New Modes of Contemporary Urbanism

Transcription

Publication © 2012 National Performance Network
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner in
any media, or transmitted by any means whatsoever, electronic or mechanical
(including photocopy, film, or video recording, internet posting, or any other
information storage retrieval system), without the prior, written consent of NPN.
10-digit ISBN-10: 1475175833
13-digit ISBN: 978-1475175837
For additional copies of this catalog, please contact:
National Performance Network
PO Box 56698
New Orleans, LA 70156
(504) 595.8008 telephone
(504) 595.8006 fax
info@npnweb.org
This publication is also available online at:
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on the cover
Saya Woolfalk
Institute of Empathy: Ritual Room, 2011
Dance collaboration performed and created by Jessica Kilpatrick with
Jillian Greenberg and Ana Masiero of the Hartt School Dance Division,
University of Hartford.
photo: John Groo
6
visual artists network:
exhibitions 2011
essay:
Elisa Turner
Journalist and Art Critic Member of AICA, International Association of Art Critics, United States Section
title:
NPN and Visual Arts:
Bold Art for a Battered New World
“We know that artists are the greatest
subsidizers of their work that exist.”
— MK Wegmann, from opening address at the
2011 NPN/VAN Annual Meeting in Tampa, Florida
We live in a time when the fierce wages of dissent and deep
inequities between haves and have-nots sweep the globe. It is a time
when turbulent consequences of Occupy Movements and the fiery
Arab Spring of 2011 are still evolving for good and for ill. Surely the
internet and rise of social media have to some extent enabled these
watershed changes, but internet access is by no means an easily
available privilege in many parts of the world.
Voices everywhere clamor ever more loudly to be heard. This highdecibel chorus includes creative, diverse and bold voices of artists
in our battered era. Talented artists can transform the dross of daily
experience into moments of moving insights that stay in our hearts
and minds long after we’ve left a performance or art exhibit. Artists
who do this in a sustained way are often the ones we read about
later in history books, or ones we will forever regret that we did not
take time to notice and support their prescient gifts when we had
the opportunity.
Yet artists’ contributions, unless fate has conferred them “big name”
celebrity, remain scoffed at, now more than ever. Consider, however,
the many ways artists have enriched our creative heritage. It’s not
often clear, especially to the game-changers themselves, who our
next trailblazers will be. Did Robert Rauschenberg, when he was
growing up in Port Arthur, Texas, know he would make artworks
coveted by museums around the world? Did teenager Elizabeth
Alexander know she would make history by reading her poem
commissioned for the inauguration of the first African-American
president of the United States? Of course not.
As Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote,
“Wayfarer, there is no way,
you make the way as you go.”
Surely now more than ever we need to nurture our future wayfarers.
essay:
elisa turner
In the wake of 9/11, the Great Recession, the abominable banking
crisis, and other game-changing crises making headlines in the
waning years of the first decade of the 21st century, it’s no secret
that our world has changed utterly. Except for a few cases, successful
models in business and the arts imported from the 20th century do
not work anymore. We need new models. These include models for
artistic patronage and NPN has positioned itself at the forefront of
creating those. Adding the Visual Arts Network (VAN) to the roster of
various programs it already supports is just one example.
At the 2011 NPN/VAN Annual Meeting in Tampa, Florida, the three
VAN POD installations were clearly in touch with how artists
supported by NPN seek out new materials and new ways to respond
to these drastically changing times. Moreover, VAN itself represents
much-needed new methods. VAN takes the radical position that
artists, as vital workers in a creativity-driven economy, should be
paid a fair wage for their time. Established in 2007, VAN provides
a one-week residency for artists, funding their travel in the U.S. to
exhibit work in a prominent way; a salary, per diem, and housing
costs are also covered. VAN partners select artists through their own
curatorial processes. Residencies are devised to emphasize critical
opportunities for artists to engage with other artists and the local
community, as an innovative way to enhance the impact and value of
visual arts in the community at large.
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Signs are everywhere that creative artistic culture and the valuable
intellectual endeavor it represents for workers and consumers is
in deep trouble. In her January 2012 ARTnews article, “The Artist
as Philanthropist,” Eileen Kinsella catalogs the distressing trend of
declining government and corporate support for the visual arts.
She quotes Joel Wachs, president of the Andy Warhol Foundation,
which helped support the 2011 NPN/VAN Annual Meeting, “Most
government officials think the arts are dispensable.” On December
30, 2011, the Wall Street Journal contained this item in its “Answers
to the Year-End Quiz” in the newspaper’s Corporate News B section:
“Bill Gates reportedly said, ‘Intellectual property has the shelflife of a banana.’” It is old news that the internet, for all its many
democratizing virtues, is making serious inroads into the sanctity
of copyrighted material and thus into the income for those who
produce copyrighted material in music, books, television and
film. Such genres overlap with the performing and visual arts in
innumerable ways. We have not yet seen how far these inroads will
go, possibly leading to pervasive piracy and irrevocable de-valuation
of artworks.
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Another alarming sign of the times: Brick-and-mortar book stores
vanish as e-books proliferate and distributors like Amazon now
compete not only with booksellers but with book publishers.
Consider “Books That Are Never Done Being Written,” by Nicholas
Carr in the Books C section of the Wall Street Journal, Saturday/
Sunday, Dec. 31, 2011–Jan. 1, 2012. For content creators, especially
artistic ones, this is not a Happy New Year story to ring in 2012.
Clearly books as we have known them for some 500 years, thanks
to the advent of Johannes Gutenberg’s movable type printing
press, have provided an immeasurable service to civilization and
our sense of history. Yet even the physical identity of books, as
purveyors of knowledge we are privileged to have and to hold, is
under assault. Today’s e-book is quite different from a traditional
book. It’s much more fluid, so that one day even the concept of
“historical record” could seem so last century. As Carr explains,
“Once digitized, a page of words loses its fixity. It can change every
time it’s refreshed on a screen.”
Just as Occupy Movements, the Arab Spring, and other challenges to
“business as usual” transforming the globe in 2011 have opened our
eyes and ears to innumerable new voices and ideas, so the internet
and its digital revolution rapidly escalate the noisy, clattering
stream of information engulfing so many of us. The 24-hour news
cycle, sounding the death knell of newspapers and other forms of
journalism as we used to know them, is relentless. Arts journalism in
many cities is severely diminished.
exhibitions 2011
A few voices are now calling for a time-out from the internetenabled surfeit of factoids. On Jan. 1, 2012, the New York Times
published the timely essay, “The Joy of Quiet” by Pico Iyer, as the
cover story for its Sunday Review section. Iyer reports numerous
instances in which people actively avoid the internet. Here’s
one: “Writer friends of mine,” he writes, “pay good money to
get the Freedom software that enables them to disable (for up
to eight hours) the very internet connections that seemed so
emancipating not long ago.” And why might that be? Iyer praises
the contemplative “joy of quiet”: “Nothing makes me feel better —
calmer, clearer and happier — than being in one place, absorbed in
a book, a conversation, a piece of music,” he writes.
