Aerial Farmland collage, archival pigment print 23” x 32” 2018
Ian Trask
Ian Trask Spores 2017 waste materials sizes range from 5” to 13” in diameter
I am a scientist-turned-artist who received a degree in biology from Bowdoin College in 2005. I worked many years in research labs, but eventually left the world of science to pursue a career in fine art. While transitioning away from lab work I got a job as a hospital groundskeeper cleaning up trash daily, an experience that proved to be formative in my artistic development. I learned to see the potential in garbage and gradually built a creative practice that drew inspiration from the waste streams around me. I choose to create my art from things that are either discarded (or donated by others) in the deliberate effort to let scarcity and access dictate the direction of my work.
www.iantrask.com
Luisa Valderrama
Luisa Valderrama, Hato, Installation, 2018, Dimensions Variable. A 12 ft. high pillar (middle) made out of compressed dirt, responded to the architecture of the space; it had the same dimensions as the columns that held it. Two 4 x 4 ft. boxes (left) with compost emulating the land I grew up in, had a water and a heating system inside that kept the dirt mixture generating smell in the gallery.
Luisa Valderrama was born in Colombia and lives in Brooklyn, New York. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from Pratt Institute with honors (2018), a BFA in Painting and Drawing and a BA in Art History from Los Andes University, Colombia (2014). Her work draws on her autobiographical experience of growing up between the rural region and the urban life in the city of Bogota. She is a recipient of the NYFA 2019 Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists (NYC) and a 2019 thematic residency at RU-Residency Unlimited (NYC). In 2015 she partook in the itinerant residencies of 4-18 (COL) a nonprofit community-based art organization. She has participated in numerous exhibitions in Colombia and New York and collaborated with 4-18 in Colombia. Solo exhibitions: Hato [’a.to] in Steuben Gallery at Pratt Institute, 2018. Selected projects and group exhibitions include Boiling Point at The Boiler Pierogi in 2018 curated by Regine Basha. Half a Wave at the Pfizer Building in Brooklyn curated by Christine Rebhuhn, 2018; The Latin American Contemporary Fine Art Competition, at Agora Gallery, New York, 2018. Crossing, at El Sótano Art Space, Brooklyn, 2018. And Entramado at Espacio Alterno Gallery curated by Lorenzo Freydell Vanstaseghem., Bogota, Colombia, 2016.
www.luisa-valderrama.com
Jina Valentine
Memoranda (NYSE:GEO) 2018 iron gall ink, oxidant on handmade paper (from hand sewn quilt) 3 panels 30x22 inches each This work examines the government memo as a seemingly innocuous missive, and reproduces three such memoranda issued by the current administration. One of the works in this series reproduces Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ memo written to the Acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons on February 21, 2017, raising a painful issue that disproportionately affects people of color--incarceration. The memo reversed the Obama administration’s plan to phase out federal use of private prisons, a plan that responded to an audit finding more safety and security problems in privately versus publicly run institutions.
Based in Chicago, Jina Valentine is an Associate Professor of Printmedia at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her interdisciplinary practice is informed by the intuitive strategies of American folk artists and traditional craft techniques, and interweaves histories latent within found texts, objects, narratives, and spaces. She has exhibited at venues including The Drawing Center, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the CUE Foundation, MCA Chicago, the DiRosa Preserve, Southern Exposure, and Marlborough Gallery. She has participated in residencies which include the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, and Banff Centre in Alberta. Her work has received recognition and support from the North Carolina Arts Council, Art Matters Foundation, and the Institute for Arts and Humanities at UNC. Jina is also a cofounder of The Black Lunch Table (BLT), which is an ongoing collaboration with New York-based artist, Heather Hart. The project was first staged in 2005 at the artist residency Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. The BLT has since taken the form of oral archiving sessions, salons, peer teaching workshops, meet-ups and Wikipedia edit-a-thons. BLT has been hosted by cultural and academic institutions around the country and internationally, and has received support from Creative Capital, the Institute for Arts and Humanities at UNC Chapel Hill, and the Rema Hort Foundation, and has been featured in Art21 Magazine, Artsy.net, and Hyperallergic. Jina received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Stanford University.
www.jinavalentine.com
F. María Velasco
Velasco_Spaces of Conviviality_fabric, embroidery_2018_73 L x 26 W in/Centro Negra-AADK, Murcia, Spain. Participatory Art Project working with the community around concepts of migration, displacement, identity and integration. I created a ‘game’ which invited residents to share personal stories through conversation. These stories served to construct an “identity flag”, which was hand-embroidered by community members and unveiled as a public art event during Open Studios.
Velasco is a Spanish-born artist who has been living and working in the US since 1991. Her interdisciplinary work consists of site-specific environments, urban interventions, sculptural objects, and temporary public art commissions. Her work deals with displacement, gender identity, vulnerability, and the structures of authority that govern our lives. She has shown her work nationally and internationally in university and private museums, and contemporary art venues such as The Soap Factory (Minneapolis, MN); the Contemporary Arts Forum (Santa Barbara, CA); the ARC gallery (Chicago, IL); the Spencer Museum of Art (Lawrence, KS); the Paula Cooper gallery and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, both in New York City. Her work has been exhibited in Spain, Paraguay, Germany, Mexico, Argentina and Morocco and has been published in Art In America and Sculpture Magazine. She has conducted independent curatorial projects, discussion panels, and workshops nationally and abroad. She has received numerous awards and grants and has been a juror for the National Endowment for the Arts. Velasco received her B.F.A in Fine Arts from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid in 1989, and her M.F.A. in New Genre from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1993. She is a Professor of Visual Art at the University of Kansas and lives in Lawrence with her nine year old son, Alex, who loves to draw and make art.
https://www.mariavelascostudio.com
Marente Renea van der Valk
Marente van der Valk_AIR_Photo_2017_Canape as part of the Non-Human Narrative Series. The canape consists out of several fermented and air-dries elements and is served with tepache.
