Interviews by Brainard Carey

Jerry Kearns

Jerry Kearns’ “psychological pop” paintings represent a multidimensional quantum universe. Juxtaposing varied modes of representation, Kearns presents a visual mash-up that highlights how certain iconography expresses American belief structures. In compositions rife with conflict, questioning, contradictions and intrigue, Kearns depicts iconic figures sourced from Western popular culture engaged in perpetual power struggles, though it’s never clear who is winning. His characters fluctuate between protagonist and antagonist in a narrative that reflects our own constructions of reality – a matrix of thought where time and space are condensed and presented in a single, tense moment.

Jerry Kearns has exhibited internationally across the Americas, Europe, and Asia since the 1980s. He has been featured many times in The New York Times, Art and Auction, ARTnews, and Artforum, among others. His paintings are included in many public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), National Galerie (Berlin), Brooklyn Museum (New York), the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), The Norton Family Collection (Los Angeles), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Queensland Art Gallery (Queensland, Australia).

In the interview a show was mentioned at Joe's Pub by Nora, that can seen here.

Between Time, 84in x 84in, Acrylic on Canvas, 2017  Photo Credit: Stephanie Berger.

Two On a Match, 84 x 90, acrylic on canvas, 2017 Photo Credit: Stephanie Berger.

Martin Jago is the Artistic Director of Raze the Space, an international theatre ensemble based in Los Angeles. The ensemble produces global theatre for global audiences with stories that explore the human condition through the use language, music, dance and mask.

An authority on Shakespeare and classical text, he is the author of several books for the actor, most recently From Courts to Dungeons, a collection of Elizabethan and Jacobean monologues that focus on criminality and justice.

He has taught performance technique far and wide, from on-camera classes at the Actors Centre London to Shakespeare Masterclasses at Malibu Playhouse.

Originally from Great Britain, he lives in Los Angeles and works internationally. He was educated at The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and the University of Oxford.

Details of the international ten-minute plays festival mentioned in the interview can be found here.

 

Displaced -- a devised play that explores the ongoing global refugee crisis through the journey of one man from his war-torn homeland to the shores of Western Europe. A story about identity, loss, and acceptance.

 

 

Antigone rehearsals. Actor Katie Rodriguez with director Martin Jago.

Daniel Terna (b. Brooklyn, NY, 1987) is a Brooklyn-based artist using photography and video as a means to uncover, reveal, and direct attention towards the overlooked.

As the first-generation child of immigrants (one of whom is a 94 year-old Holocaust survivor and painter, and the other a child of survivors), he has produced several photographic series and short films about family history and inherited trauma, subverting traditional ideas of memorialization in his exploration of various sites such as the Dachau Concentration Camp, military history museums and army bases across the United States, and bomb shelters in Israel.

Since 2017, his work has focused on mass gatherings such as Trump’s Inauguration, the Women’s March, the NYC Caribbean Day Parade, the Juggalo March on Washington, and the March for Our Lives. In conjunction to his work as an artist, Terna is a Director at 321 Gallery, an artist-run gallery space in Brooklyn that he founded in 2012. While mounting solo and group shows for a multi-generational group of emerging artists both in the gallery and at global art fairs, 321 has presented screenings, performances, hosted artist talks, and published books.

His work has been shown in select group exhibitions at MoMA PS1 (NYC); the International Center of Photography (NYC); Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (NYC); Baxter St. Camera Club of NY (NYC); New Wight Biennial (UCLA, Los Angeles); BRIC Arts Media Biennial (Brooklyn, NY); Eyebeam (NYC); the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts (Cambridge, MA); and Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena, CA). Terna graduated with a BA in photography from Bard College and received his MFA from the International Center of Photography-Bard.

The book that was mentioned in the interview was Philip Roth's Indignation.

A Crazy Bass from Daniel Terna on Vimeo.

Daniel Terna The Great Escape, 2016 30 x 20 inches Pigment print

Daniel Terna A Form of Protest, 2016 30 x 20 inches Pigment print

 

 

 

Cait Carouge and Alyse Ronayne, Angel in the House, exhibition view
, Courtesy 321 Gallery

Daisy Craddock (b1949, Memphis,TN) received a BA in Fine Arts from Rhodes College and an MFA in painting from the University of Georgia. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States. Recent one person shows Include Summer Produce, July, 2017, Garvey Simon Gallery, NYC and A View of One’s Own, John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY. An installation of Daisy’s large scale landscape paintings from the 1980’s is currently on view at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, GA, July 23 - October 15, 2018.

