Interviews by Brainard Carey

LaNia grew up in the segregated city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and graduated with a BFA from Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.

She devotes most of her time conducting research on the philosophies of self perception, queer and feminist theories, and inherent racial dogmas; while also examining the contemporary works’ of Laylah Ali, Kara Walker and poet, Warsan Shire.

The combination of printmaking and drawing inspires her to challenge these concepts and to push beyond the traditional expectations of not only the figure but printmaking itself. Through collage and assemblage she strives to conduct work that pays homage to imagery free from the barriers of social constructs and honest in its vulnerability.

Next Door Neighbors Gouache, ink, watercolor pencil, colored pencil, watercolor crayons 13 ⅝ x 19 ¾ in 2018

Kentuckyana Watercolor crayon, gouache, marker, glitter 20x18in 2019

I have been painting for more than forty years. My partner is also a painter. I have an adult son.

I have a studio in Ridgewood Queens and spend summers working in upstate NY, north of the Catskills. For most of my life I supported myself working part time, first as a waiter and then as a magazine production editor. I’ve had some shows and some awards and residencies but mostly I just paint.

 

Untitled, 2018 48’ X 30” mixed media on aluminum

Untitled, 2019 30” x 18” mixed media on aluminum

Untitled, 2019 (in progress) 48” x 30” mixed media on aluminum

Ellen Pearlman, a native New Yorker is a new media artist, critic, curator and writer who received her PhD from The School of Creative Media, Hong Kong City University where her PhD thesis on "Noor A Brain Opera" was awarded highest global honors by Leonardo LABS Abstracts. Noor was the world's first immersive, interactive brainwave opera in a 360-degree theater. A Fulbright World Learning Specialist as well as a EU Vertigo STARTS Laureate, Ellen is on faculty at Parsons/New School University and a Senior Research Assistant Professor at RISEBA University in Riga, Latvia. She is also Director of the ThoughtWorks Arts Residency, President of Art-A-Hack(TM) and Director of the Volumetric Society of New York.

Still from "Noor: A Brain Opera" where performer Saba Arat's brainwaves launched databanks of videos, audio, and a libretto as the audience viewed her brainwaves through as part of a human computer interaction loop.

Still from "Noor: A Brain Opera" where performer Saba Arat's brainwaves launched databanks of videos, audio, and a libretto as the audience viewed her brainwaves through as part of a human computer interaction loop.

The author reading Reveille at Union University

George David Clark was born in Savannah and raised in Chattanooga and Little Rock. He now lives in Washington, PA with his wife, Elisabeth, and their four young children.

This is the first interview with George, the second interview can be found here.

The author of Reveille (winner of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize from the University of Arkansas Press), David’s recent poems can be found or are forthcoming in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Believer, Blackbird, The Cincinnati Review, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Image, Ninth Letter, Poetry Northwest, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere.

After earning an MFA at the University of Virginia and a PhD at Texas Tech University, David held the Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship in Poetry at Colgate University and, later, the Lilly Postdoctoral Fellowship at Valparaiso University.  He’s received additional honors from Southern Poetry Review (the Guy Owen Prize), Narrative Magazine (the 30 Below Prize), and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference (a Walter E. Dakin fellowship), among others. The editor-in-chief of 32 Poems, he previously served in various capacities on the staffs of Meridian, Virginia Quarterly Review, Iron Horse Literary Magazine, and the Best New Poets anthology. Since 2015 David has taught creative writing and literature as an assistant professor at Washington & Jefferson College.

Running was awarded the 2017 Iowa Arts Council fellowship. In 2018 she completed a major permanent installation called Five Miles From Fayette at Upper Iowa University, and a temporary installation in the Governor’s Office at the Iowa State Capital using herbarium samples from the 1800’s as inspiration. She has recently exhibited her work at the Morris Graves Museum, Eureka CA, Western Carolina Museum of Fine Art in North Carolina, the Front Gallery, New Orleans, LA, The Dubuque Museum, Dubuque, IA and the National Taiwan University of the Arts.

In 2019 she and her collaborator Denise Bookwalter completed the artists book Fashioning at Small Craft Advisory Press. She has been an artist in residence at the Jentel Foundation, Sheridan WY, Penland School of Crafts, Penland N.C., Constellation Studios, Lincoln NE and The Vermont Studio Center, Johnson VT.

Cure: Glass, 2019, Polished roadkill deer bones, cast glass, meat hook, hardware, 6x2x3 feet

Detail - Cure: Glass, 2019, Polished roadkill deer bones, cast glass, meat hook, hardware, 6x2x3 feet

'At satirizing pop-celebrity culture Ms. Tak is on the mark'.

