Monday, April 1st, 2024

7:00PM - 8:30PM

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Barnaby Ruhe, Genesis, acrylic on canvas

A Trilogue between the Artists behind the "Whitney Counterweight" Exposition

Participants

Vernita Nemec, visual and performance artist, arts activist, and former director of Artists Talk on Art Bill Rabinovitch, visual artist, and documentarian Barnaby Ruhe, visual artist, professor and board member of Artists Talk on Art

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Participant Biographies

Vernita Nemec served as director of Artists Talk On Art, interviewing art world luminaries and creating evenings of artists presenting 5 minute performances. In 2001 she became, and still is, the director of Viridian Artists Gallery in Chelsea. Nemec has independently curated exhibits since 1994, first at Henry Street Settlement Art Center. She has continued to independently curate extensive group exhibitions of art from recycled materials, entitled Art from Detritus for which she received both a Kaufmann Foundation Grant and a Puffin Foundation Grant. Nemec also organized one of the first feminist exhibits in 1969, X-12, and in 2022 co-curated an exhibit of NYC women artists from the 70’s who are still making art at Carter Burden Gallery in Chelsea. Vernita Nemec completed her BFA cum laude at Ohio University, receiving a NDEA Grant to finish her Master’s work at New York University. Since then, she has presented more than 30 solo exhibitions of her visual art and over 60 performance artworks, receiving grants from the Jerome Foundation, Artists Space, Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, Movement Research at Judson, The Field, Artist’s Space, NEA & others. Her visual and performance art has been presented in the U.S. and internationally in Mexico, Hungary, Germany, Japan, Ireland and France. She continues to write poetry, sometimes incorporating it into her visual & performance works. Her most recent art has been environmentally motivated, first, creating art from junkmail and currently sculptural works from plastic discards which she will be presenting in a solo exhibit in February 2024.

Bill Rabinovitch My art making reflects a process of spontaneous invention and poetic feeling - while exploring the potential of great color. Expressionist artist in SoHo since the 1970’s besides feature film / art documentary maker.  Major 20 ft mural in Canal Street Post Office Bill Rabinovitch Contemporary Artist News Interview with Ben Aaron SOHO NYC 2024 Biography: https://youtu.be/GkEV6ttOfLs?si=DZz-BWulaA-0PhI8 Created original TV plays on Picasso, Basquiat - major documentaries on James Rosenquist, etc. Mechanical Engineer, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Jet pilot USAF. Worked with NASA.  Instagram BillRabinovitch.com Download Barnaby Ruhe is one of the last living members of the first generation of abstract expressionists. He was a two-time United States naval officer during the Vietnam War, as a well a historian. Ruhe has been teaching shamanism and art at NYU, where he earned his PhD, for the past two decades. He served as the Senior Editor of ArtWorld Newspaper from 1979 to 99. Also in 1979, Ruhe created the Portrait Painting Marathon and Salon de Guerre.  He muscled the Whitney Counterweight in 1977, 79, 81, and 83 alongside Bill Rabinovich and Vernita Nemec with the help of a NEA grant. He is a recepiant of both the Pollock/Krasner award and the MidAtlanticNEA award. Ruhe's artwork is included in the collections of MoMA, Jack Lang, Judd Tully, Cindy Adams, Bob Metzge, and others. Posted in current Earlier Event: March 25 Open Studio for portrait artists Later Event: April 8 Open Studio for Landscape & Street Mural Artists. © Artists Talk On Art