Artroverted

Leaving New York is a tough choice for many artists, but it was a no-brainer for this week's guests. Returning to Texas allowed Tamara and Trey to realize their dream exhibition space, an outdoor sculpture park. Founded in 2018, Sweet Pass Sculpture Park is located on a one-acre lot in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of West Dallas, TX. Their program highlights emerging and mid-career artists from around the world. 

In our conversation, they talk about how they've built a pandemic-friendly art venue that has become a refuge for many and how "The Great Postponing" affected their exhibition program. These projects include Black Power Naps (Navild Acosta & Fannie Sosa), Ssalute (Marina Rosenfeld) for the 10th Aurora Biennial, The Staff of Aslecpias (Erik DeLuca) The Philosophy of Goo, their first collaboration that received an NEA grant in association with Wassaic Projects, and Tamara's solo exhibition How to Fold a Fitted Sheet all of which opened during the pandemic.       

Their ability to balance their vision for a "Socrates of the South" with their artistic practice and teaching positions is inspiring. In a post-COVID-19 age, when viewing art safely is not guaranteed, the need for more spaces like Sweet Pass will continue to grow. These two are true leaders and changemakers in the art world, and what Artroverted is dedicated to showcasing.

This episode was recorded on October 30, 2020

Find out more about Sweet Pass here: sweetpasssculpturepark.com

On Instagram @sweetpasssculpturpark @tamarajohnson @treyburns @ourmutt

Visit www.ourmutt.com to purchase the Duchamp inspired dog bowl for the contemporary art lover who has everything. 

Music credit: Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F major - II. Assez vif, très rythmé produced by the Isabella Stuart Gardener Museum (issued under a Creative Commons License). 

Fifty-five miles south of Dallas lies the sleepy town of Corsicana, Texas. Known for its award-winning cheerleading program and the Collin Street Bakery (the world’s largest manufacturer of fruit cakes), it’s also home to a world-renowned artist residency, 100W. Housed in the now-defunct 1898 Odd Fellows Lodge, 100W hosts rotating groups of artists and writers for several month-long residencies. Kyle Hobratschk founded 100W in 2012 and has hosted artists from around the world who’ve utilized the space and the town in fascinating ways. The allure of Texas is legendary, and many of Kyle’s residents use their time to investigate the town while deepening their artistic practice. In our conversation, we talk about the challenges of running a residency, why it matters, and the impact of creative practitioners in small towns. 

This episode was recorded on May 26, 2020

Find out more about 100W here: http://www.100westcorsicana.com

On Instagram @100w_corsicana @khobratschk @anteroom_corsicana

Music credit: Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F major - II. Assez vif, très rythmé produced by the Isabella Stuart Gardener Museum (issued under a Creative Commons License). 

Katherine Wagner is the CEO of the Business Council for the Arts. Her mission is to connect business with the arts and connect the arts with business. She does this by creating primary connections that train and place business leaders on nonprofit boards and through programs that foster synergy businesses with the arts. 

Business Council for the Arts (BCA) was founded by Raymond D. Nasher in 1988 as an outgrowth of a 1987 Dallas Citizens Council initiative. Nasher—a Dallas real estate developer, leading philanthropist and global art collector—as well as other key business leaders and Citizens Council members determined that Dallas would have the best opportunity for becoming a prominent business city with parallel growth in the North Texas region’s cultural community.

Using the model developed by David Rockefeller in 1967, Nasher created a new agency. BCA opened in June 1988 as Dallas Business Committee for the Arts, an affiliate of National Business Committee for the Arts. 

One of BCA’s roles is to collect data about cultural institutions and programs that have informed and shaped the Dallas cultural policy for decades. Their partnership with Americans for the Arts led to the 2017 Arts and Economic Impact Study, which showed that the arts are not a charity but an industry and that in North Texas nonprofit organizations had a $1.5B impact on North Texas and employs 52,000 people. 

Their Leadership Arts Institute program, one of their many programs, has been responsible for training and placing board members in all cultural sectors across the DFW area. Tune in to learn more about the BCA’s work to align business and the arts. Happy listening!