Daisy’s work has been reviewed in Art in America, The New York Times, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Art and Antiques, American Artist, and Arts Magazine, among others. Her artworks in public collections include The Anderson Museum, The Georgia Museum of Art, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Milwaukee Museum of Art, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Roswell Museum, Rubin Museum of Art, and the Weatherspoon Museum.

Daisy is the recipient of a Roswell Artist in Residency and a 2002 New York Foundation for the Arts, New York Recovery Grant. The artist lives and works in New York City and upstate New York.

To learn more, view a catalog of her work here.

Crosby Street Fragments: Hudson Afternoon in Nine Parts, 2013-2017, oil on linen, 8 x 8 inches each section.

Cantaloupe, 2018, oil pastel on paper, 15 x 28 inches

Study for Avocado in progress, 6 x 6 inches each image, oil pastel on paper, 2018

Elmaz Abinader is an author and a performer. Her most recent poetry collection, This House, My Bones, was The Editor’s Selection for 2014 from Willow Books/Aquarius. Her books include a memoir: Children of the Roojme, A Family’s Journey from Lebanon, a book of poetry, In the Country of My Dreams… which won the Oakland PEN, Josephine Miles Award. Recently she was awarded a Trailblazer Award by RAWI (Radius of Arab Writers International)  Her plays include Ramadan Moon, 32 Mohammeds, and Country of Origin. She has been a frequent contributor to Al-Jazeera English. She has been anthologized widely including the New Anthology of American Poetry, and in The Colors of Natur

She has been a fellow at residencies in Marfa (Lannan) Macedonia, Brazil, Spain and Egypt and a Senior Fulbright Fellow.  Her teaching includes Master Workshops for Hedgebrook In India as well as for VORTEXT. Elmaz is one of the co-founders of The Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA/Voices) a writing workshop for writers-of-color. She teaches at Mills College, is a fitness instructor at the Oakland Y, and lives in Oakland with her husband Anthony Byers.

Her latest book of poetry is This House My Bones.

Her daily walk through the Redwoods.

photo credit: Joanna DeGeneres.

Shontina Vernon is a theatre artist/filmmaker/ musician/creative facilitator/ and educator. Her work champions the necessity of arts and culture to catalyze social change. As such, it has been recognized nationally and internationally for both its artistic merit and risk taking.

Drawing from her belief that “If you can’t tell your own story honestly, then you certainly can’t tell anyone else’s,” Vernon responds to today’s landscape of political urgency with a creative process centered on social justice. She fuses performance, live music, and multi-media amplifying the voices of traditionally marginalized communities. Her work has been particularly impactful in shifting the narrative around gender/sexuality and criminal justice reform using abolition as a framework. Vernon is a recipient of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation “Artist as Activist” Fellowship for the creation of the Visionary Justice StoryLab, a collaboratory of interdisciplinary artists, culture workers and community members working to address the impact of systemic oppression through storytelling, media and performance based healing practices. She is also this year’s Herb Alpert/MacDowell Colony Fellow in Theatre and a 2017 MAP Fund grantee.

Her theatre work has been developed and produced by New York Theatre Workshop, Seattle’s ACT Theatre, the Hansberry Project, the Hip Hop Theatre Festival, and featured at the World Wide Words International Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark. Most noted among her plays are WOMEN OF THE WILD ROOT, A LOVELY MALFUNCTION (nominated for a 2016 NYC Audelco Award), and WANTED. She is currently developing FORGING AHEAD on the impact juvenile incarceration has on who we become as adults with Flying Carpet Theatre, and LAST

KIND WORDS, the story of two black queer women and their erasure from the American blues canon. Her recent short film, GRRRL JUSTICE, exploring the pathways of girls and gender nonconforming youth of color into the juvenile justice system is scheduled for release in September of 2018.

The books mentioned in the interview are "How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective", "A Burst of Light and Other Essays" by Audre Lorde and "James Baldwin: The Last Interview"

Her Black Body Politic - A devised movement piece exploring the politics of the black female body and the way it takes up literal and poetic space, presented at On the Boards as part of Northwest New Works, Seattle, WA, 2016

WANTED, a solo performance piece on family and belonging, presented at the South Dallas Cultural Center in collaboration with the Hansberry Project. Supported by the National Performance Network, 2013.

Curt Hoppe is a New York-based artist whose photographs and realist paintings chronicle his life and interests over the past 40 years.

His diverse work ranges from caricatures for sex tabloid Screw to meticulously rendered photo-realist cityscapes of the ethnic neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan or the Hamptons. He is currently working on a series of photographs and larger-than-life black-and-white portrait paintings of the artist friends who were part of the bohemian milieu of his youth.

Exhibition "DOWNTOWN PORTRAITS" coming April 2019 to Bernarducci Gallery and Howl Happening an Arturo Vega Project.

