ATOA Artist Talk On Art Since 1975

Every Monday Virtual Open Studios 6pm-7:30pm
Share your art your studio practices and thoughts on art or just listen in and converse

Virtual Meeting 2021 Zoom Link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84198882925 
The new Zoom code for 2020 and new time 7pm-8:30pm
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/71206737625

Past Zoom talks can be seen on our Youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh2ulvPNBEyeM-xz5WBI5nQ

Our historical website and archive of panels since 1975 is being updated.
ATOA archives are held at the Smithsonian’s American archives of Art and updated periodically.
https://www.aaa.si.edu/search/collections?edan_q=ATOA

Tickets are free
Donations help to make a DENT

ATOA A 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Previous ATOA Virtual Panel Talks
Organized by Peter Duhon in 2020

The Hunger Ian Swanson & Amalia Vekri @ HOT WHEELS PROJECTS (Athens, Greece) ATOA May 2 2020 Virtual Jitsi Talk

May 2, 2020, 1–3 PM Saturday
Organizer: Orgy Park
Moderator: Steve Mykietyn
”All Changes Saved The Quest for Original Space
Panelists:

Philip Hinge (Catbox Contemporary)
http://catboxcontemporary.com/
Patrick Mohundro (P.A.D.)
https://www.instagram.com/pad_gallery/
Craig Poor Monteith (Tubplug, Plugdumpster)
https://www.tubbplug.com/
Rachel Vera Steinberg & Sophie Byerley (Custom Program) ​
http://customprogram.org/

White cube galleries come with a lot of packaging, there are backers and insurance, wages for employees, 401k, storage units, conservators all driven by an ambitious year of sales through the secondary market, large scale exhibitions, not to mention art fairs (with shipping costs). Meanwhile, independent artist run spaces operate on smaller budgets with less than half of the overhead as the larger commercial spaces- sometimes run by only one or few people managing an exhibition space with some to little sales. Now imagine something like that but without the worry or warrant to pay rent for a larger space. I mean you could have an art show in your bathtub or microwave, clothesline on the sidewalk or out in the woods. In this presentation we will have a look at a few current outlets working with artists in a less presumptive manner, one that engages an audience’s imagination. They often implore and provoke the viewer to reach a new normal with how art can be appreciated. 

April 26, 2020 3pm
Caveh Zahedi on Hallucinogens.
Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi on his experiences with hallucinogens and how they have impacted his work and his worldview.
Organized by Stephen Wuensch

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/magazine/caveh-zahedi-documentary-film.html  

April 25 2020 1pm
Emerging Focus:
Frank Tribble
Organized and Moderated by
Peter Duhon Via Jitsi

Making a DENT:
Development: Progress
Evolution: Growth
Nurture: Help
Transformation: Change

The ATOA is transforming how we present our talks in the era of physical distancing. Using developments in digital connectedness we are now offering 3 series to promote our ongoing mission to bring artist talks to a global audience and to nourish our need for community and creativity.

Join us in our adventure as we make a DENT and Develop, Evolve and Nurture Transformation in the arts. Please show your support. Our talks are free, we ask for a donation and at this difficult time in the arts we have decided to offer a small stipend to panelists.
Your help makes a DENT too.

Donation can also be received through Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=27223097

For credit card or Venmo payments
call Barry Kostrinsky @914 291 6533
barrykostrinsky@gmail.com

Checks can be mailed to:
Artists Talk On Art
PO Box 1384 Old Chelsea Station
New York City, NY 10113

We hope you and your family and the whole globe weathers the storm. We regret to postpone our in person talks. How can we continue our 45 year history of providing dialogue on the arts for and by artists and the art world? Join us every Monday virtually via Zoom 6pm-7:30pm
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84198882925

Previous Panels 2020

March 2 2020
Art and Hegemony: Artists Fight Trump
Organizer and Moderator Patricia Dahlman

Panelists/Artists

Rita Valley

Jackie Lima

Carla Rae Johnson (Image at top of page)

Karen Guancione

Many citizens of the United States have spoken out against Trump by organizing, protesting, voting, writing and making art. Most of us have hoped for the impeachment of this inept, cruel, lying and corrupt con man who is a danger to our country and to the world. We the people of the United States will continue to speak out and fight against Trump.

