Lower Manhattan Cultural Council will begin accepting online applications for the next session of its Swing Space program on December 10, 2008. In partnership with area landlords, LMCC makes vacant storefront, commercial and office space downtown available to artists, curators, and cultural organizations for periods of two to four months. The program is designed to address short-term space needs for a range of projects, and to encourage creative, experimental and collaborative approaches to artistic practice in unconventional spaces. Applications will be accepted for Presentation Space, Development Space, and Office Space in the Performing Arts and the Visual Arts. Past space grants have included theater and dance rehearsal space, studio space for visual artists, unconventional venues for self-produced performance, and groundfloor storefront spaces for installation projects and exhibitions. Artists, directors, choreographers, theater and dance companies, music ensembles, collaborative artist groups, curators and arts organizations are eligible to apply. Stipends ranging from $300 to $3,000 are provided to support project costs. Swing Space was created with lead support from The September 11th Fund.

Application guidelines and forms are available online:

www.lmcc.net/swingspace/apply

Deadline: January 21, 2009

Information Sessions:
RSVP required: www.lmcc.net/swingspace/apply
Thursday, November 20, 4pm at 100 Church Street
Wednesday, December 10, 7pm at 14 Wall Street
Thursday, January 8, 4pm at 14 Wall Street

Contact:Ben Kerrick
Program Manager, Artist Residencies
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
125 Maiden Lane, 2nd Floor
Tel: 212.219.9401 x104
Fax: 212.219.2058
E-mail: bkerrick@lmcc.net

Check out this two session seminar on Monday, November 17th, 6-8:30pm and Monday, December 1st, 6-8:30pm at NYFA.

Inside the Grant Process:
From Applications to the Panel

Grants provide much needed funding, yet the process can be overwhelming. Join NYFA for a two part workshop on grant seeking, including an inside look at how a grant panel is run and decisions are made. Session one will focus on the nuts and bolts of finding grants and creating a strong application. Session two will walk through the panel process using real life examples from visual arts workshop participants. Come and see what matters when a panel sits down to vote.

Location :
New York Foundation for the Arts
155 Avenue of the Americas, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10013

Price :
$40 - covers both sessions.
Please note this workshop is geared to individual visual artists and participants are expected to come to both sessions.

RSVP :
To purchase tickets on-line please visit NYFA’s events page at events.nyfa.org.

Questions :
Contact Christa Blatchford at cblatchford@nyfa.org

A Philadelphia-area visual artist and member of Fractured Atlas since December 2003, Ellen Priest has taken jazz as the subject of her paintings since 1990.  She creates a series of mixed-media paintings based on a single jazz composition. Her recent work has used jazz pianist/composer Edward Simon’s “Venezuelan Suite” as its inspiration.

Ellen, tell us more about your technique.

My paintings are constructed from superimposed layers of paper — the back layer opaque watercolor paper, the front layers translucent vellum — each with drawing, color and more recently, collage.  The result is that one sees a painting through a painting.

Who or what are your strongest influences?

I would point to three very diverse sources:  First, my steadiest visual art influences have been Cezanne’s later watercolors; Matisse’s color and compositional structure; and Abstract Expressionism, especially the work of Willem De Kooning and, later, Joan Mitchell.

Jazz and related African and Latin American music have changed my work.  Specifically, the rhythms and harmonic structures have both affected color and composition.  My website offers more thoughts about the interface between jazz and my paintings.

And, finally, I’ve been fairly athletic all my life.  My favorite sports are the “balance sports,” where motion depends on weight and balance thrown off-center, often in response to terrain: skiing, swimming, cycling, rollerblading, water-skiing and skating.   

It’s not often that a visual artist claims athleticism as an influence… Tell us how your enjoyment of sports has influenced your paintings.

I love being a physical person in a physical world, and movement is critical to understanding my artworks. It’s particularly apparent in my brush studies.  I strive to get an anthropomorphic feeling into the marks I make, even though they are abstract.  Art gives form to feeling.  Movement is the carrier of meaning. A career-changing book I read over 30 years ago, philosopher Susanne Langer’s Feeling and Form, developed both those concepts. You could say that I work with visual movement.

How do you define “success”?

To me, there are two kinds of success: public and private.  The public or “career” success includes the critical recognition, the sales of my paintings, the grants and exhibitions.  This success keeps me fed and in the studio, and will preserve my work when I’m gone.

