Art Restart

Architect Andrew Schachman and multidisciplinary artist and educator Faheem Majeed are two of the four artists who, along with poet avery r. young and sculptor Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, co-lead Chicago’s Floating Museum. As its name suggests, the Floating Museum does not have a brick-and-mortar fixed space; rather it creates inventive projects through which to explore and strengthen the relationship between art, community, architecture and public institutions in sites throughout Chicago. One example of past Floating Museum projects is “Cultural Transit Assembly,” which activated not only the Chicago Transit Authority’s green line but also parks and spaces along its track. Some green line CTA cars served as pop-up performance spaces and galleries, and giant movable sculptures as well as community-art events could be spied from the train throughout its route, inviting riders to visit neighborhoods that perhaps were new to them. Another example is “River Assembly,” which over a month saw an industrial barge dock at different sites along the Chicago River, bringing a host of performances and interactive exhibits to several neighborhoods, celebrating the entire city as one giant museum campus, all corners of which have always been hubs of culture and art.In a sign of the Floating Museum’s cultural influence not only citywide but also nationally and abroad, its four leaders were tapped to be the co-directors of the fifth Chicago Architecture Biennial, one of only two architecture biennials in the world, the other being the century-old Biennial in Venice, Italy. Here Faheem and Andrew describe the municipal savvy and community trust they had to cultivate for the Floating Museum and its many projects to move throughout Chicago. They also discuss how as a quartet they manage a growing institution that must remain nimble and responsive enough to continually engage with its home city. https://floatingmuseum.org/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Cellist Leo Eguchi has played all over the world in a variety of settings, from frequent appearances with the Boston Pops and the Portland Symphony to playing for some of pop music’s biggest stars, including Demi Lovato and Peter Gabriel. A career as a performer only, however, did not satisfy his itch to make music that would move an audience with its intimacy and immediacy, so he co-founded not one but two chamber music ensembles and began commissioning work from a broad array of contemporary composers.He continues to co-lead Sheffield Chamber Players, which is based in Boston and performs in community members’ homes throughout the region, and the Willamette Chamber Music Festival, which performs in several Oregon wineries through its August season. The commissioning and performing of new work remain central to both ensembles.Leo created the “UNACCOMPANIED” project, through which he commissions immigrant and first-generation American composers to create solo cello pieces that explore the very notion of American-ness. Among the commissioned artists are well-known composers such as Gabriele Lena Frank and William Bolcomb as well as newer talents, including Milad Yousufi, a recent refugee from Afghanistan whom Leo met while completing a residency in Kabul in 2012. He also commissioned a suite titled “Shared Spaces” that pairs new work by composer Kenji Bunch with the personal recollections of David Sakura about his time imprisoned with his family in a WWII internment camp. As for the Willamette Chamber Music Festival, in each season it highlights the work of a different composer in residence.Here Leo explains how he developed the ethos that drives his artistry and leadership and details how he continues to put his passion into practice. https://www.leoeguchi.com/https://www.sheffieldchamberplayers.org/https://www.wvchambermusic.org/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

As our “Art Restart” interviews have made clear time and time again, artists’ relationship with capitalism is uneasy at best. Should we really allow the market to dictate whose artistic output is valuable? Can and should art be treated like widgets? Or like a new app? To the second question, Frances Pollock and Keith Hamilton Cobb might answer, “If the artist is up for it, why not?” Frances, an opera and musical-theater composer, is the CEO of a nascent company called Midnight Oil Collective (MOC) that cribs from the funding practices of tech accelerators, which after all are hubs of creativity, to connect creators with money not from nonprofit sources but from private investors. MOC also trains its artist partners to regard their creative work as intellectual property akin to the tech innovations of an inventor. This means that an artist working with MOC learns how never to relinquish the rights to her work from start to finish and also learns how to scale it as needed. The artist does not wait for a producer or non-profit entity to determine if and how the project will grow, turning over the reins to the project in the process; she remains its captain and determines what the project requires in its own startup lab, so to speak. Keith, an actor and playwright with a lengthy and distinguished television, film and stage resume, is not only on MOC’s artistic board; he is also in the first artist cohort to fund and develop a new piece through the company. He is the director of “The Untitled Othello Project,” a hybrid theater-making-and-education innovation endeavor that brings together creative minds of diverse backgrounds and disciplines to examine and interrogate the esthetic, moral and pedagogical values promulgated by the Western canon, using the Shakespeare play as a jumping-off point. “The Untitled Othello Project” is currently in residence at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT. Here Frances and Keith explain why this is the perfect moment for MOC’s brand of disruption in the art world and describe how the company funds and supports the projects under its wing.https://www.midnightoilco.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

The raw materials of Philippa Pham Hughes’ art are human bodies and minds. Since 2007, when she hosted her first gathering of strangers, Philippa has worked as a social sculptor and cultural strategist. What this means is that, through methods drawn from the arts and the humanities, she curates what she calls creative activations. These are carefully planned spaces and events to which groups of complete strangers from different walks of life meet face to face and break bread, often quite literally. In these activations, with Philippa’s guidance, participants can touch the third rails of polite discussion, whether they be politics or religion, because the intent is always to keep everyone safe and increasingly aware of and committed to open communication and the makings of a better world. In a time when the bully pulpit of social media makes it easy to dehumanize the perceived enemy, Philippa’s work centers our shared humanity.Philippa is currently Resident Artist at the University of Michigan Museum of Art and is Visiting Fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins. She has worked with several institutions in her current hometown of Washington, DC and in a variety of settings all over the country, in activations both large and intimate.Here she describes how she refined the work of others to create her own practice of social sculpting and explains how she maintains her optimism and vigor when it seems like all Americans want to do is scream past one another from vast distance. https://www.philippahughes.com/https://umma.umich.edu/https://snfagora.jhu.edu/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