It is fitting that NPN now embraces the visual arts. Visual arts
provide a contemplative, meditative experience unlike watching a
time-based performance. You could even call the visual arts “slow
culture.” The three VAN POD Installations at the 2011 Annual Meeting
address issues reflecting our tumultuous era. In engaging ways
throughout the one-week VAN residency in 2011 in Tampa, artists
and their artworks invited those in the community as well as at the
Annual Meeting to experience quiet moments of contemplation.
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exhibitions 2011
artist:
Tanya Aguíñiga
Los Angeles, CA
www.aguinigadesign.com
title:
Lineas:
New Modes of Contemporary Urbanism
September 11 – 19, 2010
van partner:
MACLA/
Movimiento de Arte y
Cultura Latino Americana
Tanya Aguiñiga is a Los Angeles-based furniture designer/
maker raised in Tijuana, Mexico. Her work is informed by border
experiences: the interconnectedness of societies, the beauty in
struggle and the celebration of culture.
Prior to her VAN residency, Aguiñiga spent a month in the highlands
of Chiapas, the southern-most state in Mexico, working as a catalyst
for social change through the creation of craft. She worked with
craftspeople to collaborate on new functional art processes and
artwork that help sustain traditions and provide economic support
to local families and communities. Her residency, along with the
exhibition Lineas, highlighted the process and stories that came from
her experience in Chiapas. Materials used in the artwork, such as the
wool/yarn, was hand-spun and dyed by the indigenous craftspeople
that worked directly with Tanya. Handmade stuffed animals created
in Chiapas were exhibited and sold during the exhibition to support
future work there. MACLA also commissioned Aguiñiga to develop
a new large-scale work in response to the new techniques and
experiences developed in Chiapas.
San José, CA
Community engagement during the residency focused on the artist
discussing her work and demonstrating various craft processes
such as felting and printmaking to local community members.
Participants were asked to share a craft, technique or long-held
family recipe in artist-led workshops. Aguiñiga worked with the
greater community, with parents of MACLA’s Los Laureles children’s
dance group, and with a group of young adults with disabilities from
Santa Clara Unified School District’s postsecondary program.
Tanya Aguiñiga has a BA in furniture design from San Diego State
University and an MFA in furniture design from the Rhode Island
School of Design. She was awarded a prestigious United States Artist
Fellowship and named a USA Target Fellow in the field of Crafts and
Traditional Arts. Her work has been exhibited from Mexico City to
Milan and has been included in major international publications
such as Wallpaper magazine and “Pure Design, Objects of Desire”
published by Monsa Editions in Spain.
tanya aguíñiga
Tanya Aguíñiga
Animals, (detail) 2010
felt, yarn and embroidery
photo: James Dewrance
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Tanya Aguíñiga
Lineas: New Modes of Contemporary Urbanism, (detail) 2010
exhibitions 2011
tanya aguíñiga
Tanya Aguíñiga
Lineas: New Modes of Contemporary Urbanism, (installation) 2010
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exhibitions 2011
artist:
Saya Woolfalk
New York, NY www.sayawoolfalk.com
title:
Institute of Empathy
October 18 - 24, 2010
van partner:
Real Art Ways
Hartford, CT
Saya Woolfalk is a New York artist who re-imagines the world in
multiple dimensions; from sculpture, installation, and painting to
performance and video. A black, white, and Japanese woman, her
work is inspired by ethnographic, feminist, and psychoanalytic
theory. Woolfalk spent two years traveling back and forth between
Brazil and the United States, and traveled to Japan in the fall of 2008.
All three countries have had an enormous influence on her practice.
Using craft-based installation, video, photography, drawing and live
performance, Woolfalk invited Real Art Ways visitors to re-imagine
the world through her fictional creation, Institute of Empathy. The
piece was an installment in Woolfalk’s ongoing creation of another
universe in which boundaries between man-woman, plant-animal
and machine-human are blurred.
Woolfalk used conversations with Hartford area doctors, political
activists, dancers, urban farmers and others as a springboard for
Institute of Empathy’s subject matter: a group of “Empathics” who
seek to understand truth through reason and mysticism, and to
change themselves and their world. By blending fact and fiction,
Woolfalk constructed playful narratives that immersed viewers in
the logic of another place, ultimately exploring how ideas evolve
in our own culture. Woolfalk networked with area senior citizens
and quilting groups to help spread the word about the exhibition.
She worked closely with interns from area colleges to fabricate the
exhibition. Dance collaborations were also a significant part of this
project, performed and created by Jessica Kilpatrick, with Jillian
Greenberg and Ana Masiero of the Hartt School Dance Division,
In 2007-2008 Woolfalk was an Artist-in-Residence at the Studio
Museum in Harlem. Before that she completed the Whitney
Independent Study Program in Studio and holds an MFA in sculpture
from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from
Brown University. She has exhibited at PS1/MoMA; Deitch Projects;
Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center,
Cincinnati, OH; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; the
Studio Museum in Harlem; Momenta Art; Performa09; as well as at
other national and international venues. She received an Art Matters
grant to Japan and a NYFA grant (2007), a Fulbright Fellowship to
Brazil (2005), a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA grant (2004), was a
participant at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Yaddo,
and Sculpture Space. With funding from the NEA and the Visual
Artists Network, her solo exhibition The Institute of Empathy, was
presented at Real Art Ways in the fall of 2010.
saya woolfalk
Saya Woolfalk
Institute of Empathy: Ritual Room, (detail) 2011
photo: John Groo
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exhibitions 2011
saya woolfalk
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Saya Woolfalk
Institute of Empathy: Ritual Room, 2011
photo: John Groo
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exhibitions 2011
saya woolfalk
Saya Woolfalk
Institute of Empathy: Science Room, 2011
photo: John Groo
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exhibitions 2011
artist:
Brent Green
Cressona, PA
www.nervousfilms.com
title:
Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then
October 28 – November 5, 2010
van partner:
DiverseWorks Artspace
Brent Green is a self-taught animation filmmaker and artist who
lives and works in rural Cressona, PA. Green is known primarily for
creating incredibly imaginative, short animated films that feature
narration and original music created by the artist. Gravity Was
Everywhere Back Then is Green’s foray into filmmaking with live
actors and stop-motion technique.
