Interviews by Brainard Carey

Kevin Robinson is a performer-composer, educator and multi-woodwind instrumentalist who explores various interdisciplinary approaches to composition and improvisation. He is a native of Baltimore, MD and is currently based in Oakland, CA. He has a MA in Composition Program from Mills College where he is studied with Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins and others. He received his BFA in Jazz Reeds from California Institute of the Arts where he studied composition with Wadada Leo Smith and Vinny Golia.

Robinson is the leader of the band The Kevin Robinson Ensemble (KREation) which was established in 2003. The group has recorded several studio albums. He has performed at various festivals and venues throughout the United States. Some highlights include performances at the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York City, The Made in LA 2012 Biennial, The Hammer Museum in LA, Artscape Festival in Baltimore and at The Outsound Festival in San Francisco.

He has collaborated with dancers, poets, visual artist, writers and film makers -including visual artist Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle and Warren Niedrich – film makers Sola Bamis and Shirley Kim. He has also performed with the Ulrich Krieger Sextet, Marilyn Crispell, Nicole Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith’s Creative Orchestra, the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, Copper Root, Kuumba Collective, Warren Niedrich, the trio BRL and krautrock group Faust. He was a participant at the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute (2012) at UCLA, a resident at Project Row Houses in Houston Texas (2013) and a resident at Atlantic Center for the Arts.

The books he mentions in the interview are Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock Possibilities and Octavia Butler,  Lilith's Brood.

KREation Ensemble, Outsound Festival 2018 San Francisco, Marilyn Crispell- Piano, Lee Hodel - Bass, Tony Gennaro -Percussion

Brian Alfred is a painter and animator born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his BFA in 1997 from Penn State University and his MFA in 1999 from Yale University.

This is his second interview, the first can be found by clicking here.

Selected exhibitions include solo exhibitions at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York; Maho Kubota Gallery, Tokyo,  Frist Center for Visual Art, Nashville; Haunch of Venison, London, New York, Zurich, Berlin; Mary Boone Gallery, New York, NY; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; and Max Protetch Gallery, New York, NY. He was awarded a Jerome Foundation Grant; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, and he attended Skowhegan.

Brian Alfred lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and is an Assistant Professor of Art at Penn State University. He is also the host of Sound & Vision Podcast.

Time Horizons, 2017, Acrylic on canvas, 62 x 73 inches

Rag & Bone mural Elizabeth Street, NYC

Director of Education Debbie Hillyerd leading a tour of 'Phyllida Barlow. Gig', Hauser & Wirth Somerset

Debbie joined Hauser & Wirth Somerset from Bath Spa University where, since 2004, she worked as an Associate Lecturer teaching Critical Studies, Fine Art and Curatorial Practice.

This is the second interview, the first one with her can be heard by clicking here.

Debbie also taught Visual Culture and Fine Art at the University of West of England, Bristol, Northbrook College, Brighton and Loughborough University.

She has a PDSA ICT in Art & Design Education (MEd), an MA in History of Art & Architecture from the University of Central England and a BA (Hons) Fine Art Painting from Bath College of Higher Education.

In addition to her teaching roles, Debbie has written on artist's practice and provided consultancy to many other institutions across the education sector. She lives in Somerset with her husband, who is a headteacher and has three children.

Mary McCartney Open Source Salon at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, September 2018. Photo: Ben Taylor, Courtesy Hauser & Wirth Somerset

OS_Viv Groskop, Open Source Salon at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, December 2018. Photo: Ben Taylor, Courtesy Hauser & Wirth Somerset

I am an Egyptian-born Sudanese artist. My childhood was composed of two environments: the Cairene street and the Sudanese home. The relationship, and sometimes tension, between the two, strongly influenced my view of both cultures.

The need to express this dual perspective led me to make art initially and has informed my work since.

My work discusses the relationship between the included and the excluded, and open dialogue on issues of identity and politics. By working with forgotten historical events and current state policies.  I raise questions of power dynamics between the individual and authority on a social and political level.

My recent work is based on research and documentation of ignored historical events, especially colonial history and rereading it from the perspective of the native.

 

No. 1 Black Ivory, Sculpture / Audio installation,2016

Mahungo, painting,2018

Adam Marnie is an artist and editor living in Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions of his work include New Constructions, Bad Reputation, Los Angeles, One/Thinking Two/Willing, kijidome, Boston, Rongwrong, Elaine de Kooning House, East Hampton, NY, and Construction/Destruction, Galerie Almine Rech, Paris.

