Photography
at Woodstock residency (2013), and Center for Photography
at Woodstock (2012).
*This residency was also a 2013 VAN Community Fund
project. See page 125 for more information.
Kameelah Janan Rasheed
No Instructions for Assembly, 2013
chair, found photographs
dimensions variable
detail
photo: John Groo
Exhibitions
15
16
top & below
Artist talk at Real Art Ways
photos: John Groo
left
No Instructions for Assembly, 2013
digital photographs, found photographs, found religious pamphlets and
newspapers, American flag, skin bleach cream, prayer rug, found books,
prayer beads, nylons, glass jar, album cover, chair
dimensions variable
installation view
photo: John Groo
Exhibitions
17
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Laser
Liz Ma gwiwcw.lizmagiclaser.com
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March 27
013
– April 7, 2
orks
DiverseW
Houston,
TX
Liz Magic Laser’s live performances and videos often intervene
in semi-public spaces and have involved collaborations
with actors, dancers, surgeons, market research analysts,
and motorcycle gang members. Tell Me What You Want To
Hear is an extension of Laser’s previous work focused on the
relationship between the news media and the public, but
marks a new direction by enlisting actual journalists and
politicians to perform, rather than actors to play these roles.
Laser’s collaborators in Tell Me What You Want To
Hear participated in a series of workshops during her
residency in February 2013. These collaborators included
Nick Anderson, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist;
Shannon Buggs, journalist and Director of Communications
for the University of Houston’s College of Liberal Arts
and Social Sciences; Felipe Campos, artist, producer, and
educator; Maurice Duhon, realtor, former political candidate,
musician, and reality TV personality; Lizette Garcia, Broadcast
Journalism major at the University of Houston; Linda Lorelle,
Emmy Award-winning journalist and former KPRC-TV news
anchor; Sue Lovell, former Houston City Council member;
and Mustafa Tameez, founder and managing director of
Outreach Strategies, one of Texas’ leading public affairs firms.
From these workshops, a loose script was developed for what
ultimately became the three-channel video installation, Tell
Me What You Want To Hear.
Tell Me What You Want To Hear explores story-telling methods
and interview techniques employed by politicians and
newsmakers to elicit public support. Utilizing the format of
a political talk show, Tell Me What You What To Hear poses
a dialogue between political experts, the television media,
and the audience. As in Laser’s previous works, this project
18
staged a live situation in which an audience became a
character in the performance and resulting video. Dissecting
the emotive strategies used by politicians and newsmakers,
Laser exposes how factual information about the state of our
political, social, and economic reality is theatrically presented
to the public. Working with students from the University
of Houston’s Jack J. Valenti School of Communication,
performers, audience members, and the television studio
control room were videotaped and edited in real time with
the resulting footage presented in a three-channel video
installation at DiverseWorks. Laser invited the unpredictability
inherent in a live television event into her work, blurring
the line between the authentic moment and the artificially
performed one.
Liz Magic Laser lives and works in New York City. She is
a graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent Study
Program and Columbia University’s MFA program. Most
recently, her work was the subject of solo exhibitions at
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2013); the Westfälischer
Kunstverein, Münster, Germany (2013); and Mälmo Konsthall,
Mälmo, Sweden (2012). Her work has also been exhibited
at Lisson Gallery, London (2013); the Moscow Museum of
Modern Art (2012); Various Small Fires, Los Angeles (2012); The
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2012); the Performa 11
Biennial, New York (2011); The Pace Gallery, New York (2011); the
Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia (2011); and MoMA
PS 1, New York (2010). Laser was the 2013 Armory Show
Commissioned Artist.
*This residency was also a 2013 VAN Community Fund project.
See page 124 for more information.
above
Liz Magic Laser
Tell Me What You Want To Hear, 2013
3-channel HD video
60 minutes
installation view
photo: Eric Hester
below left
Liz Magic Laser
Mustafa Tameez, 2013
ink jet print mounted on Sintra board
16 x 24 inches
photo: Patrick Bresnan
below right
Liz Magic Laser
Maurice Duhon, 2013
ink jet print mounted on Sintra board
16 x 24 inches
photo: Patrick Bresnan
Exhibitions
19
20
above
Liz Magic Laser
exterior view of DiverseWorks
photo: Eric Hester
below
Liz Magic Laser
installation view
photo: Eric Hester
left
Liz Magic Laser
3-channel HD video
60 minutes
installation view
photo: Eric Hester
Exhibitions
21
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Since 2006, artist Joe Mangrum has taken to the streets
of New York, Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere armed
with sacks of colored sand that he sprinkles by the handful
to create sprawling temporary paintings. Each work is
spontaneous in its design and evolves as Mangrum works,
spending upwards of 6 to 8 hours hunched over the
ground to complete each piece. The artist estimates he has
completed nearly 550 paintings over the last few years. A
graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, his paintings have
appeared at The Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Museum of
Arts and Design in New York, as well as The Asia Society. He
has also made two appearances on the television program
Sesame Street. His works in progress are displayed on
Facebook and limited edition prints are available through
King Art Collective.
Joe Mangrum’s VAN exhibition residency culminated in the
creation of a sand mural installation as part of Redd Linen
Night, an annual event celebrating the life and work of
artist Douglas Redd, co-founder of Ashé Cultural Arts Center.
Mangrum worked on the mural for 6 hours during the
festivities of Redd Linen Night. The group exhibition featured
work by seventeen master artists and twenty student
artworks. The majority of the exhibition remained up for
two weeks; all art works in Redd Linen Night were viewed
by several hundred people. The sand mural Joe Mangrum
created live for Redd Linen Night remained on display until
May 17, 2013 and was “released” as part of the Dalai Lama’s
visit to New Orleans. Some of the sand from the mural was
scattered over the Mississippi River. The remainder of the
sand from the mural was donated to The Kuumba Institute,
Robert Moton Charter School and Kids of Excellence and
went on to create several hundred new murals.
22
This VAN exhibition residency enabled Ashé to continue
to embrace art as a tool for community development. It
also provided the opportunity to partner with other area
institutions. During Mangrum’s residency, Ashé partnered
with Mardi Gras Indian gang Guardians of the Flame and
Robert Moton Charter School. The work of Joe Mangrum
exposed students to visual art techniques and opportunities
to use sand as a medium—a new experience for many of
Ashé’s young artists. This residency also enabled Cherice
Harrison-Nelson, Big Queen of the Guardians of the Flame
Mardi Gras Indians, to share her cultural traditions. Viewing
the work of master artists along with the Mardi Gras Indian
culture gave students the chance to experience versatility
of craft and style as well as compare and contrast Joe
Mangrum’s Native American art with local traditions.
Joe Mangrum
Untitled, 2013
sand
20 x 20 feet
detail
photo: Alec De León
Exhibitions
23
24
above
Joe Mangrum
Untitled, 2013
sand
20 x 20 feet
completed sand painting with Redd Linen Night guests and
participating artists
photo: Joe Mangrum
below
Joe Mangrum
Student workshop at Robert Moton Charter School, 2013
sand, glue and paper
photo: Karel Sloane-Boekbinder
left
Joe Mangrum
Untitled, 2013
sand
20 x 20 feet
detail
photo: Alec De León
Exhibitions
25
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New Orle
April 17 –
22, 2014
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Birmingh
José Torres-Tama is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist.
He explores the Latino immigrant experience, the underbelly
of the North American Dream mythology, and New Orleans
Creole history through spoken word poetry, critical essays,
visual arts, short films, and performance art. He has worked
in the New Orleans arts community for twenty years, and
since 1995 he has toured nationally and internationally.
Space One Eleven’s programming includes local and national
artists who address themes of tolerance, social justice,
and the tearing down of geographic and racial barriers. In
keeping with this theme, José Torres-Tama’s work explores
the struggle of Latino immigrant workers in defense of their
human rights. This content was especially timely during
the 2013 commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the
Birmingham Civil Rights Movement.
Torres-Tama exhibited pastel drawings and assemblages,
including Photo Retablos: Immigrants in Chocolate City, a
series of assembled altars that document the Congress
of Day Laborers/El Congreso de Jornaleros and honors the
Latino immigrants who have contributed to the rebuilding
of post-Katrina New Orleans. The Latino immigrant
contribution to the rebuilding of New Orleans remains a
dirty little secret in the post-Katrina narratives, but José
Torres-Tama has been a fierce proponent in having Latinos
counted as part of the epic reconstruction.
The retablos are created from wooden drawers found on
the streets of New Orleans and transformed by the artist
into shadowboxes to house his photographic images. Each
retablo piece includes a working second hand clock that
pierces though the photographic images and ticks on
continuously as a moving element to literally symbolize
the beating hearts of immigrants who are ubiquitous at
construction sites but invisible to the general public. In the International Review of African American Art, writer
and curator Kristin Juarez wrote:
“Torres-Tama, concerend with uncovering buried realities,
emphasizes a marginalized community through the
intimacy of discarded objects and photographs. Laden with
a call for change, (…) Torres-Tama highlight[s a] complex and
interrelated social issue(…) that will steer the future course
of the South.”
26
Torres-Tama presented a highly engaging presentation
of visual art and performace practices as tools for social
change to students at the Unversisty of Alabama at
Birmingham. He was able to share his message with
members of the Hispanic community through the Hispanic
Interest Coalition of Alabama, and high school students of
Space One Eleven’s City Center Art program. Torres-Tama
met with the Southern Poverty Law Center and conducted
interviews with local news media. He presented an art
exhibition in Space One Eleven’s galleries which was of great
benefit to the viewers, as was the artist talk which was
given during the opening reception of his exhibition.
Torres-Tama is the recipient of a 2010 Creation Fund Award
by the National Performance Network, and is an award
recipient of the NEA and a 2008 award recipient of the Joan
Mitchell Foundation. In 2009 he was awarded a Louisiana
Division of the Arts grant, is a Louisiana Theater Fellow, and
received a 2005/06 Fund for the Arts Fellowship from the
National Association of Latino Arts and Culture.
above
José Torres-Tama
Photo Retablos and Drawings:
Somos Humanos/We Are Human, 2013
artist talk at Space One Eleven
photo: Walt Stricklin
below
José Torres-Tama
artist talk with students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham
photo: John Fields
Exhibitions
27
ers
Shani Pwewtw.shanipeters.com
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creen
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Steppin’ O
, NY
New York
April 25 –
13
May 5, 20
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Houston,
TX
Shani Peters is a New York based artist (born in Lansing, MI)
working in video, collage, printmaking, and social practice
public projects. Her work reflects interests in activism
histories, cultural record keeping, media culture, and
community building. Her 2013 Project Row Houses/ VAN
residency project centered around a screening of her 2012
video short Half Hasn’t Been Told which tells a fictionalized
narrative of Black and Native Americans by way of the actual
experience of her Osage great-great-grandmother. In the
video, her great-great-grandmother shares a model of her
actual home with a mixed-race, historically iconic, extended
family that organizes in solidarity with contemporary
Mexican Americans rights. This public art project combined a public screening
of the Half Hasn’t Been Told video with an interactive,
community supported art installation including life-size
cutouts of historical figures featured in the film, along with
intercultural Black and Native American food and music.