- Grace Glueck, The New York Times

Elise Tak is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. In her work she uses the imagery of film and popular culture to create a rich fictional and visionary world, while at the same time discussing contemporary, sociopolitical issues. Elise Tak works in both traditional media and in modern digital media using 3D software (such as Cinema4D, zBrush and several renderers) and image editors like Photoshop. By continually experimenting with new developments she continually pushes her own artistic skill to new limits.

For over 30 years already she has dedicated herself to the creation of an ever-growing body of work, featuring the lives and careers of more than 10 fictional, yet ‘world famous’, movie actors. It is an intricate play between reality and fiction, between life and art, because whereas in the movies, real living actors create a false existence, in Tak’s work even these actors are pure fiction. Up to now Elise Tak has 'given birth' to 10 movie actors, with different ages and from different backgrounds. Their names are: Michael Okada, Thomas Kirby, Marian Xiao, Pete Banich, Marvin Dunbar, Forough Amirshahi, Jeni Wright, Roy Rebergen, Charlie Pep and Anita Carbajal.

Elise Tak was born in the Netherlands and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Since the early 1990s her work has been shown in leading galleries, museums and art institutes like Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Frans Hals Museum/De Hallen, Museum Helmond (The Netherlands); Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art (USA); Musée de Luxembourg, Musée d'Art Moderne Contemporain Strasbourg, FRAC Poitou-Charentes, Le Consortium (France). Articles on her work have appeared in The New York Times, Flash Art, Der Spiegel, Art Press and many more. In addition, she has several large-scale public art projects to her credit, commissioned by leading institutes in the field like SKOR Foundation for Art and Public Space and Stroom Den Haag, both in The Netherlands. Her animation short ‘Suicide Notes’ was produced in collaboration with the two-time Emmy-award winning composer Patricia Lee Stotter. Elise Tak was the projection designer for the play ‘Flashback’, which ran in a New York City theater in 2007. Her series of stills illustrating Gogol's ‘The Nose’ originally was made for the short film ‘Here's What I Like... Russian Literature. And Now I'll Tell You Why’, directed by Abigail Zealy Bess and written and conceived by Amy Staats. In 2019 she was the director of imagery and projection designer of the staged reading of the play ‘Paging Doctor Faustus’, written by Paul Genega and Patricia Lee Stotter and directed by Mary Chang. Elise Tak is also active as a curator. Het latest exhibition 'A New York State of Mind (Stories from the unusual suspects)' was shown at Cacaofabriek in Helmond, The Netherlands in 2018 and featured a selection of artists from New York.

The book mentioned in the interview that she is reading is ‘Moment of Clarity’ by Lee Camp. (Lee Camp is a comedian who is sharply critical of the US political system and he can make the darkest of the dark funny).

‘Pent Up’ (1982) Marvin Dunbar as Green Peaz Digital 3D art, Cinema4D, Plugins 4D, zBrush, 3dCoat, Corona Render for Cinema4D, Affinity Photo © Elise Tak, 2019 Green Peaz is a Vietnam War combat veteran. Since Green Peaz has come home to Chicago, he has been suffering from paranoid delusions. Green Peaz is convinced that he is ‘The Savior’ of the city. Things get out of hand!

‘The Spirit of Not’ (2011) Charlie Pep as The Astronaut; and Marian Xiao, Forough Amirshahi, Jeni and Naomi Wright, Anita Carbajal as the five Spirits.Digital 3D art, C-print on paper, Cinema4D, Plugins 4D, zBrush, Substance Painter, Corona Render for Cinema4D, Affinity Photo, Luminar© Elise Tak,

Mohamed Ben Soltane is a visual artist and Curator exhibiting his work in Tunisia, Germany, Spain, Italy, Algeria, among other countries.

He graduated in 2004 from the High Institute of Fine Art of Tunis (I.S.B.A.T). He obtained his PhD in 2015.

He worked from 2011 to 2015 as artistic director of one of the leading private art centers in the Maghreb region: Bchira Art Center. He teaches cultural management and art history since 2016 at I.S.B.A.T.

His upcoming exhibition in NYC is at Apex Art.

He is also a founding member of the Residency program, Jiser.   

contre l oubli Hommage a El Mekki 54x54 x3 mosaic on wood 2019

Barcelona Art Fair 2016 Africa is the future but whom's future 2016 100x120 mosaic of biscuits

Ann Messner is a NY based multi-disciplinary artist. Her work has examined fault lines between the individual and the larger social body as encountered within public realm discourse, investigating the incongruities between notions of private life/space and public/civic engagement and experience.

Her 1970's performative work, interventionist in strategy, took place 'unofficially' within the context of the urban street, and survives as super 8 film and 35mm photos. Messner's first solo exhibition, an ongoing public performance (Franklin Furnace 1978), utilized a crudely over-amplified typewriter with outside speakers projecting the pounding of keys well beyond the parameters of the interior building space. It was not till later, in 1995, that these early performances were critically considered together in the exhibition 'subway stories and other shorts, Ann Messner: photographs and film 1976-1980' (Nina Felshin, Dorsky Curatorial Projects).

