Brainard Carey's Blog, page 50

Bisa Butler

Artist Bisa Butler at the Art Institute of Chicago. phot: John J. Kim.

Bisa Butler was born in Orange, NJ, the daughter of a college president and a French teacher. She was raised in South Orange and the youngest of four siblings.  Butler’s artistic talent was first recognized at the age of four, when she won a blue ribbon in an art competition.

Formally trained , Butler graduated Cum Laude from Howard University with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art degree.  It was during her education at Howard that Butler was able to refine her natural talents under the tutelage of lecturers such as Lois Mailou Jones, Elizabeth Catlett, Jeff Donaldson and Ernie Barnes. She began to experiment with fabric as a medium and became interested in collage techniques.

Butler then went on to earn a Masters in Art from Montclair State University in 2005.

While in the process of obtaining her Masters degree Butler took a Fiber Arts class where she had an artistic epiphany and she finally realized how to express her art.   “As a child, I was always watching my mother and grandmother sew, and they taught me. After that class, I made a portrait quilt for my grandmother on her deathbed, and I have been making art quilts  ever since.”

Bisa Butler was a high school art teacher for 10 years in the Newark Public Schools and 3 years at Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey.

In February 2021 Bisa was awarded a United States Artist fellowship.Butler’s work is currently the focus of a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, the second stop of a traveling exhibit which began at the Katonah Museum of Art. She is represented by the Claire Oliver Gallery of New York. Butlers work has been acquired by many private and public collections including The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture,The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Nelson-Adkins Museum , 21cMuseum Hotels, The Kemper Museum of Art, The Orlando Museum of Art, The Newark Museum, The Toledo Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

*Don’t Tread On Me , God Damn, Let’s Go! ; The Harlem Hellfighters, 2021 Cotton, silk, wool and velvet * a work in progress, Photo by Bisa ButlerI Go To Prepare A Place For You, Harriet Tubman’s last words ,2021 Cotton, silk ,wool and velvet 120” x 120” Quilted and appliquéd Photo by John Butler

Rebecca Bryant

photo by Jamie Carr

Rebecca Bryant creates danceworks that combine movement with text, video, and objects. Originally trained in visual art, Bryant’s dances emphasize improvisational methods and performative states, as well as non-hierarchical collaboration across disciplines.  Bryant has shown her work in 26 US states and in Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. She worked extensively with the Lower Left Performance Collective for 13 years and is a co-founder of PMPD (dance/music/new media). Her projects have received support from residencies such as Djerassi Resident Artist Program (USA) and Guapamacátaro Art and Ecology Residency (Mexico), and a choreographic grant from the Puffin Foundation. Bryant has danced for renowned and emerging choreographers including Nina Martin, Wally Cardona, Victoria Marks, Kim Epifano, Shelley Senter, Lionel Popkin, and Marianne Kim. She has taught workshops in New York, Stockholm, Oslo, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Bogota, and at the Los Angeles Improvisational Dance Festival, West Coast Contact Improv Festival, Texas Dance Improvisation Festival, Contact Festival Freiburg, TransContact Festival, Kontakt Budapest Festival, and at numerous universities across the US.  She holds a BA in Visual Art and an MFA in Dance, and teaches dance improvisation, composition, somatics, and pedagogy at California State University, Long Beach.

The book mentioned in the interview is The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman.

Benjamin Bertocci

Benjamin Bertocci lives with his small family and has been working out of his studio in Queens, New York since 2005. He was raised in Stockbridge Massachusetts, and attended Bard College at Simon’s Rock, UMASS Amherst, and worked as Visiting Assistant professor of Printmaking at Southern Illinois University.

He primarily shows with VonAmmonco Gallery.

Children’s Singer, oil on plastic entombed canvas, 8”x8”, 2021Holocene Threnody XVI, oil on marble drink coaster, 4”x4”, 2020

Christy Gast

Christy Gast

photo credit: Keil Troisi

(Amenia, New York) is an artist based in New York whose sculptures and video installations focus on issues of politics and aesthetics with regard to landscape.

Her work has been exhibited at MoMA/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Performa, Exit Art and Artist’s Space in New York, Perez Art Museum of Miami, Bass Museum, de la Cruz Collection and Nina Johnson Gallery in Miami, Matucana 100 and Patricia Ready Gallery in Santiago, CL, and the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris.  Cucú and Her Fishes (Act 1)Binational Seminar on Patagonian Peat Bogs