 

"Curt Hoppe" self-portrait 96x70inches Acrylic on Canvas 2013

"Arturo Vega" 96x70 inches Acrylic on Canvas 2011

"Lady Pink" (Sandra Fabara) 96x70 inches Acrylic on Canvas 2013

John Wolf is a global art advisor based in Los Angeles. He founded John Wolf Art Advisory & Brokerage in 2009 to assist private collectors, institutions, and corporations in creating outstanding collections of contemporary art. He specializes in taking the extra time to demystify and educate clients about all aspects of the art market.

Outside of traditional art advisory & brokerage, Wolf consults the interior design trade and curates exhibitions. He has spoken on panels at Art Miami, Art Silicon Valley, produced exhibitions at 4619 in Los Angeles, and is on the modern and contemporary council at LACMA. He received his BBA in International Business and Art History from Baylor University.

The images below are recent client acquisitions from John Wolf Art Advisory:

Josef Albers Study to Homage to the Square: Frisian, 1955 oil on masonite 32 x 32 inches

Harold Ancart Untitled, 2016 Burnt C-Print, oil stick, dibond, wood , bronze frame 24x36 inches

Julie Heffernan has been exhibiting her paintings nationally and internationally since 1988 and represented by PPOW Gallery (New York) and Catharine Clark Gallery (San Francisco). She has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, including at the Crocker Art Museum, Palmer Art Museum and Michael Haas Gallery in Berlin; and a museum show entitled “The Water Rises” originating at the LSU Museum of Art in Baton Rouge and traveling to museums in Pennsylvania, Florida and Texas. She participated in numerous group shows at major galleries and museums including the Museum für Moderne Kunst, in Bremen, Germany; Me Museum, Olbricht Collection in Berlin; the Palazzo Reale in Milan, Italy; and in Environmental Impact exhibition traveling to 12 museums throughout the United States

Heffernan’s has published reviews and articles in a number of books and magazines, including The Figure - Drawing, Painting, And Sculpture - Contemporary Perspectives (Rizzoli), Art Pulse; and edits essays by painters all over the country in her blog Painters on Paintings. Since 2011 her work was featured on the covers of numerous poetry books or journals including Tin House and Columbia Poetry Review.

Heffernan is a board member of the National Academy Museum in New York. She is a 2017 Fellow of the BAU Institute at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France; was awarded the Meridian Scholar (Studio-F) Artist-In-Residence Fellowship from the University of Tampa in Florida and the featured artist for the 2017 MacDowell Colony. Heffernan was awarded a Milton And Sally Avery Fellowship at MacDowell in 2013, and invited to be the Lee Ellen Fleming Artist-In-Residence at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 2012, the Commencement Speaker for the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2010 and was the featured artist at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) in 2009. She is the recipient of such prestigious grants as the NEA, NYFA and Fullbright, as well as a PS1 Artist-in-Residence, and her work has been reviewed by all the major newspapers and magazines including The New York Times and The New Yorker. Her work is in numerous museums throughout the country included the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, VA. She is a Professor of Fine Arts at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

Large Scroll Painting; 96 x 68" o/c, 2018

Self-Portrait with Scroll 2; 54 x 50", o/c, 2018

Emily Gherard is a Seattle-based painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. She received her MFA from the University of Washington, and her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Gherard is best known for her powerfully physical paintings and works on paper, built from the accumulation and erosion of repetitive mark-making in charcoal, graphite, acrylic, and oil. Tearing, scratching, and sanding the surface onto which she continually adds material, Gherard builds up a physicality which brings tangible weight and gravity to her work; making the indelible unknown relateably human.

Gherard has been featured at SOIL, Hedreen Gallery, Gallery 4Culture, The Museum of Northwest Art, Francine Seders Gallery, Cornish College of the Arts, Blindfold Gallery, and The Henry Art Gallery. She received the 2006 PONCHO Special Recognition Award and a 2014 GAP Grant. She was a finalist for the 2006 and 2010 Betty Bowen Award, a painting finalist for the 2013 Neddy Art Awards at Cornish, and a Stranger Magazine Genius Nominee for Visual Art in 2014. She has taught for the last ten years throughout the Puget Sound area, including University of Washington, Western Washington University, North Seattle College, Everett Community College, and Bellevue College. Emily is represented by Bridge Productions in Seattle, Washington.

The books mentioned: Drawing Us In; How We Experience Visual Art and Oh Crap! Potty Training.

Double Touch No.3, Acrylic, Graphite, and Staples on Panel, 12" x 9", 2016

Out of Embers, Acrylic, Pigment, Gum Arabic, Flash Paint on Panel, 22" x 20", 2017