Learn more about BCA on the web: https://ntbca.org/ 

@bcatexas on Instagram

This week's episode is one of many firsts for Artroverted, recording in a studio with two guests! Our conversation features two leaders in the field of emerging artists. Natasha Arselan and Ty Bishop. Natasha is the founder and CEO of AucArt, the world’s first online, hybrid auction house devoted to emerging artists, connecting collectors with artists enabling them to purchase directly from the artist’s studio. Ty is the founder and publisher of Friend of the Artist, a hard-back, bi-annual, juried publication that publishes the work of emerging artists from around the world. Both Natasha and Ty’s platforms have created opportunities for both emerging artists and artworld insiders to help each other connect and grow. On Monday, they begin their first collaboration, a sale of works selected from the most recent issue of Friend of the Artist, Volume 12. In our interview, they talk about everything from vouching for artists on visa applications to the end of Art. It’s leaders like these two that are essential to the survival and growth of the art world. 

This episode was recorded on October 22, 2020 

To learn more about Friend of the Artist visit FriendoftheArtist.com and @friendoftheartist on Instagram. 

To learn more about AucArt and the sale, visit AucArt.com, and @auc.art on Instagram. 

Music credit: Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F major - II. Assez vif, très rythmé produced by the Isabella Stuart Gardener Museum (issued under a Creative Commons License). 

This week I speak with Charlie Adamski Caulkins, Vice President, Head of Office, for Sotheby's in Dallas. Established in 1744, Sotheby’s became the first international auction house when it expanded from London to New York (1955), the first to conduct sales in Hong Kong (1973), India (1992), and France (2001), and the first international fine art auction house in China (2012). Today, Sotheby’s has a global network of 80 offices in 40 countries and presents auctions in 10 different salesrooms, including New York, London, Hong Kong, and Paris.

When we spoke in May, live auctions that have been a fixture of the art market since the 18th century were postponed indefinitely. We talked about Charlie's ascent up the auction house ladder from New York to San Francisco and now Dallas.

We caught up in October following the debut of Sotheby’s new auction format, the first-ever global live-streamed auction. Taking bids in real-time from Hong Kong, London, and New York resulted in record-breaking sales, proving that the demand for great art had not waned. Our conversation was taped days after the newsworthy October 28th sales, where the Baltimore Museum of Art removed two works it planned to deaccession just hours before the auction. Charlie talks about the relationship between auction houses and museums, the pandemic’s silver linings, and how she’s always working to deliver for her clients.

This episode was recorded on May 14, 2020, and October 30, 2020 

To learn more about Charlie and Sotheby’s, visit Sothebys.com

@charliecaulkins @sothebys on Instagram

Music credit: Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F major - II. Assez vif, très rythmé produced by the Isabella Stuart Gardener Museum (issued under a Creative Commons License). 

This week we speak with Jennifer Klos, founder of Collector House, a boutique art advisory firm. As a trained decorative arts historian and former museum curator, she takes a holistic approach to building her client's collections. In our conversation we talk about the business of collection building and how she combines her academic studies in decorative arts and interior design with her career as a museum curator to accomplish her client’s goals.   

This episode was recorded on June 11, 2020. 

To learn more about Jennifer’s advisory services, visit http://www.collectorhouse.com

@jenniferklos on Instagram

Music credit: Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F major - II. Assez vif, très rythmé produced by the Isabella Stuart Gardener Museum (issued under a Creative Commons License). 

This week's guest is Mark Busacca, curator, art consultant, and owner of Busacca Gallery in San Francisco. After graduating from art school in the 1980s, he was immersed in LA's celebrity culture that brought him in contact with Andy Warhol, Leo Castelli, and others in their milieu. Mark's insight into what makes a successful artist is sage advice for aspiring artists everywhere. His decades of experience as a dealer propelled him to found an art technology company that aims to "archive all the world's objects." His platform, Artifact, plans to disrupt the art market by giving collectors access to their #artdata. 

This episode was recorded via Zoom on April 29th, 2020. 

To learn more about Mark's gallery, visit BusaccaGallery.com

@markbusaccaartcollections on Instagram

Video on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/66473401

The path to becoming a museum director is circuitous, and the responsibility they have to their communities is unique. We spoke with Graham C. Boettcher, R. Hugh Daniel Director of the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama, in May during the museum’s closure and discussed his career, the role of museums in society, and how he and his colleagues are weathering the pandemic.

This episode was recorded via Zoom on May 8, 2020.