The second is my personal assessment of my artwork — the images themselves, the clarity and creativity of my thinking, the intensity and rigor of my long-term process.  Have I created artwork that satisfies my largest goals?  This is the success that allows me to look myself in the eye after nearly 30 years in the studio and feel happy.  This is also the one that keeps shifting, and moving farther out ahead of me as the work continues to grow.

These two kinds of success clearly merge at times — for example, when I see people experiencing the joy and energy I hope they will in the presence of my work.

What has been your greatest success to date?

In 2007, my first museum show was held at the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.  While the exhibition was up, I received my second Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant.  Both were deeply gratifying.

How did you hear about Fractured Atlas and what motivated you to join?

I was researching health insurance on the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) website, which led me to Fractured Atlas.  I was intrigued by Fractured Atlas’s mission and joined [in 2003], figuring that as it grew, even more services would be available to me…which has been true.

Finish this sentence: “Art is important because ______.”

…it gives symbolic form to experience, both for the artist and for the viewers.

How can we see and learn more about your work?

Please visit www.ellenpriest.com.  Lots more paintings, and lots more about the interface between jazz and my images.  There’s also a short animation designed to help viewers understand the surface and physical depth of the paintings.

Images:
Top and middle: Jazz: Edward Simon’s ‘Venezuelan Suite’ #10 and #3, © 2006. Oil and flashe on collaged paper, each 42″ x 42″.
Bottom: Jazz: Gonzaguinha’s Africa/Brazil #9, © 2004. Oil and flashe on collaged paper. 42″ x 42″.

Name: Jari Chevalier
Websites: http://jariart.com, http://livinghero.com, http://jariscope.com
Hometown: New York, NY
Artistic Disciplines: Visual art, writing
Fractured Atlas Member Since: Spring 2008
Fractured Atlas Service Used: Fiscal Sponsorship

Jari Chevalier is a mixed media artist and writer whose current visual work integrates the mysteries of the human body with cosmological and deep sea imagery, conjuring eerie narrative landscapes.  Her influences include Eastern philosophy and advances in science, as well as her travel within Asia and background in poetry.  Her solo exhibition “Mathematics of Ecstasy” is scheduled at seven venues in North Dakota during the 2008-2009 season.

We asked Jari to tell us about her influences and experiences…

How did you find out about Fractured Atlas and what motivated you to join?

“I created an integrative exercise DVD that was videotaped by Randi Cecchine, a New York artist who makes independent films. At one of Randi’s fund-raising parties last year, I made out a check to Fractured Atlas in support of a Cecchine project.

I then joined Fractured Atlas to organize fund-raising for my own project. The Fractured Atlas system is fast, professional, and reasonably priced. I am an emerging solo artist with the need to raise cash fast, in order to take advantage of immediate and near-term opportunities. Fractured Atlas has provided answers to pressing problems and enabled donors to make tax-deductible contributions to my project.

The funding I’ve received so far has enabled me to update my website and purchase materials for continuing current studio projects, while I move forward to raise funds for a perfect-bound ‘Mathematics of Ecstasy’ show catalogue.”

What/who are your biggest influences?

“Visual Art: Anselm Kiefer, Tim Hawkinson, Elizabeth Murray, Matthew Ritchie, Lee Bontecou, Helen Frankenthaler, Fred Tomaselli and Barbara Takenaga.  Literature: Kafka, Beckett, Henry James, William Matthews.  Thought/Spirit: J. Krishnamurti, Vipassana practice and study of Buddhist psychology, quantum physics, shamanic vision. Music: Steve Reich, Bobby McFerrin.  Overall: Loved ones, India, Japan.”

What have been your greatest successes to date?

“Integrative breakthroughs in consciousness and intuitive knowing. Development of patience, empathy, open-minded courage. Release of old patterns of thinking and feeling. Developing the aptitude for synthesis of multidisciplinary study, international travel, and rich life experiences into original metaphorical languages. Recognition of these inner successes through poems published in international journals, serving as a contributing editor for the literary magazine Barrow Street, and creating a solo touring museum exhibition of 25 works within five years of embarking on visual art-making.”

Finish this sentence: the artist’s role in society is . . .

“…to cut new pathways of perception; to venture into psychic wilderness; to provide antidotes to all that anesthetizes people; to create new rhythms and synapses; to crystalize and clarify; to share insight, wisdom, aesthetic pleasure, joy; to invent new codes for our tragicomic follies and the brave, enduring enterprise of life; to pass these codes on to our comrades of the future.”

How can we see, experience, or learn more about your work?

“My current work, exhibition schedule, and contact information is found at http://jariart.com. For my writings and teachings, visit http://livinghero.com (podcast page—interviews with living luminaries and mavericks) and http://jariscope.com (blog page—essays and podcast posts in a chronology).”