28
Peters completed her BA at Michigan State University and
her MFA at The City College of New York. She has exhibited,
screened and/or presented her work in the US and abroad,
including exhibitions at the Schomburg Center for Black
Culture and Research, the Brooklyn Academy of Music,
MoCAD Detroit, Project Row Houses, The Savannah College
of Art & Design, The Contact Theatre (UK), and Seoul Art
Space Geumcheon (SK). She has participated in multiple
residencies including programs hosted by The Center for
Book Arts, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Lower
East Side Printshop, the Bronx Museum of Art’s Artist in the
Marketplace program, apexart’s Outbound Residency to
Seoul, S. Korea, and The Laundromat Project. Peters’ work
has appeared in the Amsterdam News, Art Papers Magazine,
and The New York Times. above
Shani Peters
Steppin Out: Half Hasn’t Been Told, 2013
mixer and screening
Exhibitions
29
above
Shani Peters
mixer and screening
right
Shani Peters
Half Hasn’t Been Told, 2012
single channel video
30
above & left
Shani Peters
mixer and screening
Exhibitions
31
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June 7 – A
San José,
CA
Carolyn Castaño is a Los Angeles based artist whose work
explores the figures of Latin American political dramas
and drugs wars. Characters are depicted in a diversity of
materials ranging from glitter to rhinestones surrounded
by images of tropical flora, coca flowers and marijuana
leaves. Castaño’s paintings are beautified with motifs
fraught with cultural symbolism in an effort to provide
a point of access - beauty, nature, the exotic - to address
these struggles. Castaño’s interest is to ponder the human
toll of these events while also exploring established yet
paradoxical fantasies regarding wealth, love, criminality,
honor and beauty.
During her residency at MACLA, Castaño presented a
video, in a mock family room setting, depicting a Spanish
language on-air news report. The video, El Reporte Femenil/
The Female Report, features Castaño, in character, as
Colombian newscaster Silvia Godoy where she reports
on the past and current status of Latin America and, in
particular, the accomplishments and downfalls of women
south of the border.
32
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Castaño also worked with MACLA’s Peapod Adobe Youth
Voices Academy students from Summit High School. The
youth worked closely with Castaño to create their own
newscast/video project in which they revisited their
own stories, accomplishments and the obstacles they
overcome daily.
Carolyn Castaño lives and works in Los Angeles. She is a
graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute and the UCLA
School of Art and Architecture, as well as a California
Community Foundation Getty Fellow and recipient of the
prestigious C.O.L.A. Individual Artist Fellowship. Her work
was featured in LACMA’s critically acclaimed exhibition,
Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement, which
traveled to El Museo de Barrio, New York City, and the
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico
City, among other venues.
above
Carolyn Castaño
El Reporte Femenil/The Female Report, 2012
video
photo: Carolyn Castaño
left
Carolyn Castaño
Beauty Queen and Girlfriend (Laura Zuñiga), 2009
acrylic, glitter and mixed-media on canvas
60 x 48 inches
Exhibitions
33
g
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June 9 – 16
ive
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Philadelp
With a background in Landscape Architecture from the
University of Washington where he taught from 2001 to
2011, Seattle-based artist Nin Truong eventually found his
calling by merging his interests in skate culture with the
world of fashion and other design disciplines. With his
partner and co-principle Christa Thomas, he founded WKND
Studio – a design studio with a storefront coffee shop. He is
also the creative director of Maiden Noir, creative director
of Blk Pine Workshop and head menswear design for
Stussy International. In 2003, Truong co-curated a traveling
exhibition the Push Project, featuring eight established
artists investigating the aesthetics of skate culture.
In spring and summer 2013, Asian Arts Initiative (AAI)
invited Nin Truong to develop and create Skate Shop – a
youth-generated pop-up skate shop in the storefront
window of AAI’s Youth Arts Workshop (YAW) space
on Vine Street in Philadelphia’s Chinatown North/
Callowhill neighborhood. YAW’s space, a former hair salon
appropriately named “The Salon,” an integral part of AAI’s
new permanent home and multi-tenant arts facility on
Vine Street, offers an interesting opportunity to address
the intersections of urban history and youth access, as
well as the dynamism and challenges of the Vine Street
Expressway in its front yard – a formerly pedestrianfriendly corridor now split in two by Interstate 676.
34
Beginning in April 2013, Truong collaborated with
participants of the Youth Arts Workshop, staff, and local
teaching artist Nicole Schaller, to design their own mini
skateboards, stickers, t-shirts and other merchandise.
Within YAW – a tuition-free afterschool arts program for
youth grades 6-8 – Nin Truong guided students in exploring
creative economies, art and design, and skate cultureinspired concepts and aesthetics. Workshops included
field trips, guest speakers, and 2-D and 3-D design/build
workshops. The culmination of the project was the creation
of a “mock skate shop” that filled the storefront window of
“The Salon” and opened with a showcase of youth artwork
in June 2013.
The idea for Skate Shop: Nin Truong and Youth Arts Workshop
emerged in part out of Asian Arts Initiative’s desire to
further engage with its site-specific context – a commercial
corridor along the north side of the Vine Street Expressway
– as well as to create a youth arts and hang-out space
that addresses these circumstances. By activating YAW’s
storefront window, Skate Shop highlights both its historical
urban context and the importance of youth-focused spaces
beyond skate parks in a rapidly changing urban terrain.
Nin Truong
Skate Shop, 2013
multimedia installation
storefront view
photo: Tim Kyuman Lee
Exhibitions
35
above
Nin Truong
Skate Shop, 2013
merchandise created by students in the Skate Shop
right
Nin Truong
Skate Shop, 2013
Nin Truong working with students to create merchandise
for the Skate Shop installation
36
above
Nin Truong
Skate Shop, 2013
youth created skateboard design in the Skate Shop
Exhibitions
37
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Steve Lambert’s father, a former Franciscan monk, and
mother, an ex-Dominican nun, imbued in him the values of
dedication, study, poverty, and service to others – qualities
which prepared him for life as an artist. He first made
international news following the presidential election of
2008, when he published a “Special Edition” of the New York
Times, a replica announcing the end of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan and other good news. He has developed and led
workshops for Creative Capital Foundation, co-directs the
Center for Artistic Activism, an anti-advertising agency, and
is an Assistant Professor at SUNY Purchase.
In the summer of 2011, Lambert began a national tour
of Capitalism Works For Me! True/False, a 9 by 20-foot,
carnivalesque sign that invites viewers to vote and then
tallies their responses on an LED scoreboard. Lambert has
said that the goal of the work is to foster conversation
around an often taboo subject by being playful. “Start a
conversation about capitalism and friends edge away slowly,
and strangers even faster,” he explains. “But this is what art
is for. This is what art does well. It creates a space where new
ideas and perspectives can be explored.”
38
Prior to its installation in the galleries at CSPS Hall, the sign
was displayed at three public locations in Cedar Rapids,
each in a neighborhood that had been impacted by severe
flooding in 2008. In 2013, these areas were still in the
process of rebuilding, and debates over the city’s handling
of recovery funds were frequent and heated. In this context,
passersby were invited to vote, have their picture taken and,
if they wished, explain their vote in front of a video camera.
The video documentation was then edited by the artist and
included in the gallery exhibit, alongside video from other
cities in which the work had been shown. Visitors to CSPS
Hall, of course, were also able to vote. In addition, they were
invited to explain their vote in written form and post it on
a gallery wall. As a result, several thousand Iowans became
engaged in the conversation.
Lambert’s projects have won awards from Prix Ars
Electronica, Rhizome, the Creative Work Fund, Adbusters
Media Foundation, the California Arts Council, and others.
His work has been shown everywhere from museums to
protest marches nationally and internationally, featured
in fourteen books, four documentary films, and placed in
the collections of The Sheldon Museum, the Progressive
Insurance Company, and The Library of Congress. Lambert
has discussed his work live on NPR, the BBC, and CNN; his
work has been covered by the Associated Press, The New
York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, The Believer,
Good, Dwell, ARTnews, Punk Planet and Newsweek. He has
collaborated with a variety of groups, ranging from the Yes
Men to Graffiti Research Lab and Greenpeace.
above
Steve Lambert
Capitalism Works For Me! True/False, 2014
detail
photo: Mel Andringa
left
Steve Lambert
False!, 2014
detail
photo: Mel Andringa
Exhibitions
39
Steve Lambert
Capitalism Works For Me! True/False, 2013
installation view
photo: Steve Lambert
40
Exhibitions
41
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June 21 –
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Diaspora
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Miami, FL
Selina Roman was born and raised in Florida where
she began her career as an investigative journalist. Her
photographic work continues the journalistic tradition of
asking questions and seeking out alternative views. Roman’s
Puerto Rican background and Florida upbringing is present
in her work through her use of vibrant color and texture.
For her VAN exhibition residency Roman showed work
from her series, The Burqa Project. The project features the
garment worn by Muslim women and challenges viewers
to question beauty. The photographs show western women
wearing burqas in a variety of scenarios from domestic
situations to formal, abstract compositions. The project is
not meant to be documentary, but metaphoric. Specifically,
can something that is loathed and demonized be considered
beautiful? The Burqa Project also questions: Can there be
power in anonymity and the unseen?
The VAN exhibition residency offered a unique
opportunity to show The Burqa Project. It was the first
time since graduate school that Roman had showed the
work in its entirety. The show provided a platform for
viewers to engage the work. During the residency, Roman
shared the work with GirlPower, a community agency that
serves at-risk teens in Miami-Dade. The young women
had never seen burqas in person and Roman brought
some from her own collection for them to see and try on.
They were particularly interested in finding out what the
world looks like from inside the garment.
Roman obtained a Masters of Fine Arts degree from
the University of South Florida in Tampa. She currently
works as an adjunct photography professor at the Art
Institute of Tampa, as well as gallery assistant at Gallery
221, Hillsborough Community College. She is a member
of Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator and has shown
her work internationally. Her work is also in numerous
private collections.
42
Selina Roman
Escape, 2009
archival inkjet print
36 x 24 inches
photo: Selina Roman
Exhibitions
43
above
Selina Roman
Untitled (Sand), 2012
40 x 60 inches
photo: Selina Roman
right
Selina Roman
Untitled (Lean), 2011
30 x 24 inches
photo: Selina Roman
44
Exhibitions
45
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hcock
John Hihtybcridpress.blogspot.com
Madison,
WI hur
Emily FAL retmilyarthur.squarespace.com
le,
Jacksonvil
Seed
Air, Lan20d13,
June 24 –
29,
516 AR,TNMS
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Albuquerq
John Hitchcock uses multimedia methods in conjunction
with print media and its long history of social and political
commentary to explore relationships of community, land
and culture.
Emily Arthur’s fine art practice is informed by a concern for
the environment, displacement, exile and the return home
from dislocation and separation. She seeks the unbroken
relationship between modern culture and ancient lands
which uses tradition and story to make sense of the enduring
quest to understand our changing experience of home.
Artists John Hitchcock and Emily Arthur participated in Air,
Land, Seed with their project Impact Vs. Influence, a largescale printmaking installation in 516 Arts’ front gallery. Air,
Land, Seed was a small group exhibition that addressed
global tensions between home and exile, drawing from the
unique perspectives of the indigenous peoples of Native
North America. The exhibition featured Hitchcock, Arthur
and additional artists who engaged in the politicized
medium of printmaking to exhibit works that question
the forced displacements and ideologies that define our
collective contemporary existence. In Impact Vs. Influence,
the re-appropriation of colonial markers – flags, boats and
airwaves – served to subvert the control and militarization
of indigenous homelands. Through participatory live print
actions, performance, exhibition and dialogue, the artists
repurposed these potent icons inscribed in the US Marine
credo: “From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli,
We fight our country’s battles, in the air, on land and sea.”