He is publisher and editor-in-chief of F Magazine, a biannual self-published art magazine based in Los Angeles and New York, a project around which he has organized group exhibitions such as The Garden of Forking Paths at Magenta Plains, New York, and Windows at David Peterson Gallery, Minneapolis. In 2018 he co-organized, with Rebecca Matalon, the traveling exhibition Harry Dodge: Works of Love at JOAN, Los Angeles, which will open at Tufts University, Boston, later this month. He is currently working on F issue 8: CELEBRITY to be released at the F Magazine table at Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair, April 2019.

New Constructions, Bad Reputation, Los Angeles, April 2018

The F Magazine table at Printed Matter's NY Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY, September 2018

Reyna in her studio in Toulouse, France working on the Wild Coat series, 2016

Born in Pau, a town in southern France, Reyna is a visual artist, who has lived in Toulouse for many years.

Reyna’s work gives breath to the art world, with a sensibility at once contemporary and ancient, reminding us of the importance of human touch in art and life. With her origins in the south of France, she has lived and created in this region where wild horses still graze freely and also, where, just a few hours away, the great cave drawings of animals of Lascaux hold their secrets embedded in the body of the Earth as an eternal inspiration in human history. For Reyna, the land embraces the elements as a corporal being; textures of rock, soil, and sediment, become the sand of the beaches she visits, where she uncovers our final state of being as earthen rocks in the landscape, after which, inevitably, the natural progression of humanity is to return oneself to the sea. Here, by the shoreline, she ritualizes her drawing process, a performance with pigments in the sand. The water, the minerals, and the skin of the body become one spirit of essential qualities, embodied in this world through Reyna, as she performs each drawing, her mind and body a conduit in a contemporary shamanism. Her images, faces and bodies, the sand their skin, evolve and disappear with the water’s caress, a touch of gentle effacement, as if to wipe away the dust and grime of years of distress. Her ongoing series of work, Primeval Matrix, requires her whole body to move as a ritual; as a dance, her gesture is determined, a stretched arm and hand, controls the lines she carves, while at the same time, she delicately embellishes these etched faces and bodies with natural powdered pigments. Her action as a gentle saltpetering, a vibrant means to create one last image, before they disappear forever as minerals swallowed by the sea, their tones ochre, burnt sienna, umber, and white. Her art is as a Dervish ‘whirling’ as her body conveys a silent lightning strike, drawing energy into the sand from somewhere above. This gesture of creation is both a funeral and a celebration, as the minerals are restored to their origins. These minerals are life forms in a final state of being as rocks, destined to be renewed, in the womb of all life: the sea.

Reyna found solidarity in the writings of the American environmentalist, Paul Shephard, who wrote about humanity’s constant desire to return to nature as a necessity, and about the role of animals in the development of our human conscience and reflective thought. Her recent work focuses on the iconography of the horse, a recurring image in her conscious and unconscious thought, filtering its way to the surface in the new series, Wild Coat, as large scale drawings, paintings, and videos. These works come together as installations with a tremendous energy of movement and grace; the horses are nearly deified in their presentation. These are not domesticated horses, but wild spirits, as the mustangs of the American wild west, their movements a testament to their weightlessness, unencumbered by the frailties of human error, they spring up onto two back hooves with all the grace of the Andalusian horses at the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art in Spain. One senses how they once flew across the ceilings of Rococo style churches or sprung into action as the horses that draw the chariot at the tomb of the Emperor Hadrian and now they travel through time to these contemporary renderings; their restless spirits limitless and free to pass through walls and edifices. An ancient wisdom flows from the dark pools of their eyes, a primal knowledge translated through the gaze of each of these horses.

Spending time with the wild horses of her region to film and photograph them, Reyna draws a closeness to their spirits and their essential being, Reyna states,

Leslie Wayne was born in 1953 in Landstül, Germany to American parents and grew up in Southern California. She studied painting at the College of Creative Studies, UC Santa Barbara for two years before moving to Paris for a year, followed by five years in Israel. In 1982 she moved to New York and received her BFA with Honors in Sculpture from Parsons School of Design. Her signature abstract paintings are known for their highly dimensional surfaces of oil paint with strong references to geology.

She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 2 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in Painting, a New York State Council on the Arts Projects Residency Grant, a Yaddo Artists Fellowship, a Buhl Foundation Award for abstract photography and an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant.

She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad and her work is in the public collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; la Coleccion Jumex, Mexico City; Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC; le Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum Smithsonian Library, NYC; The Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, FL; the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR; the Davis Museum of Art, Wellesley, MA; and the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY, among others.

In 2017 the MTA Arts and Design program in New York City commissioned her to create a window for the Bay Parkway Station on the Culver (F) line in Brooklyn, NY. She is a member and serves on the Board of the National Academy of Design.

Wayne is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery and lives and works in New York City.

Jill Freidberg heading out to interview the late Dr Reverend Samuel McKinney

Jill Freidberg is a Seattle-based documentary filmmaker, oral historian, radio producer, and youth media educator.

