Interviews by Brainard Carey

Mary Mattingly is a visual artist. She founded Swale, an edible landscape on a barge in New York City to circumvent public land laws.

Swale helped co-create the "foodway" in Concrete Plant Park, the Bronx in 2017. The "foodway" is the first time New York City Parks is allowing people to publicly forage in over 100 years. Mattingly recently completed a sculpture “Pull” with the International Havana Biennial with the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de la Habana and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. In 2018 she worked with BRIC Arts to build "What Happens After" which involved dismantling a military vehicle and deconstructing its mineral supply chain. Mattingly is currently artist in residence at the Brooklyn Public Library and is working towards an Ecotopian Library,  a learning center for art and creativity in the face of climate change. Her work has also been exhibited at Storm King, the International Center of Photography, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Palais de Tokyo. Her work has been featured in Aperture Magazine, Art in America, Artforum, Sculpture Magazine, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Le Monde Magazine, New Yorker, and on BBC News, NPR, on Art21. Her work has been included in books such as MIT Press Documents of Contemporary Art series titled “Nature”, and Henry Sayre’s A World of Art, published by Pearson Education Inc.

Along the Lines of Displacement, Storm King, 2018

Swale, Concrete Plant Park, Bronx, 2017

Ya Levy-La’ford is an artist, educator and foremost a transporter working between the visual and our community  through a wide range of mediums including paint, sculpture, installation, video and sound. La'ford is known for her  site-specific installations of her bold, geometric paintings to  explore themes of transformation and transcendence. She builds each work with a unique vocabulary of intersecting lines and gestural repetition that create distinctive visual impact. Her labyrinth patterns are both an exploration of self and place, as well as a reflection of her Jamaican background. Complex yet minimal, La’ford’s work emphasizes contrasts between light and dark,  positive and negative space and draw connections between interconnectivity  and human neutrality.

The Monument, Metal Sculpture, 10 foot 

Tied, Environmental Facade Tampa, Metal Facade, 24 x 75 feet

Algers, Jiser, 2019 (photo: Hichem Merouche).

Interdisciplinary artist who operates at the crossroads of visual, education and living arts. She has spent most of her life in Bogotá, where art can be found in a hole in the asphalt.

She lives and works in Barcelona since 2015, and she speaks from migrant body on the borders of multiply body, overturning technology to imaginative and micro-political ways of learning. Her work is about listening time: how perception of time operates within a people and the city and how we can change the function of everyday objects, monuments and also, institutions. With her video, sound and radio performances, she has been recently exploring the disruption of language and the social meaning of using 'our voice'. Listen to that project here.

She is Radio Cava-ret, with Samuel Céspedes, since 2016, a living arts and radia collective. Recently, she made a 'solo exhibition' in Alalimón Galería (2019), called 'So happy together & altres covers', where she has invited Radio Cava-ret to the gallery space. In Barcelona, she has co-founded Radioactius Poble-sec with Pla Comunitari (2017), an online radio community. She works with several projects in Jiser Reflexions Mediterrànies, like the radio program Taula, and she has been also collaborating with Ràdio Web MACBA.

During her career she has been awarded the Otto de Greiff Award (2010), New Names of the Bank of the Republic of Colombia (2011), National University Postgraduate Scholarship (2011 - 2013), Master in Theater and Living Arts and ICETEX (Young Talents) Scholarship to study sound art at the University of Barcelona (2014- 2015). She has made some grants in Barcelona with collective projects like Beca de creación La Escocesa in 2018 and Sala d'Art Jove in 2019, with Radio Cava-ret.

The book mentioned in the interview was Listening in Dreams : A Compendium of Sound Dreams, Meditations And Rituals for Deep Dreamers.

Trampa para monumentos (Eclipse), 2010, videoperformance, photographer: Lucía Huertas.

La vuelta al mundo en 80 teatros, 2017, videoperformance, photographer: Daniel Authier.

I grew up in the whites-only suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa during the apartheid era, when South African law decreed that 92% of the population were regulated to the status of second-class citizens.

My interest in photography began at the age of twelve, but I soon realized that a Kodak Instamatic was never going to produce the results that I wanted. I worked for three years in a bookshop and eventually bought myself a Fujica ST701. It was a real thing of beauty; a single reflex camera with a basic zoom lens, that provided me with the means to control how light formed itself onto the surface of the silver halide film. Sunsets and silhouettes held my attention for a few months, but I had already begun to explore the complex tradition of photographic expression. Life Magazine was for me, at that time, the Holy Grail. Over the years, my enthusiasm for exploring the photographic medium has never diminished.

My photographic momentum was temporarily diverted after school by parental pressure to obtain a ‘proper’ qualification. In my final school year I was both the  Dux scholar as well as a first team sportsman, which resulted in me being offered a De Beers bursary to study Geology and Statistics at the University of Cape Town. After graduating, I broke the news to my unnerved parents that I was giving up this career path and instead becoming a property photographer at the local newspaper. In the hierarchy of photographic jobs this is very close to the bottom. My immediate aim was to gain access to unlimited amounts of film and the time to work on my own projects.