46
In addition to their VAN exhibition residency, Hitchcock and
Arthur collaborated with Marwin Begaye and Ryan O’Malley,
printing a large-scale banner and inviting the public into the
gallery to engage in dialogue and participate in the creative
process throughout the duration of the residency. At the
end of the week, during the Downtown Growers’ Market,
the artists staged a Print Blitz in which the public was
encouraged to observe and participate in the production
of multiple prints, and by using the artists’ designs on
both fabric and paper, the artists made and ceremonially
distributed screen printed objects in the Native tradition of
“give-aways.” The culmination of the Print Blitz featured the
communally-designed banner produced during the VAN
residency week in the Parade of Flags demonstration at the
close of the Downtown Growers’ Market.
John Hitchcock is Graduate Chair and Professor at the
University of Wisconsin Madison and earned his MFA in
printmaking and photography at Texas Tech University.
Emily Arthur is an Associate Professor at the University of
North Florida. She received an MFA from the Pennsylvania
Academy of Fine Arts and has served as Fellow at the Barnes
Foundation for Advance Theoretical and Critical Research.
She has served as an International Artist-in-Residence in
France and Japan with artists from the Diné/Navajo Nation.
Chemically Wasted Warhorse, 2011
screenprint & drawing
44 x 30 inches
Exhibitions
47
Impact Vs. Influence, 2013
screen-print and painting
24 x 42 feet
detail
photo: 516 ARTS
48
above
screen-print and painting
24 x 42 feet
installation in progress
photo: 516 ARTS
left
John Hitchcock
silver screenprint detail
photo: 516 ARTS
Exhibitions
49
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Erika Blumenfeld’s installation, Water, water, everywhere…,
incorporates photographs, charred debris collected from
recent wildfires across the Southwest, desert sand, and a
bonsai-trained tree native to Texas. This work poignantly
studies shifting water patterns due to climate change,
natural resource and land ownership, and increasing
drought in the Southwest.
Blumenfeld approaches her work as an ecological archivist,
and has chronicled a range of subjects including the physics
of atmospheric and astronomic phenomena, bioluminescent
organisms, wildfires, and the remote landscape of
Antarctica. In each series, she investigates the simple
beauty and complex predicament of our environment and
ecologies, working with institutions such as the McDonald
Observatory, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, South
African National Antarctic Program and the organization
Cape Farewell.
Blumenfeld’s growing concern for the injustices against our
environment has led her to document the ecological and
human impact caused by anthropogenic environmental
negligence and climate disruption. Currently, she is making
artworks about the aftermath of the recent wildfires in
the Southwest of the United States, photographing and
collecting the charred remains of trees, grasses, pinecones
and needles, dirt and animal bones. This new Wildfire Series
is both a eulogy to the incinerated flora and fauna as well as
forensic evidence of the impact of climate disruption.
For her VAN residency, Blumenfeld shared her work with
dozens of children discussing it in the context of the
impact of drought, wildfires (which had devastated a
small community near Austin the year before) and climate
change. She worked with them to create charcoal rubbings
using ash from wildfires, a material that she uses in her
own work.
continues on page 52...
Erika Blumenfeld
Displaced Nature, 2013
Texas native colima prickly lime ash bonsai-trained tree,
scientific glass instrument, water
dimensions variable
installation view
photo: Women & Their Work
50
Exhibitions
51
Erika Blumenfeld is an internationally exhibiting artist
and Guggenheim Fellow with a BFA in Photography from
Parsons, The New School of Design. Since 1998, she has
approached her work much like an ecological archivist, and
has created photo- and video-based works through the
study, witness and documentation of the natural world.
Her art has been featured in Art In America, ARTnews, Nature:
Climate Change, New Scientist and Camera Arts magazines,
and appears in the books Photography: New Mexico
published by Fresco Fine Art Publications (2008), and The
Polaroid Book (2005, 2008) published by Taschen. The artist’s
recent work from Antarctica appears in the book Arte Da
Antartida (Art from Antarctica) published by Goethe-Institut
(2009), in which Blumenfeld’s essay “What is White” is also
included. “What is White” has been translated into both
Portuguese and German and is also published on GoetheInstitut’s Culture and Climate Change website.
52
Blumenfeld’s artwork is in the permanent collections of
the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Lannan Foundation, Houston
Museum of Fine Arts, New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, The
Polaroid Collection, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary
Art, and the University of Texas.
Blumenfeld has received grants from Creative Capital
Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Land
Rheinland-Pfalz Kultusministerium, Polaroid Corporation,
and a purchase award from the New Mexico Museum of Art.
She was Ballroom Marfa’s inaugural artist-in-residence, and
was awarded a Special Editions Fellowship from the Lower
East Side Printshop.
Erika Blumenfeld
Fire Mandala: Spiral No. 1
(Silver Wildfire: Gila National Forest, New Mexico 2013), 2013
wildfire burned debris (rocks, trees, pine needles, pine cones, bark, cacti,
dirt) and hand-hammered Tibetan song bowls
8 x 8 x 4 feet
left
Erika Blumenfeld
Water, water, everywhere…, 2013
mixed media
installation view
below
Erika Blumenfeld
artist talk during Water, water, everywhere…
above
Erika Blumenfeld installing “Fire Mandala:
Spiral No. 1 (Silver Wildfire: Gila National Forest,
New Mexico 2013)”, 2013
wildfire burned debris (rocks, trees, pine
needles, pine cones, bark, cacti, dirt) and handhammered Tibetan song bowls
8 x 8 x 4 feet
right
Erika Blumenfeld
area recreation centers created charcoal
rubbings during Water, water, everywhere…
charcoal paper rubbings
Exhibitions
53
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In October 2013, LACE presented the North American
premiere of Interference, a large-scale, physical game
installation by architect Nathalie Pozzi and game designer
Eric Zimmerman. Interference was exhibited at Track 16
Gallery and presented in partnership with USC Visions and
Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative and IndieCade 2013,
The International Festival of Independent Games.
Interference is a strategic social game where you win by
stealing from other players. Five suspended, super-thin steel
walls dotted with organic patterns resembling cell tissues
act as vertical game boards. The twist is that each turn you
must steal a piece from another game going on between
other players. While each game takes place in a local area
of one of the walls, the games themselves can move across
the walls – and games even collide with each other as they
drift across the walls’ surfaces. Interference encourages
players to negotiate, argue, and scheme with and against
each other, across physical space, social space, and the
spaces between games.
Architect Nathalie Pozzi and game designer Eric Zimmerman
have collaborated on a number of playable installations that
have appeared in Paris, Berlin, Dublin, Moscow, Los Angeles,
and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
54
Nathalie Pozzi is an architect, whose projects cross the
boundaries of architecture, installation, and art, exploring
the critical intersection of space, light, material, and culture.
Her work includes contributions to the architectural
studio Casagrande & Rintala, in projects like Bird Cage at
Yokohama Triennale of Art and Installation 2001 at the
Florence International Biennale of Contemporary Art. She
also works as a designer and production consultant for
large-scale art installations. Currently she is completing a
full renovation of a traditional mountain village home in the
Italian Alps.
Eric Zimmerman is a game designer and a 20-year veteran
of the game industry. Eric co-founded Gamelab, an awardwinning NYC-based studio that helped invent casual games
with titles like Diner Dash. Other projects range from the
pioneering independent online game SiSSYFiGHT 2000 to
tabletop games like the strategy board game Quantum and
Local No. 12’s card game The Metagame. He is the co-author
with Katie Salen of Rules of Play and is a founding faculty
and Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center.
Nathalie Pozzi & Eric Zimmerman
Interference, 2013
dimensions variable
installation view
photos: Erica Rodriguez
Exhibitions
55
Nathalie Pozzi & Eric Zimmerman
Interference, 2013
dimensions variable
detail
photo: Erica Rodriguez
56
Exhibitions
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Gabriel Brown is an artist, activist, and shoe cobbler born
and raised in the Pacific Northwest. He creates multimedia
installations, satirical street performances, and collaborative
community projects that examine consumerism, waste,
and garbage. Brown has exhibited at the Northwest
Museum of Art & Culture, Korea National University of the
Arts, and throughout community centers, street corners,
and public restrooms. Serving two years in AmeriCorps he
worked as a community organizer on environmental and
neighborhood projects in Spokane, WA. Currently, Brown
works for Spaceworks Tacoma, a program that activates
empty storefronts and vacant spaces with art and creative
enterprise. He holds an MFA from Washington State
University and has been a professor of sculpture, 3D-design,
and humanities. Brown can be found cobbling shoes, raising
his daughter, and tending chickens on an urban homestead
in downtown Tacoma, Washington.
58
Brown showed two pieces as part of the Ironic Object
exhibition at Denver’s RedLine in October 2013. Curated
by Lanny Frances DeVuono, the show included his Tricked
Out Shopping Cart, 2006-2013, an installation that paired a
customized steel cart with a video entitled, Sorting Bottles
and Cans with Tricked Out Shopping Cart Recycling Machine.
As DeVuono notes in the exhibition catalog, the concept for
the piece emerged through a series of public performances
on homelessness, during which Brown created a “soupedup shopping cart for the homeless” as a commentary on
“yuppie preoccupations” with conspicuous consumption
and up-cycling. Expanding on the shopping cart as a
metaphor for problematic consumerism, Brown’s other piece
in the exhibition, Lost Carts of Spokane, 2006-2013, offers a
portrait of the city’s urban spaces through a series of digital
photographs documenting abandoned shopping carts
throughout Spokane.
Gabriel Brown
Lost Carts of Spokane, 2006–2013
ongoing digital photo series
dimensions variable
photo: Gabriel Brown
As part of his residency at RedLine, Brown collaborated with
the art teacher at a local high school to do a Cellphone
Deconstruction Art Workshop with high school seniors.
He also conducted the workshop for a second group of
students (grades 6-12) during RedLine’s Monthly Art Class.
The workshop was given in two parts. During the first part
students deconstructed cell-phones and explored what is
inside, while the second part involved creating mandalas
from the many pieces that make up a cell-phone. Brown
discussed the process of recycling phones in the United
States and how the US actually ships technology abroad
to be taken apart and recycled. This workshop was an
incredible experience for students, because they got to
think about the role of technology in their lives from a new
perspective along with working with a professional artist
who uses unconventional materials in his work. Participating
students were thoroughly engaged in the experience of
contemporary art making.