In 2022, Steven Melendez was named artistic director of New York Theatre Ballet, becoming only the second person to lead the institution. In several ways, he was destined to become its next leader since his relationship with the company started when he was only 7 years old and founding artistic director Diana Byer recruited him to train at NYTB’s school through the company’s LIFT scholarship program. As an adult he then went on to dance professionally with NYTB for 15 years. His dance career also included numerous international stints, including as a soloist dancer with Ballet Concierto in Buenos Aires, Argentina and as a principal dancer with the Vanemuine Theater Ballet Company in Tartu, Estonia.In other ways, however, Steven’s rise to his current leadership position has been extraordinary, if not highly improbable. When he started studying at NYTB, Steven was living with his mother in a homeless shelter in the Bronx and would reside there for three years. Thanks to the LIFT program as well as his inborn talent, he was able to traverse innumerable barriers as he crossed several times a week from the South Bronx to the rarefied world of Park Avenue and back again. Steven’s own journey is explored in the feature documentary film “LIFT: a Journey from Homelessness to the Ballet Stage,” which was released earlier this year. The film, which spans six years, tracks Steven as he works with three young dancers in the LIFT program who, just as he himself once did, have to traverse the minefield of economic insecurity to study an artform that in ways financial, cultural and historical would have normally been completely inaccessible to them. Here Steven candidly describes the new barriers he is having to overcome in his new role as a cultural leader and envisions how to make ballet a thrilling and relevant artform for all audiences across cultures and backgrounds. https://stevenmelendez.com/https://nytb.org/https://www.liftdocumentary.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Precious Perez is a singer, songwriter, educator and disability activist who has recently been performing and recording under the moniker “La Reggaetonera Ciega,” the Blind Reggaeton Singer. A graduate of the Berklee School of Music, she has already released one album, 2 EPs, one cover and eight singles, with a ninth on the way. Her single “Sin Preguntar” won Best Latin Song just last month at the Latin Music Awards KY.Precious is also President of RAMPD, Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities, whose mission is “to amplify Disability Culture, promote equitable inclusion and advocate for accessibility in the music industry.” Founded just two years ago by recording artists Lachi and Gaelynn Lea, RAMPD has already succeeded in making the last two Grammy Awards more accessible than ever to participants, audience members and viewers alike.Here Precious describes how from a very young age she learned to be adamantly her fullest self in private and in public so as to advocate for her needs and those of the blind musicians who will follow in her footsteps.https://preciousperezmusica.com/https://www.afb.org/consulting/afb-accessibility-resources/afbs-social-media-accessibility-standardsHosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

To describe Meow Wolf as an artistic juggernaut might not be entirely hyperbolic. Founded in 2008 by a group of Santa Fe-based artists looking to show their work outside of the traditional art ecosystem, the collective created its first permanent exhibition in Santa Fe 2016 when famed author George R.R. Martin pledged $2.7 million to purchase an abandoned bowling alley. Meow Wolf titled the installation “House of Eternal Return,” and the surreal, immersive, semi-narrative, multi-artist, multimedia and multi-room experience it provided quickly garnered many fans and repeat visitors. Since the success of “House of Eternal Return,” Meow Wolf has opened several more gigantic installations: two in Las Vegas, one in Denver and as of July 2023 one Grapevine, TX titled “The Real Unreal.” Meow Wolf continues to be artist-run and employs artists both in their headquarters in Santa Fe and also in the locales where they install their new exhibits. In order to understand the extent to which the company’s model of audience engagement and artist support might be a gamechanger nationally, “Art Restart” interviewed three Texas-based artists who contributed their talents to the creation of “The Real Unreal.”Kwinton Gray is a composer and sound designer based in Dallas; Will Heron, who is based in Austin, is a graphic designer and muralist; and Katie Murray is a painter and muralist based in Fort Worth.https://meowwolf.com/visit/grapevineHosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

