May 15, 2014

Creative Highlands and Highlands Arts Council

Our Partners and Supporters:  please join us in recognizing and thanking our supporters.  We are most grateful to them for making this Call to Collaboration possible:  Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, Clean Ocean Action, Highlands Borough Arts Council, Monmouth Arts, Monmouth County Division of Planning, New Jersey Future, Sustainable Jersey. We are also grateful for our Hospitality Partners: Bay Avenue Bakery & Café, The Girls Café, Highlands Pancake House, and Water Witch Coffee & Tea Co.

Creative New Jersey gratefully acknowledges the support of The New Jersey Recovery Fund. We also remain grateful for the leadership support of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation for making possible all of Creative New Jersey’s statewide programming.

Creative Highlands public art project


May 5, 2013

Brooklyn Greenway Initiative Gallery announces Resurgence: An exhibit celebrating courage, resilience and strength by Brooklyn artists affected by Hurricane Sandy, featuring Red Hook artists Marsha Trattner and Hiroshi Kumagai and curated by Carolyn Morris. BGI Gallery hosts quarterly art openings and shows featuring artists that live or work in neighborhoods along the route of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway. Marsha Trattner creates large outdoor sculpture in forged steel and home and outdoor objects and furniture. She was commissioned to create the first solar-powered chandelier, at Habana Outpost in Brooklyn. Ms. Trattner teaches NYC’s only blacksmithing classes at SVA and is the owner of She-Weld, a custom metal working business in Red Hook. Hiroshi Kumagai uses pixelated internet images re-created in multi-level vinyl to explore the new definitions of personal privacy and what we reveal about ourselves through the tools of digital and social media and the concerns of the residues left behind in the electronic atmosphere. The closing reception will be held on Friday, June 7th from 6:00PM-9:00PM. 30% of proceeds will be donated by the artists to support BGI’s work. All purchasers will also receive a one-year BGI membership. Event sponsors: Waterfront Wines & Spirits at One Brooklyn Bridge Park and Brooklyn Farmacy. BGI Gallery is located at 153 Columbia Street, Brooklyn, New York, 11231. Directions: F/G to Bergen or Carroll; B61 to Columbia Street. BGI is open Monday through Friday, 10:00AM-5:00PM or by appointment. Tel: 718.522.0193. ICAL IMPORT

Oct 23, 2011

Emerging Artist Christian Mitchell Launches his First Show Hosted at The Hole NYC October 25, 2011 from 6-9pm

Christian Mitchell will present Mental Circus, his first solo show of photograph, prints and installation pieces at The Hole in NYC, 312 Bowery. While this is Christian's first show he is not new to the art scene or its creative world. His work is an exploration in transformation and self-discovery. His current body of work calls upon technical skill and imagination pushed to the extreme.

Meghan Coleman (previously with Deitch Project) has been providing regular feedback on the project. She and others like Kathy Grayson, Kembra Pfahler, and Hagen Linss have encouraged him to refine the body of work by focusing on the transformation of himself only. “I met Kembra of Voluptuous Horror of karen Black while working on a collaborative event at M⋅A⋅C Cosmetics. I had admired her work since the early 90s. She has become a really good friend and mentor.” Christian was recently introduced to curator Donna Kessinger, who is now assisting with the project.

May 3, 2011

Nikki S. Lee @ the BXMA: Collaborative Art Projects

BXMA - Curatorial and Education Programming

The first exhibition to examine the transnational impact of hip-hop culture on contemporary art is currently on view at the Bronx Museum of the Arts through March 3. Entitled "One Planet under a Groove: Hip-Hop and Contemporary Art," the exhibit features the work of 30 visual artists based in the United States, Europe and Japan. Artists include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Davide Bertocchi, Sanford Biggers with David Ellis, Max King Cap, Juan Capistran, Mel Chin, Renee Green, David Hammons, Keith Haring, Nikki S. Lee, Chris Ofili, Erik Parker, Adrian Piper, Nadine Robinson, Dario Robleto, Douglas Ross, Sol Sax, Coreen Simpson, Susan Smith-Pinelo, Hisashi Tenmyouya and Martin Wong. These artists span several artistic generations, and their work reflects the evolution of hip-hop from an urban street culture to a billion-dollar industry, according to museum officials. Many of the works challenge hip-hop stereotypes.