Exhibitions
59
Gabriel Brown
Tricked Out Shopping Cart, 2006–2013
steel cart, custom accessories, can crusher
32 x 32 x 40 inches
photo: Gabriel Brown
60
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Denver, C
Debra Baxter is a Seattle-based sculptor and jewelry
designer who combines carved alabaster with crystals,
minerals, and metals. She received an MFA in Sculpture
from Bard College in 2007 and a BFA from the Minneapolis
College of Art and Design in 1996. She also studied at
Academia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy. Baxter has received
an Artist Trust Individual Artist Grant and two 4Culture
Individual Project Grants. She was recently nominated
for a Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award. Baxter’s work
has been featured in Zoo Magazine, Germany, Edelweiss
Magazine in Switzerland, Zink, Art Ltd., Design Bureau and
Sculpture magazines, as well as in hundreds of brags all
over the world. Her work has been exhibited in solo shows,
including Wanting is Easier Than Having at Platform Gallery,
Seattle; So Proud of You at Howard House, Seattle; and Debra
Baxter at Massimo Audello, New York City. Recent group
shows including, Making Mends at Bellevue Art Museum,
Bellevue, WA; Death and other Objects at Or Gallery,
Vancouver, BC; and Women in the Director’s Chair at Walker
Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.
Two of Baxter’s pieces were featured in RedLine’s Ironic
Object exhibition in October 2013: Crystal Brass Knuckles II
(I am going to realign your chakras motherf*****), 2013 and
Devil Horns Crystal Brass Knuckles (mosh safely), 2013. The
two works, created from crystal set in gold- and silver-plated
bronze, respectively, demonstrate the technical refinement
of jewelry making while engaging themes of violence. Lanny
DeVuono, the exhibition’s curator, suggests that Baxter’s
crystal brass-knuckles are both humorous and feminist,
delicate and sharp. He states, they “manage to suggest both
menace and new age spiritualism.”
Debra Baxter
Ironic Object, 2013
photo: Ken Hamel
During her time in Denver, Baxter held a workshop for
students (grades 3-5) from a local elementary school.
Participants constructed “power objects” using paper, clay,
paint, rocks and found objects. After discussing the history
of amulets, talismans, and alchemy, the students created
objects that made them feel empowered and gave them
luck. By removing art from the museum context, Baxter
created an approachable atmosphere which made artistic
experiences relevant to students’ lives and easy for them
to understand.
Exhibitions
61
62
above
Debra Baxter
teaching “power object” class to K–12 students
left
Debra Baxter
Devil Horns Crystal Brass Knuckles (mosh safely), 2013
quartz crystals, silver plated bronze
4.5 x 4.5 x 2 inches
photo: Debra Baxter
opposite
Debra Baxter
Crystal Brass Knuckle II (I am going to realign your
chakras motherf*****), 2013
quartz crystals, gold plated bronze
6 x 4.5 x 3 inches
photo: Debra Baxter
Exhibitions
63
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Darin Forehand brought his 1860 French Star Wheel
lithography press to Birmingham to create PrintProject, a
community print shop at Space One Eleven. Birmingham
youth and artists were given access to the print workshop
to create lithographs, relief, and monoprints while
open discussions established new and renewed artistic
investigations that challenged marginalized opinions
and concepts. PrintProject was designed to allow artists
to work freely in a professional print shop environment
under the supervised assistance of a skilled Master Printer.
A mentor relationship fostered dialogue that gave voice to
the aesthetics similar to the print workshops of Atelier 17
Paris, Taller Gráfica de Popular Mexico City and the Robert
Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in New York City.
Forehand shared his knowledge and skills as a Master
Printer through artist talks, printmaking demonstrations,
a lithography workshop, and collaborations with artists.
Community members engaged by Forehand included
faculty and students from the University of Alabama at
Birmingham and Miles College, high school students
of Space One Eleven’s City Center Arts Program, and
Birmingham area artists.
64
Darin Forehand’s VAN residency coincided with Interchange,
an artist exchange between Space One Eleven and
Houston’s Project Row Houses. Organized by Space One
Eleven, Interchange was designed to bring artists together
to exchange experiences. Forehand and the other exchange
artists participated in the panel discussion, “The Color Line
Has Not Disappeared,” moderated by Rick Lowe, and held
an exhibition of their site specific installations in Space One
Eleven’s galleries.
Space One Eleven and Project Row Houses share common
missions and joined together in exploring themes of
tolerance, social justice, and the tearing down of geographic
and racial barriers during Interchange and the 50th
anniversary of Birmingham’s Civil Rights Movement.
Darin Forehand is a Master Printer with over twenty years of
experience printing for numerous national and international
artists. He received a BS from Florida State University and
an MFA from Ohio State University. He has established
Forehandpress, a lithography atelier in Houston, TX.
Somya Singh
Opening, 2013
lithograph
12 x 16 inches
photo: Space One Eleven
Artist Somya Singh and Master Printer Darin
Forehand during Forehand’s lithography
workshop at Space One Eleven
photo: Space One Eleven
Exhibitions
65
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A native of New Orleans, LA, Katrina Andry received an
MFA in printmaking from Louisiana State University, Baton
Rouge, in 2010. She currently lives and works in New Orleans,
maintaining her printmaking studio at Xavier University.
Andry’s work explores the negative effects of stereotypes
on the lives of minorities and how these stereotypes give
rise to biased laws and ideologies in the Western World.
Her large-scale prints—some as big as five feet—confront
the viewer with these derogatory cultural clichés. The
prints feature figures in watermelon/black face. They
represent those who are targeted by racist characterizations.
However, Andry specifically uses non-minority figures in
this role to illustrate the fact that stereotypes are unjustly
perpetuated. Stereotypes are neither based in truth nor
innate characteristics of a specific person, instead they are
ideas forced onto a group of people as a whole. Portraying
entire populations in a negative light, stereotypes confer on
the perpetuator an impression of superiority and a greater
sense of normalcy.
66
Andry was listed in the September, 2012 Art in Print
magazine as one of the top 50 printmakers. Her work
was also featured on the popular Beautiful Decay blog.
She has recently shown at Staple Goods Gallery, New
Orleans, in a group show, Shape of Place, curated by each
of the collective’s members. She has also been an artistin-residence at Anchor Graphics in Chicago and Kala Art
Institute in Berkeley, CA.
Katrina Andry
Mammy Complex: Unfit Mommies Make for Fit Nannies, 2011
digital media and color woodcut reduction
40 x 60 inches
Exhibitions
67
above
Katrina Andry
Mammy Complex: Unfit Mommies Make for
Fit Nannies, 2011
40 x 60 inches
detail
photo: Bottletree
left
Katrina Andry
Congratulations You Made It!: Working Your
Way Up the American Caste System, 2009
42 x 58 inches
detail
photo: Bottletree
right
Katrina Andry
The Jungle Bunny Gave You Fever. The Only
Cure is to Fuck the Bunny. She Wants It., 2011
40 x 60 inches
photo: Bottletree
68
Exhibitions
69
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Castillo is a native of Los Angeles, where she lives, works and
teaches. She earned a BA in art education, with an emphasis
in drawing and painting from California State University,
Fullerton, and an MFA in sculpture from Claremont Graduate
University, Claremont, CA.
Castillo was born in Los Angeles to a Colombian immigrant
family. Her Filipino, African, Spanish, and Indigenous
Colombian lineage has had a profound influence on her
work. Rife with ancestral and historical symbolism, her
work utilizes materials such as hair, food, rope, burlap
bags, rags, painting, and digital imagery, both projected
and printed. Her installations explore materials and their
perceived identity.
Presenting materials in a new way that embodies layers
of meaning—while not denying their identity—remains
a source of fascination for Castillo. Her installations use
human and synthetic hair as a metaphor for ancestry
within the galaxy. As she makes each hairball and joins
them together in the shape of a circle, Castillo’s process
becomes a series of individual meditations in homage to her
ancestors. The use of hair is symbolic of genetics, as well. A
single strand of hair contains one’s DNA—an astonishing
amount of information stored in a tiny organic structure. A
person’s head is covered with thousands of individual hairs,
thousands of copies of genetic information. How would the
immense amount of genetic information contained within a
single strand or a full head of hair express or manifest itself?
70
The exploration of hair as a medium is psychologically
charged. Identity is declared by the way people wear their
hair. Hairstyles are statements. Hair is valued, cared for,
meticulously groomed. Yet when it becomes detached
from the head and found on any surface, its value is gone
and replaced with revulsion. The relationship to hair is
contradictory, one of attraction and repulsion.
Recent exhibitions include: Prospect New Orleans – P3, SUR:
Biennial, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles Municipal Art
Gallery, California African American Museum, Watts Towers
Arts Center, Ontario Museum of History and Art, and MACLA
in San José, CA. She has also collaborated with sculptural
assemblage artist John Outterbridge on several installations
in Los Angeles. Castillo is a recipient of the City of Los
Angeles Fellowship as well as the Visions from the New
California Award.
Castillo
Strand, 2009
manila rope
dimensions variable
photo: Bottletree
Exhibitions
71
72
Castillo
excentricidad eliplica (ecliptic eccentricity), 2000
synthetic hair balls
each 3 x 3 x 3 feet
detail
photos: Bottletree
Exhibitions
73
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Eric Gottesman is a photographic artist, teacher, and
activist. Since 1999 he has been working in and around the
Middle East and Africa, as well as in rural North America,
collaborating with communities to produce photographs
and videos that often challenge preexisting images and
perceptions of a culture and/or place as well as the concept
of singular artistic authorship. Many of Gottesman’s projects
examine the quiet, long-term, psychological impact of mass
trauma. It was the relationship of trauma and production of
culture in recent Ethiopian history that led to the project on
display at the VAN Annual Meeting Exhibition.
In 1982, Ethiopian writer Baalu Girma secretly wrote
Oromaye, a novel and a thinly-veiled critique of the
communist regime ruling his country at the time. Ten days
after the book’s quiet publication, government censors
ordered it removed from bookstores. Five months later, Baalu
Girma disappeared, never to be heard from again.
This photographic series is an excerpt from Gottesman’s
ongoing project based on the life and fiction of Baalu Girma.
Extracting words from interviews with Girma’s daughter
and text from the novel itself, Gottesman ended up with
two lists of adjectives: one that describes the real-life author
from his eldest child’s perspective and one that describes his
fictional protagonist in his own words.
With these adjectives as a guide, Gottesman hired and
photographed an Ethiopian actor portraying these two
different characters. Through these images and a video of
the same actor reading the novel’s introduction as a barber
transforms him into character, Gottesman tries to visually
distinguish the author Baalu from his character Tsegaye.
74
In doing so, he clarifies (or blurs?) the line between the
performative and the photographic. It is here, as it tragically
was in Girma’s life and death, that the fictional and the
historical collide.
Gottesman studied politics and economics at Duke
University and, later, art at Bard College. In 2003, he was
named one of the top 25 young American photographers in
25 Under 25: Up-and-Coming American Photographers. Eric
has been the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships,
and grants including the Light Work Grant, a Fulbright
Fellowship in Art, an Artadia award, an Aaron Siskind
Fellowship, the apexart Franchise award, and grants from
the Magnum Foundation, the Open Society Foundation
and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Most recently
his work has been exhibited at the Addison Gallery of
American Art, the deCordova Museum and Sculpture
Park, and the Clark Gallery. In 2012 he was both an artistin-residence at Amherst College and an Edward E. Elson
artist-in-residence at the Addison Gallery of American Art.
He will have a solo show at Hamiltonian Gallery in Fall 2013.