When the Writers Guild of America strike began in early May of 2023, screenwriter, playwright and essayist Dorothy was in the middle of promoting an Apple TV+ mini-series titled “Extrapolations,” on which she’d worked as executive producer and writer. As a result, she had to cancel all appearances relating to the show, which was especially disappointing to her given that it was the first major scripted TV show about climate change. Instead, she braved the blistering heat of summer in Burbank, CA and started walking the picket lines.Dorothy’s TV producing and writing credits also include the acclaimed Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The 100” for the CW network. Her work on “The Handmaid’s Tale” earned her not only multiple Emmy nominations but also a Producers Guild Award as well as a Writers Guild Award. Her plays have been performed all over the country, including at the sadly now-defunct Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, KY; IAMA Theatre in Los Angeles; and the Red Fern Theatre Company in New York City.Here she describes how in 15 years streaming channels went from being a writer’s playground to an ever more precarious means to earn a basic living. She also explains why the current strike is crucial not only for Writers Guild members but also any worker whose profession is in danger of ever becoming just another gig. Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Actor and educator Charles Andrew Gardner is starting his fourth term as president of the Chicago local branch of the union SAG-AFTRA.He grew up in Chicago and studied acting at Northern Illinois University. He is a company member with TimeLine Theater and has acted on several of Chicago’s important stages. He has appeared on the Chicago-filmed TV shows “The Chi” and “Chicago P.D.,” and his film credits include “Long Ride Home” and “Olympia.” He has also shot several national commercials for brands including Hyundai and Liberty Mutual, and he has many credits as a voiceover artist.This interview took place a little over five weeks after SAG-AFTRA, having failed to reach an agreement with AMPTP (the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers), went on strike on July 14, 2023. At the core of the disagreement between the actors and the producers is the amount of residuals actors should receive for streamed content. Also on the negotiating table are the burdens on actors of self-taped auditions, the amount producers should contribute to the union’s healthcare and pension funds and how the use of AI-generated likenesses of performers should be regulated.Here Charles explains why he chose to remain in his hometown as he set out on his acting career and how a passion for education continues to inform his leadership style as he shepherds his fellow union members through this latest challenge.https://www.charlesandrewgardner.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Terri Lyne Carrington is one of the most respected jazz musicians in the world. Her drumming career started at the age of 10, which is when she officially got her musicians’ union card, and in the decades since, she’s earned countless accolades, including four Grammys, a Doris Duke Artist Award and an NEW Jazz Masters Fellowship. She has performed on over 100 recordings and has toured and recorded with jazz legends, including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Stan Getz and Esperanza Spalding. In recent years she has turned her attention to correcting gender inequities in her field. In 2018 she founded the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice at her alma mater, Berklee School of Music in Boston. She remains the Institute’s artistic director, ensuring that new generations of female, trans and non-binary musicians are welcomed to contribute their talents to the genre. She’s also passionate about recognizing the contributions women have already made to jazz. To wit, she edited a recently published collection of music titled “New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets by Women Composers.” Alongside that project, she recorded an album titled “New Standards, Vol. 1” that features several compositions in the book. “New Standards” won Terri Lyne her most recent Grammy, and not surprisingly she plans eventually to record all 101 compositions. Terri Lyne also recently curated a multi-artist multimedia installation titled “New Standards” that initially opened at the Carr Center in Detroit, where she is artistic director. This interview took place the morning after the closing party celebrating the exhibition of “New Standards” at Emerson Gallery of Contemporary Arts in Boston.https://www.terrilynecarrington.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Woodworker, furniture-maker, artist and educator Aspen Golann trained at the renowned North Bennet Street School in Boston and specializes in building furniture with the techniques of 18th and 19th century American fine woodworking. Her pieces aren’t mere modern iterations of a centuries-old tradition, however. They also often exhibit very modern feminist touches that acknowledge and subvert the power and function of furniture, traditionally made by men, that is created for domestic spaces, historically the domain of women. Aspen’s work has earned her the admiration of the arts-and-crafts establishment. Her work has been featured in American Craft magazine, Fine Woodworking magazine and Architectural Digest. In 2020 she was the recipient of the Mineck Furniture Fellowship from the Society of Arts and Crafts, and this year The Maxwell Hanrahan Foundation gave her one of its prestigious $100,000 unrestricted Awards in Craft. She teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and in national and international craft workshops.Three years ago, thanks in part to the Minreck Fellowship, Aspen created The Chairmaker’s Toolbox, a three-pronged project that provides free tools, education and mentorship for BIPOC, gender-expansive and female chair- and toolmakers seeking to build sustainable businesses. Here Aspen describes how she herself homed in on her exact passion and explains the inventive ways in which The Chairmaker’s Toolbox makes a career in woodworking a little less daunting for craftspeople who have traditionally been excluded from the field. https://www.aspengolann.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Barely four months into his tenure as the artistic director of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Adam W. McKinney is already implementing revolutionary ways to build on the company’s existing strengths with his gaze firmly set on its overall health a hundred years from now.Adam has a remarkable resume as a ballet dancer, a choreographer, a professor, an activist and an arts leader. He danced with some of the world’s most renowned ballet companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Alonzo King LINES Ballet and Béjart Ballet in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was the co-founder and co-director of DNAWORKS, an arts-and-service organization based in Fort Worth, TX, dedicated to dialogue and healing through the arts. Among DNAWORKS’ many projects is the interactive “Forth Worth Lynching Tour: Honoring the Memory of Mr. Fred Rouse.” Thanks to an app with augmented-reality features, the tour allows audiences — whether in person or virtually — to visit four sites in Fort Worth associated with the December 11, 1921 lynching of Mr. Rouse. DNAWORKS also produced “The Borders Project,” which uses a variety of creative performances and events to explore the histories of manmade borders and their effects on the human spirit and body. “The Borders Project” has so far worked on the U.S./Mexico and Israel/Palestine borders.Adam was also awarded the NYU President’s Service Award for his dance work with populations who struggle with heroin addiction.Before accepting his new post in Pittsburgh, he was the Associate Professor of Dance and Ballet at Texas Christian University, a tenured position he took on after having served as the inaugural Dance Department Chair at New Mexico School for the Arts in Santa Fe.In this interview he describes the core beliefs and practices he believes will make ballet a rigorous, sustainable contemporary artform accessible and welcoming to all for generations to come.https://www.pbt.org/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Norma Baker-Flying Horse’s designs are the stuff of fashion runway dreams. They display the sophistication, impeccable tailoring and gorgeous lines of her fashion idols, including Chanel and McQueen, but what makes them exceptional is that they incorporate gorgeous details that bespeak her Native heritage. Norma Baker-Flying Horse, whose company, Red Berry Woman, bears her given Native name, is a member of the Hidatsa, Dakota Sioux and Assiniboine tribes, and her creations often bear designs from these cultures rendered via traditional techniques, including intricate beadwork and/or appliques of smoked hide, sometimes even feathers or shells. And all in a spectacular color palette.Norma has been designing bespoke pieces in and for her community for years, but recently her reach has gone national and international. She showed at Paris Fashion Week in 2019; in 2022 she won Designer of the Year at Phoenix Fashion Week and was also the co-recipient of a Cultural Recognition Visual Arts Grammy; and just in the past year Miss Minnesota wore a Red Berry Woman gown in the Miss America pageant. Here she explains how she wed her forebears’ cultural skills and know-how with a taste for glamor she unexpectedly cultivated as a little girl in toy heels on the North Dakota prairie to create a singular brand. She also describes the rigors of being a self-taught and self-guided business owner who won’t even let a C-section keep her from delivering a gown on schedule.https://redberrywoman.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Dancer/choreographer Michael Manson is an internationally recognized authority in Detroit Jit, a dance genre birthed in his hometown over 50 years ago. His talent earned him a national audience when he appeared on “So You Think You Can Dance” in 2015, and as a performer and teacher he has worked all over the States and as far away as Paris and La Paz. Once a student of famed dancer/choreography Rennie Harris, he now tours with Rennie Harris Puremovement in performances of “Caravan,” starring jazz scholar Terence Blanchard.Last year, Mike, in conjunction with the non-profit Living Arts, was one of five recipients of a prestigious Joyce Foundation grant for artists working in the Great Lakes region. Thanks to the grant’s support, Mike has been able to commit to his passion, namely teaching young people in Detroit about their city’s rich cultural history and ensuring that Detroit Jit is recognized, respected and studied as a distinctive American dance genre. The Joyce Foundation grant also allowed him to create “Rhythm of the Feet,” a concert-length dance production that not only centers Detroit Jit but also, thanks to a cast of professional dancers from around the country, places it in the context of other seminal American footwork styles, such as tap, Chicago footwork, House, Memphis Jookin and Lindy Hop.Here he describes how he developed his passion for cultural preservation in tandem with his dance skills and explains why he takes pride in seeing his students overtake him … as long as they remain respectful of the Jit.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSSGccDQNXM&t=51shttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ioq0MK1mhdghttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/p7ZHQqOEX_0Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Early in her career, Maura video essayist and performance artist Maura Brewer explored the relationship between representations of women in Hollywood films and the structures of contemporary capitalism. Through several often-tongue-in-cheek video pieces, she focused on the actor Jessica Chastain, who at the time was being typecast in films such as “Zero Dark Thirty” as a steely go-getter who paid a steep personal price for her ambition. In recent years, Maura’s focus has shifted from representations created by capitalism to the underlying financial structures that uphold it. To wit, she is deep into a years-long project titled “Private Client Services” that explores how the rich launder money through art acquisition and sales. In this project, which Maura is documenting meticulously through video and writing, she herself is doing the very thing she is studying, namely laundering money through art. Maura is not entering this world entirely dewy-eyed, however. For several years, in addition to being an artist, she has worked as an experienced professional private investigator, garnering skills that are proving invaluable in her forays into the world of money laundering. Her work has been exhibited at spaces including MoMA and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and is in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her projects have appeared in The Guardian, CBS News and The Paris Review. She is a 2023 Guggenheim fellow, a 2022 Creative Capital fellow, and a recipient of the Fellowship for Visual Artists at the California Community Foundation and the City of Los Angeles Master Artist Fellowship.In this interview, she details how she, once a fiber artist, harnessed her own investigative talents to create performance and video art about a crime that uses art as its primary instrument. https://maurabrewer.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Robin Tran has been performing standup comedy for the past 11 years, but it is only in the last eight that she has been performing under the name Robin. Before her transition in 2015, she presented as male and used the name Robert. During the pandemic, she gained a sizeable and loyal following via TikTok, and in 2021 she was featured as one of the “New Faces” of the year by the influential Just for Laughs festival. In the last couple of years, she’s enjoyed some very prominent appearances on various TV and streaming platforms, including “Comedy Central Roast” and Comedy Central Stand-Up Featuring.” Last year she also appeared on the Netflix show “That’s My Time With David Letterman.”In this episode, Robin describes how she’s managed to cultivate and grow her career despite an industry that at first didn’t know what to do with her and explains why, when all is said and done, she may always remain “a pro-wrestling bad guy. “https://www.instagram.com/robintran04/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Alexandria Wailes is an accomplished actor, choreographer and dancer who just this last season appeared on Broadway in the acclaimed revival of Ntozake Shange’s seminal play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” The production, directed by UNCSA alum Camille A. Brown, held one notable surprise, the use of American Sign Language, since Alexandria, who is Deaf, played the Lady in Purple, a part that had not originally been written as a Deaf character. This was not her first time on Broadway. She understudied Marlee Matlin in the revival of “Spring Awakening,” and then she went on in the part for the run’s final month. Before that, she acted in the legendary Deaf West Theatre production of “Big River,” which after its Broadway run toured throughout the U.S. and even played not once but twice in Tokyo.She’s acted in some of the country’s most respected regional theaters, from Minneapolis’s Mixed Blood Theater to Los Angeles’s Kirk Douglas Theater, and she has also been featured in several popular TV shows, including “Nurse Jackie” and “Law and Order: Criminal Intent.” She is a member of Heidi Latsky Dance Company, and she is the co-founder of BHO5, a company whose mission is, “to usher in a new era of authentic artistic representation of American deaf people.” In this episode, Alexandria describes how she crafted her remarkable career as a multidisciplinary performer and explains the work that must still be done to ensure that not only Deaf but also hearing performers can feel fully informed and bolstered in work that features Deaf artists and/or subjects. http://www.alexandriawailes.com/home.htmlhttps://www.bho5.org/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Perhaps the hottest ticket on Broadway right now is to the starry revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s play “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” starring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan. Should you be lucky enough to score that ticket, you will find an unusual credit in the Playbill: scenic design by dots.Barely two years old, dots is a collective of three talented international designers who decided soon after earning their MFA’s at NYU to create a unique partnership. They are Andrew Moerdyk, who hails from South Africa; Kimie Nishikawa, born in Japan; and Santiago Orjuela-Laverde, a native of Colombia. Their partnership, truly unique in the American theater, is clearly paying off. Not only are they about to make their Broadway debut at a very early stage in their respective careers but their work has also been seen in some of the highest-profile theatrical projects of recent months, including “Dark Disabled Stories” at the Public Theater and Elevator Repair Service’s “Seagull.”In this episode, the three designers explain how they developed the initial idea for their partnership during the pandemic lockdown and describe how the stability the collaboration provides more than makes up for no longer seeing their individual names in the production credits.https://designbydots.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Theater director Sean Daniels has outstanding credits to his name. He co-founded the company Dad’s Garage, which is now a cornerstone of Atlanta’s theatrical scene, and then went on to lead Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Massachusetts. He also spent four years as associate artistic director at Actors Theatre of Louisville where he oversaw the sadly now-defunct Humana Festival of New American Plays and directed many of its world premieres over five years.The credit that brings him the greatest pride, however, is just a tad more recent, however: person in long-term recovery. For almost two decades as he charted his remarkable artistic path, he was also increasingly hobbled by his addiction to alcohol, and as is so common for people with substance-abuse disorders, it took him several tries before he was finally able to manage his disease. Sean detailed his painful, absurd and often surprisingly hilarious journey to sobriety in his play “The White Chip,” which enjoyed a successful Off-Broadway run in 2019.Now, over a decade into his sobriety, he has added a new credit to his resume: advocate. After a widely lauded stint as artistic director of Arizona Theatre Company, Sean recently became the associate director of Florida Studio Theatre. At FST not only will he head the theater’s new-play-development program, but he will also work as the inaugural director of his brainchild, The Recovery Project. The Recovery Project is an initiative working to heal the stigma of addiction and recovery through the development of new plays, theatre-education programs and outreach.In this interview, Sean explains why those working in the performing arts are especially vulnerable to substance-abuse disorders and details how he hopes his advocacy will establish new support systems to catch struggling artists long before they fall as far as he once did.https://www.floridastudiotheatre.org/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