Marente van der Valk is a Dutch-born, London based chef, (food) designer and food stylist. She graduated in 2012 from a MA Design and Environment at Goldsmiths University of London, and has since then been focusing on projects and events with an emphasis on environmental awareness and community mindedness. Her work is often a multi-sensory experience where a love for bringing people together results in a wealth of flavours and colours and a feel-good atmosphere. Currently, Marente is six months into a year-long culinary residency at the Jan van Eyck Academy’s Food Lab in Maastricht. Founding the Food lab at JvE and running it on a day-to-day basis has enabled her to investigate new approaches and angles to her cooking processes and the interactive properties of food and the act of eating. By focusing on the wealth of the edible plant world - using organic, seasonal produce straight from local farmers- and the use of the whole vegetable where possible, as well as considering meat to be a treat, she strives to have a minimal impact on the environment.
www.marentevandervalk.com
Sugar Vendil
Sugar Vendil_Islander_Performance_2018_Work in progress showing at Dixon Place
Sugar Vendil is a composer, pianist, and interdisciplinary artist. Her artistic practice is strongly rooted in rigorous discipline as a musician and gradually expanded into performance that integrates music, movement, and unconventional approaches to the piano. As a collaborative artist, Vendil has been commissioned for a variety of projects by visual artists, fashion designers, and choreographers. She is a proud second generation Filipinx American. Vendil has performed at a variety of venues, ranging from arts spaces such as BAM Fisher, Dixon Place, Knockdown Center’s Ready Room, National Sawdust, the New School’s Glassbox Theater, and Roulette; to galleries and spaces such as The Development Gallery, Milk Studios, Spring Studios, and others. She was a 2017 Summer Labs Artist in Residence at National Sawdust and a 2016 Fellow in the Target Margin Institute for Collaborative Theater Making. Other residencies include Avaloch Farm, Earthdance (E|MERGE Multidisciplinary Residency), the A-Z West Wagon Station Encampment, Arts Letters & Numbers, and Yaddo. She is the founder of a contemporary music ensemble, The Nouveau Classical Project. Vendil is a 2019 resident artist at Mabou Mines and has a residency at Target Margin in February 2019.
sugarvendil.com
Wendy Vogel
Wendy Vogel_books to which I have contributed_2014 to 2018
Wendy Vogel is a writer, art critic and independent curator based in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BA from New York University and an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and she was a Critical Fellow in the Core Program residency at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. A former editor at Flash Art International, Modern Painters and Art in America, Vogel has contributed to Artforum, art-agenda, The Art Newspaper, Art Review, BOMB, Brooklyn Rail, frieze, The Guardian and MOUSSE, among other publications. In collaboration with the artist Peter Halley, she edited a history of the New York–based magazine index (Rizzoli, 2014). She has curated or co-curated projects at venues including the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, the Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral, The Kitchen, Abrons Arts Center, VOLTA Art Fair, Baxter Street Camera Club of New York, and bitforms. She is a 2018 recipient of a Creative Capital / Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant in Short-Form Writing.
http://wendyvogel.net
Eva Weber
Documentary Short. 2011. An impressionistic and haunting portrait of reindeer herding in the twilight expanses of the Lappish wilderness. Commissioned by NOWNESS. Premiered at LA Film Fest 2012. Festival screenings include Sundance, Sundance London, Telluride, Camden, San Francisco, True/False, BFI London, Sheffield Doc/Fest, AFI Fest.
A London-based, German director working in documentary and fiction, Eva Weber has found acclaim with films like the 27-minute documentary THE SOLITARY LIFE OF CRANES (“one of the most absorbing documentaries of the year” – The Observer), the mid-length film BLACK OUT (“An eye-opening doc…moves seamlessly between the straightforward and the poetic” – The Hollywood Reporter), and the fiction short FIELD STUDY (nominated for the European Film Awards). Eva’s multi-award-winning films have screened at 50+ festivals, including Sundance, Telluride, SXSW, HotDocs, BFI London True/False, Sheffield, IDFA, Frameline, and New Fest. They have also been exhibited at MoMA, the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, and other gallery spaces, and broadcast on national and international television (Channel 4, PBS, SBS, YLE, Arte, amongst others). Eva is the recipient of a Sundance Institute Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award; and a Sundance Screenwriter, Director, and Composer & Sound Design Lab Fellow.
www.oddgirlout.co.uk
Keith Wilson
Keith S. Wilson is an Affrilachian Poet, Cave Canem fellow, and graduate of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. He has received an NEA, three scholarships from Bread Loaf as well as scholarships from MacDowell, UCross, Millay Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center, among others. Keith serves as Assistant Poetry Editor at Four Way Review and Digital Media Editor at Obsidian Journal. Keith's first book, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love, will be published by Copper Canyon in 2019.
www.keithswilson.com
Jody Wood
In the Black Box (Looking Out) is a 2-channel video juxtaposing theater with social work to explore secondary trauma caused from inhabiting another person's experience.