His first collaborative monograph, Sudden Flowers, will be
published by Fishbar in Spring 2014. He has taught at the
Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Amherst College,
the International Center for Photography, the Institute of
Contemporary Art, Boston and in collaborative workshops in
Lebanon, Jordan and Ethiopia.
above
Eric Gottesman
Smoker, 2013
framed inkjet print
8 x 10 inches
photo: Eric Gottesman
top right
Eric Gottesman
The Oromaye Project, 2013
detail of dogtag
photo: Bottletree
right
Eric Gottesman
installation view
photo: Bottletree
Exhibitions
75
Eric Gottesman
Oromaye (Introduction), 2012
video (5 minutes)
dimensions variable
photo: Eric Gottesman
76
Eric Gottesman
installation view
photo: Bottletree
Exhibitions
77
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Los Angeles-based artist Aaron Noble is a nationally and
internationally respected artist who is known for both his
large-scale mural projects and his fine art practice. He has
painted murals all over the world in cities such as London,
Beijing, Djogyakarta, Indonesia; Los Angeles, New York and
San Francisco. His most recent projects in Albuquerque
include The Cuckoo’s Nest, or What You Hustlin’ Brother?,
4th Chamber and Quantum Bridge; the latter of which is
Noble’s largest and most ambitious mural project to date.
Commissioned for Heart of the City, an exhibition at
516 ARTS, 4th Chamber was painted in collaboration
with partnering organization Warehouse 508 mural
arts instructors, Roberto Reyes, Faustino Villa and Noah
de St. Croix. 4th Chamber was designed and conceived
as a massive, three-paneled portable mural that, upon
completion of Heart of the City, would become part of the
City of Albuquerque’s Public Art collection. 4th Chamber
itself is a companion piece and continued investigation
of thematic material explored in Noble’s breathtaking
mural, Quantum Bridge, completed in Albuquerque in the
early part of 2014. As Noble describes, “Quantum Bridge
embodies my response to the interests and challenges of
the young artists of the Warehouse 508 mural program. It
is a semi-abstract time travel epic with aesthetic roots in
comics, graffiti and Hip-Hop.”
78
516 ARTS held several Open Studio events in which the
general public was invited to visit the gallery to both watch
and engage with the artist as he worked on the mural.
What resulted was an intimate opportunity to witness a
professional artist at work in a very accessible surrounding.
Noble openly discussed his process involving comic books,
collage, painting and drawing and the variety of techniques
and tools he regularly uses. Noble also gave an artist talk
at the Central New Mexico Community College in which
he thoroughly discussed his influences and evolution as a
visual artist living and working in both the Bay Area and
currently in Los Angeles.
Noble is the co-founder of the Clarion Alley Mural
Project (CAMP) that was formed in 1992 to create and
facilitate opportunities for artists to paint murals on
the Clarion Alley between Valencia and Mission Streets
in San Francisco. His work has been shown in museums
and galleries alike including, the Torrance Art Museum,
Hammer Museum, Blum & Poe, Morgan Lehman Gallery
and the Guerrero Gallery.
top
Aaron Noble
4th Chamber, 2014
element contribution by Noah de St. Croix,
mural apprentice
photo: Roberto Reyes
above
Aaron Noble
4th Chamber, 2014
aerosol and acrylic on canvas on panel
96 x 214 inches
photo: Margot Geist
Exhibitions
79
80
above
Aaron Noble
4th Chamber, 2014
detail
photo: Rhiannon Mercer
left
Aaron Noble
4th Chamber, 2014
aerosol and acrylic on canvas on panel
96 x 214 inches
photo: Margot Geist
Exhibitions
81
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Los Angeles-based artist Wu Tsang tells stories through
the language of moving pictures. Whether focusing on a
specific location, a particular piece of writing, or the life
of a performer, Tsang fully inhabits each world in order to
re-construct a mirror narrative that is as visually complex
as it is emotionally rich. He combines two distinct modes of
storytelling through film: documentary and fantasy, so that
certain truths may be made visible through the blurring of
fiction and reality. By combining these two modes, Tsang
addresses questions of identity, politics, and social constructs.
Originally drawn to film as an activist, Tsang is interested in
the medium’s broad reach in regards to narrative. He thinks
about film and the performance of actors and non-actors
differently than traditional documentary filmmakers do.
Rather than simply ethnographically portraying a subject
through the lens, he utilizes fantasy and imagination to
provoke the viewer to connect more deeply with the subject
matter. The work actively engages queer communities and
attempts to shift the terms—“queer” and “community”—in
the hopes of creating agency for individuals and subcultural
groups without commodifying or co-opting them.
82
Tsang’s residency and exhibition at DiverseWorks, Moved
by the Motion, featured an ongoing collaboration with the
performer boychild, whose visceral and vivid performances
bring a sense of other-worldliness to the body. Central to
the exhibition was the premiere of the 2-channel film, A day
in the life of bliss, which simultaneously explores cinematic
and performative narrative. The film follows Blis (played by
boychild), who inhabits a “near future” world in which our
social media avatars and online personas develop their own
hive-minded consciousness called Looks. Blis, a celebritycollaborator by day and underground performer by night,
discovers her ability to challenge the Looks. Utilizing sci-fi
genre tropes and melodrama, the film evokes a classic
“outsider” narrative that is complicated by affect, movement,
and body politics. Moved by the Motion also included a live
performance within the installation by Tsang and boychild.
continues on page 84...
above
Wu Tsang
Moved by the Motion, 2014
2-channel video with sound, custom screens,
and mirrors of A day in the life of bliss
20 minutes
installation view
photo: Paul Hester
left
Wu Tsang
A day in the life of bliss, 2013
production photo
photo: Jesús Torres Torres
Exhibitions
83
Wu Tsang is a Los Angeles based filmmaker, artist, and
performer. His projects have been presented at the Tate
Modern (London); the Whitney Museum of American Art, the
Museum of Modern Art, and the New Museum (New York);
ICA (Philadelphia); and MOCA and REDCAT (Los Angeles).
In 2012, he participated in the Whitney Biennial and New
Museum Triennial (New York), Gwangju Biennial (South
Korea), and Liverpool Biennial (UK). He was named one of
Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in
2012, and is a Film Independent Project:Involve alum. His first
feature WILDNESS won multiple awards, including the Grand
Jury Prize for Outstanding Documentary at Outfest 2012.
WILDNESS had its world premiere at MoMA Documentary
Fortnight (New York, NY), and was screened at SXSW (Austin,
TX), Hot Docs (Toronto, Canada), and SANFIC8 (Santiago,
Chile), among other festivals. Tsang was recently included in
the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. 2014 biennial.
top
Wu Tsang
Moved by the Motion (featuring boychild), 2014
live performance
60 minutes
photo: Rachel Cook
bottom
Wu Tsang
A day in the life of bliss, 2013
production photo
photo: Jesús Torres Torres
84
Wu Tsang
A day in the life of bliss (still), 2014
2-channel video with sound featuring the performer boychild
20 minutes
photo: courtesy the artist and DiverseWorks
Exhibitions
85
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Allison Kaufman is a video artist and photographer living
in New York City. She has exhibited her work nationally at
spaces including HERE Arts Center and Hendershot Gallery
in NYC, Moore College of Art and Design, and the Pittsburgh
Center for the Arts. Her exhibitions have been reviewed
in the Huffington Post, L Magazine, the Pittsburgh-Tribune
Review, and Bomb Magazine’s BOMBlog.
Kaufman’s installation recreates a DJ and speaker
showroom with towering amps, colored spotlights, and a
disco ball suspended from the ceiling. A series of videos
showcased several people of varying musical abilities
performing popular songs in Guitar Center stores.
Kaufman’s exhibition peers into the psychology of American
chain music stores and how they package identities
that perpetuate the fantasy of rock stardom, the human
desire to be seen and recognized, and the simultaneity of
exhibitionism and vulnerability.
For her residency, Allison conducted two artist talks. During
the opening reception of her exhibition, which 221 people
attended, Allison discussed the themes within her work and
then invited visitors to engage with the installation. Allison
delivered her second artist talk to a group of 81 fourth grade
students visiting from the Wolcott School in West Hartford,
Connecticut. After a discussion about Amplified Stages and
art in general, she welcomed them to interact with the
installation. The children enthusiastically jumped onto the
stage, danced, and delighted in becoming performers.
86
Allison Kaufman received her BFA in Film and Television
Production from New York University and her MFA in
Photography, Video, and Related Media from the School of
Visual Arts. She was an Artist in Residence at the Constance
Saltonstall Foundation of the Arts and Yaddo in upstate New
York, the Center for Emerging Visual Artists in Philadelphia,
and the Penland School of Crafts in Bakersville, North
Carolina. Kaufman is an adjunct instructor at New York Film
Academy and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Allison Kaufman
Amplified Stages, 2014
digital photographs, found photographs, found religious pamphlets
and newspapers, American flag, skin bleach cream, prayer rug, found
books, prayer beads, nylons, glass jar, album cover, chair
dimensions variable
installation view
photo: John Groo
Exhibitions
87
Allison Kaufman
Fourth grade students from the Wolcott
School interact with Amplified Stages
following an artist talk.
photo: Lindsey Fyfe
88
above
Allison Kaufman
speakers, colored lights, disco ball, stage, video
dimensions variable
installation view
photo: John Groo
left
Allison Kaufman
digital photographs, found photographs,
found religious pamphlets and newspapers,
American flag, skin bleach cream, prayer rug,
found books, prayer beads, nylons, glass jar,
album cover, chair
dimensions variable
installation view
photo: John Groo
Exhibitions
89
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Steve A. Prince is a native of New Orleans, LA and is currently
an Artist in Residence at Allegheny College in Meadsville,
PA. He received his BFA from Xavier University of Louisiana
and his MFA in printmaking and sculpture from Michigan
State University. Prince has shown his art nationally and
internationally in various solo, group, and juried exhibitions.
A partial listing of exhibitions include: the Contemporary
Art Center of Virginia, the National Gallery of the Bahamas,
the Museum of Cultural Arts Center in Santa Catarina,
Brazil, the Grand Rapids Museum of Art, the Portsmouth
Courthouse Museum, Hampton University Museum, the
Museum of African American Culture in New Orleans, Xavier
University of Louisiana Gallery, Charles H. Taylor Art Center
in Hampton, and the Peninsula Fine Arts Center. He is widely
sought after to fulfill public art installations and community
engagement projects.
Prince’s work challenges viewers to ponder the various
constraints found in popular culture that limit their
freedom, and erode their sense of history, morality and
ethics. He states, “I deal with themes of social and racial
justice and visually explore biblical responses to the
problems overwhelming today’s urban culture.” His images
offer moralistic and ethical challenges to viewers. The
work beckons the audience to ponder their responsibility
within the fabric of the American family and to redress race,
representation, and education with a new raiment woven
with respect, truth, and equality.
90
Each of his works reflects a keen understanding of
symbolism, history, and oral traditions that challenge
viewers to ponder their agency and be active in creating
a better world. For Steve Prince, art is a tool used to
battle social issues like violence, racism, and injustice.
He considers his work “a conduit of God’s grace, helping
people make sense of their lives and realize that their
actions have consequences.” He believes, “There are a lot of
things we haven’t dealt with in our souls, so I like to deal
with them in my artwork.” The result is art interwoven with
social metaphors and symbolic messages. “The intent of
my work is to heighten our collective consciousness in the
face of indifference and delve into the power of faith in
perilous times.”
Although well versed in a variety of mediums, Prince’s works
primarily uses the black and white language of printmaking
and drawing. When he exhibited at Hammonds House
Museum in 2009 viewers were intrigued by his amazing
7-foot graphite drawings and intricate message-laden prints.