J Chong was a well-respected chef in her community of Asheville, NC for years before she suddenly acquired a national profile thanks to her participation in HBO Max’s cooking-competition show, “The Big Brunch.” Suddenly J, who only recently had decided to strike out on her own by creating J Chong Eats, had a new platform on which to extol the flavors of her bedrock cuisine, traditional Cantonese.She also had a platform on which to express her unique perspective as a Canadian Asian queer woman making food and creating a business in the American South. In “The Big Brunch,” her talent, honed from years of working in some of the finest kitchens in foodie-destination Asheville, is on full display, as are her resourcefulness and kindness. Watching her at work, it is easy to understand why her craft is known as a culinary art. Furthermore, her vision for J Chong Eats, which relies on pop-ups rather than a bricks-and-mortar restaurant to sell its creations, bespeaks a nimbleness and commitment to community outreach that are hallmarks of so many of the artists we feature on “Art Restart.”Which is why it was surprising to discover that J, upon receiving an invitation to appear on “Art Restart,” did not initially consider herself an artist. In this interview, J takes a deep dive into her artistry and explains her unique take on how she intends to share her talent with her community.https://www.instagram.com/jchong_eats/https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GY0WzfASbP4OEqQEAAACXHosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Anthony Hudson might have earned the tongue-in-cheek title of “Portland OR’s premier drag clown” even if he were not Portland’s – and perhaps even the country’s -- only drag clown. He has delighted and terrified Portland audiences in equal measure as his alter-ego Carla Rossi for over 12 years, performing carefully honed satire in a variety of venues, including the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art.At Portland’s historic Hollywood Theatre, both Anthony and Carla program and host “Queer Horror,” the only LGBT horror screening-and-performance series in the country. Anthony also co-hosts with writer Stacie Ponder the queer feminist horror podcast “Gaylords of Darkness.”A member of the Confederated Grand Ronde Tribes, Siletz, he recently was one of four Indigenous artists to present work in an exhibit titled “Always Here” at The Arts Center in Corvallis, OR. In the exhibit, he and his fellow artists separately and collaboratively created conceptual pieces that upended perceptions of what Native art can or should be.Anthony also wrote the solo autobiographical play “Looking for Tiger Lily,” which he has performed in theaters all over the country and has toured internationally, from Melbourne to Vancouver. He is currently adapting the play into a book.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Anthony explains how he developed Carla Rossi and her particular flavor of drag performance and describes the joys and dangers of being an outspoken queer clown when drag in particular has become such a dangerous cultural flashpoint.https://www.thecarlarossi.com/https://theartscenter.net/always-here/https://www.grandronde.org/history-culture/culture/chachalu-museum-and-cultural-center/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Last summer, bassoonist Brian Petkovich lost his job and then got a job that had never existed before. Not long after the San Antonio Symphony, with whom Brian played for 25 years, shut its doors, he became the inaugural president of the nascent San Antonio Philharmonic, which as of this writing is seven months old.For a brief moment in 2022, it seemed like San Antonio, the nation’s seventh-largest city, might not have a major orchestra. The musicians of the San Antonio Symphony, protesting significant personnel and salary cuts demanded by the Board, had gone on strike in September of 2021, and nine months later, on June 16, 2022, the Symphony Society of San Antonio declared it was shutting down the 83-year-old institution for good, declaring a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The musicians had not been idle throughout this tumult, however. They had founded the Musicians of the San Antonio Symphony (MOSAS) through which they raised private funds that allowed them to perform through the spring and early summer of 2022 in venues throughout the city. When the Symphony’s demise was finalized, they set about creating a new permanent ensemble, appointing Brian as its president, and on September 16, 2022, the brand-new San Antonio Philharmonic played its first concert to a rapt audience at First Baptist Church of San Antonio.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Brian reveals some of the assumptions and miscalculations that led to the Symphony’s dissolution and discusses his and his fellow musicians’ dreams for how their new classical-music ensemble will serve San Antonio for years to come.https://saphil.org/team/brian-petkovich/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