The exhibition, named after Green’s first feature-length film, is
inspired by the true story of Leonard Wood, an eccentric hardware
store clerk from Louisville, KY. The story follows Wood’s decadeslong quest to build a strange and wonderful house that could
function as a healing machine to save his wife’s life after she was
diagnosed with cancer. For the exhibition at DiverseWorks, Green
created an environment of handmade cardboard sculptures that
provided a three-dimensional accompaniment to the film, which
was screened continuously on four separate screens throughout
the run of the show.
Wood’s house was remarkably odd, with rooms that started
halfway up the door frames of neighboring rooms. The laundry
room had a 23 foot-high vaulted ceiling. Every stair was numbered
and every window painted a different color. Leonard was trying
to make some kind of healing machine and also trying to distract
himself from his wife dying. Unfortunately the house didn’t work
and his wife Mary died. Leonard kept frantically building it for
another twenty years until he fell off the roof, ended up in a nursing
home and had to sell the house to cover the bills. Someone bought
and razed the house because it was the only house that didn’t look
like every other house on the block.
Houston, TX
Green tells of his visit to the house:
“I got to go to Leonard’s house before it fell and I
rooted through his stuff. I found a box full of tapes of
him playing crazy people church music on the piano
like some kind of Appalachian Thelonious Monk.
Awful, though. We found the blueprints for the house
– they were on cardboard – and we found his bank
statements. He was completely broke. He had about
17 cents in the bank most of the time. The friend who
was filming with me turned to me and said, ‘You
know, no one is ever going to care how much money
you had in the bank in 1987.’ That was a mighty thing
to hear someone say, because I was completely broke
at the time. I decided to make a film about Leonard,
a film about how you’ll never die from running out
of money, and you will never die from running out of
energy, until you do, and then it’s not your problem
anymore. I decided to make a film about running
everything down to zero to leave behind something
wonderful, which is exactly what Leonard did.”
brent green
Brent Green
Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then, 2010
Installation view
photo: Mark Francis and Eric Zapata
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In addition to the exhibition, Green presented a free lecture about
his interdisciplinary practice at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center
for the Arts. He spoke about the process of making Gravity Was
Everywhere Back Then, which was shot entirely in a full-scale town
he built in his backyard, and combines animation, stop-motion
and live-action filmmaking with his homemade sculptures and
props. The film was also featured as part of the Houston Cinema
Arts Festival during which Brent Green, Donna K, Drew Henkels,
Brendan Canty and John Michael Swartz provided live musical
accompaniment to the film.
Green’s films have been shown at the Sundance Film Festival
(2006-09), MoMA, the Getty Center, Warhol Museum, IFC Center,
the Walker Arts Center, the Kitchen, Hammer Museum, EMPAC,
the Rotterdam International Film Festival and at a number of
other museums and festivals around the world. Green has had
solo shows at the Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, NY; Bellwether
Gallery, New York, NY; the Sculpture Center, Cleveland, OH; CAM, St.
Louis, MO; Site Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM; The Berkeley Art Museum,
Matrix program, Berkeley, CA; the ASU Art Museum, Tempe, AZ;
DiverseWorks, Houston, TX; and Hallwalls, Buffalo, NY. Green’s
artwork is represented by the Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, NY.
He is also a 2005 Creative Capital grantee.
Brent Green
Installation view
exhibitions 2011
brent green
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exhibitions 2011
brent green
Brent Green
Installation view
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exhibitions 2011
artist:
Annette Lawrence
Denton, TX
www.annettelawrence.net
title:
Thirty Years, Four Seasons, and One Day
December 6 – 12, 2010
npn/van annual meeting
Hotel Room Installation
Hotel Room Installations
In December 2010, the Visual Artists Network presented three
Hotel Room Installations during the NPN/VAN Annual Meeting in
Dallas, TX, where three artists were selected to transform hotel
rooms into visual art installations. Two of the participating artists,
Robert Ransick and Saya Woolfalk, participated in VAN Exhibition
Residencies in the previous year and the third artist, Annette
Lawrence, is a renowned Dallas-based artist. These installations echo
the format of the VAN Exhibition Residencies by using a standard
contract and fixed fee structure to fairly compensate the artists
during their residency at the Annual Meeting.
Dallas, TX
Annette Lawrence has been based in Texas since 1990. Her work
is generally related to text and information, often in response to
physical space and time; grounded in autobiography, counting and
the measurement of everyday life. Her subjects of inquiry range from
body cycles to ancestor portraits, music lessons, and unsolicited mail.
Thirty Years, Four Seasons, and One Day was a layered experience
comprised of a drawing, a silent video, and a recorded reading.
The drawing was a series of dates that mark the passage of
time, cataloging the cycles of the artist’s body, forming a line
reminiscent of strata, a water line, or a horizon. The four-minute
video represented water, wind, fire, and earth. These elements
in turn relate to the seasons: winter, spring, summer and fall. A
recorded voice read journal entries dated December 9, 10, 11, and
12, the respective days of the Annual Meeting, filling the room with
accounts of specific events, observations, and thoughts written by
the artist over a period of twenty-five years, yet seen through the
lens of a single day.
Based in Denton, TX, approximately 40 miles north of Dallas,
Lawrence was selected to present a Hotel Room Installation as
a representative of the local Dallas art scene. She helped artist
Robert Ransick, also presenting work in a Hotel Room Installation,
connect with local people to interview for his project, and she was
subsequently interviewed for the project as well. Lawrence felt that
this was the most significant aspect of her community engagement
during the Annual Meeting. The range of voices that Robert collected
was rich, and the people that were interviewed appreciated being
asked about their lives and being heard. Additionally, a number of
students from the University of North Texas were introduced to the
work of the National Performance Network and the Visual Artists
Network through Lawrence’s involvement. Attendees at the meeting
were generous in their response to the installation. The line of dates,
recorded journals, and silent video provided a quiet moment among
the activities of the meeting. The room gave people an opportunity
to be still and reflect.
annette lawrence
Annette Lawrence
Thirty Years, Four Seasons, and One Day, 2010
detail with exterior view
photo: Annette Lawrence
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Annette Lawrence
installation view
photo: Tracy Hicks
exhibitions 2011
annette lawrence
Lawrence’s artwork is widely exhibited and held in museums and
private collections including The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The
Dallas Museum of Art, The Rachofsky Collection, ArtPace Center for
Contemporary Art, Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, and American
Airlines. Lawrence has participated in artist-in-residence programs
in Houston, TX, Skowhegan, ME, Johannesburg, South Africa, Tanera
Mor, Scotland, and Melbourne/Adelaide, Australia. Thirty Years,
Four Seasons, and One Day, installed at the Dallas Annual Meeting,
developed out of the residency in Australia in 2009.