His phenomenal work and natural fit for a community
engagement project made selecting him for the 2014 VAN
residency a correct choice. For the residency he focused
on the medium of linoleum cut printmaking. During the
residency he produced two prints at the Atlanta Printmakers
Studio (APS) interacting with studio artists, instructors, and
students and was present during their annual communitywide Print Big Day. In addition he conducted workshops and
classes at Georgia State University, Clark Atlanta University
and Kennesaw State University.
Steve A. Prince
Prince with artists at the Atlanta Printmakers Studio
Thirteen prints, including those produced during the
residency, comprised a three person exhibition at
Hammonds House Museum titled The Rupture Between. His
work was also exhibited at Mason Murer Fine Art during his
stay in Atlanta.
Exhibitions
91
Steve A. Prince
Second Line, 2012
graphite
9 x 20 feet
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Exhibitions
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PICA presented the politically and historically immersed
artist Andrea Geyer for the U.S. premiere of Geyer’s
two-channel video installation, Three Chants Modern.
Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York,
during a research residency at the museum in 2013 and
made possible by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for
Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg
Foundation, Three Chants Modern looks at the network
of women thinkers, social and political activists, artists
and philanthropists who were the creative drivers and
institutional pillars of the Modernist Project in New York in
the early part of the 20th century. Three Chants addresses
how history and power are constructed, in part, through
the undeniable legacy of these women in contrast to their
sparse representation in the formal history of the period.
Specifically it marks the undeniable intertwined relationship
between Modernism and socio-political reforms in the
United States. Beyond the rediscovery of such facts, the
work invites us to reflect on the failure to recognize the
groundbreaking historical work of many women in today’s
understanding of culture, even though the traces of their
labor are present everywhere.
94
In concert with her exhibition and public opening, PICA
and the MFA Studio Program at Portland State University
hosted a free public lecture to learn more about Geyer and
her practice. The artist also spent time with the students
in their studios for critique and conversation sessions and
the exhibition was visited by several class groups from area
high schools and colleges. The video installation was further
contextualized by two choreographers, Laura Arrington and
Jesse Hewitt who met with Geyer to develop a one night
class as part of PICA’s education and outreach “Field Guide”
program. Several large groups attended the exhibition for
special screenings including the Native American Youth and
Family Center and “Assembly: a social practice get-together”
a symposium hosted by PICA and organized by the PSU Art
& Social Practice Program, Portland Art Museum, Julie Ault
and Arianna Jacob. A 2000 graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent
Study Program, Andrea Geyer works with photography,
video and performance, using both fiction and
documentary strategies in order to address larger concepts
such as national identity, gender, and class in the context
of the ongoing re-adjustment of cultural meanings and
social memories.
Geyer’s work has been shown at The Museum of Modern
Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Apex Art, and
Artists Space, in New York City; the Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam; REDCAT and LACE, in Los Angeles; Tate Modern
and Serpentine Gallery, London; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen,
Switzerland; Göteborgs Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden;
Generali Foundation and Secession, Vienna; Smart Project
Space, Amsterdam; Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New
Zealand; the Turin Biennale; the São Paulo Biennial; and
dOCUMENTA (12), Kassel, Germany.
Andrea Geyer
Three Chants Modern, 2014
installation view
photo: Evan LaLonde
Geyer was born in 1971 in Freiburg, Germany. She lives and
works in New York City.
Exhibitions
95
96
above
Andrea Geyer
publication
photo: Evan LaLonde
left
Andrea Geyer
installation view
photo: Evan LaLonde
Exhibitions
97
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April 20 –
San José,
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Vargas-Suarez UNIVERSAL (VSU) is primarily known
for large-scale murals, paintings, drawings, and sound
recordings. He sources American and Russian spaceflight
programs, astronomy, and aerospace architecture to create
commissioned, studio-based, and public artworks for
museums, galleries, private and public spaces.
A major aspect of the exhibition is VSU’s dialogue with
scientists and other experts at the NASA Ames Research
Center, gathering information that directly informs the
artwork. Vargas-Suarez is exploring concepts for retrieving
materials from Mars, asteroids and other orbiting bodies
in our solar system. He intends to grant access of these
materials to artists, architects and designers, allowing
them to expand and explore possibilities not available with
traditional materials available on Earth.
The exhibition installation in MACLA’s gallery was set up as a
mock “clean room,” or spacecraft processing facility typically
found at NASA operations centers. The installation included
hand-intervened digital prints, paintings, sculptural objects,
and a video produced in collaboration with artist Barbora
Bereznáková. Vargas-Suarez also worked with MACLA staff
and youth to create a 20 foot long mural on the exterior of
MACLA’s building.
98
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Further, this exhibition presented an exciting educational
opportunity for the hundreds of middle school and high
school-aged students which MACLA serves every year.
The exhibition and artist’s residency encouraged MACLA’s
students to engage with art and science in a different and
meaningful way. VSU, who studied both astronomy and art
history in college, has been inspired by the data collected by
space and research entities, including NASA. His work is an
inspiration for Latino youth who may be considering studies
and careers in the arts and sciences.
Vargas-Suarez UNIVERSAL is based in New York. He was born
in Mexico City and raised in the Houston suburb of Clear
Lake City adjacent to the NASA Johnson Space Center. He
studied astronomy and art history at the University of Texas
at Austin and moved to New York City in 1997.
above
Vargas-Suarez UNIVERSAL
Landing Sites & Beyond, 2014
video
photo: Barbora Bereznáková
left
spraypaint and oil-based marker on wall
20 x 10 feet
photo: Melina Ramirez
Exhibitions
99
installation view
photo: José Reyes
100
Exhibitions
101
Ian EttYe rwww.ianetter.com
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Ian Etter has long been interested in the history of America’s
westward expansion, the development of the railroad,
and the steps we’re currently taking to colonize Mars. He’s
fascinated by the parallels between contemporary imagery
of Mars and 19th century paintings of the American West.
“The paintings of Thomas Moran and others stimulated
the imagination of settlers and tourists, fueling expansion
and helping to fund the development of the railroad,” he
explains. “Likewise, imagery from Mars builds excitement in
the public and helps fund NASA. Rovers are better equipped
to take high-resolution, panoramic photographs than to
perform actual geological studies. Much like the early
paintings of the West, the imagery allows the public to
imagine itself colonizing the frontier.”
The project at the center of his VAN residency, Manned Mock
Mars Mission, or MMMM, began in 2013, when Ian Etter
spent two weeks as artist in residence at the Mars Desert
Research Station (MDRS). Located in the Utah desert, MDRS
is an ongoing testing environment designed to simulate
living on Mars, and is seen as a first step to establishing
colonies there. The scientists at MDRS conduct their research
in “full sim,” during which they act as fully as possible as
if they’re on the surface of Mars. While at MDRS, Etter had
the opportunity to work with contemporary explorers:
engineers, astronomers, biologists and geologists.
During the next stage of MMMM, in March 2014, Etter
performed his own simulation in the Loess Hills, a desolate
area in western Iowa. Living alone for two weeks, in a
102
transportable space station he designed and built, he carried
out a Mars simulation on a small patch of reconstituted
prairie. Wearing a space suit he designed and fabricated,
he conducted daily explorations of the surface. Using a mix
of space-age and 19th century imagery and technology, he
then created artworks that blend the histories of astronomy,
space exploration and the settlement of the American West.
His exhibit at CSPS featured the space suit and station
that Etter used in the Loess Hills, along with video
documentation, photographs and photogravure prints. “The
drawings, prints and photos,” Etter explained, “function as
artifacts from my two-week stay on Mars. They incorporate
imagery from the observational history of Mars alongside
maps and imagery of Iowa. Through mining these histories,
I created a fiction that imagines a contemporary Mars in the
early stages of terraforming, a Mars that is being colonized
using 19th century technology.”
During his residency at CSPS Hall, Etter spent his days in the
gallery, re-enacting his Loess Hills explorations and conversing
with invited audiences of artists, students, engineers and
makers, along with members of the general public.
Ian Etter was born in Alaska, grew up in Kansas, and
currently resides in New York City. He studied art at the
University of Iowa, Kansas State University, and Norwich
School of Art and Design in the UK. His work has been
exhibited in Iowa City, St. Louis, Austin and Chicago.
Ian Etter
MMMM, Manned Mock Mars Mission, 2014
Ian prepares to leave the Loess Hills Analog station,
in advance of his exploration of the prairie environment
photo: Derek Blackman
Exhibitions
103
104
above
Ian Etter
Ian explores the prairie environment of the
Loess Hill in Southwestern Iowa
left
Ian Etter
simulated Mars station, video, drawings, space suit and artifacts
Exhibitions
105
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Michael Sieben is a professional designer and illustrator
from Austin, Texas. Sieben is a founding member of Okay
Mountain Collective and a co-founder of Roger Skateboards.
He is the Managing Editor of Thrasher Magazine and writes
a monthly column for Juxtapoz Magazine. Sieben has had
success working collaboratively with Adidas, Toy Machine
Skateboards, MTV, Vans and Nickelodeon. Sieben’s fictional
characters juxtapose the adolescent-driven subculture of
skateboarding with the sinister anxieties of adulthood,
creating a distinct playful style that has become instantly
identifiable within the skateboarding community.
For his VAN exhibition residency, Dallas Contemporary (DC)
invited Michael Sieben and assistant Josh Row to create a
mural in Trinity Groves. DC has a long-standing partnership
with the up-and-coming neighborhood to the west of
Dallas, having commissioned four murals in the area since
2012. Responding to the rapidly changing neighborhood,
Sieben’s mural depicts two dueling grackles in front of a
dandelion. Both the bird and the weed are native to Texas
and generally evoke a negative connotation. However Sieben
depicts these grackles dancing proud, defiant and perhaps
territorially. They are Trinity Groves’ newest residents and are
evidence of the exciting changes happening in this colorful
Dallas neighborhood.
106
Along with creating the mural in Trinity Groves, Dallas
Contemporary made Michael Sieben the June guest juror for
#dcplusme, a new program designed to cultivate DC’s online
community by creating a universally accessible space for
artists to see, share, explore, and exhibit art. With Sieben as
the guest juror, #dcplusme received 55 submissions. Sieben
chose to publish five artists and wrote about their work for
DC’s Tumblr webpage.
In addition, Michael Sieben gave a well-attended artist
talk at the site of the mural in Trinity Groves. The Chit Chat
was moderated by Carlos Donjuan, a local street artist who
is part of the Sour Grapes Collective. Discussing both the
inspiration and process behind the mural, Michael Sieben,
Josh Row and Carlos Donjuan presented an engaging and
entertaining conversation.
Michael Sieben’s strong presence within the skateboarding
subculture and as an illustrator allowed Dallas
Contemporary to connect with a new demographic.
Michael Sieben
wall mural
35 x 12 feet
photos: Jacque Donaldson
Exhibitions
107
108
Michael Sieben
wall mural
35 x 12 feet
photos: Jacque Donaldson
Exhibitions
109
ldes
Juana Vwaww.juanaMvaldes.com
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New York
29, 2014
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Juana Valdes completed an MFA in Fine Arts from the
School of Visual Arts in 1993 and a BFA in Sculpture at
Parsons School of Design in 1991. She was born in Cabañas,
Pinar Del Rio, Cuba and came to the United States in
1971. Juana currently teaches as an Assistant Professor of
Printmaking at Florida Atlantic University in the Visual Arts
and Art History Department.