Marta Popivoda

Marta Popivoda (Berlin/Belgrade) is a filmmaker, video artist, and researcher. Her work explores tensions between memory and history, collective and individual bodies, as well as ideology and everyday life, with a focus on antifascist and feminist potentialities of the Yugoslav socialist project. She cherishes collective practice in art-making and research, and for several years has been part of the TkH (Walking Theory) collective. Popivoda’s first feature documentary, Yugoslavia, How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body, premiered at the 63rd Berlinale and was later screened at many international film festivals.The film is part of the permanent collection of MoMA New York, and it’s featured in What Is Contemporary Art? MoMA’s online course about contemporary art from 1980 to the present. Her work has also featured in major art galleries, such as Tate Modern London, MoMA New York, M HKA Antwerp, Museum of Modern Art + MSUM Ljubljana, etc. Popivoda received the prestigious Berlin Art Prize for the visual arts by Akademie der Künste Berlin and Edith-Russ-Haus Award for Emerging Media Artist. Her new feature documentary Landscapes of Resistance premiered in the Tiger Competition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2021. It won the Best Picture Prize in the International Competition of the 22nd Jeonju International Film Festival, South Korea, and Library Award at the 43rd Cinéma du réel – Festival international du film documentaire, Paris.[image error]Landscapes of Resistance, Marta Popivoda, Film Still[image error]Landscapes of Resistance, Marta Popivoda, Film Still

 

Cristina Mejías Gómez

Cristina Mejías (Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, 1986) We have become accustomed to preconceiving the academic world as the legitimate container and transmitter of knowledge. We have the luxury of being able to forget something because we can always retrieve it from books. But here it is not enough to simply dry a leaf and store it in a herbarium, because a living plant is bitten by the air, and it is important that this happens. Libraries need to be driven by our desire in order to take on life. The practice of orality cuts across bodies. The listener listens.

Cristina Mejías’ work is predicated on familiar narrations and storytelling, challenging the strict, traditional methods used to construct history by means of a linear narrative. What has brought us here to the present is founded upon the strata of History and stories that predate us. The creation of something regarded as new always begins with seizing a murmuring that triggers the story.

Mejías has a degree in Fine Arts from UEM (Madrid) and NCAD (Dublin) and a Master’s in Research in Art and Creation from UCM (Madrid). After several years living in Berlin, now she lives and works in Madrid.

Her work has recently been exhibited individually in Art centers such as Centro Párraga (Murcia, SP)- A un tiempo. Unos higos y un cántaro , Museum of Jaen and Museum of Cadiz (Jaen/Cádiz, SP)- For What Cannot Be Recovered Can at Least Be Reenacted, Blueproject Foundation (Barcelona, SP)- You Can’t Leave Fingerprints on Stone, a project born thanks to the collaboration with archaeologist and performer Efthimis Theou-, and the Contemporary Art Museum from Maracaibo (Maracaibo, VZ)- Tejer y contar.

Her work has also appeared in group exhibitions in Art institutions such as Tabakalera Donostia- Estudiotik at (San Sebastián, SP), CA2M- Colección XX (Madrid), La Casa Encedida- Generación 2020 and Things That Never Happened but Have Always Existed (Madrid, SP), SCAN Projects-Where water Rumbles (London, UK), CentroCentro (Madrid, SP), C3A-Touching Ground (Cordoba, SP), Fundación Mendoza- Correspondencias de Ultramar #4 Ana Navas y Cristina Mejías (Caracas, VZ), Artothèque-Ceux qui nous lient (Bordeaux, FR) or Tea-La tierra tiembla (Tenerife, SP).  Along with her personal artistic work, currently she is collaborating with artist and performer Víctor Colmenero and their work has been seen or will be seen in places such as Volcánica Festival (Guadalajara, MX), La Capilla Theatre and Proyecto H (Mexico City, MX) or Pradillo Theatre (Madrid, SP).

She has recently won a number of awards and grants, including Generación 2020, Blueproject Foundation, VEGAP XXIII, Comunidad de Madrid|Estampa award or Iniciarte. Over the course of the last months, she has been artist in residence at Pico do Refúgio (Azores, PT), Hangar Lisboa (Lisboa, PT), C3A (Cordoba, SP), Matadero Madrid (Madrid, SP), Ateliers dos Coruchéus (Lisboa, PT), Tabakalera Donostia (San Sebastián, PT) and MACZUL (Maracaibo, VZ)

 The book mentioned was by Ursula K. Leguin: The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

You Can’t Leave Fingerprints on Stone, solo exhibition at Blueproject Foundation (Barcelona, SP, 2020). Photo by Roberto RuizA un tiempo. Unos higos y un cántaro, solo exhibition at Centro Párraga (Murcia, SP, 2020). Curated by Ana García Alarcón. Photo courtesy of Centro Párraga.

 

 

 

Zeren Oruc

Zeren Oruc is an independent curator based in Belgrade, Serbia, and Istanbul, Turkey. Her curatorial practice revolves around the environment, comparative cultural analysis, and intercultural communication through art. To reflect on the current artistic structures and social issues that art tackles, she tends to take an innovative and multidisciplinary approach, and adapt accordingly to the artist, the project, or the geography that she is working in.