Born in 1965, Lawrence grew up in Queens and Freeport, NY. She
received a BFA from the Hartford Art School and an MFA from The
Maryland Institute College of Art. Currently, Lawrence lives and
works in Denton, Texas and is a professor of drawing and painting at
the University of North Texas, College of Arts and Design.
Annette Lawrence
detail
photo: Tracy Hicks
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exhibitions 2011
artist:
Robert Ransick
www.robertransick.com
title:
State of the Union and Voice of the People
December 6 – 12, 2010
Hotel Room Installation
Robert Ransick’s hotel room installation for the 2010 NPN/VAN
Annual Meeting consisted of two artworks, State of the Union and
Voice of the People. The works transformed the site into a space
for reflection and sharing on the topic of same-sex marriage. The
central image for State of the Union was Texas Proposition 2 from
2005, custom printed on a duvet covering a king-sized bed. The
citizens of Texas voted on this ballot measure to define marriage as
“solely the union of a man and a woman.” Adjacent to the bed was
a space for recording videos of local Dallas residents talking about
same-sex marriage and a screen that displayed the resulting Voice of
the People videos.
In addition, a 32-page version of State of the Union was distributed
free-of-charge. It included legislation from thirty states that had
been recently put before voters as defense of marriage ballot
measures. Ransick’s work draws on material that is simultaneously of
public record and highly personal. It represents a poetic call to action
and serves as a necessary record during this shifting and contentious
moment in history.
Dallas, TX
Robert Ransick works in a wide range of media. He has exhibited
in New York City at such venues as Eyebeam Center for Art and
Technology, Exit Art, Storefront for Art and Architecture, White
Box Gallery, and others. In addition he has shown at LACE (Los
Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), the Museum of Contemporary
Photography in Chicago and at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome,
Italy, among others. Ransick has received funding from Franklin
Furnace, the Mellon Foundation, The Boomerang Fund for Artists,
and the National Performance Network/Visual Artists Network.
He has been an artist-in-residence at Eyebeam Center for Art and
Technology and LACE. He holds a BFA in photography, with honors,
from the School of Visual Arts, and an MA in media studies from the
New School for Social Research. He is currently a full-time faculty
member in digital arts at Bennington College. Ransick lives and
works in New York City, but spends a good deal of time in Vermont
and southern Arizona.
robert ransick
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Robert Ransick
Voice of the People (Diedrick), 2010
photo: Robert Ransick
Robert Ransick
Voice of the People (Bob and Paul), 2010
Robert Ransick
Voice of the People (Annette), 2010
Robert Ransick
State of the Union and Voice of the People, 2010
installation view with artist
photo: Tracy Hicks
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Robert Ransick
State of the Union, 2010
detail
exhibitions 2011
robert ransick
Robert Ransick
State of the Union, 2010
detail
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saya woolfalk
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Saya Woolfalk
Lovescape, 2010
installation view
photo: Tracy Hicks
Saya Woolfalk
Lovescape, 2010
Lovemonster and Sweethearts detail
photo: Tracy Hicks
Saya Woolfalk
Lovescape, 2010
Paradise Imagined detail
photo: Tracy Hicks
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exhibitions 2011
artist:
Bryan Warren
Louisville, KY
title:
Bruce Lee Bombs the City
April 21 – 26, 2011
van partner:
Space One Eleven
Birmingham, AL
Bryan Warren is an artist, educator and community activist in
Louisville, KY. He has an interest in drawing, sculpture, new media
(web and video), installation and community-based art. He has
exhibited his work throughout the Southeast and Midwest, has
work in several collections, and is a founding member of the Radix
Commission, an experimental art collective, in Louisville. He also
independently curates exhibitions and serves as a consultant for
planning, installation and programming exhibitions for other
organizations. Currently, he is the executive director of the Asia
Institute - Crane House, where he oversees the operations, and
curatorial and educational programs of the organization.
As a community-based artist, Bryan has worked as program
coordinator with the nationally recognized City Center Art Program
at Space One Eleven in Birmingham, AL. There he contributed his
ceramics expertise and arts education background to help realize the
Birmingham Urban Mural Project. He has continued his communitybased artwork in Louisville with projects ranging from sculpture,
multimedia, ceramics, photography and poetry with several local
neighborhood groups, community centers and schools.
For his VAN exhibition residency, Bryan began exploring connections
between American urban graffiti forms and Asian calligraphy. Bruce
Lee Bombs the City looks at similar formal qualities that Warren
believes relate to urban street artists’ exposure to Asian culture in
the 1970s, primarily through martial arts films.
During the residency, Warren met with local community members
and artists to talk about the local art scene, exhibitions and the
project. He toured the city to visit the places where urban artists
work, from very elaborate sanctioned murals on businesses to street
tags located in abandoned areas. The process included documenting
these areas. The tour also included visits to historic sites and to the
recently built rail park in the central part of the city.
For the final portion of the project, Warren worked with artists and
high school students in a three-day workshop to sketch out ideas
for a final project. The program included an evening gathering and
lecture on graffiti, Asian calligraphy, 1970’s urban African-American
culture and Kung-Fu movies. The workshop consisted of exercises
in Asian calligraphy, graffiti and creating mockups of painted train
cars. The final ideas were temporarily installed in Space One Elelven’s
gallery for viewing.
Bryan holds a BFA from Northern Kentucky University and MFA from
the University of Arizona.
bryan warren
Bryan Warren
Bruce Lee Bombs the City, 2011
documentation of local street art and graffiti
photo: Bryan Warren
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Bryan Warren
community workshop exhibit install, in progress
exhibitions 2011
bryan warren
Bryan Warren
reinterpreting Chinese characters
photo: Bryan Warren
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Bryan Warren
students and Space One Eleven staff critique during workshop
photo: Bryan Warren
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exhibitions 2011
artist:
Margie Livingston
Seattle, WA
www.margie.net
title:
Twenty Gallons
May 4, – June 18, 2011
van partner:
LACE/
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions
Margie Livingston was born in Vancouver, WA and now lives
and works in Seattle. Her awards include a 2008 residency at
the Shenzhen Fine Art Institute in Shenzhen, China; a Fulbright
Scholarship in 2001; the Betty Bowen Memorial Award in 2006; the
Neddy Artist Fellowship in Painting in 2007; and the Arts Innovator
award in 2010.
Commissioned by LACE, Twenty Gallons is a site-specific painting/
installation covering the 12-foot-tall archway that is the entry for
LACE’s main gallery. The surface of the arch is covered with twenty
gallons of paint. The paint was first poured into sheets that were
then layered, sliced into strips, and cut into individual “marks.” These
were then assembled into panels to be attached to the archway.