For sound artist and ethnographer Brian Harnetty, listening is perhaps even more important than composing. He is passionate about capturing the essence of a place through his creations, and his work therefore involves venturing into towns and landscapes armed with his microphone and recording everything from ambient sounds to oral histories. It also involves in-depth research in archives and libraries to discover a community’s often forgotten history, images and archival recordings. The geographic area to which he is most devoted is Appalachian Ohio. His parents and their forebears hail from those mountains, and though he currently lives a 90-minute drive away in Columbus, OH, over the years he has spent enough time in the area not only to gain a deep understanding of its landscape and people but also to earn the community’s trust, an essential component of his work. He wishes his compositions — sound collages might be a better description — to have a social impact. Not only do those who listen to his creations gain a rich appreciation for a region that for decades has been marked and scarred by extractive industries, but the community members who contribute their memories hear the richness of their culture and history echoed back to them.Brian, who is currently a Faculty Fellow at Ohio State University’s Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme, has released nine albums. The influential music magazine MOJO gave two of his most recent albums, “Shawnee, Ohio” and “Words and Silences,” five stars out of five, and “Wire” magazine placed “Words and Silences” at position number five on its top 10 list of 2022’s modern-composition albums.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Brian explains how he arrived at his sonic ethnography practice and what strategies he uses to make his work with the utmost integrity. https://www.brianharnetty.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Sukanya Mani’s works seem light as air, intricate and mesmerizing paper sculptures that can move and twirl with the slightest breeze. What may not be immediately apparent, however, is that Sukanya has made each irreversible cut in her material with the intention of representing — albeit abstractly — a weighty story or theme she’s explored in depth. The way gravity affects light; the relationship between physiological, psychological and cosmological time; how clothing and adornment affect how a woman’s sexuality is perceived: These are just a few of the themes Sukanya has researched before picking up her scissors and utility knives to start her next site-specific project In recent years, the self-taught artist has made quite an impression on her hometown of St. Louis, Mo and the region around it. She has been commissioned to create public works for several Missouri cities — including Poplar Bluff, Lee’s Summit and Brentwood. Last year a piece of hers was displayed in St. Louis’ international airport, and she was commissioned to create a piece for Florissant Performing Arts Center.After a lengthy research-and-interview process, she’s currently completing “The Beside Between Beyond Project,” an installation that explores domestic abuse, particularly as it impacts immigrant and refugee populations. In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Sukanya explains how her immigrant story led to her picking up the utility knife and what might make it easier for other newcomers to the country to express their artistic selves. www.sukanyamani.comhttps://camstl.org/exhibitions/teen-museum-studies-presents-sukanya-mani-weight-of-shadows/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