I am pleased to present the online exhibition ARTISTS FIGHT TRUMP. This includes the artists Rita Valley, Sue Coe, Jackie Lima, Carla Rae Johnson and Karen Guancione. For over two years these artists have dedicated their art work and lives to fighting Trump.

This past year I was introduced to the work of Rita Valley and Carla Rae Johnson at ODETTA Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Their work is both beautiful, biting and humorous. I am thrilled they are participating. For many years I have been aware of and appreciative of Jackie Lima’s work and was totally taken with her new anti-Trump art work. I am very appreciative that she has allowed me to show it here. I am honored to have Sue Coe participating in ARTIST FIGHT TRUMP and thank both Sue Coe and Galerie St. Etienne for making this possible. The artist Karen Guancione has spent an extraordinary amount of time organizing and protesting against Trump. I wanted to include photographs of Karen’s work as an activist fighting Trump in the streets. Thanks to Karen for all her incredible work and thanks to all the artists for their dedication and powerful art and for being part of ARTISTS FIGHT TRUMP.

Patricia Dahlman watpaetki@aol.com

Please note all the art is copyright and permission of the artist is needed to reproduce the work.

https://sites.google.com/view/artistsfighttrump/home

https://sites.google.com/view/artistsfighttrump/home

February 3 2020

“Space and Desire: NYC Apartment Galleries”
Organized and Moderated by
Steven Pestana

Panelists Feb 3 2020:
J. Simmz, Doppelgänger Projects
Steve Mykietyn, Orgy Park
Lauren Wolchik, Gloria’s Project Space
Olivia Swider and Michael Fleming,
Selanas Mountain
Below: Steve Mykietyn, Orgy Park http://www.orgypark.com/about.html

J. Simmz, Doppelgänger Projects https://www.doppelgangerprojects.com/

Olivia Swider and Michael Fleming,
Selanas Mountain https://selenasmountain.com/about

Lauren Wolchik, Gloria’s Project Space https://www.gloriasprojectspace.com/

“We have now reached a point where we see not the art but the space first.”

This was Brian O’Doherty’s pronouncement in 1976 describing the heavy and hidden connotations of the white cube exhibition format. As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, the time is ripe to appraise how O’Doherty’s observation might be applied to other genres of art space.

This panel features speakers from four different art spaces that share at least one thing in common: they all began (and/or remain) in someone’s home. Living among art, artists, and ideas every day and regularly inviting the public into their homes, it is a lifestyle choice not only based around sharing ideas but also providing a sort of experience machine to visitors.

How does an environment warm with domestic intimacy shape a viewer's relationship to an artwork? Are these spaces a type of “return of the repressed,” a desire called art rising from beneath the crushing weight of New York real estate? And, what happens when an idea outgrows its space?
Our panelists will reveal their own thoughts and inspirations, looking back on their missions and forward into how emerging art professionals might thrive outside of ordinary market channels.

Previous Panels 2019

Photo Gallery

Dec 16 2019: "Alternative Art School Pedagogy"

Andrew Freiband, founder of Artist Literacies Institute, Kyle Dacuyan, executive director of The Poetry Project, Tal Beery of Eco Practicum and Sheetal Prajapati founder of Lohar Projects will join Cat Tyc, writer/videomaker and organizer of this panel in conversation for the last ATOA panel of our 5th decade presenting dynamic dialogue on the arts in NYC.

This panel will discuss topics and questions often addressed by artist run artist institutions today.

What is the potential of incorporating research as a significant tool in the framework of artistic practice today? How can artists go beyond the instrumentalization and commodification of their work by nefarious and often unstable, untrustworthy economic forces?

What are the nuances and potential of a rhizomatic approach to open learning and exchange via diverse/new audiences but also institutional partners, traditional and artist run spaces?

Finally, why should one question the ideas of traditional pedagogy and contemporary practice?