When approached from the front, the 3/8-inch thickness of the paint
is visible, but when entering the archway, the tactile quality of the
surface is at eye-level. Referencing both Pollock’s gestural pours and
Roy Lichtenstein’s Three Brushstrokes, the piece acknowledges its
lineage in the history of painting, while at the same time occupying a
space somewhere between painting, sculpture and installation.
Los Angeles, CA
As part of the community engagement portion of the residency at
LACE, Livingston presented her work at two universities: California
State University, Fullerton, and University of California, Santa
Barbara. After finishing her presentation to a group of graduate
students at UC Santa Barbara, the professor asked the students
to assist Livingston with the installation of her work at LACE.
These students became the crew that helped Livingston realize
the installation of Twenty Gallons. The students received behindthe-scenes and hands-on installation experience and Livingston’s
installation gained the extra energy that six more people can bring
to a project.
Livingston also visited the Getty Conservation Institute and met
with a painting conservator specializing in acrylic paint. This led
to a lengthy discussion of materials and methods relevant to her
experiments with acrylic as a sculptural medium. Her visit concluded
with the opportunity to see Roy Lichtenstein’s Three Brushstrokes in
the conservation lab, where it had just been repainted.
Livingston received her MFA in painting from the University of
Washington in 1999. She is represented by the Greg Kucera Gallery
in Seattle and Luis De Jesus in Los Angeles. Livingston’s work resides
in the permanent collections of the Shenzhen Fine Art Institute, the
Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, the City of Seattle,
King County, and the Henry Art Gallery. She has been a member of
the SOIL Artist Collective since 2000.
margie livingston
Margie Livingston
Twenty Gallons, 2011
installation view
photo: Joshua White
45
46
Margie Livingston
Twenty Gallons, 2011
detail
photo: Joshua White
exhibitions 2011
margie livingston
47
48
exhibitions 2011
artist:
Amy Youngs
Columbus, OH
www.hypernatural.com
title:
Building a Rainbow
May 8 – 14, 2011
van partner:
SPACES
Cleveland, OH
Amy Youngs creates biological art, interactive sculptures and
digital media works that explore the complex relationship between
technology and our changing concept of nature and self.
Amy Youngs’ Building a Rainbow was an installation that
transformed waste into fertile soil through a colorful indoor
apparatus. The soil, in turn, was used to grow edible plants. Waste
streams of uneaten food, old tea-bags, old newspapers and throwaway plastic household objects were turned into lettuce, basil,
wheatgrass and herbs. The plants grew in plastic containers sourced
from thrift stores, fed by nutrient-rich water recycling throughout
the system. All nutrients came from food and paper waste
transformed by composting worms living in the installation.
During her residency, Amy Youngs led a free public workshop about
the environmental benefits of vermicomposting (composting with
worms) and about how to share worms with friends and neighbors.
Participants explored the variety of methods and containers that
are being used for vermicomposting, from practical to chic, as well
as experimental flow-through fabric funnels. Workshop participants
discussed, imagined and dreamed up creative concept designs for
their own ideal worm bin system and then voted on the best designs
among the group. The winner took home a pound of live, red wiggler
worms and the next two runners-up were able to collect live worms
from the Building a Rainbow installation at the end of the exhibition.
Youngs has exhibited her works nationally and internationally at
venues such as the Biennale of Electronic Arts, Perth, Australia;
Te Papa Museum, Wellington, New Zealand; John Michael Kohler
Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; the Tweed Museum, Duluth, MN;
Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain; the Visual Arts Museum,
Pace Digital Gallery, New York, NY; the Art Institute of Chicago’s
Betty Rymer Gallery, Vedanta Gallery, Northern Illinois University
Art Gallery, Chicago, IL; Blasthaus, San Francisco, CA; and Works,
San Jose, CA. Her artwork has been reviewed in publications such
as The Chicago Reader, Toronto Star, San Francisco Bay Guardian,
RealTime and Artweek.
Youngs has published several essays, including one on genetic
art in the journal Leonardo and another on art, technology and
ecology in the international art publication Nouvel Objet in
2001. Her work was profiled in the recent book, Art in Action,
Nature, Creativity & Our Collective Future. She has lectured on
her work widely, including at Columbia College, Chicago, IL;
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, MA; the
Australian Center For the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia;
and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and has participated
in panels at professional conferences such as the Women’s
Caucus for the Arts and the College Art Association. In 2002,
Youngs was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship Grant from
the Ohio Arts Council. Youngs received a BA from San Francisco
State University, graduating Summa Cum Laude and Art Student
Honoree of her class. She was awarded a full Merit Scholarship
to study at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she
completed her MFA in 1999. Youngs is currently an associate
professor in the Department of Art at The Ohio State University.
amy youngs
Amy Youngs
Building a Rainbow, 2011
installation view
photo: Amy Youngs
49
50
Amy Youngs
installation view
photo: Amy Youngs
exhibitions 2011
amy youngs
51
Amy Youngs
worm sharing workshop
photo: SPACES
Amy Youngs
detail of vermicomposting system
photo: Amy Youngs
Amy Youngs
worm sharing workshop
photo: SPACES
52
exhibitions 2011
artist:
Dollie Eaglin-Monroe
Crowley, LA
title:
Images of the Louisiana Wetlands — Its Habitat,
Wildlife, Marshes & Landscapes
May 16 – 21, 2011
van partner:
Ashé Cultural Arts Center
Dollie Eaglin-Monroe creates figurative portraits and landscapes in
acrylic. Her work deals with the conservation of Louisiana’s wetlands
and the current state of the Mississippi River. She is presently an
arts educator in Lafayette Parish Schools. She is the director of The
Big Easy Classical Arts award-winning production The Origin of Life
on Earth. She has also taught dance at Audubon Charter School,
New Orleans, LA, for twenty years and was chosen by her peers as
Audubon Charter Schools’ Teacher of the Year in 1998 and 2007. In
addition, she has presented arts-integrated comprehensive arts
education workshops for teachers at the Arts Council of Greater
Baton Rouge, Acadia Parish Schools, and New Orleans Ballet
Association’s classroom teachers and dance professionals.
This VAN exhibition residency enabled Ashé to continue its mission
to embrace art as a tool for community development. This was the
largest residency Ashé had undertaken to date. Ashé partnered with
Xavier Universty and Audubon Charter Elementary School. EaglinMonroe led a week of workshops at Audubon Charter Elementary
School for 100 students, teaching them about Louisiana wildlife and
the fragile state of the local environment.