In 1987 I began photographing a conscientious objector and medical doctor, Ivan Toms, who refused to comply with the apartheid government’s military service requirements. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison. The essay, highlighted the absurdity of the political system. Renowned photographer, David Goldblatt , took an interest in this work and this interaction led to a three-decade relationship in which he became both a mentor and a friend. The rights to my essay on Ivan Toms were bought by Life magazine the following year.

Much of my work during this period was motivated by the desire to expose the social inequalities and racial divisions within my country. I eventually joined the strongly anti-apartheid collective, Afrapix and later became a founding member and manager of documentary collective, South Photographs.

In 1989, the beginning of the end of apartheid was evident. I was eager to situate myself in a position that would afford me the best opportunities to witness the transition to democracy. I joined Reuters News Agency as permanent stringer and for the next five years, I became immersed in the events, both violent and momentous, that led up to the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president in 1994. Many of my photographs from this period have taken on a life of their own. The image of Nelson Mandela walking out of prison with his wife, Winnie, has been exhibited and published worldwide. In 2008, as Barack Obama fought John McCain for the presidency, Newsweek magazine ran a story asking each candidate to choose an image that best personified their world view. Obama’s team chose an image that I photographed in Thokoza township in 1991. Last year the same photograph became central in a high profile image-appropriation dispute between myself and New York artist, Hank Willis Thomas. There was a massive groundswell of support from colleagues and media from around the world. An amicable settlement was reached.

Since 1994 I have concentrated on producing personalized and contemporary bodies of work that reflect this complex country and the continent as a whole. These essays have been shown in solo exhibitions in New York, London, Paris, Cape Town and Johannesburg as well as numerous photo festivals around the world. (Including China, Singapore, Brazil, Cambodia, France,

M. Evelina Galang is the author of the story collection Her Wild American Self (Coffee House Press, 1996), novels One Tribe (New Issues Press, 2006) and Angel De La Luna and the Fifth Glorious Mystery (Coffee House Press, 2013), the nonfiction work Lolas’ House: Filipino Women Living With War (Curbstone Books, 2017), and the editor of Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images (Coffee House Press, 2003).

Among her numerous awards are the 2004 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Prize for the Novel, the 2007 Global Filipino Literary Award for ONE TRIBE, the 2004 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Awards Advancing Human Rights, and a 2002 Senior Research Fellowship from Fulbright. Galang teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami and is core faculty and President of the Board of Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA/Voices).

Natasha Ria El-Scari is long known for being an acclaimed local poet, writer, feminist, and educator but in this offering, her third book, she takes a sharp turn to lean into not only non-fiction but also motherhood. Mama Sutra is an opening to over 15 years of conversation about lovemaking that she has had with her son. The focus: being present with the woman and not focused specifically on the male orgasm. It includes advice about how to prepare the body and personal space for lovemaking, communication and contemplation to liberate long standing taboos within the African American community and beyond.

This book is the perfect gift for a young man entering young adulthood, for single men who wants to make sure he is ready for lovemaking or a married man that needs a refresher course. Natasha gives not only practical advice but the real "mother wit" wisdom of what many women are looking for in a lover from a black feminist perspective. Mama Sutra is long overdue, it provides an opening for families and lovers to have conversations that have never occurred but that we all desperately need to be having with our sons and women with their lovers. Mama Sutra is just in time for the holidays, semester breaks and the rest of their lives. Don't delay and purchase today from the writer, or purchase it on amazon here.

Nicole Schmölzer works with oil paint and ink. Her intuitive, abstract imagery emerges out of the dynamics and the organic flow of the fluid paint, in which gravitation, sedimentation and other process-oriented approaches are in play. The distinctive characteristics of her work lie in a play and counter-play of intention and chance, suggestive rhythms, as well as of an attractive-repulsive aspect as they are revealed in the creative process and its becoming.

Her paintings grow and develop rhythmically over time, giving visible form to natural phenomena as known in our cyclical, suggestive and paradoxical reality: (an extract of her new publication: Imbuing, Modo Publisher.

“With painting I am pursuing an approach to the real which is not necessarily visible or depicted as such. I have followed the motivation for abstraction, the inner impulse, a life rhythm, a movement or an energy which underlie the tides of life and human growth. To translate this into painting, to represent and incorporate the flowing, to catch the subtle movement of the changeable, to set one’s sights on in-between state (describable through an observation from the inside); the stillness in the flow—all this becomes the content of a painting for me as a painter and observer.”

Nicole Schmölzer is from Switzerland and has been painting since 1995 in her studios in Basel and New York. She was introduced to painting at an early age through the art school Martenot (1975-88) and completed pedagogical studies at Martenot in Paris in 1988-89. Since 1995 her work has been regularly shown at different galleries and exhibition spaces in Europe, the United States and Japan. She has received grants for artist residencies from the Art OMI Foundation NY, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in New Mexico, the Valparaiso Foundation in Spain, the Virginia Center for the Arts, the Montalvo Arts Center in California and the Heliker-LaHotan Foundation in Maine.