Cat Tyc is a writer and artist. She explores dynamics of speculative relations on the precipice of a poetic mediology that include the page, video, sound, installation and performance.She has three chapbooks, An Architectural Seance (Dancing Girl Press), CONSUMES ME (Belladonna Collaborative) and I AM BECAUSE MY LITTLE DOG KNOWS ME (Blush Lit).

Her video work has screened locally and internationally at spaces that include the Microscope Gallery, Anthology Film Archives, CUNY Graduate Center, Brooklyn Museum, Hauser & Wirth, and Kassel Fest. She has directed music videos that have been added to the rotation on LOGO's NewNowNext and MTVu.

She co-curates the Poet Transmit with Victoria Keddie which engages in the connections between poetry, transmission, and performance to explore textual practice and modes of transmission and how poetry exists in expanded fields of time. Events have been held at St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Knockdown Center and MOMA Ps1.

She teaches writing as an adjunct and directs The Home School in Hudson, NY which is a week long intensive program that foregrounds interdisciplinary experimentation and collaboration.

Tal Beery is an artist and educator, co-founder of Eco Practicum, an artist-run school for ecological justice and founding faculty at School of Apocalypse, examining the connections between creative practice and notions of survival. Beery is also a core member of Occupy Museums, an artist collective shedding light on the links between global finance and fine art. His curatorial research centers on land-based practices and epochal change. His written work and interviews have appeared in numerous publications and his personal and collaborative works have been exhibited in museums and galleries in the US and Europe, including the 2012 Berlin Biennale, Brooklyn Museum, and the 2017 Whitney Biennial.

Kyle Dacuyan is a poet, performance-maker, and arts administrator dedicated to work at the intersections of writing, performance, and movement and community building. Prior to joining The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, where he currently serves as Executive Director, Kyle was the Co-Director of National Outreach & Membership at PEN America, where he led the launch of a community engagement fund for writers. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Ambit, DIAGRAM, Lambda Literary, and Social Text, among other places, and he has presented performance at Ars Nova, Cloud City, FringeArts Philadelphia, The Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue, and Poesiefestival Berlin. He is the recipient of scholarships, awards, and support from The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Poets House, The Academy of American Poets, Best New Poets, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference.

Sheetal Prajapati is a Brooklyn-based educator and artist. She is an arts and culture advisor through her consulting agency Lohar Projects working with individual artists and organizational clients including Times Square Alliance, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, and ArteEast amongst others. She serves on faculty at the School of Visual Arts (New York) in the Master of Fine Arts program and is a founding board member at Art + Feminism, a non-profit organization dedicated to building and expanding the network of female and feminist identifying contributors and content on Wikipedia. Sheetal received her BA from Northwestern University and her MA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Andrew Freiband is the founder and co-director of the Artists’ Literacies Institute, an experiment in arts education that helps artists reframe their artistic practice as research, and then connects them to new possibilities for artists’ engagement in social, ecological, political, and economic systems.  

For 25 years he has worked as a producer of documentary films, a multimedia artist, writer, researcher, and arts educator.  After years of organizing and working to mobilize artists to engage in their historical moment in ways that can go beyond activism or advocacy, he founded the Artists’ Literacies Institute in 2018 to serve as a supplement to the education of citizen artists.  As a critique of the capitalist instrumentalization of artists as only communicators or servants of the market, the ALI seeks to discover new more meaningful roles for artists in their society and communities.

At the ALI, Andrew has done national Impact and Engagement campaign for “Tre Maison Dasan” a nationally-broadcast film about the rippling impact of mass incarceration on children; produced three editions so far of “The Democratic Field,” a civic intervention and arts-based research project that uses performing artists’ ‘literacies’ to identify the role of implicit biases in our political preferences; and held open-to-all workgroups to identify the unique ‘literacies’ of artists from a range of disciplines and career stages.

Dec 2 2019: "A Green Thought in a Green Shade"

Dec 2 2019: "A Green Thought in a Green Shade" Artists Chris Bogia, Esteban Cabeza de Baca and Heidi Howard explore the contemporary color usage in art today, color green. Stephen Wuensch an international curator is organizing and moderating this panel connected to art shows in the fall.