Valdes brings a finely honed polemic sense to her work
and the range of subjects that have captured her fancy
boggles the mind: organza and linen - fabrics that
classified two different classes in Cuba; the collectables
of the bourgeois and the servant class; the Whites and
Blacks. While these oppositions are subtly built-in, they
represent a preoccupation present in previous work.
Throughout her body of work Valdes parses the width and
breath of the issues she confronts in richly articulated
forms that can be festooned with appliquéd elements
or printmaking transfers. She weaves the patterns of her
stories, creating a narrative with text, images and found
objects as principal elements, along with fabric grids of
male handkerchiefs, making the entire structure feminine
and fragile.
110
Juana Valdes’ most current work elicits migration as a
complex process, constructing history through a continuum
that involves both the “home-space” of the diasporic
community along with their new homeland. Valdes
examines the post-colonial history of the Americas and
the current representation of Latinos, Caribbean citizens,
Blacks or what the current “other” is in vogue in mainstream
America, reflecting on what is ascribed, contested, and
granted. This ethno-social exploration serves as the raw
material for her aesthetic and formal investigation, as it
circumscribes issues of transmutation via the everyday
object, as a personal and time-based reference that is
diachronic in orientation.
Throughout her career, Juana has participated in a range of
exhibitions and residencies, most currently at the European
Keramic Work Center in the Netherlands (2012), the Jamaica
Center for Arts and Learning (2009), the Artist Residency
at the Center for Book Arts (2007), and the Smack Mellon
Studio Program (2004). Past exhibitions include a solo show
at SENSEI Gallery as part of the SENSEI Exchange Series Part
008: In the Fold in New York (2013), and travelling exhibitions
Multiplicity: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture (2007-08) and
Multiple, Limited, Unique: Selections from the Permanent
Collection of the Center for Book Arts (2011-13). Diaspora Vibe
Cultural Arts Incubator has exhibited Valdes’ work in the
Caribbean and Miami.
Juana Valdes
Visual Literacy 2, 2014
mixed media
books and found objects, film stills,
xerox transfer on cotton handkerchief
30 x 40 x 9 inches
photo: Juana Valdes
Exhibitions
111
Juana Valdes
mixed media
books and found objects with film stills
30 x 40 x 9 inches
detail
photo: Juana Valdes
112
top
Juana Valdes
mixed media
books and found objects with film stills
photo: Juana Valdes
bottom
Juana Valdes
mixed media
xerox transfer on cotton handkerchief
detail
photo: Juana Valdes
Exhibitions
113
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A graduate of Southern University at New Orleans, with a
degree in Fine Arts, Siler studied with Jean Paul Hubbard,
Frank Hayden, and Harold Cureau as an undergraduate
and credits a number of other artists as influences over the
years. While an undergrad at Southern he cartooned for the
school newspaper, The Digest, and wrote a humor column
and contributed artwork to The Cat yearbook. He has
exhibited at the Salter Gallery, The Gallery in The Courtyard,
Mumbo Jumbo and the California African American
Museum in Los Angeles, The West Baton Rouge Museum,
The Arna Bontemps Museum, Alexandria, LA; Ashé Cultural
Arts Center, The New Orleans African American Museum
and the Black Heritage Gallery in Lake Charles, LA. He has
work in private collections worldwide and the collection
of Cultural Crossroads in Baton Rouge. He is currently the
cartoonist for The Louisiana Weekly.
Siler’s VAN residency included a variety of media and themes
ranging from New Orleans’ lively and unique jazz scene
to its equally lively and unique political scene. Siler gives us a
glimpse into this treasure of American cities as only a native
can, using his art to comment on its complexities, warts and
beauty marks. His work spans the gamut of media from fine
watercolors and acrylics to biting political cartoons, most of
which find their way into various publications monthly. 114
Charles Siler led community workshops for the students
of Kuumba Institute and the APEX Center. The Kuumba
Institute at Ashé commits to make communities more
beautiful and beneficial than they were when they
were inherited. Kuumba’s goal is to inspire students to
use culture and the arts to help develop their power of
expression and encourage the building of relationships
within the community and throughout the world. Life is the
inspiration of art; and artistic expressions should inspire
the students’ lives as well as those in the community and
throughout the world. APEX Community Advancement,
Inc. was formed for the expressed purpose of supporting,
innovating and creating programs and services focusing
on the needs of young people from age 5 through 25. APEX
offers classes in acting, art, music and dance, teaching
youth how to look at the world and their fellow human
being in a different way. The overarching theme is
“Reconciliation, Never Retaliation.” Charles Siler’s workshops
during the VAN residency served 180 youth, the majority of
whom live in Central City New Orleans.
Charles “Chuck” Siler
pencil and multimedia
workshop with Apex Center students
photos: Karel Sloane-Boekbinder
Exhibitions
115
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York, AL
The Coleman Center for the Arts was pleased to welcome
New Orleans-based artist Bob Snead for a performance
of his Family Dollar General Tree. Snead’s methodical
installation consists of hundreds of sculptures of common
household items sold at dollar stores, created out of the
cardboard boxes in which they are shipped. The installation
pits contemporary art practice against consumerism in a
whimsical investigation of contemporary object making.
The performance took place in a former five and dime
store in downtown York, a town home to three different
dollar stores. Listening to a soundtrack of factory noises,
participants joined Snead to form a human assembly line, as
they used hot glue guns to affix product sections together.
Rolls of toilet paper, PowerAde drinks and detergent bottles
were assembled using Snead’s pre-made sections. Once
finished, the installation creates a one to one model of dollar
store merchandise, fashioned out the very consumer waste
from which their likeness originated.
116
Bob Snead holds a BA in Studio Art from the College of
Charleston, SC and an MFA in painting and printmaking
from Yale University School of Art. He is the Executive
Director of Press Street in New Orleans and founding
Director of Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston
and helped form the traveling artist collective Transit
Antenna. He has exhibited with Jack Tilton Gallery and
Deitch Projects in New York, the Aldrich Contemporary
Art Museum, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the
Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans, Jonathan
Ferrara Gallery, and most recently May Gallery. In 2011
he was named a distinguished alumnus of the College
of Charleston for his extensive work with non-profit
arts organizations.
Bob Snead
Family Dollar General Tree, York, AL, 2014
mixed media, public performance
dimensions variable
photos: Shana Berger
Exhibitions
117
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Working with a minimalist palette, Akiko Kotani transforms
everyday materials by hand into large scale works and
installations. In Soft Walls, Kotani envelops over 150 square
feet of gallery walls using thousands of feet of crocheted
plastic that she fashioned from more than 1,000 45-gallon
white trash bags. The white plastic encases and flows off the
walls and puddles at the floor reflecting both inner strength
and external flexibility which she likens metaphorically
to the characters of many women. In a nod to the love of
handwork that inspired her mother as well as many other
women for generations, Kotani’s use of sewing and crochet
embodies the surprising power and attraction of simplicity,
containing a depth of feeling within an economy of
means. Kotani uses scale to transform Soft Walls into large
and abstract forms, making it more conceptual art than
traditional women’s handwork.
In other two dimensional work including The Black Sea,
Kotani sews black bamboo thread onto paper to create
delicate abstractions that reference memory and the
natural world.
During Kotani’s VAN residency in Austin she led
demonstrations and discussions with several classes.
Students ranging from 5- to 13-years-old came to the gallery
for art making field trips. Kotani worked with the South
Austin Recreation Center, Parque Zaragoza Recreation Center,
and Montopolis Recreation Center. For many of these at-risk
youth, this was their first visit to a museum or gallery.
118
Akiko Kotani was born in Hawaii and received a BFA from
the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. She earned an MFA
from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA and taught at
Slippery Rock University in Slippery Rock, PA for 21 years until
her retirement in 2000. She lived in Guatemala from 2007
to 2010, where she studied under a Mayan weaver and from
2008-2010, she served as Adjunct Professor at Koc University
in Istanbul, Turkey.
Kotani has exhibited widely throughout the United States as
well as internationally in Spain, France, Italy, Hungary, Poland,
Turkey, Peru, and Japan. In 2013, she was named Pittsburgh
Artist of the Year by the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Her
work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, The Cleveland Museum of Art,
the Erie Art Museum in Erie, PA, the Montclair Art Museum
in Montclair, NJ and at Dokuz Eylui University in Izmir, Turkey,
and Moulin a Nef at VCCA-France in Auvillar, France.
Akiko Kotani
Soft Walls, 2013
crochet, plastic, canvas, staples, screws and wood
2 walls, 96 x 216 x 18 inches and 96 x 156 x 18 inches
photo: Rino Pizzi
Exhibitions
119
120
above & opposite
Akiko Kotani
Soft Walls, 2013
crochet, plastic, canvas, staples, screws and wood
2 walls, 96 x 216 x 18 inches and 96 x 156 x 18 inches
photo: Rino Pizzi
left
Akiko Kotani
Soft Walls, 2013
Akiko Kotani teaching students from Austin Recreational Center
photo: Rino Pizzi
Exhibitions
121
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ections.
their conn
122
on
conjuncti
ducted in
n
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ition Resi
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Partners
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22,500 w
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Fund
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n
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m
VAN Com
Projects
van partner:
516 Arts, Albuquerque, NM
artists:
John Hitchcock, Madison, WI and
Emily Arthur, Jacksonville, FL
project:
Air, Land, Seed Community Programming
Native American printmakers John Hitchcock and Emily
Arthur worked with artists Marwin Begaye (Norman, OK)
and Ryan O’Malley (Corpus Christi, TX) to create a largescale public art banner. They worked with the community
in the production of multiples during a Print Blitz and
conducted a ceremonial distribution of prints in the Native
“give-away” tradition.
For more information about John Hitchcock and
Emily Arthur’s exhibition residency, please see page 46
top
Print Blitz, 2013
demonstrating linocut printing
photo: 516 ARTS
bottom
Impact vs. Influence, 2013
screenprint on paper
dimensions variable
volunteers assisting
photo: 516 ARTS
Community Fund Awards 2013 – 2014
123
Liz Magic Laser
Tell Me What You Want To Hear Workshop, 2013
van partner:
van partner:
DiverseWorks, Houston, TX
artist:
LACE / Los Angeles Contemporary
Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA
Liz Magic Laser, New York, NY
artists:
project:
Tell Me What You Want To Hear
Liz Magic Laser, along with political, media and marketing
experts, led a series of week-long workshops to teach
participants how to dissect the emotionally manipulative
methods used by politicians and newsmakers to generate
empathy and compassion. The workshops culminated in
an interactive performance using the format of a news
talk show.
For more information about Liz Magic Laser’s exhibition
residency, please see page 18
Eric Zimmerman, Brooklyn, NY and
Nathalie Pozzi, New York, NY
project:
Planning and Documentation:
Engaging Local Community in
Extended Dialogue
LACE engaged in a planning and documentation project with
VAN resident artists, including a survey of past VAN resident
artists and community participants. The project resulted in a
Practice Sessions video to share with online audiences.