When the devastating floods of July 2022 tore through the mountain communities of Southeastern Kentucky, visual artist Lacy Hale lost her studio and a trove of works in progress. Since that tragic and deadly night, though, even as many of her neighbors in Whitesburg have been forced to move away, one thing she has not lost is her determination to remain in the mountains where she grew up. They are in her blood, and they inspire her art, just as she intends for her art to inspire the people of her corner of Appalachia.Lacy has been making art in Whitesburg since returning from her studies at Pratt Institute in New York City in the early 2000s, and it has become her full-time occupation since 2017. In addition to being a painter and a muralist, she is also a printmaker and over the years has created and sold an array of items bearing her designs. One of her most recognized designs is “No Hate in My Holler,” a graphic she created in 2017 in response to a scheduled neo-Nazi gathering in a nearby town. “No Hate in My Holler” quickly appeared on billboards and T-shirts and also became a popular hashtag, garnering attention from national media outlets.Lacy’s murals can be seen in communities throughout Kentucky and Virginia. Among the honors she has received are the Eastern Kentucky Artist Impact Award as well as grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, Great Meadows Foundation and the Tanne Foundation Award. In 2016 she co-founded EpiCentre Arts, which supports and advocates for art and artists throughout the Appalachian Mountains.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Lacy explains why and how her artistry is inseparable from her community and the landscape in which it nestles. She also describes that devastating July night and what it’s taken to recommit to her art, her business and her home despite losing almost everything. https://www.lacyhale.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Described by The New York Times as “one of America’s most peculiarly original dance poets,” choreographer Trey McIntyre has made a habit of defying expectations throughout his career. A graduate of UNCSA, he went on to the Houston Ballet Academy where upon finishing his training, he was given the position of Choreographic Apprentice at the Ballet, a post created specifically for him.As his freelance career started to take off, he did something completely unexpected. Rather than tether himself to a large coastal metropolis or a European capital, he decided to settle down in Boise, ID, where he created Trey McIntyre Projects, a vibrant dance company that quickly garnered the world’s attention, spending up to 22 weeks a year on national and international touring. Then 10 years later in 2014, at the height of the company’s success, Trey decided to fold the company and return to freelancing.He continues to be an in-demand choreographer around the world — just before the pandemic he created works for Queensland Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and The Washington Ballet — but lately he has also been diving into a new artistic passion. He has a photographic practice, creating kinetic and often erotic tableaux of the human body, that he supports through a network of fans via a Patreon account. In 2018 he also directed “Gravity Hero,” a documentary about his journey with his Boise-based dance company.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Trey discusses why and how he has always pushed himself past comfort zones in order to feed his voracious curiosity and wonders what it will take for dance companies to remain equally curious and nimble in the digital age.www.treycool.com Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Siblings Crystal and Rico Worl have been making art together in Juneau, AK since they were children, and as adults, not only are they thriving as professional artists, they also co-own a successful online business, Trickster Company, whose mission is to promote innovative Indigenous art. Members of the Tlingit and Athabascan clans, Crystal and Rico continue to explore the cultural traditions of their heritage, studying at length with master craftsmen and artists, and the formline style prevalent in the Pacific Northwest lies at the heart of their practice. However, whether using new technology in their art or applying traditional design to everyday objects from basketballs to playing cards — Trickster Company is currently featuring the “Cards Against Colonialism: Western Expansion” set — they remain committed to keeping Indigenous art a living, breathing and evolving cultural touchstone. The scope and reach of their work continue to expand. In July of 2021, the U.S. Postal Service issued the Raven Story stamp bearing a Rico Worl design, and in the last year Crystal has painted two enormous murals – one in Anchorage, the other in Juneau — that with striking vibrancy counteract a long tradition of whitewashing Alaska’s history.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Rico and Crystal delve into the many ways they are working and playing together and apart to ensure that all Alaskans, as well as the millions of visitors to the state, learn to celebrate the value of authenticity.https://crystalworl.com/https://ricoworl.com/https://trickstercompany.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Cedric Mitchell is a glass artist based in Los Angeles who for the last 10 years has created an array of both decorative and functional pieces. He has completed residencies at some of the most prestigious craft institutes in the country, including Penland School of Craft, Pilchuck Glass School and Corning Museum of Glass. In 2018 he officially launched his own business, Cedric Mitchell Design, through which he continues to create blown glass for retailers nationwide.Cedric is also the events-and-resource manager for Crafting the Future, a nonprofit that works to diversify the fields of art, craft and design by connecting BIPOC artists with opportunities that will help them thrive. In the last three years, Crafting the Future has provided 70 scholarships for artists and craftspeople to attend instructional programs throughout the country.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Cedric, who to this day remains one of the very few Black glass blowers in the field, describes how a combination of curiosity, initiative and generosity has led him to be an admired professional as well as a mentor in the field.https://cedricmitchelldesign.com/https://www.craftingthefuture.org/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

While working on a project in Portland, OR over a decade ago, theater-maker Aaron Landsman accepted a colleague’s invitation to attend a city-council meeting. In between moments of boredom typical to such meetings, Landsman, who had made a career of making works of theater in a variety of unusual settings, glimpsed inherently theatrical moments. The clincher came when a well-dressed sixtysomething by the name of Pete Colt, clearly well-known to and barely tolerated by the city councilors, testified about the drug-related paraphernalia that littered a children’s park in the city. At the end of his testimony, to make his point, he dumped the contents of his briefcase — the very litter he'd railed against — on the table in front of him. Thus was sown the seed of what would become “City Council Meeting,” a participatory theatrical event that Aaron — along with his collaborators, director Mallory Catlett and theater artist and visual designer Jim Findlay — mounted in several American cities, including New York City, Tempe, AZ and Houston, TX. Just this past summer, University of Iowa Press published Mallory and Aaron’s “The City We Make Together: City Council Meeting’s Primer for Participation,” a thorough and galvanizing examination of their process that is sure to inspire a new generation of artists looking to engage communities in the intricacies of making democracy.Since “City Council Meeting,” Mallory and Aaron have continued building their remarkable and eclectic careers. Mallory is now the co-artistic director of the legendary Mabou Mines theater company and is developing several new operas, and Aaron is artist in residence at Abrons Art Center in New York and is preparing the premiers of “Night Keeper,” a new work commissioned by The Chocolate Factory Theater, and “Trouble Hunters,” a performance created in collaboration with artists in Serbia.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Mallory, who studied dance as a high schooler at UNCSA, and Aaron describe how they developed their unique theatrical viewpoints and esthetic and how throughout their careers they’ve succeeded in hewing to their iconoclastic artistic passions. https://mallorycatlett.net/https://www.maboumines.org/http://www.thinaar.com/https://perfectcity.org/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

