SNOW DAY!

Hi Everyone,

I know you are probably snowed in right now, but this post is filled with interviews, articles,  photos, and fun to brighten up your day!

New York member JoAnne McFarland was recently interviewed on her latest poetry collection Acid Rain with Yolanda Wisher of G Town Radio out of Philadelphia. Click this link to listen to the interview, it is about 10 minutes in.


Barbara Siegel is a New York Member is interviewed for the University of Chicago Alumni Magazine blog about her installation "Women with Beards." Siegel's work focuses on 12 real-life bearded ladies from the 19th and early 20th centuries and two from today. In this insightful interview Siegel discusses the connection between these historically marginalized women and contemporary women's self image.


Daria Dorosh's exhibition "Jump-off" was written up on Ecouterre's website discussing the connection between art, fashion, and technology. The article includes really great images of her exhibition!

I also wanted to share with you some shots of the exhibition Emma Bee Bernstein: Masquerade a Retrospective that A.I.R.'s director Kat Griefen co-curated at the University of Chicago's DOVA Gallery with Laura Letinsky, professor and chair of the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. 

 

 

  

Three amazing exhibitions are closing February 28th! I hope you have the chance to go see them:

Suzanne Broughel
White Advent Calendar for Black History Month

Photo Credit: Jeanette May 

 

Nancy Storrow

Findings

Photo Credit: Jeanette May 

 

Daria Dorosh

Jump-off

Photo Credit: Jeanette May 

And because I, as well as many others at A.I.R,  are huge fans of Kathleen Hanna I am including this interview with her from GritTV. She discusses her music career, feminism, zines, and blogs. She is truly an inspiration.

So check these links out, and stay warm on this snow day!

-Stephanie

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Fight Inequality in the Art World!

A.I.R. Gallery was founded in 1972 in reaction to gender inequality in the art world.  At that time, 63% of those attaining degrees in art and art history were women. Women also constituted a majority of the students, yet made up a small minority of university faculty. In Ph.D. programs women made up 16% of the faculty, 9% of the full-time professors, and 0% of the departmental chairs.  Inequality clearly existed in art galleries and museums, where 90% of the artists shown and represented were men. The women who founded A.I.R. Gallery established their own space to showcase women artists in the New York art world.

One might think that in 2010 such inequality would be obsolete.

Unfortunately there is still a large discrepancy in the representation of women artists versus male artists. Research shows that 70% of artists with representation in New York galleries are male.

Art Institutions continue to favor male artists. P.S.1’s Greater New York exhibition markets itself as the most comprehensive survey of emerging New York artists. It is well known that Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programs currently serve as incubators for emerging artists. Men and women are equally represented in the MFA programs throughout the tri-state area, so why did P.S.1’s Greater New York exhibition in 2005 include more than twice as many male artists than female artists?

Brainstormers is an art collective that, through public performance, exhibition, publication, the internet, and video, ignited discussion on a topic most would rather avoid: gross gender inequities in the contemporary New York art world. Their project, Greater Than Last Time, is aimed at this inequality at P.S.1, asking them to break away from the trend of discrimination in their 2010 exhibition.

Brainstormers wants you to get involved:

*If you’re an artist, create a profile on P.S.1's new web-initiative, Studio Visit. Include one (or all) of these graphics in your profile. We encourage you to use one of these images as your profile's thumbnail to increase visibility on the issue.
*Use one of these graphics as your facebook profile picture, link to www.brainstormersreport.net, and pose the question "Given that women and men are equally represented in tri-state MFA programs and respected artist registries, we ask, will the 2010 P.S.1 Greater New York curators buck the trend of the gallery world's discrimination?" [I will be including the images in the blog post]
*Tweet the following link www.brainstormersreport.net
*Blog about the situation

Friends and members of A.I.R. Gallery, I hope you take the initiative and push for change. Even though we are part of an open accepting community we cannot forget the inequalities we see time and time again. 


[To get the full size files of the images I posted to include on your P.S.1's Studio Visit or blog please visit www.brainstormersreport.net]

Stephanie

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Video Interview with Nancy Storrow

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here is an interview Simone Meltesen [artist, as well as A.I.R.'s Executive Assistant and Fellowship Coordinator] did with Nancy Storrow on her exhibition Findings.




-Stephanie

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Video Interview with Daria Dorosh

Hi!

I just wanted to share the interview I did with Daria Dorosh this weekend on her exhibition jump-off.  In conjunction with jump-off Daria has created a blog!



Hope you enjoy the video and if you are interested in attending Daria's DIY Fashion Reboot February 17th at 6pm please reserve a place by contacting Simone Meltsen at info@airgallery.org by Wed. February 10th!

-Stephanie

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Upcoming Exhibitions Opening Feb. 4th!

Hi Everyone,

This week three new exhibitions are opening at A.I.R. Hope you can make it to the reception: February 4th from 6-8pm

Gallery I - jump-off, an exhibition of new work by Daria Dorosh. Jump-off maps a personal geography in textile, text, and wireless technology. Using QR codes ('quick response' code, a matrix code that allows its context to be decoded at a high speed), Dorosh tags six 'story rugs' and six 'fabric bundles.' These codes can be read with QR readers on cell phones, revealing their stories of transformation from fiber, woven into cloth, enabling the cultural story of fashion to be told. The process in jump-off continues the loop, in which clothing is raw material for art, unmasking its material nature and showing its place in the immaterial world of text and theory. The subtext for this installation is a theory of patterns set forth in Dorosh's 2007 thesis Patterning: The Informatics of Art and Fashion, in which information is a process that navigates the territory between art and artifact to reveal shared patterns. A reading room is provided, in which her thesis is on view as a book and in mini comic book format.

 

Daria Dorosh

Gallery II: Fellowship Gallery - Suzanne Broughel 2009-2010 A.I.R. Fellowship Artist's exhibition White Advent Calender for Black History Month. Broughel uses everyday household objects like bandaids and bedsheets to address race and cultural identity from the perspective of a white American female raised in a racially segregated environment.  Broughel is deeply invested in exploring how we are defined by cultural constructs, and how we, as society and individuals, may move beyond them through  drawing on her own experience of white skin privilege.  She confronts the unspoken dialogue that rages beneath false reconciliation, delving into more personal levels of meaning and touching on desire. Her choice of materials speak to her interest in the personal as the political: bandaids become a wall hanging and skin bronzers become tie-dye. Though the artist's material are mass produced commodities, they enter the intimate, domestic realm in our homes and on our bodies. It is from this intimate, personal perspective that Broughel believes the strongest dialogue on race can begin.

                                                                                                                                                                                 

Susan Broughel, Forty Acres of Bandaids, 2003

Gallery III - Findings a  new exhibition of drawings by Nancy Storrow. This series of abstract drawings explores both observed and imagined occurrences in nature over a yearlong period. Reflective of seasonal changes and weather, the evocative drawings are static images of transient events. Storrow uses pastels, pastel pencils, graphite, and erasers to mark, wipe, cover, smudge and layer her drawings. Her process reflects the process of nature; drawings are made, changed, erased, and remade. Findings continues Storrow's visual conversation about nature - interpreting both the world she experiences and the world she sees. Her drawings are a response to and a recording of small events, gesture is combined with imagery in an effort to portray or reconstruct particular moments. Storrow's expressive drawings exhibit and intuitive response and an immediacy of touch.

 Nancy Storrow, Dusk, 2009

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