Learn more on the museum’s website: https://www.artsbma.org

Instagram: @bhammuseum @grahamboettcher

Music credit: Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F major - II. Assez vif, très rythmé produced by the Isabella Stuart Gardener Museum (issued under a Creative Commons License). 

Founded in 2016, ATŌ developed a proprietary technology that utilizes the decentralized database model to store market data and information on works of art they've authenticated. Their freely accessible resource aims to increase trust and transparency in the art market by giving artists and collectors the tools to understand the value of their art. After conducting hundreds of surveys and interviews, she and her team identified the most significant problems facing artists and collectors: counterfeits, provenance, and data for valuation. For Carrie, the solution is in the Data. In making more #artdata accessible to artists and collectors, she hopes that she can restore confidence and transparency to allow artists to grow their careers and invite a new class of collectors to the table. Her experience as an art technology entrepreneur and collector are insightful and informative to both creators and art world insiders. 

This episode was recorded via Zoom on April 25, 2020.

Learn more on ATŌ's website: https://atogallery.com

Instagram: @ato_gallery

Music credit: Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F major - II. Assez vif, très rythmé produced by the Isabella Stuart Gardener Museum (issued under a Creative Commons License). 

Nancy Willis is an artist, activist, and educator. Until the pandemic, she taught "Principles of Design," an art class for pastry students at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Napa Valley. As an artist and chef, Nancy works to bridge the divide between the culinary arts and the fine arts through exhibitions, workshops, and her art practice. We spoke about her work at the CIA, activism with the Yazidi refugee community, and Nourish, an exhibition project she curated at the Napa Valley Museum. 

Her course at the CIA taught students traditional design conventions and how to look at art and analyze it through their own experiences. She required students to visit a gallery or museum and select a work they could translate into a plating design. For many, it was the first time they had been to a museum. In this intensive course, many students had profound responses that allowed them to work through past trauma.

In 2015 Nancy curated NOURISH, an exhibition that brought together chefs and artists, including Anne-Sophie Pic, Grant Achatz, Richard Diebenkorn, Miro, Picasso, and Wayne Thiebaud. Through a Kickstarter campaign, she was able to present a diverse group of works across all media. She also traveled to Valence, France, to install a Nest camera in the kitchen of Anne-Sophie Pic, one of four female Michelin starred chefs, that live-streamed the kitchen during service into the museum. 

In 2017 she was invited to participate in an exhibition related to President Trump's travel ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries, which allowed her to engage with the Yazidi refugee community. She traveled around the world to conduct monotype workshops with Yadizi refugees of all ages. On a trip to Europe, she met Nadia Murad, a recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize (2018), and led her and her husband through a monotype workshop in her hotel room. 

In conducting workshops with diverse communities, Nancy brings her extensive background in hospitality to art-making that fosters intimate exchanges that are often transformative. 

36:51 Lightning round questions.
51:35 One work of Art she would own.
57:22 Wish for the Art World.

We recorded this episode on May 28, 2020.

More about Nancy:

Artist Nancy Willis lives and works in the Napa Valley. As a painter/printmaker she works with themes of intimacy and social connection by creating series such as The BED, RSVP, the CHANDELIER and TERRAIN. With paint or printing ink, Willis uses an additive and subtractive process to explore how color, light and atmosphere can instill meaning and evoke a sense of place.

Until the Covid-19 restrictions, Willis taught classes at the Culinary Institute of America/Greystone, Nimbus Arts and the Napa Valley College. She quickly pivoted to offering online classes out of her studio, including Bake Like an Artist, and Postcards from the Edge. Her entrepreneurial projects include Path of an Artist tours, leading artists to France and Sundance for annual painting workshops. Willis' curatorial projects include Discrepancy/living between war and peace (2011) and Nourish (2015). Her recent exhibitions include NEXT: Print Matters in Houston, Texas and her solo exhibition, Savor the Moment, in Oakland which was an homage to Paris. In 2018/19, Willis was awarded two Community Fund Grants for her project Conflict Zone, a collaborative printmaking project with Yazidi women, men, and kids from northern Iraq.       

Learn more on her website: https://www.nancywillis.com

Music credit: Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F major - II. Assez vif, très rythmé produced by the Isabella Stuart Gardener Museum (issued under a Creative Commons License).