Nov 18 2019: Matthew Brannon : Concerning Vietnam

Nov 18 2019: Matthew Brannon : Concerning Vietnam

followed by Q&A with Peter Duhon and the audience.

Organized and moderated by Peter Duhon

Nov 4 2019: "Re-Orientations”
Artists from South Asia and the Near East reflect on the term Orientalism"
Organized and moderated by Audra Lambert

"Re-Orientations: Artists from South Asia and the Near East reflect on the term Orientalism"

Organized and moderated by Audra Lambert

Panelist: Samira Abbasy was born in Ahwaz, Iran. She moved to London in 1967 before settling to the US in 1998. She lives and works in New York. Abbassy holds a B.A., Honors in Fine Art/Painting (‘87) and is Co-Founder, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts artist studios. She has held fellowships from the Saltonstall foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation; her works are included in several public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, NY.

Panelist: Camille Eskell notes of her artistic practice : “As the third girl in an intense, turbulent Iraqi-Jewish family from Mumbai, I felt impelled to examine the social and psychological legacy that’s shaped my perceptions, identity, and motivations from a feminist perspective. My current series, The Fez as Storyteller, is comprised of mixed-media sculptures exploring impactful family influences and cultural origins.”

Panelist: Dhanashree Gadiyar is an Indian artist based in the United States whose work expresses the immigrant experience through painting, drawing, embroidery and mixed media. She holds an MFA from the City College of NY (CUNY) & has been awarded fellowships from the Laundromat Project And Bronx Museum.

Moderator: Audra Lambert is an art critic and curator whose body of work engages in intercultural dialogue. She is Founder of Antecedent Projects, a site-specific curatorial consultancy that has produced exhibitions at sites including Fountain House Gallery, Arsenal Gallery, and the Center for Jewish History. She has studied art history at the undergraduate (St Peters University) & graduate (CUNY) levels after moving to the NYC metro area from South Louisiana in 2005. Lambert has studied and worked abroad in Japan, Germany and Russia.

Re-Orientations is on view at 246 E 4th St in Manhattan and co-curated by Lambert and Anita Alvin Nilert as part of an art series produced by Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security ans Conflict Transformation (WCAPS). The exhibit is on view from Oct 30-Nov 8, opening hours 12-7 pm with a closing event Fri Nov 8 from 6-8 pm.

The ATOA wishes to thank the: Bloom Family Fund Mr. Lloyd M. Bloom 1075 Montello Ave Hood River, Oregon 97031
for being a gracious donor in support of this panel

Oct 21 2019: "The Contemporary Portrait: Four Major Exponents" organized and moderated by Douglas I. Sheer, co-founder and ATOA Chairman Emeritus.
Panelists include: Jerelyn Hanahan, Claire Lambe, Barnaby Ruhe and Christian White.

This panel looks at a cross – section of styles and approaches in contemporary portrait art in the East Coast today.

Past portrait artists featured at ATOA have included: Will Barnet, Paul Georges, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, Philip Pearlstein, and Kehinde Wiley, to name just a few.

The Panelists:

Jerelyn Hanrahan is both a painter and a sculptor. She is the former president of the board of trustees of the Sculptors Guild of New York. She is also a member of the ATOA board. Her work is found in numerous international collections and her public art projects receive support by corporations and cultural institutions in the USA and abroad. Notations On a Trek of her works on paper published by Andres Zust/Ricco Bilger of Zurich. She does portraits by commission and continues her studio practice on the North Shore of Long Island. https://jerelynhanrahan.com/links

Claire Lambe a resident of Woodstock, NY, is a multidisciplinary artist with an emphasis on portraiture, a writer and an educator. Born in the Republic of Ireland, she began her formal art education at age 17. She holds a BFA from Ireland’s National College of Art and Design (NCAD) and an MFA from the City University of New York. Claire has exhibited widely on both sides of the Atlantic including in Ireland’s National Portrait Exhibitions. In addition to working on commissions, Claire teaches portrait at the Woodstock School of Art. https://www.clairelambe.net