Comprised of more than 60 works including paintings, sculpture, drawings, photographs, installations and videos, all created in the past two decades, the exhibit suggests that the frenetic, graffiti style of painting of artists like Basquiat and Haring evoke the "cutting" and "scratching" techniques of early hip-hop DJs.The exhibition's title plays off a similarly titled classic 1978 song by Funkadelic whose music has been widely sampled by hip-hop acts.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Advanstar Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
TWO COLORFUL MURALS ADORN TREMONT PARK
Parkies, the Bronx Museum of Art, VIP Community Services, and community members celebrated the unveiling of two 8’x 16’ murals by artist Brett Cook-Dizney on Monday, January 28, 2002. The murals were installed in Tremont Park in the Bronx as a collaboration between Parks Temporary Public Art Program and the Bronx Museum of Art. The graffiti-style portraits are two of five murals from the public artwork entitled "Information for Peace and Democracy." Cook-Disney worked with the Collaborative Arts Program (CAP)2002: Artists in Community Residencies, a museum-sponsored public art education program, to produce portraits in response to the tragic events of September 11th. Two women, Thelma and Lisa, are the subjects of the two murals installed at the northeast entrance to Tremont Park. The colorful and
thought-provoking murals will bring vibrancy and life to the community during the winter months and are on display through June. The three other portraits are currently being installed throughout the South Bronx, including one adjacent to the Museum. William (Zorro) Castro, acting on behalf of Commissioner Henry J.(StarQuest)
Stern, welcomed honored guests and attendees. In attendance were Dorothy (Polka) Lewandowski, Bronx Chief of Operations; Adrian (Sassafras) Sas, Public Art Curator; Jenny (Wren)Dixon, Executive Director of The Bronx Museum of Art’s; Eathon Hall, Curator of Education and Public Programs of The Bronx Museum of Art’s; Donna Kessinger, CAP Facilitator; Sandra Ruiz Butter, Executive Director of VIP Community Services, and Elenore Penziner, Manager of External Affairs of VIP Community Services.

CAP MURAL at Tremont Part, the Bronx

Moses BXMA CAP PROJECT MURAL

RALPHIE, STEVIE Murals by Cook-Dizney as part of BXMA's Collaborative Art Projects

BXMA Collaborative Art Project 2002

IMAGE OF RALPHIE
one time PS1 Avant Guard and resident of the South Bronx

Dec 4, 2010

pop-up Jersey City Curatorial Project

PoP-UP Art presents Jersey City artist Jon Rappleye courtesy of Jeff Bailey Gallery and video by Rebecca Major. Opening Reception Friday December 3, 2010 5-9pm Show runs through January 1, 2011 with gallery hours by appointment only.

Oct 15, 2009

A Micro/Macroscopic look at the world of Rodolfo Rojas-Rocha

by Donna Rae Kessinger

video@donnakessinger.net

P.O. Box 30325 NY, NY 10011

Rodolfo Rojas-Rocha and I met at an art opening at the Miami Art Center (800 Lincoln Road Gallery) during Art Basel-Miami Beach 2007. He is a prolific painter, professor and community educator. Rojas-Rocha (1968) was raised in Costa Rica and he has had 20 solo shows and more than 90 national and international exhibitions (New York, Mississippi, Cartagena, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador among other countries), is a member of Costarrican Visual Artists Association (ACAV), and serves on the Ministry of Education and PROCESOS as an artistic education Consultant. Remarkably, seven months from Art-Basel, I found myself exploring the Arts and Culture of San Jose, Costa Rica. I spent ten days meeting with contemporary Costarrican Artists in local galleries and in their studios. I quickly found myself in a world that appears quite different from mine on the surface, but when it comes to being Artists, we are of the same heart.

I asked Rodolfo to describe his upcoming mural / drawing project scheduled at the Media Project Space, Gallery Aferro in Newark, New Jersey, Zoomitograhy Rhizome:

I am interested in doing a performance that challenge(s) the audience to think about the rhizome drawing and consider ‘what art is’…I would like to improvise and incorporate sounds while I am drawing. The performace might be a series of intimate gestures taken from action drawing.

