We had a wonderfully motivating time last Thursday at the second session of our Engaging Artists program.
Todd Lester, founder of freeDimensional gave a great keynote speech and you can view his slideshow Arts/Culture as a Social Change Tool here: AVS_presentation
Martha Dorn (Executive Director of the Art Therapy Outreach Center) introduced to the practice of Art Therapy and Art Therapist Karen Gibbons spoke about using art to heal and communicate when words cannot suffice and led us through a cathartic experiential exercise.
Our Engaging Artists residents made these Engaging Flowers!
Join us this this Thursday night (June 26th) when we discuss homelessness, advocacy for affordable housing, and a better quality of life for all New Yorkers! We will be joined by James Macklin (Director of Outreach at The Bowery Mission), Chris Tabellario (Common Ground Community Director, Street to Home, Brooklyn and Queens), and Marcus Moore from Picture the Homeless.
Our 2014 Engaging Artists residents. Bottom, sitting from left to right: Christina Sukhgian Houle, Jamie Grove, Anne Peabody, Flavia Berindoague, Sue jeong Ka, Corinne Cappelletti, Anthony Heinz May. Top, standing from left to right: Anna Adler, Kate Weigel, David Wallace, Fanny Allié, Dato Mio, Travis Fairclough, Julia Ann Frances Rooney, and Emily Miller.
Our Engaging Artists residency program officially kicked off on Thursday, June 12th! We are honored to have fifteen amazingly talented artists who are committed to serving the community and working with the homeless. Each week Engaging Artists will convene at Judson Memorial Church for a series of workshops, activities, and peer to peer collaboration. These meetings will take place Thursday nights beginning at 6:30pm. The first portion of each session (approximately 90 minutes) will consist of speakers who are experts on topics such as art therapy, activism, and homelessness. This portion is free and open to the public. The second half of each session will consist of workshops and discussions for our fifteen artists as well as homeless artists and individuals.
Michael and Charise, who participated in Residents of New York, our public art exhibition with Andres Serrano, joined us for a discussion with Andres about the project and their experiences living on the streets of New York. It was really amazing to share stories, hopes, and encouragement together. Michael and Charise are exceptional human beings who are full of love and hope for a better tomorrow. They are two of the many people nationwide who have fallen on hard times due to a massive widening gap between the rich and the poor. The cost of life in American cities is getting extremely expensive and many hardworking Americans are receiving paychecks that are well under the amount that they need to live and provide for themselves. It is difficult for couples especially with limited space and resources provided by the city. See our previous feature on Michael and Charise: here. Michael and Charise will be joining us again for our workshops (a list of which you can find here) and will work with our artists in residents on collaborative socially engaged projects.
After our discussion with Andres Serrano, we all went underground to view Residents of New York. Michael and Charise saw their portraits for the first time at the West 4th Street Subway Station!
We were also fortunate to have Ravindra in attendance last night. Ravi is a homeless musician and spiritual leader from the Camba Shelter in Brooklyn. Ravi instantly hit it off with our resident artists and we’re thrilled to hear that he will be collaborating on a few projects! Our artists will also get to take part in the homeless organizing efforts that he’s a part of!
Ravi talks with Jason Maas (Founder and Director of the Artist Volunteer Center).
We are looking forward to our next session of Engaging Artists, when we will have an evening of Art Therapy with Karen Gibbons, and Martha Dorn! We will be doing an experiential activity! Todd Lester (founder of freeDimensional) will lead things off with a brief keynote address on activism, social justice, and leadership!
It all begins this Thursday, 6:30pm at Judson Memorial Church’s Assembly Hall (239 Thompson St, New York, NY)!
Thank you to those who joined us over the weekend for our Art Walk in Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you couldn’t make it don’t worry, we have the whole thing covered!
Our walk began at Justin Berry’s studio. Justin collaborated with More Art in 2009 and worked with students from the Clinton Middle School in Chelsea. He asked students: “what would you want to put in a gallery?” He then created a 3D model of an art gallery and collaborated on a curated exhibition of their artwork.
Currently Justin makes things that exist a little in reality and a little in virtual space or the imagination.
The series in his studio at the moment is a collection of video game photos, screen-capped landscapes, which are then stitched as layers in Photoshop. These odd landscapes are redolent of Hudson River School or Ansel Adams. Another series he has consists of Book covers he created. He removed characters, leaving only landscapes so that they were open to viewers’ interpretations. Justin explained that these landscapes are like stereoscopic images in that they show time passing.
