Giulia Faria and Mónica Lima in Sideslip, Photo taken by Marcy Rosenblat
The impetus for this series of conversations between a visual artist and a choreographer comes directly from my recent collaborative work with a choreographer as part of Norte Maar’s CounterPointe10. In this unique project a choreographer is paired with a visual artist to create together over two months a dance performance that integrates the two disciplines into a cohesive vision. Here is the conversation between artist Marcy Rosenblat and Choreographer Amanda Treiber.
Liu Shiming. All photos courtesy of The Liu Shiming Foundation.
Art non-profits play a critical role in fiscally supporting and guiding emerging artists. Founded in August 2021, The Liu Shiming Art Foundation was created to preserve the legacy of artist Liu Shiming’s work as well as to support art students and emerging artists. In April, the Foundation announced the very first ten recipients of the Liu Shiming Art Grant. Channeling Shiming’s longstanding passion for the arts, the $3,000 grant is given to young artists who are no longer enrolled in school or students enrolled in institutions outside of the Foundation’s partner universities and colleges.
“There’s always time to do what you really want. When I had children, I worked when everybody went to bed, after 11pm. I would set up at the kitchen table and clean it very well before I would start.”
–Luchita Hurtado
Remember in the darkest, most locked down days of the pandemic, when all of us were stuck within our own walls, and many of us had kids at home too? And we found ourselves having to resort to making work at the kitchen table in between the cracks of work and school. Well, it got me thinking that this was nothing new to the history of making art: a history that wants us to think that its entire timeline is full of swaggering guys in big New York City lofts, hands-on-chins, undistracted by life’s mundanity. But, in fact, the reality of being an artist is rife with personal stories of people who had to make it work. They, like us, squeezed making art in between the oven timer and the kids’ nap, or in between the hours of a demoralizing 9-5. And quite frankly, those artists that find a way to eke through those tough years of limited space and time are the artists that have the swagger that impresses me the most.
Garden for Drowning Descendant/Garden Sequence from “Flying and Drowning Dream,“ interactive mixed reality installation, 2022, with performer Danielle McPhatter.
Eva Davidova makes new media works that focus on ecological disaster, our interdependence as a species, and the political implications of technology which she unpacks with performative works rooted in the absurd. She imagines the paradox that one day our descendants–human or cyborg–will be constructing our reality as a simulation, and asks: “If we are the games our children will program one day, can we influence the code they are writing?”
Pope.L, studio, 2022, photo courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery 52 Walker
When I heard about Impossible Failures it promised to be an exciting exhibition, in that it was to bring together Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978), a White post-Minimalist artist best known for his site-specific works of cutting through buildings and homes, and Pope.L (b.1955), a Black artist who used to describe himself as the friendliest Black man in America, and is known for his public performances and installations, which address Black racial stereotyping and other such hypocrisies. In a not un-interesting way, the resulting exhibition is a curatorial mash-up in which the works in it are overwhelmed. As such, this is not an exhibition where the works of each artist supply a context for the other, nor does it explore Matta-Clark’s legacy by focusing on Pope.L’s overlapping strategies. Instead it might be thought of as a collaborative installation authored by the curator Ebony L. Haynes.
For the last 50+ years, eco-artist and environmental activist Betsy Damon has devoted herself to community building – the coming together of individuals to achieve a common purpose. Since the 1980s, after a decade of engaging the public through public performances in New York City, she has worked at the intersection of art and science, focusing on the topic of water and on creating models for communities in the United States and China to know and become stewards of their own water sources. The brief descriptions below, highlighting four of Damon’s many exhibitions, ecological and sustainable design projects, publications, and organizations are only a brief glimpse into her prolific and important body of work.
Smashworks Dance (Taylor Jordan, Louisa Pancoast, Haley Williams, Tyler Choquette, Laurie Deziel), CITY STORIES, 2022, Photo by Elyse Mertz, courtesy of Smashworks Dance
Though I saw Smashworks Dance’s CITY STORIES over a month ago, it still lingers in the back of my mind. As a New Yorker, how could it not? The images from the show are the images of my daily life. Flashes of scenes and movements weave their way through my commute and my coffee run, popping up like absurdist smash-cuts in early-2000s sitcoms. That’s where Artistic Director Ashley McQueen’s magic lies: the source material is everyday, the execution is something else entirely.
In October 2021, at the periphery of the parking lot outside of the Time and Space Limited Center in Hudson, artwork by Linda Mussman appeared—about 20 large dictionaries and encyclopedias opened out on a crude wooden table. For several months, round the clock, these dictionaries were exposed to rain, sunlight, and snow, and rifled through by winds. Peach-colored streetlight bathed the texts some nights, and bright sunlight bleached the pages some days. The grass around the table receded and then returned with – mirabile dictu – a green shoot briefly fighting its way between 2 volumes.
Dancers Unlimited members at Waikalua fishpond in Hawai’i. Photo credit: Jordan Medeiros
Brooklyn Arts Council announced in March 2022 an allocation of over $1.3 million to 238 Brooklyn-based artists and cultural organizations. This year marks the highest number of grantees and awardees as well as the largest amount of funding BAC has ever distributed. Art Spiel in collaboration with Brooklyn Arts Council features some artists who received a Brooklyn Arts Fund, Local Arts Support, and/or Creative Equations Fund grant in 2022.
Vanilla Ice, 2016, Edition 3 of 3. Chromogenic print, 24 x 36 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Vielmetter Los Angeles
To Whom It May Concern, the current exhibition featuring an installation and collages by Los Angeles based artist Genevieve Gaignard, raises poignant questions related to nostalgic notions of American history and culture. The work ranges from staged photographs, questioning social stigmas and beauty standards, to a room installation made of found furniture and other objects. The artist says the aim is to “beckon viewers to dig into the imperfect relationship between our inner worlds, public lives, and modern events.” Mary Salvante, the director and chief curator of Rowan University Art Gallery sheds some more light on this show. The show runs through October 29, 2022.