Her work reflects her belief that responsible, powerful storytelling builds understanding and solidarity across borders and across the street.In this interview she describers her current project, Shelf Life Stories.

The book she mentions reading at the end is The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein.

A few of the over 70 Central District residents interviewed by Shelf Life.

Neighborhood Teen Interacts with Shelf Life stories at community engagement event (stories on rotary phones)

Photo by Bridget Badore for the 14th Street Y | @bridgetbadore

Shawn Shafner is an artist, educator and activist. Creator of The People's Own Organic Power Project (www.thePOOPproject.org), he has catalyzed conversation about sustainable sanitation from NYC's largest wastewater treatment plant to the United Nations. Shawn's solo show An Inconvenient Poop was a Time Out NY Critic’s Pick and won him the 2015 NY International Fringe Festival Award for Overall Excellence in Solo Performance. Other major POOP works include the feature documentary Flush, family musical Innie / Outie, and monthly episodes of SHHH: The Poopcast (aka Shit and Shame with Shawn). His new show, Assume the Throne, is currently touring living rooms across the USA.

Shawn was a 2005 Spielberg Fellow, 2014-15 LABA Fellow, 2014-15 iLAND/LMCC resident (featured in their book, A Field Guide to iLANDing), 2017 Global Social Impact House fellow through UPenn's Center for Social Impact Strategy, a 2017 Performing Arts Legacy Fellow, 2018 National Fellow through the Environmental Leaders Program, and is a member of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation's ROI Community.

Outside of The POOP Project, Shawn pursues work that invites human interaction and connection. Community-based projects include The Clap (with Laura Silver), art walks for Jane's Walks NYC and Elastic City (featured in their forthcoming book), and Latch/Attach commissioned by the World Policy Institute and Fourth Arts Block and exhibited at Cooper Union. An accomplished theatre artist, Shawn's performances have graced New York Stages from Madison Square Garden to Joe's Pub, and venues around the world including the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, and Harpa Concert Hall in Iceland. He has sung with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center alongside Marisa Michelson's Constellation Chor (of whom he is a founding member), and spent the summer of 2017 in residence at the Art Monastery Project, directing a new play about white supremacy. Shawn teaches movement through the lineage of acclaimed choreographer Tamar Rogoff, tells original stories for young children and their families, develops arts-integrated curriculum, and is devoted to manifesting a world of creativity, mindfulness and joy.

Shawn in his 2015 award-winning solo show, An Inconvenient Poop, directed by Annie G. Levy. Photo by Ellise Lesser

Spring 2018, Shawn created a two-part performance, beginning at the Soil Symposium hosted by the University of California at Santa Cruz, and ending at the Follow the Flush Wastewater Walk in Santa Cruz produced by Fictilis. During The Sum of My Soil Part 1: Realization of the Grotesque Body, Shawn baked his own body weight in mud cakes, and led participants in contemplation of the body's form and impermanence (traditional Paṭikkūlamanasikāra meditation). In The Sum of My Soil Part 2: Earth Witness, Shawn retold the story of Siddartha Gautama becoming the enlightened Buddha by naming the earth as his witness, and thus claiming his right to enlightenment. Visitors were reminded that they, too, are worthy of the space allotted them, and each person was gifted a mud cake. Sprinkled with native seeds, audiences were invited to plant the cakes or allow them to dissolve in a final gesture of embodied impermanence. Photo by Timothy Furstnau.

Photo by ©Taylor Jewell

Billie Tsien was born in Ithaca, NY and received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Yale University and her Master of Architecture degree from UCLA. In 1986 she and Tod Williams founded their New York based architecture firm Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners.

Located in New York City, their studio focuses on work for institutions including schools, museums, and not-for-profits. A sense of rootedness, light, texture, detail, and most of all, experience, are at the heart of what they design. Some of their notable projects include The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, LeFrak Center at Lakeside in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, and the Asia Society Center in Hong Kong. They are currently designing The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Over the past three decades, they have received numerous national and international citations, including the 2013 Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects and the National Medal of the Arts from President Obama.

Billie is deeply involved in the cultural community and maintains long-standing associations with many organizations devoted to the arts. She is currently President of the Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Academy of Design, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

In parallel with her practice Billie also maintains an active academic career and lectures worldwide. As both an educator and practitioner, she is deeply committed to making a better world through architecture.

Tod Williams Billie Tsien, Lefrak Center at Lakeside, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, photo ©Michael Moran

Tod Williams Billie Tsien, Lefrak Center at Lakeside, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, photo ©Michael Moran

Tod Williams Billie Tsien, Lefrak Center at Lakeside, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, photo ©Michael Moran