Barnaby Ruhe (PhD) is an American artist, shaman, academic, and six-time world champion boomerang thrower. As an artist, Ruhe, a professor at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, is best known for his portrait painting marathons, otherwise known as endurance feats. His New York City studio is located within the Westbeth Artists Community. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnaby_Ruhe

Christian White works in many idioms and media, including portraiture in both painting and sculpture. He was born in Rome, Italy in 1953, while his father, sculptor Robert White, was on a Rome Prize fellowship at The American Academy in Rome. Christian is a great grandson of the architect Stanford White. He resides on Long Island’s North Shore. http://www.christianwhitestudio.com/

The ATOA wishes to thank the: Bloom Family Fund Mr. Lloyd M. Bloom 1075 Montello Ave Hood River, Oregon 97031
for being a gracious donor in support of this panel

Oct 7 2019: "MFA Programs: The State of the Art School"
The panel will provide insights into the variety and types of MFA programs available in NYC. This is a unique opportunity for artists of all ages considering pursuing a masters degree.

Organized and moderated by Mitch Pilnick.

Panelists:

Mark Tribe Chair MFA Program at School of Visual Arts,

Jane South Chair Fine Arts at Pratt Institute,

Jackie Battenfield MFA Professor Professional Practices, Columbia University

Lisa Corinne Davis MFA Professor Hunter College.

Sept 23 2019 - 'Critiquing the Critics: The Limits of Populist Criticism' -

Moderated by: Peter Duhon, is ATOA's programming director and is a cultural producer, writer and independent curator and organized this panel. Contact him at peterduhon@gmail.com

Panelists:

Stephen Zachs is an architecture critic, urbanist and curator based in New York City. He previously served as an editor at Metropolis and has wrtten for the New York Times, Village Voice, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Abitare, Landscape Architecture Magazine, The Architect’s Newspaper, Architectural Record, Monocle, Blueprint, Mic, Curbed, and Print. https://www.stephenzacks.com/

Allen Tombello is a builder, designer and artist who lives in Los Angeles. His projects and artwork have been produced and shown in New York and Los Angeles. https://www.allentombello.com/

Steven Pestano is a multidisciplinary artist working in painting, sculpture, installation, and mixed media and based in Los Angeles.

https://instagram.com/otombello?igshid=bbyqx7nivxwc

Focus:

The panel seeks to clarify issues related to appealing to popular audiences and themes through art and art criticism and put forward a larger historical perspective on the role of art and the circumscribed nature of the art world at this moment in human civilization. The panelists will argue that on the whole other jobs are much more important than art and art criticism, especially teaching and serving others, and that criticism that furthers the cult-like quality of art is only making things worse.

June 18 2019: “Exploring The D-Day Myth of Robert Capa” @National Arts Club

May 21 2019: Artists Open Screening @National Arts Club

Peg Reilly (1) started us off with her brightly colored works, a trend that trailed through many of the artists as would her use of contrasting textures and balancing of loud and quiet points within her work. Lynda Caspe (2) spoke about her sculptures that were inspired by the bible and how the bible has good secular advice for everyday life and morality. Again theme's would be repeated and the bible would turn up in the work about light by Carmela Tal Baron (14). Carmela's last image was of a beautiful O'Keefe like piece that vacillated between being floral and vaginal and yet was just light spread out through moray like geometric patterns.

Thea Lanzisero (3) showed similar line and form sensibilities as other artists and a use of mixed materials and added an extra layer of surrealism in her work with video. Her objects, sculptures or creatures seem to inhabit another world, yet are obviously welded and pieced together from ordinary materials.

Jeffrey Bishop (4) used layers and collage like effects mixing both random drips and pulled stains through the canvases topped spacially with a geometric formal architectural layer. The works are loud, strong, balanced and appealing. They are both minimal and maximal. Susan Kaprov (13) would use this theme to offset and contrast flowers and galaxy swirls in massive public works. She likes to put dualistic opposing forces at play in her works for their power and strength when juxtaposed. The work drew awe from the crowd.

Artists spoke of finding their place in the art world. Some found success with public works but trouble cracking into the gallery world.