For more information about Eric Zimmerman and
Nathalie Pozzi’s exhibition residency, please see page 54
124
left
artist workshop at the Greater Hartford Academy
of the Arts in Hartford, CT
photo: Kameelah Janan Rasheed
below
assemblage (photographs, cds, cards, letters, keys)
photo: Kameelah Janan Rasheed
van partner:
van partner:
Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT
DiverseWorks, Houston, TX
artist:
artist:
Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Brooklyn, NY
Wu Tsang, Los Angeles, CA
project:
project:
Excavating and Reimagining
Our Community
Moved by the Motion
Real Art Ways hosted artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed in an
extended residency that engaged students from the Greater
Hartford Academy of the Arts in collaborative research of
local history, culminating in an exhibition of the youths’
narrative photographic works.
For more information about Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s
exhibition residency, please see page 14
Wu Tsang, a transgender second-generation ChineseAmerican artist, developed and filmed a series of intimate
interviews with members of the LGBTQ immigrant
community in Houston. The interviews contributed to the
research and production of a multi-media performance and
exhibition that utilized a filmic installation and event space.
Through these interviews Tsang provoked a line of inquiry in
order to expose the boundaries between the terms “inside”
and “outside” when referring to the shifting terrain of
human sexuality and gender identity.
For more information about Wu Tsang’s exhibition
residency, please see page 82
Community Fund Awards 2013 – 2014
125
van partner:
Space One Eleven, Birmingham, AL
artist:
Steve Lambert, Beacon, NY
project:
Steve Lambert is coming to Birmingham.
Write it in crayon.
nding
nerous fu
e
g
r
o
f
l
u
h
is gratef
tion, whic
a
d
n
NPN/VAN
u
o
F
hell
sible.
Joan Mitc
Fund pos
from the
y
it
n
u
m
VAN Com
made the
Steve Lambert planned for a residency by connecting
with the general public, news media, and human rights
organizations to select sites and determine community
concerns that will be addressed in his project, In My Life,
True/False. The project was documented by Victoria Estok,
and the resulting video will be available to audiences online.
For more information about Steve Lambert’s exhibition
residency at Space One Eleven, stay tuned for the 2015
VAN Catalog!
[images: Lambert - Public Forum Game Show at SOE,
Lambert – Public Forum in Canada, Lambert – Sign Drawing]
126
Steve Lambert
PUBLIC FORUM, 2014
wood, aluminum, electrical
14 feet wide, 7 inches deep, variable height
photo: courtesy of CAFKA
ners
VAN Part
r
Center fo
Coleman
516 ARTS
SW
al Avenue
516 Centr
7102-3114
8
ue, NM
Albuquerq
445
505.242.1
arts.org
www.516
tor
tive Direc
arge, Execu
b
S
e
n
n
Suza
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516arts.o
suzanne@
tor
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org
@516arts.
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1712 O
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New Orle
070
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www.ash
ctor
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Jo Ann M
ail.com
009@gm
nt:
jominor2
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Karel Sloa
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Asian
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Arts Initia
Street
1219 Vine
107-1111
hia, PA 19
Philadelp
55
215.557.04
ue A
630 Aven
6925
York, AL 3
005
205.392.2
t he A r t s
org
manarts.
www.cole
-Director
urath, Co
Nathan P
gmail.com
npurath@
irector
rger, Co-D
Shana Be
.com
er@gmail
shanaberg
ry
ntempora
Dallas Co
Street
161 Glass
75207
Dallas, TX
22
214 .821.25
porary.org
ascontem
irector
shenko, D
orary.org
Peter Doro
scontemp
a
ll
a
d
@
o
shenk
peter.doro
www.dall
ral A
ibe Cultu
V
a
r
o
p
s
Dia
tor
rts Incuba
6 Street
686 NE 5
33137-2318
Miami, FL
801
786.536.7
ai.org
www.dvc
sident
Pre
Founder &
-Wallace,
n
o
rd
o
G
Rosie
ai.org
rosie@dvc
Director
Zafar, SM
m
ya
rr
a
M
rg
@dvcai.o
marryam
tive.org
nartsinitia
r
www.asia
s Manage
c Program
li
b
u
P
,
n
e
ve.org
Nancy Ch
rtsinitiati
n@asiana
e
h
.c
cy
n
ator
a
n
s Coordin
xhibition
E
,
a
w
za
o
Sh
rg
Katherine
nitiative.o
asianartsi
@
e
n
ri
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kath
Partners
127
DiverseWorks
Legion Arts
4102 Fannin Street, Suite 200
Houston, TX 77004
1103 Third Street SE
Cedar Rapids, IA 52401-2305
713.223.8346
319.364.1580
www.diverseworks.org
www.legionarts.org
Elizabeth Dunbar, Executive Director
[email protected]
Mel Andringa, Producing Director
[email protected]
Rachel Cook, Associate Curator
[email protected]
Hammonds House Museum
503 Peeples Street, SW
Atlanta, GA 30310
404-612-0482
www.hammondshouse.org
Myrna Anderson-Fuller, Executive Director
[email protected]
LACE / Los Angeles
Contemporary Exhibitions
6522 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90028-6210
510 S. First Street
San José, CA 95113-2806
408.998.ARTE
www.maclaarte.org
Anjee Helstrup-Alvarez, Executive Director
[email protected]
Joey Reyes, Curatorial Coordinator
[email protected]
PICA / Portland Institute for
Contemporary Art
323.957.1777
415 SW 10th Avenue, Suite 300
Portland, OR 97205
www.welcometolace.org
503.242.1419
Sarah Russin, Executive Director
[email protected]
www.pica.org
Shoghig Halajian, Assistant Director
[email protected]
128
MACLA / Movimiento de
Arte y Cultura Latino Americana
Kristan Kennedy, Visual Art Curator
[email protected]
Victoria Frey, Executive Director
[email protected]
Project Row Houses
Space One Eleven
2521 Holman Street
Houston, TX 77004-4247
2409 Second Avenue North
Birmingham, AL 35203-3809
713.526.7662
205.328.0553
www.projectrowhouses.org
www.spaceoneeleven.org
Ryan N. Dennis, Public Art Director
[email protected]
Peter Prinz, CEO & Co-Founder
[email protected]
Linda Shearer, Executive Director
[email protected]
Anne Arrasmith, Founding Director
[email protected]
Real Art Ways
Women & Their Work
56 Arbor Street
Hartford, CT 06106-1228
1710 Lavaca Street
Austin, TX 78701-1316
860.232.1006
512.477.1064
www.realartways.org
www.womenandtheirwork.org
Will K. Wilkins, Executive Director
[email protected]
Chris Cowden, Executive Director
[email protected]
Michael Galvin, Visual Arts Manager
[email protected]
Liberty Lloyd, Gallery Director
[email protected]
RedLine
2350 Arapahoe Street
Denver, CO 80205
303.296.4448
www.redlineart.org
Louise Martorano, Executive Director
[email protected]
Robin Gallite, Education Director
[email protected]
Partners
129
About the
The Visual Artists Network (VAN) is a
national network of visual artists, curators
and exhibitors providing opportunities
and subsidy support for under-recognized
visual artists. VAN nurtures the creation
of experimental artwork and supports the
touring of contemporary visual artists and
their work.
Modeled after the National Performance Network’s (NPN)
performing arts program, VAN was launched in 2007 as
a pilot program, and in 2009 the program was formally
established through the induction of the VAN Partners,
leading contemporary arts organizations from across the
United States. Selected in a rigorous application process,
the VAN Partners join the Network for the life of their
organizations, thus guaranteeing them subsidy support
and services as long as their work and commitment to the
Network’s values remain consistent.
VAN’s dedication to long-term relationships serves the
greater goal of nourishing creative communities where
artists may thrive.
e
twork
e
About th
N
e
c
n
l
a
rm
e Nationa
o
f
r
e
twork, th
e
P
n
d
l
te
a
ra
ne
active
d, field-ge
cture. Its
Nation
ist-centere
in its stru
e
cted
u
iq
n
o
As an art
u
rc
is
te nne
N)
twork (NP
e
N
e
c
n
a
m
nal Perfor
ers,
The Natio
al organiz
r
u
lt
u
c
e
s
of diver
create
is a group
orking to
w
,
s
t
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including
d to provid
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a
s
ip
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s
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ul par tne
e and
meaningf
the practic
s
le
b
a
n
e
that
he
leadership
e ar ts in t
h
t
f
o
e
c
n
erie
public exp
tes.
United Sta
atement
mission st
130
ork
an in
nce Netw
ters form
ices
Performa
of presen
rk
o
rt and serv
o
tw
p
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p
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su
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web of re
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sign
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are strate
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successfu
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all nu
recipro
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ment and
vited
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Every two
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n
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NPN Pa
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requirem
us nomin
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deliberate
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NPN’s st
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goal to su
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National Performance Network /
Visual Artists Network Staff
Stephanie Atkins
Renata Petroni
Steve Bailey
MK Wegmann
William Bowling
Thérèse Wegmann
Stanlyn Brevé
Kathleen Welch
Steffani Clemons
Kyoko Yoshida
Alec De León
Mimi Zarsky
Kathie deNobriga
interns:
Resource Development Specialist
[email protected]
Chief Operating Officer
[email protected]
Program Associate, National Programs
[email protected]
Director of National Programs
[email protected]
Administrative Assistant
[email protected]
Program Specialist (VAN), National Programs
[email protected]
Publications Editor
[email protected]
Elizabeth Doud
Coordinator, Performing Americas Program
[email protected]
Bryan Graham
IT/Design
[email protected]
Anna Henschel
Consultant, International Program
[email protected]
President & CEO
[email protected]
Senior Program Specialist, Operations & Data
[email protected]
Facilities Manager, Arts Estuary 1024
[email protected]
Consultant, U.S.-Japan Connection
[email protected]
Senior Program Specialist, Convenings
[email protected]
Eun Jung Yang
Fall 2013
Carrie Knopf
Spring 2014
Rachel Swan
Summer 2014
Monica Tyran
Fall 2014
Program Assistant, National Programs
[email protected]
Info
131
Thanks
and
any people
m
e
h
t
e
e
g
cess of th
cknowled
c
a
u
s
o
t
e
s
h
e
t
h
o
ted t
NPN wis
r tners and
e contribu
v
a
a
P
h
N
o
A
h
V
w
e
s
the th
ho
institution
including
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k
r
o
w
e ar tists w
t
h
e
t
N
ll
a
s
t
o
is
t
t
r
.
f fered
Visual A
y Program
anks are o
c
h
n
t
e
l
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id
c
s
e
e
R
p
S
ition
their staf f.
VAN Exhib
e
h
t
in
d
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icipat
have par t
132
Support
The Visual Artists Network is generously supported
by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts,
the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Ford Foundation,
the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Nathan Cummings
Foundation, the Lambent Foundation – a project of the
Tides Center and Southwest Airlines. The VAN Partners
also make a significant contribution to the program
through their matching dollars and annual dues.
Info
133
Colophon
by
nt family
e Thesis fo
h
T
f
o
rt
a
p
TheSans,
4.
Groot, 199
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editor:
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Alec De Le
134
address: P.O. Box 56698 New Orleans, LA 70156-6698
phone: 504.595.8008
fax: 504.595.8006
email: [email protected]
web: www.npnweb.org
Selina Roman
Untitled (Sand), 2012
40 x 60 inches
photo: Selina Roman

Exhibitions 2013-2014 - National Performance Network

Transcription

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