My Annual Thanksgiving Day Post

I'm feeling especially grateful for art and artists and the role they play in contributing to contemporary culture. Looking at art, I thinking about the relationship between artist intent and my interpretation, which expands my own ability to hold other viewpoints and experiences next to my own. I'm grateful for that contribution and for this blog, which affords me the opportunity to become familiar with the work of so many living, practicing artists. Since Featured Artist Interviews always fall on Thursdays and so does Thanksgiving, I'd like to take this opportunity to highlight some of my personal favorites from the last year in no particular order. (Stacia Yeapanis)

WANDA RAIMUNDI-ORTIZ

GuerilleReina #1, 2013. Giclee print. 64"x 44"

WANDA RAIMUNDI-ORTIZ explores the interplay between vulnerability and empowerment in the space where stereotypes, archetypes and lived experience of cultural and racial Otherness. Since 2006, her persona Chuleta has unpretentiously educated YouTube viewers about the Art World. Her Wepa Woman murals tell the story of a NuyoRican superhero, who is charged with representing all her people and preserving their culture on top of having the deal with the regular stresses that all humans have. Most recently, in a suite of performances and photographs called Reinas, she holds court in a costumed manifestation of personal and universal anxieties. Read the interview.

MIRA BURACK

from the bed to the mountain, 2015. installation variable

MIRA BURACK depicts an intimacy with direct experience. Through photo-collage and installation, she heightens our awareness of the overlooked objects, environments and sensual experiences that we sometimes forget to notice. Images of rumpled comforters, repeated, become mountain ranges, while plants gathered from the land surrounding her home are paired with their own portraits, collapsing the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional. Read the interview.

ANTOINE WILLIAMS

Because They Believe in Unicorns, 2016. Surplus WW II military tents, wood, thread, marker, collage and acrylic on Sheetrock. 120”x 48"x120"

Both the vulnerability and the strength of the Black body are highlighted in ANTOINE WILLIAMS' ink drawings on velum, collages, paintings and black and white wheat-paste installations on white walls. Inspired by personal experiences of a rural, working-class upbringing in the South and by themes of Otherness in sci-fi literature, he presents a catalogue of nameless, faceless beings. Part human/part animal/part stereotype/part racial trope, each is a conglomeration of signifiers of race, class and masculinity. Read the interview.

KALENA PATTON

Untitled (Rubber, Rock, Chair) (detail), 2015. Inflatable rubber ball, rock, chairs

KALENA PATTON's carefully balances bowling balls on columns of crystal goblets, hammer heads inside porcelain teacups and workout weights on tiny, decorative vases. Her precarious arrangements of found objects hint at the profound strength of the delicate support objects, poetically drawing together physics and Feminist theory. Read the interview.

JOHNATHAN PAYNE

Bound #1, 2015. Ballpoint pen and ink pen on paper. 6 3/4 in. x 5 1/2 in.

The racialized and gendered body—his body—is the jumping off point for JOHNATHAN PAYNE's performance, sculpture and installation. His performances include rituals that embody endurance, self-investigation, self-care and preparation for facing the world as a human in a particular body. Coming at the same content from another direction, his Constructions—beautiful, airy, fragile curtains, meticulously assembled from shredded, colored printer paper and comic books—and ballpoint pen drawings of dense, wavy lines that evoke human hair explore the body through abstraction and materiality. Read the interview.

EDRA SOTO

Graft, 2013 - ongoing. Architectural intervention at Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space. Wood or adhesive

Influenced by her upbringing in Puerto Rico, EDRA SOTO explores the cultural, symbolic and historical meanings of vernacular patterns and objects. Her projects often have multiple iterations and require audience-participation to be truly activated; participants read the newspapers at the rejas-adorned "bus stops" in GRAFT, play dominoes in Dominodomino (2015) or consume pineapple upside-down cake in The Wedding Cake Project (2009-ongoing). By merging research with autobiography and audience-participation, she reveals the intersection of the individual with the collective. Read the interview.

TERESA F. FARIS

Collaboration with a Bird ll #3, 2010. Sterling silver, wood altered by a bird. 3” x 4" x 1"

TERESA F. FARIS draws connections across species boundaries: "When removed from what is intended/natural and stripped of privilege one must find ways of soothing the mind." In wearable and non-wearable sculpture, she juxtaposes chewed wood—what she views as the byproducts of a captive, rescued bird's soothing practices—with sawed, pierced and pieced metal—her own creative practice. Read the interview.

REBECCA POTTS

Radiant Color Chart, Softened. Acrylic on wood, resin adhesive, cow hide. 48 x 30 x 18”

Informed by her research into metaphysical philosophy, REBECCA POTTS explores the transmutation of matter and energy as manifested in sculpture and painting. Her angular, wooden sculptures evoke webs, dome-like architecture, stained-glass windows. Most often radiating from a central point, they are portals, focus points for the attention and energy of the viewer. Read the interview.