Interviews by Brainard Carey

Youssef Rakha is an Egyptian novelist, essayist and poet who writes in both Arabic and English. Born, raised and based in Cairo, he graduated from Hull University, UK, in 1998, and has worked as a cultural journalist, literary translator and creative writing coach since then.

He is the founding editor of the bilingual literary website тнє ѕυℓтαη’ѕ ѕєαℓ: Cairo's coolest cosmopolitan hotel, named after his acclaimed first novel, The Book of the Sultan's Seal. He can be found on therakha.net, on Twitter @Sultans_Seal and on YouTube.

The poems he reads in the course of this conversation (translated by Robin Moger) can be found here, and the essay he refers to in the context of the third poem here.

Andrew Schwartz’s practice explores the possibilities of abstract visual language using a vocabulary of color, form, light, and materiality. Collaborating with chance and the alchemical properties of paint, he employs a range of studio techniques in an improvisational flow of repetition and variation to create new visual outcomes.  Each painting becomes a site for impressions, residues, and subsequent excavations.

Schwartz’s recent work draws on the incidental beauty of daily visual experience, never discriminating between the monumental and the mundane. His paintings also allude to those microscopic and macroscopic abstract worlds brought into focus through the aid of technology. In an age flooded with ephemeral images all vying for attention, Schwartz is particularly interested in the role of painting as a format that demands patience and slow, intimate looking from its audience.

Andrew Schwartz received a BFA with concentrations in painting and sculpture from Cornell University in 2010 and an MFA in painting from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2016. Schwartz has exhibited his artwork at Morgan Lehman Gallery (NYC); Deanna Evans Projects (NYC); and Geoffrey Young Gallery (Great Barrington, MA); among others. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

The books mentioned in the interview are: (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism and On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism).

Andrew Schwartz “Golem (Blue/Red)”, 2020, 30 x 22 inches, Oil, pigments, and mica on archival paper

Andrew Schwartz, “Late Bloomer”, 2019, 30 x 22 inches, Oil and pigments on archival paper

Andrew Schwartz “Impressions: Green-Wood”, 2020, 30 x 22 inches, Oil, pigments, and mica on archival paper

Arthur Menezes Brum (b.1985) is an educator, artist, and consultant. His activities focus on interrogating creativity within and beyond the fine arts.

As an educator he seeks to reinforce the controversial concept that anyone can become an artist. He received his MFA from Yale University, and his BFA in from the University of Cincinnati.

 

Bad Idea in Orange, 2020.  Light bulb and dehydrated orange, ~12"x 3.5" x 3.5"

Ash Canary, 2020. Hand sanitizer on painted cardboard effigy, ~ 5" x 4" x 3"

Alien Space Suit, 2020. Performance/Costume: Seersucker suit, N95 respirator, goggles, sunglasses, gloves, boat shoes, and latex mask.

Steve Rand, Lu, and Baci

apexart is a not-for-profit art space in Lower Manhattan. Founded by artist Steven Rand in 1994, it was conceived to challenge ideas about art, its practice and curation, and to provide opportunity through meritocratic processes. apexart realizes this mission through exhibitions, an international residency program, a book publishing initiative, and public programs. To date it has worked with over 1,800 artists from around the world in its exhibition and residency programs. 2013 marked the publication of apexart’s fourth book, Life Between Borders: The Nomadic Life of Curators and Artists, a collection of essays on the affect of travel and nomadism in the art world. apexart has exhibited 200 exhibitions and hosted over 150 residencies in New York City and around the world.

Presenting nine shows annually, apexart’s exhibition program seeks to put new people in the position of curator through three different initiatives: the invited curator series, Unsolicited Proposal Program, and Franchise Program.

Each year, apexart presents two exhibitions organized by invited individuals, three exhibitions selected through the Unsolicited Proposal Program, and four exhibitions selected from the Franchise Program. These last two programs are open call curatorial opportunities that allow anyone from anywhere to propose an exhibition to be presented by apexart at its Tribeca location (in the case of the Unsolicited Proposal Program), or elsewhere in the world (in the case of the Franchise Program).