After working with various art institutions in Europe, she founded Belgrade-based initiative, iksvy art, focusing on interdisciplinary art projects and art in Eastern Europe. As a part of iksvy art’s program, she led and managed several projects, such as Collective Journaling and Curatorial Round Tables, Curatorial Sessions, and the podcast “iksvy art talks”.In 2019, she was invited to revitalize the studio of deceased German artist Wolfgang Simon, in Andalusia, Spain. Her efforts resulted in co-founding and curating Montemero Art Residency dedicated to sustainable ecology and alternative art production. She aims to bring people together to build a network for eco-art projects and research alternative materials for art production, while actively supporting the artists in the residency through curatorial sessions.

Currently, she is working on several exhibitions in Belgrade and in Gemer, Slovakia, conducting curatorial brainstorming sessions with artists and giving portfolio reviews.

The book mentioned in the interview is Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype.Muma Paduri – solo show of Joan Alvado, curated by Zeren Oruc, Instituto Cervantes in BelgradeMuma Paduri – solo show of Joan Alvado, curated by Zeren Oruc, Instituto Cervantes in Belgrade

Christine Suarez

Christine Suárez is a choreographer, performer, educator and community activist based in Los Angeles. Born in Caracas, Venezuela and raised in Baton Rouge Louisiana, she founded Suarez Dance Theater in 2003. They create at the intersection of collaborative dance-making and community outreach. Their work has been seen in theaters, parks, classrooms and houses and toured nationally and internationally. They have been awarded grants from Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, Santa Monica Cultural Affairs, Flourish Foundation and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Christine is co-creator of Dance for Veterans – a program that builds creative expression and social cohesion at Los Angeles VA Hospitals.

Christine Suarez & Shelby Williams-Gonzalez performing On Being American for students at Culver Park HS. photo by Alex MillarPictured are dancer/collaborators Bernard Brown and Nguyen Nguyen performing Mother.Father. @ the Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, CA photo by Christine Suarez.

Elizabeth Munro

Elizabeth Munro was born in London in 1939 and currently lives near Porthmadog, in North Wales. She is a painter and art/life practitioner. She was influenced early on by Harry Thubron, her inspirational mentor at Leeds College of Art- and  later by the groundbreaking Judson Dance Theatre where she participated in various performances. Arlene Rothlein, Malcolm Goldstein, and Philip Corner became good friends. Yvonne Rainer was a powerful influence.

Her paintings have been exhibited in various galleries in the U.K. and New York. In the Eighties in Upstate New York she met and collaborated with Linda “Rosita” Montano, performance artist,  as well as becoming a friend of hers for life.

Elizabeth Munro calls her work “Survival Art” and now sees it as a healing response to her childhood sexual abuse.  She attributes her freedom of movement in painting- and the painting itself- inspired by the influence of Sam Francis, Jackson Pollock and the Abstract expressionists-in helping to create a Lifeline for her: for escape, survival, and healing from early child sexual abuse.

At the moment she has her studio in Wales and plans to do whatever she wants to next.

Currently reading: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel, Look At Me  by Anita Brookner and Self- Help by Lorrie Moore.

Scroll painting by Elizabeth Munro – ‘Millstream’, early spring, pink rushing water, Woodstock N.Y.Photo from my dear friend Sky’s natural burial in Boduan Wood, Eternal Forest Trust, near Pwllheli in Wales. Birds were singing as I scattered flowers and rosemary on the wicker casket.

Alethea Pace

Photo by Whitney Browne

Alethea Pace is a Bronx-based choreographer and performer. Her first solo performance work, trying to sweep back the ocean with a broom, was created with support from Pepatian’s Open Call Residency and was performed at BAAD! (2016) and New York Live Arts (2017). Her second evening-length work, Bring Me Flowers, was developed with support from residencies including New York Live Arts’ Fresh Tracks, Dancing While Black, 92Y Harkness Dance and premiered at Pregones Theater in 2018.

She is currently working on Here goes the neighborhood… , a multimedia performance installation that reminds us of the wealth of knowledge we have in our bodies, memories and geographies, and empowers us to dream of radical visions for our future.

As a dancer, Alethea has performed with a variety of choreographers and was a member of Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre for eight years. She has been a collaborator in numerous multimedia community-centered arts projects including Angela’s Pulse and the Laundromat Project.

Alethea trained at Mind-Builders Creative Arts Center in the Bronx. She has a BA in Urban Design from NYU where she completed her thesis project on the history of Bronx housing. She is currently expanding her artistic practice as an MFA candidate at the City College of New York’s Digital and Interdisciplinary Arts Practice program. She was awarded the BRIO award and CUNY Dance Initiative in 2019 and was BAAD!’s Muse Artist in Residence in 2020. Read more at aletheapace.com or follow her on instagram @alethea_pace

Alethea Pace and Richard Rivera perform Here goes the neighborhood… Photo by Trevon BlondetAlethea Pace performs Bring me flowers at Danspace Project in 2019. Photo by Paula Lobo