sicolab.org [staten island collaboration]

Tuesday, June 23rd, 7pm-9pm
Cargo Café, 120 Bay Street, Staten Island

“The Challenges of Creating Public Art through Different Channels”
A panel discussion and dialogue co-sponsored by the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island and Freshkills Park

This panel will focus on how commissioning entities, time scales, transient or permanent siting and approvals processes moderate what public work can and should be.

Panelists:

Ingrid Chu (http://www.foreverandtoday.org)
Ingrid Chu is a Canadian curator and critic. She directs RED-I Projects which assists artists in the creation of new work in the public realm, and in 2008 opened Forever & Today, Inc., a non-profit initiative that offers a unique set of circumstances to engage the public through exhibitions, site-specific installations, publications, editions, and public programs that focus on the creation of new work in collaboration with a single artist. Chu’s most recent curated projects include Marko Lulic: DIVISION/S (2009), Pablo Helguera: The Seven Bridges of Königsberg (2008), and Greener Pastures, Permanent Midnight (2007).

Michael Falco (www.falcophoto.com)
Michael Falco is a freelance photographer living in New York City. His work in photojournalism and documentary photography has been published in The New York Times and National Geographic, and has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art. Falco created the 10x30 foot silkscreen on glass mural, “Where Marsh Meets the Sea” at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal as part of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs’ Percent for Art Program.

Kathryne Hall (http://kathrynehall.com)
Kathryne Hall is an emerging artist originally from Nashville, TN and based in New York. Responding to her environment, she is interested in the possibility for surreal forms to emerge from familiar spaces and transform architecture or the urban landscape. After her successful 2007 project “Tubisms: Cars” project was profiled on HDNet TV and Time Out New York, she is now working on her second temporary public art series, “Aberrant Sidewalk”, scheduled to debut at the Figment Festival on Governor’s Island June 13th.

Christina Ray (www.glowlab.com)
Christina Ray is the founder of Glowlab, a platform for presenting site-specific art and technology projects and nurturing the cutting-edge work of artists inspired by urban life. Glowlab was launched in 2002 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and currently maintains a gallery space in SoHo. In 2003 Ray founded Conflux, the annual art and technology festival for the creative exploration of urban public space. Ray recently became a founding member of the Advisory Committee of the new 92YTribeca arts and entertainment venue, and is currently serving as Key Artistic Advisor for Times Square Public Art Planning with the Times Square Alliance.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles (http://www.feldmangallery.com/pages/artistsrffa/artuke01.html)
Mierle Laderman Ukeles was awarded a Percent for Art commission from the NYC Departments of Cultural Affairs and Sanitation as “Percent for Art Artist of Fresh Kills” in 1989, and has been studying the site and offering proposals, artworks and video artworks for the site since then. She has also been the Artist-in-Residence for New York City’s Department of Sanitation since 1977, doing work locally and internationally that incorporates maintenance as ecological sustainability, dialogue, and public participation around life-centered issues. She is the recipient of numerous awards and public art commissions, including work with Creative Time and the Percent for Art Program. Ukeles is a Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of many grants and fellowships from the NEA and NYSCA, and is represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in NYC.

Moderated by Sara Reisman
Sara Reisman is the Director of Percent for Art at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Since the 1980s, Percent for Art has commissioned more than 220 artworks in schools, courthouses, parks, plazas, libraries, and water treatment plants, among other civic sites throughout New York City, and is currently commissioning seventy projects. Prior to Percent for Art, Reisman’s curatorial work has focused on public engagement with contemporary art through exhibitions like Stalin by Picasso or Portrait of Woman with Moustache by Lene Berg (2008) at the Cooper Union School of Art, The Center of Everywhere (2008) at the Queens Museum of Art and Corona, Queens, Soft Sites (2006) at the Philadelphia ICA and Bartram’s Garden, and Landscape as Litmus(2008-2009) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Republic of Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Reisman has also curated public art installations and time-based works for Socrates Sculpture Park through a biennial series called Float (2007, 2005, 2003),and Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning’s Jamaica Flux: Workspaces and Windows (2004-2005), among others.

About the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI):
COAHSI works hand-in-hand with individual artists and arts organizations to foster and develop projects on Staten Island by offering re-grants and providing year-round technical assistance and professional development workshops and seminars.

About Freshkills Park:
At 2,200 acres, Freshkills Park will be almost three times the size of Central Park and the largest park developed in New York City in over 100 years. The transformation of what was formerly the world’s largest landfill into a productive and beautiful cultural destination will make the park a symbol of renewal and an expression of how our society can restore balance to its landscape.
In addition to providing a wide range of recreational opportunities, including many uncommon in the city, the park’s design, ecological restoration and cultural and educational programming will emphasize environmental sustainability and a renewed public concern for our human impact on the earth. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, which is managing the project, is committed to working with artists and organizations in realizing the site’s potential as a one-of-a-kind venue for the arts.

For more information, please contact gshulick@statenislandarts.org