With a bachelor’s degree from Juilliard and a doctorate in musical arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Midori Samson is not only exquisitely trained in her instrument, the bassoon. Throughout her education she also studied social work, even minoring in the field as she earned her Ph.D. For Midori — who describes herself as equally a bassoonist, educator, activist and scholar — her commitment to equity and social inclusion is inseparable from her artistry.She is a longtime member of Arts Ignite, a non-profit that works with artists to unlock children’s imaginations and potential. Arts Ignite works throughout the country and as far away as India and the Philippines. She is also the proud co-founder and artistic director of Trade Winds Ensemble, a group of professional musicians who teach workshops incorporating music composition, songwriting, interactive games and creative writing to children around the world. Midori’s most recent educational foray abroad took place a few days after this interview when she flew to Turkey to take part in past Art Restart guest Sahba Aminikia’s Flying Carpet Festival, where she was looking forward to creating music with refugee children.In this conversation with Pier Carlo Talenti, Midori explains why her musicianship relies on her social-justice work and vice-versa and discusses the many ways in which the teaching and performing of classical music could be transformed to be radically welcoming.https://www.midorisamson.com/https://artsignite.org/https://www.tradewindsensemble.org/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Though Sekou Cooke did not invent the term or the theory of hip-hop architecture, he is one of its leading proponents and practitioners. An architect, urban designer, researcher and curator born and raised in Jamaica and educated at Cornell and Harvard, he currently serves as the Director of the Master of Urban Design at UNC Charlotte. He also owns and operates Sekou Cooke STUDIO, which recently earned a 2022 Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League of New York.Sekou’s recent projects include “Grids + Griots,” an architectural intervention commissioned for the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the soon-to-be-built Syracuse Hip-Hop Headquarters that will convert a derelict building in the city’s Near Westside into event and performance venues and a variety of education and office spaces. Two of his designs are also now included on the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety’s list of Approved Standard Plans for Additional Dwelling Units.In 2021, Bloomsbury published Sekou’s “Hip-Hop Architecture,” a monograph that, true to its title and inspiration, is a manifesto and exploration constructed more like a music album combined with expansive liner notes than a traditional academic tome, with its foreword written by noted sociologist and author Michael Eric Dyson.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Sekou draws a line between the fluid and inherently anti-authoritarian nature of hip-hop culture and the kind of equitable and fully participatory built environments hip-hop architecture envisions. https://www.sekoucooke.com/https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/hiphop-architecture-9781350116146/https://www.archdaily.com/435952/keep-talking-kanye-an-architect-s-defense-of-kanye-westHosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Maria Sykes earned her architecture degree from Auburn University just as the 2008 recession paralyzed the nation. Unable to find a job right away, she decided to join a classmate who was volunteering with AmeriCorps in the small town of Green River, UT. The plan was to spend a summer in Green River before buckling down to launch her architecture career. That summer turned into her own yearlong commitment to AmeriCorps, which then turned into a second year, with Maria always thinking she’d leave when the economy turned around.What she hadn’t planned on was falling deeply in love with the place and its people. To wit, thirteen years later, she remains not only an enthusiastic Green River resident but also an invaluable community leader. In 2009 she co-founded Epicenter, a community-service nonprofit that over the years has served Green River in a number of ways, from offering low-cost home-repair services to elderly, disabled and low-income homeowners to rehabbing abandoned community parks. Today she remains Epicenter’s executive director.Maria’s own artistic imagination drives much of Epicenter’s work, but she has established a pipeline that guarantees a steady influx of fresh creative visions. Through its Frontier Fellowship program, Epicenter has welcomed scores of artists from around the country and as far away as the UK to reside in Green River, develop their own work and engage with the community in creative, respectful and galvanizing ways. This year the team at Epicenter will proudly mark the culmination of their deep investment in the community when they break ground on Canal Commons, their first multi-unit affordable-housing development, planned in close partnership with Green River stakeholders.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Maria explains the intricacies, joys and challenges of serving a remote, rural community through artistic engagement.www.ruralandproud.orghttps://vimeo.com/161476495?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=2213578Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

On January 6, 2021, hearing that Trump supporters were descending on the U.S. Capitol, freelance photographer Shedrick Pelt grabbed goggles, a respirator and his Canon 5D Mark 4 and ran to the scene to document the event. The arresting images he captured on that terrifying day constitute “Attack on Democracy: Through the Lens of a Black Photojournalist,” a traveling exhibit that opened at Gallery O in Washington, DC one year after the attack on the Capitol. Shedrick’s instinct to run towards the danger of that day was based in a bone-deep commitment to community and local storytelling. Moving to D.C. in late 2017, he quickly embedded himself in that city’s artistic community, working with such arts organizations as Exposed DC and Dupont Underground, where he serves as cultural ambassador. He currently sits on the board of Focus on the Story, an internationally recognized non-profit dedicated to promoting the work of leading photographers and providing education and resources for visual artists. His work has been featured in Washingtonian magazine and in exhibits at such institutions as the International Center of Photography in New York and at the Phillips Collection in D.C. He also curates the Look Hear Gallery, which is a revolving gallery that features the Black experience in DC through the lens of Black photographers. And as of 2022, he is a contributing photographer for Getty Images.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Shedrick describes the artistic journey that led him to the Capitol on that fateful day and makes a case for supporting hyper-local artists and storytellers.https://www.sdotpdotmedia.com/homeHosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Ayo Janeen Jackson enjoyed an enviable dance career after earning her BFA at UNCSA. She danced with two of the world’s most renowned contemporary companies — Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and Ballet Preljocaj — before joining the company of Broadway’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”Yearning to learn more ways to express herself, though, she shifted her career path. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she earned a Master’s in Interdisciplinary Arts, and today she remains a performing artist firmly rooted in her body with the difference that she has added several skills to her artistic repertoire, including filmmaking and font design.Along with recent “Art Restart” guest Gregg Mozgala, Ayo received a 2022 Artpreneur Alumni of the Year Award from UNCSA. The award recognizes not only Ayo’s artistic experimentations but also a new skin-care business she has created that is inspired by her artistic research and .In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Ayo describes why and how she set out to broaden her artistic horizons and explains the historic and artistic ethic behind her new business venture.https://www.ayojackson.com/https://vimeo.com/498440544/5ea55cbbf3Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

UNCSA alumnus Gregg Mozgala, after years of performing on some of Off-Broadway’s finest stages, is enjoying a well-earned banner year. He recently completed a national tour playing the title character in “Teenage Dick,” a modern take on Shakespeare’s “Richard III” centered on the experience of a high school student with cerebral palsy, and this summer he appeared in “Richard III” itself, alongside film and theater star Danai Gurira, in the Public Theater’s revered Shakespeare in the Park season. This fall he will cap off the year with his Broadway debut in Martyna Majok’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Cost of Living,” reprising the leading role he performed in the play’s premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2018.Gregg can credit that success not only to his acting but also his producing skills. In 2012, determined to make disability and people with disabilities more visible on the nation’s stages, he founded The Apothetae, a New York-based theater company dedicated to the production of works that explore and illuminate the disabled experience. The Apothetae has developed several new plays and adaptations from and with both established and up-and-coming artists — disabled and non-disabled, Deaf and hearing — and it is through The Apothetae’s commissioning program that playwright Mike Lew completed “Teenage Dick.”In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Gregg describes how an understanding of his cultural lineage as a disabled performer led him to create a company that celebrates displaying disabled bodies and their stories with unassailable authenticity.http://www.greggmozgala.com/http://www.theapothetae.org/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