The installation will be a combination of conceptual maps, handmade media combined with cognitive thinking, theory of art, performative elements, along with innovative lighting techniques.

When asked to describe his work he replied, (It is) the way to think about nature around me, related with the micro and macro world. Since the space between rain forest to the sky.

Rojas-Rocha incorporates non-linear and rhizomatic images in collage with relationships and patterns cultivated from nature. He works in oil, acrylic, mixed media and site-specific drawing layered with natural imagery found in the rain forest. A common theme in his art is the examination of a simultaneous microscopic and macroscopic reality that is based on human anatomy, muscles, fiber of animal, vegetable and mineral elements, along with ideological aspects of the Costa Rican mythological, including pre-Columbian symbols. His works on canvas bring to mind the early biomorphic paintings of Terry Winters, while crossing the territory between human anatomy, nature and Costa Rica mythologies. His paintings explore a deep exchange of color taken directly from the palette of the Costa Rican Landscape.

Rojas-Rocha is not afraid to use applied technology in his work, whether in the classroom or exhibiton space. He employs 3-D Google Maps teach Design History alongside his Janson, Art History Book, and the Metropolitan Museum’s Timeline of Art History; http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/.

He pulls the combined media together to bring innovative methods of learning to his students. This reflects his approach to his own art. He uses conceptual maps to think forward about his creative process, in order to help better organize and visualize ideas, or topics. A conceptual map is a special form of a web diagram for exploring knowledge and gathering and sharing aesthetic information.

Rodolfo: In my work drawing a concept mapping is the strategy employed to develop Art. A concept map consists of nodes or cells as rhizomatic links, which contain an image, words and lines. The links are labeled and denote direction with an arrow symbol related with muscles and organization structure. The labeled links explain the relationship between the nodes. The arrow describes the direction of the relationship and reads like a visual sentence.

Rojas-Rocha adds, I am interested in hybridized culture… an approach to the contemporary artistic image. Culture means transform(ing) nature; I transform culture with a rhizomatic drawing. My drawings have fibers, nodes, buds, and tiny figures that will create a composition along the wall. The rhizome is a pattern of life…a fleshy stem that grows horizontally, as a food-storing organ, beneath the surface of the ground, and enables a plant to reproduce. The wall is the surface where I will draw the process as stem. Lines and forms will be visible and will grow as a plant in a forest

Rodolfo Rojas-Rocha’s solo Exhibiton in Gallery Aferro’s New Media Project Space will open the last weekend of October in 2009, and will correspond with, The Open Doors Artist's Studios and Available Space Tour, an annual event organized by the Newark Arts Council. The Tour features a number of curated and juried exhibitions featuring Art from Newark and surrounding areas while showcasing available artists' space; performance art. Check out http://www.aferro.org and www.newarkarts.org, for workshops and related events. Also see Rodolfo’s website http://www.rojasrocha.com for images of his work and updated exhibiton information. Gallery Aferro can be found at 73 Market Street, located in Downtown Newark. Newark has a rapidly growing art scene that is less than thirty minutes from Manhattan by train, and is within walking distance to the world famous Iberian culinary delights of the Portuguese / Spanish neighborhood known as the Iron Bound.

*Donna Rae Kessinger is a working Artist and Curator, based in the New York Metro Area, whose focus is mainly on projects that encourage collaboration between emerging artists and communities, resulting in a marriage of art and commerce in the form of a possible intervention / performative work, public art project, or traditional gallery exhibition.*

Sep 15, 2009

Una Mirada al Mundo de

Rodolfo Rojas-Rocha

por Donna Rae Kessinger

Este mes, El Playero les presenta a Donna Rae Kessinger, quien escribe sobre el artista Rodolfo Rojas Rocha de Costa Rica. Donna Rae Kessinger es Artista y Curadora, con base en el Area Metro de New York y enfoca sus proyectos con el propósito de estimular la colaboración entre artistas recientes y las comunidades.