The next stop was Justin’s solo show, Lorem Ipsum, which is up through June 15th at Interstate Projects at 66 Knickerbocker Avenue.
The 56 Bogart building has become a mecca for emerging galleries over the past few years. It is also home to several non-profit organizations including Momenta Art. We visited Momenta Art, a space dedicated to the promotion and scholarship of emerging artists, and saw Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen’s first US solo exhibition titled Space Fiction & the Archives.
Photographer Meryl Meisler guided us through the history of the neighborhood. Meryl taught public school in Bushwick in the years that followed the infamous ’77 blackout. The image above is from Bushwick’s past as a brewery town.
We also visited a historic Opera House…now converted into lofts.
We concluded our day at Meryl’s solo exhibition A Tale of Two Cities: Disco Era Bushwick at Bizarre (12 Jefferson Street). Meisler’s photographs beautifully juxtapose two completely different but concurrent lifestyles within New York City.
Last week posters poppud up throughout the East and West Village containing images from Residents of New York. It was interesting to see the juxtaposition of the guerrilla marketing ad-space with Serrano’s portraits of the homeless. Similar to the exhibition at the W. 4th Street Subway Station, these posters are an alternative to the constant barrage of commercial ad space. It’s evident that these images are not selling anything and that there is a message that seeks the viewers attention. If these posters make you stop and think about homelessness, poverty, and elicit feelings on the subject, then they have done their job. While we were looking at the images, a man in a wheelchair named John spoke with us. John (asked not to be photographed) became homeless because of a motorcycle accident. He is also a diabetic and his insurance company wouldn’t cover the costs of his medical bills. John recognized most of the individuals that participated in Residents of New York. John’s story could happen to anyone. Healthcare is a major issue in this country. It is an outrage for someone to lose their home because they cannot receive adequate and affordable care and are neglected by the system that they are reliant on to protect and serve them. The cost of life is higher than ever in New York City, and yet not enough has been done to make life livable for a vast majority of residents.
A man ponders the meaning of the posters.
Be sure to view Residents of New York at the W. 4th Street Subway Station, LaGuardia Place (between W. 3rd and Bleecker St.), and on Phone booths around the city!
On May 21st we had our public opening for Andres Serrano: Residents of New York at La Guardia Place in the West Village. The weather was perfect and the plaza was filled with great conversation, and of course the stunning images from our collaboration with Andres Serrano. There was a performative element to this event, images were affixed to sign posts and were held throughout the night.
On Sunday (May 18th) you will be able to see the West 4th Street Subway Station transform into a public arts exhibition called Residents of New York in collaboration between More Art and Andres Serrano. We will have an opening reception for the public at LaGuardia Place (btwn W. 3rd and Bleecker St) on Wednesday, May 21st from 6 to 8 pm. Our collaboration with Andres Serrano is in full speed! Currently you can see some of the images from Residents of New York, on public phone booths (courtesy of Van Wagner) around Manhattan! If you see one on your daily walk/jog/bike ride around the city feel free to tag it on instagram, twitter, or facebook using the hashtag #ResidentsofNewYork. Below is a list of locations where you can find our Residents of New York phone booths:
Canal St & Broadway Broadway on Reade St Chambers St & Westside Hwy Wall Street / City Hall Broadway & Walker St Broadway on Beaver St(off Broad st) Wall Street / City Hall Sixth Ave & 21st St Sixth Ave & 21st St Broad St & So William St Sixth Ave & 24th St Centre St & Worth St Water St & John St Third Ave & 19th St Third Ave & 16th St Second Ave & 26th St Second Ave & 27th St Third Ave & 15th St Park Ave S & 24th St Second Ave & 19th St Fifth Ave & 18th St Fifth Ave & 17th St Park Ave S & 20th St Second Ave on 21st St Third Ave on 25th St Tenth Ave & 57th St Second Ave & 32nd St Second Ave & 33rd St Second Ave & 28th St First Ave on 28th St First Ave on 39th St Columbus Ave & 94th St Columbus Ave & 95th St Columbus Ave & 94th St Broadway & 104th St Broadway & 105th St Broadway & 105th St Amsterdam Ave & 101st St Broadway & 106th St Columbus Ave on 96th St Columbus Ave & 96th St Columbus Ave & 94th St Broadway & 78th St Broadway on 80th St Broadway on 84th St Broadway on 89th St Broadway on 67th St Columbus Ave & 82nd St Columbus Ave & 84th St Columbus Ave & 83rd St Columbus Ave & 83rd St Broadway on 82nd St