Steven Hirsch (5) has a wide range. His photographs and documentation of the courtroom characters is both real and surreal. His photo's are alive, deep and vary from abstraction to deep inner portraits. The wildly colored and at times, religious stacking in his brut styled paintings was jarring and shocking, admirable and hard to do these days. The brush is alive in the hands of this photographer-artist.

Carol Radsprecher (6) created a collage like effect using photoshop and employs line and creates a patterned and layered feel in her own unique language. Her oils on her website show her admiration for early Kandinsky.

Kimberly Berg (8) presented a touching talk on the importance and almost enlightened view of woman in society from eons passed to now. His softness and sincerity was paralleled in his works serenity and light touch. Vicki Pacimeo (12) had light filled imagery that echoed similar notes and tones as Kimberly's work. Her moon like cratered and textured art played in a softer world and a quieter space yet incorporated bold markings.

Tado Okazaki (9) did not fly in from Fukashima but did send images and a beautiful statement about his "Ma" paintings. His words and work brought a quiet moment and a stillness to the fuller group presentation and highlighted the dualistic approaches of loud verses quiet, active versus subtle and more versus less. Others less than 15,000 miles away had and would share a similar point of view.

Shelley Parriott's (10) color field sculptures wrapped the viewer in her light and screens of color, they were three dimensional expressions of similar forms other artists had presented. The theme of light was revisited in the talk with her works soft, translucent, changing colors and subtle harmonies that brought fun to those that engaged her large scale outside sculptures. Some of works have a surreal tone others are ethereal.

Diana Hobson (11) incorporated dance moves lined out and vibrated with Duchamp like cracks and edges to brake up the space in her large canvases. She uses a mix of tradition receding diagonals set somewhat adrift in space as well as stories from her life and her family in her vibrantly colored works.

Michael Filan (15) Paintings were bold, large and colorful. They have the feel of a two dimensionalized Chamberlain sculpture and Filan mentioned his affection for Chamberlains 2-d work. Clifford Still comes to mind too. Filan pointed out an interesting point that though sometimes art takes days to make mostly he goes in spurts, run-times of an hour and a half, as that is all you have that is of the most potent power. I've noticed when viewing art that is my limit too.

Hilda Green Demsky (16) works were colorful and bold- a theme often repeated among the artists, and revealed three dimensional plays as well as flat canvas plays quite different and yet not unlike other artists that showed work.

Toni Silber-Delerive (17) art work incorporated ariel views of global destinations from her life and made for an interesting contrast with her images of suburban bland repetition and city-scapes with interesting and diverse water towers.

Finally, Mona Colchy Haigler (18) concluded and braved having to present from her Instagram account and not on the work she intended to. What I noticed was that her close up photography, her fabric details and other shallow depth of field work caught the eyes of viewers, mine included

April 2 2019 "What's New in My Studio", Rick Prol, Jerelyn Hanrahan, Alexandra Rutsch Brock and J.C. Rice will discuss what's currently going on in their studios and their history. Barry Kostrinsky organized and moderated this panel for the Artists Talk on Art Series

"What's New in My Studio", Rick Prol, Jerelyn Hanrahan, Alexandra Rutsch Brock and J.C. Rice

Rick Prol (Above) was born and raised in NYC where he currently lives and works. He attended Cooper Union College in 1980 and began showing his work publicly in 1982 – during the then burgeoning East Village art scene. "The East Village art scene of the 80’s thrived on the romance of slumming in an era of widespread economic prosperity. Rick Prol was an icon of that era, known for his cartoonish tableaux of mayhem, murder and suicide set in a rat-infested world somewhere east of First Avenue”- Eleanor Heartney, July 1993 Art in America. In June 2012 Prol had a major retrospective at The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, NY which spanned the period from the early 1980’s to the present. Works included sculptures, paintings, window constructions and works on paper.

http://www.artnet.com/artists/rick-prol/

Jerelyn Hanrahan (Image at top) has traveled extensively throughout India, Asia, Korea, Europe, Cuba and the United States. Jerelyn Hanrahan has been interviewed on three occasions for the PS1 / Museum of Modern Art radio station, and on National Public Radio with Margo Adler, the BBC in New York and London, Telli –Bern in Switzerland, Air Canada in Toronto and on Havana T.V. in Cuba. Her work has been favorably reviewed by Sculpture Magazine, The New York Times, Newsday,neue bildende kunst, Time Out Magazine, the Village Voice, NYArts, the Brooklyn Rail, Tages Anzeiger , Kunst Bulletin, Art Observer, Adbusters and The Resident, as well as many local newspapers and numerous international publications.