New Orleans, LA
The students also had the chance to experience the versatility
of craft and of style of a living master artist working in multiple
genres. They learned about the elements and principals of art and
viewed samples of Eaglin-Monroe’s work. The residency culminated
in an exhibition of master artist and student work. The student
exhibition remained up for one week and Eaglin-Monroe’s artwork
was exhibited for a number of weeks and was viewed by several
hundred people. Xavier Universty assisted Ashé and the artist with
the installation of the exhibition and the show’s opening.
Eaglin-Monroe received a BFA degree with a major in dance and a
minor in visual art at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and
earned an MA degree at the University of Houston/Clear Lake City.
She has traveled throughout the United States and Europe as a
teacher, performer and choreographer. Eaglin-Monroe received the
University of New Orleans MLK, Jr. Award for Community Service
in 2004. In January 2011, she had her first one-woman exhibition
in Crowley, LA titled Nature’s Dance. This exhibition also marks her
second year serving as a VAN artist-in-residence.
dollie eaglin-monroe
Bearded Iris, 2010
acrylic on canvas
53
54
Images of the Louisiana Wetlands, 2011
students, student work and art patrons at the exhibition opening
photo: Karel Sloane-Boekbinder
exhibitions 2011
dollie eaglin-monroe
student worskshop
55
student worskshop
58
exhibitions 2011
artist:
Housing is a Human Right
Brooklyn, NY
www.housingisahumanright.org
title:
The Office Of Human Rights
June 2 – 9, 2011
van partner:
Asian Arts Initiative
Philadelphia, PA
Rachel Falcone and Michael Premo created and co-direct the
transmedia project Housing is a Human Right (HHR), by
creating a space for people to share stories of their community
and their ongoing experiences trying to obtain or maintain a
place to call home.
On June 2, 2010, The Office Of Human Rights took over a vacant
storefront at 1223 Vine Street, in Philadelphia. It featured more
than 50 photographs and a dozen first-person stories in sound as
part of a growing collection exploring the human right to home.
With communities feeling increasingly fractured by issues of
race, class, religion, and other matters, The Office brought people
together around their shared desire for “home” — be it a roof
to keep out the rain or a healthy community where everyone is
allowed to pursue their dreams. At the grand opening, a town
hall meeting was held with residents and leaders of several local
organizations, including the Philadelphia Chinatown Development
Corporation, ASIAC, Ridge Avenue Men’s Shelter, Sunday Breakfast
Rescue Mission and Chinese Christian Church and Center.
Community members were invited to share what “home” means
to them, and these testimonies were remixed live by DJ SpazeCraft
One. Community members were also invited to contribute, brickby-brick, to writing and building a collective definition of what
“home” means to the people of Chinatown and beyond.
During the week-long residency that followed the opening of The
Office of Human Rights, Falcone and Premo conducted 15 indepth
oral history interviews with local residents of the North Chinatown
and Callowhill neighborhoods. To facilitate the development of local
interviewers, they hosted two storytelling workshops in The Office
of Human Rights and trained participants in interview techniques
and skills. Falcone and Premo also held a sneak peak screening of
the documentary film More Than a Roof and a panel discussion with
local mediamakers from Media Mobilizing Project and Philadelphia
Community Access Media. Produced by The Campaign to Restore
National Housing Rights, the National Economic and Social Rights
Initiative, and Premo and Falcone’s Housing is a Human Right, More
Than a Roof is a powerful example of community journalism. It tells
the story of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to
Adequate Housing’s first official fact-finding mission to the United
States in 2009. The screening provided a platform for discussion
about the role grassroots media can have in movement building.
housing is a human right
The Office of Human Rights, 2011
photo: Michael Premo
59
60
exhibitions 2011
Attendees of the town hall meeting discussed the meaning of “home” and
were encouraged to share their thoughts on a wall installed in the exhibition.
pictured: Victoria Chau
photo: Annie Seng
Oral History Mixing, 2011
DJ Spaze Craft One mixing audio from oral history interviews collected by
Rachel Falcone and Michael Premo throughout the residency. Attendees were
also encouraged to record their own stories in an interview room at the back
of the exhibition.
pictured: DJ Spaze Craft One
photo: Annie Seng
installation view with attendees
installation view with attendees
61
Rachel Falcone is a New York-based multimedia artist, educator
and producer and co-creator and co-director of Housing is a Human
Right. She has worked on such interview-based projects as EarSay,
Inc., None On Record and the award-winning national oral history
project StoryCorps. She has taught oral history and interviewing
in partnership with institutions like the Museum of the City
of New York and People’s Production House. Her independent
radio documentaries and multimedia have been broadcast
internationally. She is currently coordinating outreach, audience
engagement and transmedia for Incite Picture’s forthcoming film
Young Lakota. Rachel studied philosophy at University College
London and at Vassar College.
Rachel Falcone and Michael Premo create multimedia content and
interactive exhibitions in unconventional spaces, fostering unique
and deep community engagement. The pair have facilitated and
produced more than 1,000 interviews with people around the
world, celebrating experiences through listening. Their independent
radio documentaries have aired on National Radio Project’s
Making Contact, Idealist.org, PRX’s Remix Radio, Free Speech Radio
News, WBAI and WPEB, among others. Through grassroots digital
distribution, their multimedia videos have had more than 50,000
views online. They also helped produce nearly a dozen stories for
broadcast on NPR’s Morning Edition for the award-winning national
project StoryCorps and its 2007-08 Griot Initiative.
Michael Premo is a New York-based artist, producer, and cultural
worker. Currently he works with the Hip-Hop Theater Festival
and has worked with EarSay, Inc., The Foundry Theatre, Penny
Arcade and NPR’s StoryCorps, among others. He is co-creator and
co-director of Housing is a Human Right, an associate artist with
The Civilians and serves on the board of directors for The Network
of Ensemble Theaters. His radio documentaries and photography
are distributed internationally. Michael studied at the University
of Cape Town in South Africa and at Northeastern University. For
more information, visit www.michaelpremo.com
Housing is a Human Right was launched with an installation of
audio stories and photographs at Wash and Play Lotto Laundromat,
a functioning coin-op in Brooklyn, NY in 2009 as part of The
Laundromat Project’s Create Change: Public Artist Residency
program. Installations since have been created in partnership with
the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, SUPERFRONT
Gallery, Adriala Gallery, Chashama Studios, the New Museum and
MAPP International Productions in New York; Asian Arts Initiative in
Philadelphia and NPN/VAN. The project has also presented stories at
numerous festivals, educational institutions and other venues across
the country, and has been featured in publications such as the Daily
News, The New York Times, Left Turn, and City Limits.
town hall meeting
photo: Annie Seng
62
exhibitions 2011
artist:
Lauren Woods
Allen, TX
title:
Notes of a Native Daughter
June 6 -10, 2011
van partner:
Women & Their Work
Born in Kansas City, MO, Lauren Woods was raised in Dallas. She
holds a BA in Radio, Television and Film and a BA in Spanish with
a minor in sociology from the University of North Texas. In 2006,
she received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Lauren Woods creates hybrid media projects — film, video and
sound installations, interventions, and site-specific work — that
engages history while contemplating the socio-politics of the
present. Challenging the tradition of documentary/ethnography
as objective, she creates ethno-fictive work that investigates the
invisible dynamics in society, remixing memory and imagining
other possibilities.