Past invited curators include: David Bianculli, Leah Buechley, Rob Walker, Simon Critchley, David Byrne, Boris Groys, and Dave Eggers. Past Unsolicited Proposal Winners include: Alastair Noble (2014), Avi Lubin (2014), Martin Waldmeier (2013), Natalie Musteata (2012), Gary Fogelson and Michael Hutcherson (2011), Courtenay Finn (2010), and Sandra Skurvida (2009). Past Franchise winners include: Mike Crane (Palestine, 2014), Chuong-Dai Vo (Cambodia, 2014), Paul Falzone and Marisa Jahn (Uganda 2013), Katharina Rhode (South Africa, 2012), Corina Oprea, Isabel Löfgren, Judith Souriau, Milena Placentile, and Valerio Del Baglivo (Sweden, 2011), and Logan Bay (Thailand, 2010).

The apexart Residency is an alternative educational program that invites creative professionals to leave their familiar surroundings for a month-long stay in a foreign country. Inbound Residents travel to New York, while Outbound Residents are sent from New York to locations including Ethiopia, Thailand, and Brazil.

apexart provides each resident with a detailed schedule of daily activities, meetings, and unexpected new experiences designed to provide creative and professional development The program is a geographical, historical, and intellectual exploration that combines the high and the low, art and non-art, and the mundane with the extraordinary and seeks to catalyze ideas for future work. Participants—from different disciplines and at different points in their career—are recommended by noted individuals from their home country who believe their practice could benefit from a non-working visit to a foreign country.

apexart’s publishing program examines timely issues in contemporary art and culture with new essays by members of the field from around the world.

In 2006, apexart published its first book, On Cultural Influence: Collected Papers from apexart International Conferences. This book, a compilation of essays presented at three apexart Conferences, offers a unique perspective of international viewpoints of the changing cultural landscape. Cautionary Tales: Critical Curating, published in 2007, asked academics, writers, and curators to consider how the proliferation of ‘cultural producers’ has changed the definition, evolution, and purpose of the curator over the last ten years. Playing by the Rules: Alternative Thinking/Alternative Spaces, published in 2010,

Randy’s job is to provide the overarching vision and direction for Intersection for the Arts, which includes finding new ways to support artists.

With over thirty years experience as an artistic director, he co-founded New York City’s HOME for Contemporary Theatre and Art and HERE Arts Center, served as the executive artistic director for Cleveland Public Theatre, and has a long career as an actor and director in NYC and regionally.

He joined Intersection for the Arts in 2008 and became Executive Director in 2015. When he’s not keeping the trains running at Intersection, you can find him cooking adventurous meals, traveling, researching his family tree, or working (at a snail’s pace) on his memoirs.

The book mentioned in the interview is Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1.

Dancing Earth is an Indigenous dance company that aims to inspire creativity, grow cultural consciousness, and support Indigenous dance.Intersection for the Arts is a historic arts and culture nonprofit that provides Bay Area based artists and arts organizations with fiscal sponsorship, resources, space, and support to grow their artistic practices.

Red Poppy Art House is an artistic and cultural center and venue in the historic San Francisco Mission district. They host diverse performances, exhibitions, workshops, and artist residencies that creatively address social, political, and community issues.Intersection for the Arts is a historic arts and culture nonprofit that provides Bay Area based artists and arts organizations with fiscal sponsorship, resources, space, and support to grow their artistic practices.

Ishion Hutchinson Neil Watson

Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He is the author of two poetry collections: Far District and House of Lords and Commons.

He is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, among others.