Check out Add-Art.  It’s an extension for the Firefox web browser (which if you aren’t using, you should be) that replaces most web advertising with images of contemporary art.  Here’s how the project is described on its site:

Add-Art is a Firefox extension which replaces advertising images on web pages with art images from a curated database.

It is a free and open source project, currently being developed at the Eyebeam Development site.

Of the 100+ add-ons available for Firefox, “adblockers” are the most popular. The most current, Adblock Plus, has over 18 million downloads (as of May 2008) since Jan 2006 (currently over 250,000/week). It’s predecessor, Adblock, has been downloaded over 8 million times. These extensions work by preventing advertising images from downloading and replacing the ads with blank space. Their popularity has risen as pop-up ads, banner ads, and ads incorporating sound and animation have permeated the internet.

For many, replacing ads with blank space would be enough. Add-Art attempts to do something more interesting than just blocking ads - it turns your browser into an art gallery. Every time you visit the New York Times online or check the weather you’ll also see a spattering of images by a young contemporary artist.

The project will be supported by an small website providing information on the current artists and curator, along with a schedule of past and upcoming Add-Art shows. Each 2 weeks will include 5-8 artists selected by emerging and established curators. Images will have to be cropped to standard banner sizes or can be custom made for the project. Artists can target sites (such as every ad on FoxNews.com) and/or default to any page on the internet with ads. One artist will be shown per page. The curatorial duty will be passed among curators through recommendations, word of mouth, and solicitations to the Add-Art site.

With the overwhelming popularity of adblockers, if Add-Art were to attract 5% of existing users, the numbers would be in the hundreds of thousands. Add-Art can bring contemporary art to the desktops of all types of people at home and in their workplace - all over the world.

Semi-random Note #1: Unfortunately it isn’t compatible with the latest version of Firefox (3.0.1), but they’re apparently working on a fix.  In the meantime, if you’ve got an earlier version, it’s definitely worth giving this extension a whirl.

Semi-random Note #2: There is some debate over the ethics of ad blockers like this.  Critics say that web publishers have a right to display ads and that advertisers have a right to have those ads displayed when they’ve paid for them.  There’s an undeniable logic to this view, and I suppose it could always be enforced in a web site’s terms of use.  However, on a practical level, I believe any efforts to fight this trend will prove futile and that publishers’ energies ought therefore be redirected towards creative solutions that don’t alienate their readers/audiences.  We’re living in a TiVO world.  Advertising had better be relevant and compelling if it expects to be tolerated.

You might have noticed this already, but there are a whole lot of arts contests swirling around nowadays. From Fractured Atlas’ video contest that happened last year (non-profit), to the Doritos spot during a recent Superbowl (for-profit), to public art design contests in almost every major city (government). I even just found a whole website — The Art List — that seems dedicated to these contests (at least for visual artists and photographers). And, you don’t have to be a “professional” artist to even compete — anyone can submit! It’s a cost-effective way for organizations to solve their design problems and can serve as a boon to an artist’s career — from both a financial (some of these come with an ample monetary prize!) and promotional (get your work out to a wider audience!) standpoint.

And, since I’m on the topic, I thought I would let you know about some new opportunities. Feel free to comment to the blog and post other opportunities that you want to spread the word about!

TubeArt — Support the arts through a YouTube video

Logo Design Contest for Gemini SBS, a website & software development company

Center for Disease Control (CDC) Poster Contest

Best of luck to those who enter!!

This morning I heard on the radio about a new art group in San Francisco with a radical business model: selling “subscriptions” to new works by contemporary artists. From their website:

THE THING is an object based quarterly publication. Each issue of THE THING is conceived of by an individual artist, reproduced and wrapped by the editors (Jonn Hershend and Will Rogan) and sent to the subscribers.

Apparently they’ve got around 850 subscribers around the world who pay $120/year for a subscription, which is impressive considering they’ve only actually produced one “issue” so far. For subscribers, it’s an opportunity to get 4 new works from contemporary artists each year for $30 per piece.

I’ll be interested to see how this plays out. My hunch is that there’s a viable, creative new business model here, but a lot depends on the group’s ability to manage their own growth. Under the current approach, the larger the subscriber base grows, the less valuable each issue becomes (since each object is less rare). There are ways around that challenge (e.g. have the artists produce variations, recruit multiple artists per issue, etc.) but it’s tricky regardless. Either way, probably worth keeping an eye on.