- - - - - - - -

Conocí a Rodolfo Rojas-Rocha en el Centro de Arte de Miami durante “Art Basel-Miami Beach 2007”. Pintor prolífico, Rojas-Rocha ha exhibido sus trabajos nacional e internacionalmente y es también profesor en la Universidad de Veritas y en la Universidad de Costa Rica. El es actualmente consultor en Educación de Arte en el Ministerio de Educación de Costa Rica. La exhibición “Zoometría del Rhizoma”, mural dibujado por Rodolfo Rojas-Rocha, empezará a ser exhibido el último fin de semanas de octubre en el “New Media Project Space” de la Galería Aferro, en Newark, New Jersey. Describiendo este proyecto, Rodolfo dice: “Estoy interesado en hacer una impresión que rete a la audiencia a pensar sobre el dibujo del rhizoma y que consideren ‘qué es arte…Me gustaría improvisar e incorporar sonidos mientras dibujo” La exhibición incluirá una combinación de diagramas de ideas generales, pinturas de murales “airbrushed”, la actuación de elementos y técnicas innovadoras de iluminación. El trabajo que él crea tiene su foco visual y emocional en “… el espacio entre el bosque lluvioso y el cielo.”

Rodolfo explica además, que su trabajo es una reflexión de la manera que él piensa sobre cosas pequeñas y grandes en naturaleza. El incorpora “dibujos rhizomáticos sin líneas, imágenes de plantas en colage con relaciones y patrones derivados de la naturaleza. Sus dibujos acodados con la imaginación natural que se encuentra en un bosque pluvial. Su trabajo lo hace al óleo, en acrílico y mezclando medios.

Un tema común en su arte es el examen de la simultánea realidad de lo micro y macroscópico percibida a través de la anatomía humana, de fibras de animales y de elementos tales como vegetales y minerales. Su trabajo también muestra imágenes de la mitología costarricense y de símbolos pre-colombianos. Los cuadros de Rojas Rocha son réplicas tomadas de los pinceles que pintan los paisajes costarricenses.

Para ver imágenes del trabajo de Rodolfo, visite su website: www.rojasrocha.com. La Galería Aferro está en 73 Market Street , Downtown Newark, New Jersey.†

Este artículo fue escrito en ingles por Donna Rae Kessinger video@donnakessinger.net P.O. Box 30325, NY 10011

Dec 31, 2008

interview in village voice 1999 - Eathon Hall ... Alanna Heiss

Jul 9, 2008

jonas mekas website

jonas was a part of artwalking bedford avenue

NETWORKED link to Galllery Aferro in Newark

Artist's websites from the show are linked from this page - under NETWORKED!

artwalking bedford ave

artwalking bedford ave - eyewash blog

hiroshi kumagai : artwalking bedford

hiroshi kumagai : artwalking bedford

asha ganpat : artwalking bedford

vikki michalios : artwalking bedford

100 things, video MTAA : artwalking bedford

watch MTAA video online

100 things

image

artwalking bedford ave - art cal link

Studio Tour 2008 - artists from WACK! @ PS1

the walking tour

P.S.1 WACK! Open Studio Tour on Monday February 18, 2008 2 - 6 pm

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, the first comprehensive, historical exhibition to examine the international foundations and legacy of feminist art.

The presentation of WACK! at P.S.1 offers a timely opportunity to tour the studios of some of the featured artists. View 70s and current work while gaining a deeper understanding of the depth of production of these artists within their own environment. SoHo is where the feminist revolution in New York City began and flourished, and eventually became a magnet for feminists around the world.

Thank you to all who attended the SOHO walking tour. It was a wonderful success. We appreciate everyone who came and made it a wonderful day. Please click on selections on the map to view images and video from the tour.