Woods describes herself as “part historian, part archivist, part
sociologist and part anthropologist.” Her exhibition, Notes of a
Native Daughter at Women & Their Work featured five videos
that reflect her studies of culture and race. Woods refers to these
videos as “a collection of videographic texts.” The exhibition title
is a nod to James Baldwin’s seminal 1955 work, Notes of a Native
Son, a collection of literary criticism and essays on race, sexuality
and politics in post-war America and Europe. Woods employs
many of Baldwin’s ideas as a compass to navigate art, politics,
and the possibility of a post-racial world.
In her large-scale projections and multi-channel video
installations, Woods gleans images from Hollywood cinema,
pop culture and history to examine and comment on how race,
gender and the socio-political environment have been depicted.
This survey of eclectic video work, spanning the last five years,
was Woods’ first solo exhibition in Texas and served as a
homecoming, after years spent in California.
Austin, TX
During the residency, Woods participated in a panel discussion,
“Checklist for The Post Racial-ist.” Women & Their Work hosted an
overflow crowd that considered the questions: Is it possible that we
have, in fact, entered a post-racial era? What does this buzzword
“post-racial” really mean? Three years after Barack Obama assumed
the office of the presidency, many who believed a post-racial
America was within reach now dismiss the ideal as unrealistic. Yet,
others maintain that as intellectual thought, “post-race” is already
a seedling; it is just a matter of time before the blossoms will bear
fruit. Woods invited seven scholars, activists, and writers from across
the state of Texas to lead this discussion including: Omi Osun Joni J.
Jones, PhD, Mario Marcel Salas, Jennifer Fuller, PhD, William Cordova,
Cherise Smith, PhD, Maganthrie Pillay and Dingi Ntuli.
Lauren Woods’ work has been exhibited throughout the United
States including Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco
and Washington D.C., as well as internationally in France, Japan, Mali,
Puerto Rico, South Korea and Taiwan. She has been the recipient of
grants and awards from the Alliance of Artists Communities, the
College Art Association, the Puffin Foundation, and the San Francisco
Foundation. Woods is the recipient of a 2008 Creative Capital award
in the visual arts and is a Tribeca Film Institute Media Arts Fellow. She
recently completed a residency at CentralTrak in Dallas, TX. Currently,
Woods is creating a video installation that will be installed in the
drinking fountain in the Dallas County Records Building beneath a
Jim Crow “White Only” sign that was rediscovered in 2003.
lauren woods
Lauren Woods
When Nola Awoke, No.1, 2011
opening reception
photo: Shama Ko
63
64
Lauren Woods
Inkblot Projective Test #1 (Darkest Africa 1936/2006), 2011
photo: Shama Ko
exhibitions 2011
Lauren Woods
Inkblot Projective Test #1 (Darkest Africa 1936/2006), 2011
pictured: Lauren Woods, Rachel Koper, students from Bastrop High School
photo: Celina Zisman
lauren woods
65
66
exhibitions 2011
artist:
Ashley Hunt
Van Nuys, CA
www.ashleyhuntwork.net
title:
Communograph
June 27 – July 8, 2011
van partner:
Project Row Houses
Houston, TX
Ashley Hunt is an artist and activist who uses video, photography,
mapping and writing to engage social movements, modes of
learning and public discourse. Rather than seeing art and activism
as two exclusive spheres, he approaches them as complimentary,
the theorizing and practices of each enhancing the possibilities of
the other.
For his VAN residency at Project Row Houses (PRH), Hunt completed
the development of Communograph, a large-scale community
research project that engages the community of Houston’s Third
Ward — a historically African American neighborhood — in which
PRH is deeply embedded. The Communograph project began
during a VAN residency the previous summer of 2010. In addition
to launching Communograph, Hunt held a public screening and
discussion of his feature-length documentary film from 2001,
Corrections. The film looks at the massive growth of the U.S. prison
system through the lens of prison privatization, as imprisonment
takes on for-profit motivations. This screening was in part a
response to a conversation about community-based safety
strategies, following recent incidents of safety and trespass in the
surrounding community. What followed was a lively conversation
with neighbors and local artists, which supplemented the
strategies that a number of artists and community members were
already forging.
The community engagement portion of Hunt’s residency was based
both in the community workshop that led up to this public screening
and in the continuing work of Communograph. The community
workshop was titled, “On Movement, Thought, and Politics,” and was
led by Hunt and his collaborator, Taisha Paggett. An initial workshop
with PRH staff, residents, and neighbors was followed by daily
morning yoga sessions in Houston’s Dupree Park, which extended
the conversation from the first day. The work of the Communograph
project included a series of meals and brainstorming sessions with
six local artists: Regina Agu, Lisa Harris, Journey Allen, Michael
K Taylor, Rebecca Novak, and Ifeanyi “Res” Okoro, each of whom
became key participants in Communograph. Their work was curated
collaboratively into the Communograph House exhibition, which
accompanied two Communograph conversation series: “Sidewalk
Talks,” organized by these artists around community issues; and
“Mapping Community Through Creative Action,” which the Cynthia
Mitchell Woods Center helped to program around communitybased arts practices. Communograph also includes a website (www.
communograph.com), which archives the broader project, and a
participatory mapping and story project designed with students
from the University of Houston.