A hit and run strategy developed into more permanent, but still intentionally temporary, public projects, activating impersonal urban sites with an intimate object-based encounter. Meteor (Public Art Fund 1986), sited at Times Square, was one such project. These works, eschewed the monumental, echoing in scale an early commitment to experience as perceived through the individual psyche in relationship to the body.

In 2005 Messner directed 'disarming images', an open-call project produced by the collective Artists Against the War. Screenings of 'disarming images', accompanied by public discussion, took place, notably, at Yale University, School of Visual Arts, The New School, Hunter College, Carnegie Mellon and Casa delle Cultura (Rome). The gesture of individual action within the context of both a larger collective and far-reaching socio-political intention exemplifies this project.

Three recent works continue a commitment to engagement: 'The Real Estate Show and Other Histories', presented at Creative Time's Summit 2013: Art, Place, and Dislocation in the 21st-Century City; 'the underground potato' (in collaboration with activist/artist Laurie Arbeiter), a food vending media cart, installed in the Essex Street Market Cuchifritos Gallery in conjunction with 'The Real Estate Show: Was Then: 1980; What Next 2014?'; and 'DuBois_the FBI files', commissioned for Du Bois in Our Time, University Museum of Contemporary Art, UMASS, Amherst.

The free library and other histories 2018 tabloid, second edition of 2,000, distributed free to the public through the Lower Manhattan Network of New York Public Libraries NYPL

DuBois_the FBI Files 2013 a public project for the exhibition Du Bois in Our Time University Museum of Contemporary Art, UMASS Amherst, MA removal of all redactions from the William E. B. DuBois FBI Files, a 530 page scroll (approx 600 running ft); table dimensions 240 x 36 x 25 inches; audio script plays through speakers imbedded in table

DuBois_the FBI Files 2013 a public project for the exhibition Du Bois in Our Time University Museum of Contemporary Art, UMASS Amherst, MA removal of all redactions from the William E. B. DuBois FBI Files, a 530 page scroll (approx 600 running ft); table dimensions 240 x 36 x 25 inches; audio script plays through speakers imbedded in table

Pennie Key is a London based artist. Her work incorporates visual, performative and autobiographical elements. She is interested in sexuality, relationships, gender issues, power dynamics, and her work expands across a variety of mediums. Currently, her starting point is her various identities (a queer, young woman, a middle class daughter, a Mixed Martial Artist in the very heteronormative, male environment of the gym and a sex worker engaging in fetish wrestling and domination) and her point of focus is how the aforementioned identities are contextualized and shifted in the various spaces that she inhabits.

The Fantasy of Heterosexual Male Submission Does Not Include Critical Race or Gender Theory, Mixed media installation and mixed wrestling performance, 2016

2018 - art STUDIO, happening at 3 137 project-space in Athens

Rafael Soldi in his exhibit 'Imagined Futures'

Rafael Soldi is a Peruvian­-born, Seattle-based artist and curator. He holds a BFA in Photography & Curatorial Studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art. He has exhibited internationally at the Frye Art Museum, American University Museum, Griffin Museum of Photography, ClampArt, The Print Center, G. Gibson Gallery, Connersmith, Filter Space, and Burrard Arts Foundation, among others. Rafael is a 2012 Magenta Foundation Award Winner, and recipient of the 2014 Puffin Foundation grant, 2015 Portable Works Cultural Perspectives Purchase Grant, 2016 smART Ventures grant, 2016 Jini Dellaccio GAP grant, 2017 CityArtist Projects Grant, and a 2017 4Culture Arts Projects Grant. He has been awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, PICTURE BERLIN, Oxbow Space, and The Bogliasco Foundation.

His work is in the permanent collections of the Tacoma Art Museum, Frye Art Museum, and the King County Public Art Collection. He has been published in PDN, Dwell, Hello Mr, Metropolis, GRAY, LUXE, Lagom, among others. His work has been reviewed on ARTFORUM, The Seattle Times, The Boston Globe, ArtNexus, Photograph Magazine, Lensculture, and PDN. Rafael is the co-founder of FOUND, a space for contemporary art in Seattle, and the Strange Fire Collective, a project dedicated to highlighting work made by women, people of color, and queer and trans artists.

'Imagined Futures,' Fifty Gelatin silver photo booth portraits, 2 x 1.5 inches each. Each unique. Installation view at Oxbow Seattle

'Imagined Futures (detail),' Fifty Gelatin silver photo booth portraits, 2 x 1.5 inches each. Each unique. Installation view at Oxbow Seattle.