artwalking bedford : rune olsen

artwalking bedford : jeffery gibson

screened short video at spikehill as part of artwalking bedford sponsored by the brooklyn rail magazine

newark blog

NETWORKED @ gallery aferro

Jul 8, 2008

NETWORKED : katherine sweetman

NETWORKED http://www.aferro.org/websitebaker/wb/pages/exhibitions/2008.php

NETWORKED : jody zellen, dis embodied voices

NETWORKED : CFDB

dare gallery THE COALITION FOR DARING BEHAVIOUR (CFDB) Launched in January 2008, The Coalition for Daring Behaviour is an on-line artist project that strives to facilitate a global exchange of dares, double dares, and possibly triple dog dares. An ever-expanding network of international artists/daredevils, the CFBD promotes creative collaborations of a spontaneous, non-traditional and, most importantly, daring nature. The CFDB's website serves as a virtual gallery and as an archive of all dares submitted and executed over the course of the project. Artists / daredevils wishing to join the CFDB are warmly invited to propose a dare.
ROUND #1 - Spring 2008 CLICK ON ANY DARE TO VIEW I dare you to sell your soul on Ebay. I dare you to make me laugh. !!! I dare you to make a stuffed version, from felt and only felt, of your spirit animal and depict it dying due to a flood. I dare you to take all the kitchen knives you can find, (buy them from a dollar/pound shop if you must) and hand them out to random people on the street. Don't say a word, just stand there, handing out large, sharp knives. I dare you to write an anonymous seven-sentence confession and print it onto seven posters and put those posters up at seven bus stops and leave space on the posters for seven comments and then document the results after seven days. I dare you to make your earliest childhood memory a tangible experience for another. !!! I dare you to enter the ATM section of a bank after hours and, in the open space, perform and document a two-minute dance piece, playing for the security camera as your audience. Try to get access to the tape afterwards by talking to security. I dare you to make a puppet with your hand (the kind where you make a fist and your middle thumb becomes the mouth and you'd draw the eyes on the side of your pointer finger) and go to a bar... [more] I dare you to brush a stranger's teeth. !!! I dare you to show up to an exhibition opening at a prominent art gallery, either provincial, university or parallel, with measuring tape and notepad/clipboard/paper... [more] I dare you to completely read and digest (through oral consumption, of course) any reading material (of at least 20 pages) by Greenberg... [more] I dare you to spend an entire 24 hours drawing... [more] I dare you to write a submission (artist statement and/or a proposal, along with all the accompanying documentation) in sonnet form (or with some kind of rhyming scheme so that's easily sung)... [more] I dare you to save the world. !!! !!! = DARE COMPLETED

Press Release : networked @ Aferro

Networked New Media Room April 17- May 17, 2008 Curated by Donna Kessinger The world of networked art is expansive and constantly evolving daily with new technology and applications. Networked is an effort to take into consideration both literal and physical interpretations based on an open call for networked art on a local and international level. This small group survey is an attempt to look at the manifestation of net-based interactive projects, and physical attempts to escape from virtual realities, resulting in work with a more personal connection - going back to an idea of networks having to do with people and the way we live and work, both alone and in community. Submit or accept a dare with The Coalition for Daring Behavior, or hear Disembodied Voices by Jody Zellen Artists: William Brovelli, Doris Caçoilo, Beatrice Coron, The Coalition for Daring Behavior, Sean Hovendick, Visakh Menon, William Oliwa, Gunter Puller, Katherine Sweetman, Amanda Thackray, Michelle Wilson, Jody Zellen Donna Rae Kessinger is a video artist and independent curator. She was the Installation Coordinator of the Greater New York Show, 1999, at PS1 Contemporary Art Center. She produced the Collaborative Arts Projects (CAP), Bronx Museum of the Arts, emerging artist residency program with Eathon G. Hall Jr., Director of Education; as well as developing curatorial, education and public programs for Aljira, a Space for Contemporary Art, including the acclaimed Young Curators program. She was on the BRIO panel for video in 2007. Most she recently co-developed and produced the PS1 Wack! Soho walking tour and interactive media map with Mary Beth Edelson and GAIA Studios. She is currently curating a video event, and community based Art show called: Walking Bedford Avenue with eyewash Gallery Director Larry Walczack, Spring 2008. Her media work les biens inc, has been cloned into Rhizome's Artbase, and has been screened at the Jersey City Museum of Art.

May 20, 2008

colcha project

IMGP6487.JPG, originally uploaded by seanaes.

networked

NETWORKED images


IMGP6492.JPG, originally uploaded by seanaes.

networked

colcha project : doris cacoilo

IMGP6486.JPG, originally uploaded by seanaes.

networked

thackray

IMGP6470.JPG, originally uploaded by seanaes.

networked