He is a contributing editor to the literary journals The Common and Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art and teaches in the graduate writing program at Cornell University. Books mentioned, two by Montale: Collected Poems and The Second Art of Life.

photo by Taso Papadakis, from "This Dance is Stolen"

Alexx Shilling is a Los Angeles-based choreographer, performer, filmmaker and teacher fully committed to the infinite investigation of movement and its potential to uncover alternative narratives and allow us to remember. Her original choreography and experimental films have been presented nationally and internationally, through residencies including Millay Colony, PAM, UCLA and Ebenbökhaus / Jewish Museum in Munich, and with generous support from institutions including Dance Films Association, Asylum Arts, Yiddishkayt, Center for Cultural Innovation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, CHIME (with mentor Bob Een) and California Arts Council both as Artistic Director of alexx makes dances and ann and alexx make dances (2004-2010).

She has collaborated as a performer most robustly with Victoria Marks and Richard Rivera/PHYSUAL, and recently in projects by Christine Suarez, Kevin Williamson and Nickels Sunshine. Alexx holds an MFA in Choreography from UCLA’s World Arts & Cultures/Dance Department and a degree in Dance from Skidmore College.

She currently teaches at Loyola Marymount University and Cal State Long Beach, co-founded the performance platforms Hi, Solo and Gold Series and holds certifications in Pilates, Yoga, Open Source Forms and Fleming Technique.

Absence a History,  photo by Taso PapadakisSarah Leddy, Nguyen Nguyen, Dorothy Dubrule and Carol McDowell in Absence: a HistoryAbsence was a suspicious attempt at constructing a past without proof; it was about creating testimony by first making fake family photographs and using them as movement language. For a change, the theatre space seemed like the perfect shadow box within which to investigate memory.Highways Performance Space, Los Angeles (2015) 

Julie Troost in the opening scene of The Sun Is Over the Yardarm (2004-5) , Conceived and co-directed with Ann Robideaux taken aboard the Lightship "Frying Pan," Hudson River, photo by Bing Smith

Sarah Stolar and Merlene Schain at SFMOMA, 2012, photo credit Jeff Medinas

Merlene Schain is a painter and mixed-media artist. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an MFA from the University of Cincinnati, and she has been exhibiting internationally since 1972.

Cincinnati born, in the family lineage of Rookwood Pottery and German master painter Adolph von Menzel, Merlene Schain is an acclaimed art educator in the Midwest. Founder of Schain Studios, an independent art school established in 1989, Merlene is responsible for mentoring students in achieving over 300 regional and national Scholastic awards, and over $900,000 in college scholarship money from top art schools across the country.

She has also been a Visiting Professor at the University of Cincinnati and Art Academy of Cincinnati. Her own artwork is in several prestigious private and public collections including Fidelity Investments, Merrill Dow, and Lifesphere, among others. Recently, Merlene Schain retired from teaching and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico focus on her work.

Merlene Schain’s current studio space with a selection of new drawings on the wall.

Cultural Harmony, ink and acrylic on Stonehenge paper, 44x84”, 2013

Hazel Nut Tree, Sumi ink on Stonehenge paper, approx. 12x6”, 2018, photo credit Heather Marie Bergerson

Vladimir Palibrk

Curator, writer and artist.

After graduating at Comparative studies of world literature department at Belgrade University, Vladimir focused mostly on storytelling through various forms, including words, graphic art forms, and event production/network management as ways to externalize his visions. With more than 10 years of experience of working as a mediator and author both in challenging non-formal international setting as well in more structured official platforms and organizations worldwide gave him valuable experience in the nature of creative and team processes. He is based in Paris, France, since 2015.

Installation at Atelier Meraki Paris by DZAIZKU

Dzaizku collage by Vladimir Palibrk

Author Photo by Cybele Knowles

Fady Joudah has published four collections of poems, The Earth in the Attic, Alight, Textu, a book-long sequence of short poems whose meter is based on cellphone character count; and, most recently, Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance.

He has translated several collections of poetry from the Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize.

He was a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007 and has received a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize from the UK, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Houston, with his wife and kids, where he practices internal medicine.