Her accomplishments, exhibitions and commissions are too numerous to attempt to list.

https://jerelynhanrahan.com/

Alexandra Rutsch Brock (Self portrait above) is an artist, independent curator and educator. She has exhibited nationally, and curated in smaller venues around NY including Studio 12N, NYC; MirandaArtsProjectSpace, Portchester, NY and Pelham Art Center, NY. Born in Westchester, NY, she received her BFA in Fine Art & Art Education K-12 from the School of Visual Arts, NY and her MS in Studio Art from the College of New Rochelle, NY.

She has been teaching at New Rochelle High School since 1991, where she started the Visiting Artists Program with Scott Seaboldt. Artists have included Whitfield Lovell and other notables.

https://www.alexandrarutschbrock.com/

J.C. Rice is an accomplished photographer well respected by his peers. J. C. is a photographer for the New York Post. He was a director and curator at Haven Arts Gallery in The South Bronx from 2005-2009. http://jcricephoto.com/

March 5 2019 A Panel on Haitian Art and Artists @National Arts Club

February 12 2019: “Body Painting: Spiritual Predecessor Of Eye Shadow”

Andy Golub has painted on rocks, car doors, suitcases and the human figure. Andy is one of the most famous figures in the world that no body in the art world knows or will admit knowing- don't worry Andy, the best are often hiding in plain view and not recognized in their time. Millions have watched him paint in NYC at Chelsea or Time Square, crash gallery and museum openings and spread his word through his non-profit Human Connection Arts. He has grown body painting festivals on several continents and millions of photos have been taken of his works. Often these are single body paintings, at times they are groups. He has helped define our laws of freedom of expression and whereas in the past the police have arrested him and hushed him away now they come to protect his and yes our right to self expression.

Trina Merry is a different kind of body painter; Most artists are quite different from each other. Trina has developed a highly skilled form of trompe-l'oeil to blend her figures into iconic and beautiful settings. Like Tesla, not the model 3, think model 1- Nikola- she too had an awakening moment in her life with electricity.

"When I was struck by lightning, it altered the course of my life. Everything turned white and there was a loud buzzing sound. Incredible aching sensations shot through my bones.... I met a woman who encouraged me to perform with a synesthesia art rock band. While wearing a silver mask that shot lasers out into the audience, complete strangers painted me with brightly colored space toys. Something sparked during this sensory experience: art had a heartbeat and became the primary way of how I could engage with culture.

It is easy to dismiss body painting as something kids do at a carnival. I've learned life is deeper and richer the closer you look. Yes, you math majors should think fractals and Mandelbrot. We have roots that lay under the surface of our thin membrane of understanding that are rich, deep and volatile. These roots are grounded in our past, have been extolled by the great shamans of our world and evoked by the developed and genuine geniuses of tribes we often call primitive people.

On the surface you might think body painting and exposing a nude in the public is all about sex and the artists are just taking a cheap shot, using a gimmick and shocking us to get us to look at their work for their own fame. For some artists working in oil paint or painting ketchup bottles or soup cans this is undoubtedly partially true. But you need to look deeply if you want to not force your own prejudice upon your gaze or else you will only see your own shortcomings. Golub has painted people on their death beds, over-weight woman fostering body acceptance and yes, men with long and short schlongs. Trina Merry is working with the precision of Renaissance masters and has a work ethic Elon Musk would respect and want to incorporate into his robot crew.

Join me for a talk with Trina Merry and Andy Golub on February 12th at the National Arts Club starting at 6:30pm to hear a lively conversation on these matters and more from two very different leaders of movements rooted in our archetypal past that hope to do the same thing. They want you to wake up, take notice and see beyond the mask we cover ourselves and to the more real and enlightened you.