Ashley Hunt received his BFA from the University of California at
Irvine, and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
An alumus of the Whitney Independent Study Program, he is
currently co-director of the Program in Photograph and Media
at CalArts, and faculty of the low residency program at Vermont
College of Fine Arts. Hunt’s work has been exhibited at the New
Museum, MoMA, Tate Modern, and the Contemporary Museum
in Baltimore, MD. His writings have appeared in the Journal of
Aesthetics and Protest and Art Journal. In 2002 Hunt received a Ford
Foundation grant for social justice, and he was a fellow of the Vera
List Center for Art and Politics from 2006-07.
ashley hunt
Ashley Hunt
Communograph, 2011
page from Ashley Hunt’s notebook
photo: Ashley Hunt
67
68
Ashley Hunt
Communograph, 2011
Community mapping installation. Collaboration with University of Houston
Graphic Communications students.
photo: Eric Hester
exhibitions 2011
ashley hunt
69
Ashley Hunt
Communograph, 2011
Installation view, Communograph House – Ashley Hunt in collaboration with
Regina Agu, Lisa E. Harris, Journey Allen, Rebecca Novak, Ifeanyi Okoro, and
Michael Kahlil Taylor
photo: Eric Hester
Ashley Hunt
Communograph, 2011
Communograph Sidewalk Talk, “Youth Speak,” hosted by Journey Allen
photo: Brittney Connelly
70
exhibitions 2011
artist:
Santiago Echeverry
Tampa, FL
www.santi.tv
title:
EDWARDO
December 10, 2011
2011 npn/van annual meeting
ArtBurst
Tampa, FL
ArtBursts
ArtBursts are low tech performance/artwork “bursts” that are
featured at the NPN/VAN Annual Meeting, and are proposed by
the artists registered to attend the meeting. They are ephemeral
works that last no more than five minutes, but serve to remind
Annual Meeting attendees that the experience of art is at the
core of NPN/VAN’s mission.
Santiago Echeverry is a Colombian new media and digital artist with
a background in film and television production, video art and theater.
His research interests are non-linear narration, streaming video,
performance art, interactive design, physical and camera computing
and online production. In his country, he is considered a pioneer in
the field of Net Art.
EDWARDO is a video-performance where Echeverry, as an illegal
alien, explores his feminine side, manifested as a torch song
performer. The performance is a statement against the increasing
anti-LGBT rhetoric used by right-wing America. The heavily edited
video is projected onto the artist, creating a dialogue between the
virtual, fast-paced avatar and its flesh and bone creator, while they
are both lip-syncing to the same song.
Before leaving Columbia, Echeverry was a pioneer LGBT and HIV/
AIDS activist in his community, co-founding influential gay and
lesbian associations and groups, including the Sisters of Perpetual
Indulgence. Mostly focused on adapting to his new country,
Echeverry has been devoted to exploring new technologies and how
they can be used to transform the role of minorities on a global scale.
Echeverry uses his web site, www.santi.tv, as a public platform for his
art projects and communication.
Santiago Echeverry graduated from the inaugural class of the
Film and Television School of the Universidad Nacional de
Colombia. He received his master’s degree from the Interactive
Telecommunications Program at NYU with a Fulbright Scholarship.
He moved to the United States in 2003 to teach Interactivity at
the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and then relocated
to Florida in the Fall of 2005 to teach Digital Arts and Interactive
Media at the University of Tampa. He started exhibiting his work
internationally in 1992, at events such as the Festivales FrancoLatinoamericanos de Videoarte, Milia, FILE, Siggraph and the Japan
Media Arts Festival, among others.
santiago echeverry
Santiago Echeverry
EDWARDO, 2011
live performance during 2011 NPN/VAN Annual Meeting
Straz Center for the Performing Arts, Tampa, FL.
December 10, 2011
photo: Michael Snyder / michaelsnyder.us © 2011
71
Occupy Your Home: Housing is a Human Right, 2011
installation view
photo: Joseph Gamble
75
76
installation view
exhibitions 2011
opening reception
opening reception
77
margie livingston
Margie Livingston
Repository: A Taxonomy of Remains, 2011
the artist installing the work
79
80
Margie Livingston
detail
exhibitions 2011
margie livingston
Margie Livingston
detail
Margie Livingston
opening reception
81
84
exhibitions 2011
artist:
Jono Vaughan
Tampa, FL
www.fineartvaughan.net
title:
Safety in Numbers
December 8 – 12, 2011
POD Installation
Tampa, FL
Jono Vaughan was born in London, England in 1977 and immigrated
to the United States in 1985. Vaughan received a BFA from The School
of Visual Arts in NY in 1999, an MAT from the University of the Arts
in Philadelphia in 2002, and an MFA from the University of South
Florida in 2009. From 2006-2011 Vaughan worked at the University
of South Florida’s Graphicstudio as a production assistant and is
currently teaching drawing, painting, and printmaking at a number
of colleges and universities in the Tampa area. Since 2006 Vaughan’s
work has explored anonymity and gender identity through drawings
focused primarily on the back of his/her hair and its changes over a
period of six years, a period closely linked to the artist’s transition
away from a masculine identity towards a more feminine self.
For Vaughan, the concept of the anonymous portrait functions as
both an offering and denial of the viewer’s gaze, creating a tension
reflective of the artist’s own experience in his/her day-to-day
experiences. As an individual whose identity places him/her into an
often misunderstood and underrepresented area of society, Vaughan
creates works that are accessible and enjoyable as a means to
subtlety educate and influence how others relate to him/her.
Safety in Numbers was a multi-day performance artwork that invited
members of the community and participants in the NPN/VAN
Annual Meeting to assume the identity of the artist through physical
transformations such as hair cutting and makeup application. Like
the artist’s drawings, Safety in Numbers further explored the power
of anonymity through the creation of clones that offered the artist
a sense of security and normality previously unattainable by him/
her. For this project Vaughan turned the provided POD into a hair
salon where stylists Moriah Milliken and Jenny Mercado worked,
surrounded by floor-to-ceiling stripes. To create the stripes for the
space, Vaughan sewed together large sections of black and white
striped fabric and adhered it to the walls. A hand-cut vinyl floor
mimicked the stripes on the walls and the striped uniforms of the
artist and stylist team camouflaged them within the space. During
their transformations, volunteers were able to talk with the artist
about the concepts behind the work and its relationship to his/her
gender variance.
Throughout the performance/installation, the artist documented
the haircuts. Each volunteer was photographed with the artist
in a double portrait, yet the photographs only reveal the back of
their heads. These images further extend the visual language of
Vaughan’s anonymous portraits and the artist hopes to use them as
documentation for explorations in other media. Currently Vaughan
is developing his/her next community based work, The Tampa Bay
Hair Project, which will feature drawings made in collaboration with
barbershops and salons from the Tampa Bay community.
jono vaughan
Jono Vaughan
Safety in Numbers, 2011
installation view
85
86
exhibitions 2011
Jono Vaughan
Safety in Numbers #3, 2011
digital photograph
photo: Jono Vaughan
Jono Vaughan
opening reception opening reception with stylists and volunteers
Jono Vaughan
Safety in Numbers #11, 2011
digital photograph
photo: Jono Vaughan
jono vaughan
Jono Vaughan
opening reception opening reception with stylists and volunteers
87

New Modes of Contemporary Urbanism

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