She has also worked with site-specific art and architecture realizations (Basel, 2014), as well as with projection-performance-projects involving animated painting (experimental video).

For more information on the interdisciplinary project mentioned in the interview, click here.

Imbuing 39x31.5 inches, oil, ink, linen.

Staining, 70x60 inches, oil, ink, linen.

Studio, 2020

Duane Michals is an artist with an exhibition at the time of this interview at The Morgan Library as well as DC Moore Gallery.

He has published numerous books throughout his lifetime, and many of them can be seen and bought here.

YORT from Duane Michals on Vimeo.

The End from Duane Michals on Vimeo.

Adam de Boer graduated with a BA in Painting from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2006) and an MA in Fine Art from the Chelsea College of Art, London (2012). Recent exhibitions include Hunter Shaw Fine Art, Los Angeles (2018/2016); Elevator Mondays, Los Angeles (2018); World Trade Centre, Jakarta (2018); Art|Jog, Yogyakarta (2018/2015); Redbase Foundation, Yogyakarta (2017); Riflemaker, London (2016/2013/2011); Indonesian Contemporary Art Network, Yogyakarta (2014); University of California, Santa Barbara (2014); Escuela Taller, Bogotá (2013); Flashpoint Gallery, Washington, DC (2010).

In 2017, de Boer was awarded a Fulbright research fellowship to Indonesia. Other grants include those from Arts for India, The Cultural Development Corporation, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and The Santa Barbara Arts Fund.

For the past seven years de Boer has travelled throughout Indonesia to investigate his Eurasian heritage. His recent work employs imagery and traditional crafts from the region as a way to connect his artistic practice with those of his distant cultural forebears. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Fool's Cap Map of the World, 2019, wax-resist acrylic paint washes and crayon on linen 30 x 40 inches

Monday Evening Studio View, 2020, wax-resist acrylic paint washes and crayon on linen 92 x 120 inches

Detail: Monday Evening Studio View, 2020, wax-resist acrylic paint washes and crayon on linen 92 x 120 inches

Margaret Keller’s large-scale installations are concerned with the impact of humans and technology on the survival of all interdependent species on earth, as we stumble into the future.  Issues she addresses include speculative possibilities for planetary  and species survival, climate change, natural disasters, gender, surveillance, and our experience of nature in this digital age.

Using diverse media such as installation, sculpture, painting, drawing, laser-cutting,

3-D printing, video, and mixed-media, all her series share an investigation into the relationships between nature, contemporary culture, and technology, recognizing these relationships as now negatively symbiotic.  Keller’s series come from her sense that at this precise moment, we are at the tipping point of a world gone wrong.  Her installation Botanica absentia was at The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis for Fall 2019 and travels in 2020 to The Mitchell Museum in Illinois as part of her one-person exhibition Leaning on Nature.  Thousands of earth’s plant and animal species are under eminent threat of extinction now; Botanica absentia is a memorial to lost species - set 70 years in the future.

Keller also focuses on the curatorial and critical aspects of contemporary art, with reviews published in Art in America, delicious line, All the Art, and temporaryartreview among others, and numerous exhibitions curated at The Meramec Contemporary Art Gallery.

Keller’s art has been shown in over fifty galleries, museums and collections including The Arkansas Art Center Museum in Little Rock, the RAC gallery in St. Louis, The Mitchell Museum in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, The Center for Contemporary Art and Gallery 210 in St. Louis and Quadratfuß/NX2-Annex Art in Berlin.  In 2018, she was commissioned to create Riverbend, a 133-foot-long aluminum public art installation representing the Missouri River at The Gateway Arch National Park.  The Space Between was at The William and Florence Schmidt Art Center in 2019, where her laser-cut sculpture was selected for the permanent collection.  Currently she is the Artist-in-Residence at Forsyth School.

Keller has worked full-time as Professor of Art at Meramec College in St. Louis; she was also Visiting Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis and in Florence, Italy; Historic Preservation Consultant; Fiscal Analyst for the Missouri State Legislature; self-employed cake decorator; and box factory worker.

Studies include Post-Graduate work in Experimental Electronic Media (video game design, animation) at Webster University, Master of Fine Arts from Washington University in St. Louis, and Bachelor of Arts from University of Missouri-Columbia.

The book mentioned in the interview was

Link to the book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert.

The Aternative Spaces mentioned in the interview are - Monaco Founded by 12 member artists and G-CADD (Granite City Art & Design District) and STNDRD (flagpole gallery) and The Luminary.

Botanica absentia, 2019, aluminum, chrome, stainless steel, dichroic plexiglass, holographic vinyl, wood, at The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis Photo: Josh Rowan

Studio Window: Disaster Series, 30x22”, graphite and watercolor on Arches Paper, The Mitchell Museum, 2020 Photo: Margaret Keller