A neuroscientist-turned-artist, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, has long known how to “make the invisible visible,” as her artist statement declares. Her ability to make intricate scientific concepts accessible through art and design earned her a TED residency as well as the opportunity to speak on two TED mainstages. Her numerous works — including an AR installation immersing viewers in the world of microbes and “Beyond Curie,” a project that harnessed both technology and design to celebrate the most badass women in STEM history — have been featured in spaces all over the world, from a highway tunnel in the Netherlands to New York’s Cooper Union. In the last couple of years, Amanda has focused her talents on engaging with and revealing often-hidden parts of the human psyche, from the bigotry and racist violence that have reared their heads throughout the country to the cumulative trauma and grief of the COVID crisis. As an artist-in-residence with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, she created a citywide mural project titled “I Still Believe in Our City” to counter anti-Asian violence and center the lives and experiences of Asian Americans and people of color as crucial threads in the American fabric. Soon after the shootings at a spa in Atlanta in 2021, Time magazine featured images from the series on its cover.Pier Carlo Talenti spoke to Amanda while she was taking a brief break from troubleshooting one in a series of installations on Lincoln Center plaza in New York City. In this interview she describes the challenges and joys of expanding her artistic practice to invite even more collaborators — from institutions to the public at large — into her creations.https://www.alonglastname.com/https://www.istillbelieve.nyc/abouthttps://www.lincolncenter.org/series/summer-for-the-city/s/GATHER:%20A%20series%20of%20monuments%20and%20ritualsHosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

It’s a good thing that director Lear deBessonet and producer Clyde Valentín have extensive experience in community-engaged participatory art — nine years ago she founded the acclaimed Public Works program at the Public Theater in New York City; he was the inaugural director of Ignite/Arts, a renowned community-arts incubator in Dallas since 2015 — because the scope of their newest project, One Nation/One Project, would overwhelm most artists and administrators. One Nation/One Project, a partnership with the National League of Cities, is a truly national multi-year health-and-wellness initiative. Over the next two years, 18 communities scattered throughout the country will create hyper-local participatory and collaborative art works that in July of 2024 will be shared with a national audience. It’s a hugely ambitious project, a reimagining of the 1930s Federal Theatre Project, that looks to capitalize on a well-documented fact, namely that participating in the arts makes individuals and communities healthier.Among the first cohort of nine sites that One Nation/One Project recently announced is the Kenan Institute’s very own community of Winston-Salem and surrounding Forsythe County. The Institute is working with several local partners — including the Arts Council of Winston-Salem & Forsyth County, Forsyth County Department of Public Health, United Health Centers and the City of Winston-Salem Department of Community Development — to support the program.The other eight communities chosen are Gainesville, FL; Chicago, IL; Utica, MS; Providence, RI; Rhinelander, WI; Harlan County, KY; Edinburg, TX; and Phillips County, AR, focusing on the cities of Elaine and Helena.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Lear and Clyde describe how they conceived and designed their ambitious project and share their hopes for the national healing the 18 local creations might engender. https://www.onenationoneproject.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Partners in life, love and art, dancer/choreographer Lauren Edson and musician/composer Andrew Stensaas founded the remarkable performance company LED in Boise, ID in 2015 and remain its co-leadersLauren, the company’s artistic director, trained at UNCSA and Juilliard before dancing with the renowned dance company Trey McIntyre Projects for many years. Andrew, LED’s creative director, is a self-taught musician and composer who played with two critically acclaimed bands — one in Portland, OR; the other in Boise, ID — before establishing himself as a teacher and composer/songwriter at Boise Rock School. Just five years after LED’s founding, Dance Magazine included the company in its influential “25 to Watch” list, but it wouldn’t be accurate to call LED a dance company. Instead, what Lauren and Andrew have created is a creative laboratory that accommodates each their artistic backgrounds and interests and challenges them to keep exploring, whether through live performance, film or community happenings and always with movement and music at the core. LED has performed in venues all over the Western US, and their most recent short film, “Waters into Wilderness,” screened at festivals all over the world including the prestigious San Francisco Dance Film Festival. In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Lauren and Edson discuss how their distinct artistic personalities combined with their dedicated partnership to create the special sauce that keeps their young company nimble, inventive and exciting to the creative team and their audiences alike.https://www.ledboise.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Composer Brittany J. Green is already making waves in the world of new classical music. However, given the variety of inspirations that pervades her work – from computer-coding languages to Black feminist theory – and her growing passion for electronica and for DJing her own sets, she is very much beating an artistic path that disregards the boundaries of genre.Her work has been performed at concerts and festivals throughout the United States, including the Boulanger Initiative’s WoCo Fest and New York City Electronic Music Festival, and last year she recorded a new piece with the Atlanta Symphony that was released online in January 2022 as part of the Symphony’s “Concerts for Young People” series.A recent recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Charles Ives Scholarship and the ASCAP Foundation’s Morton Gould Award, Brittany is currently in residence at Duke University in Durham, NC, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in music composition as a Deans Graduate Fellow. In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Brittany discusses the two qualities that guide the evolution of her compositional practice: her ability to learn through deep listening and her commitment to cross-disciplinary collaborations. https://www.brittanyjgreen.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Artist, activist and visionary ChristinaMaria Xochitlzihuatl Patiño Houle is the co-founder and lead visionary of Las Imaginistas, a socially engaged art collective working to liberate the public imagination.Several of Las Imaginistas’ projects have centered on Brownsville, TX, including “Taller de Permiso,” an arts and economic-justice campaign. Through hands-on art-making workshops and events, “Taller de Permiso” harnessed the community’s collective imagination to parse and reimagine the municipal permitting process, particularly as it affects small businesses operating in communities of color.Another Las Imaginistas project is “Borders Like Water,” an ongoing international cross-cultural collaboration between healers, visionaries and thought leaders. “Borders Like Water” centers ancestral wisdoms and environmental understanding to answer the question, “If borders have been like ice, how can they move like water?”ChristinaMaria is also the Weaver for Voces Unidas, a network focused on immigration and community development issues serving the multi-state Rio Grande Valley. In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, ChristinaMaria, who is passionate about decolonizing longstanding historical and cultural practices, shares her deep unease with the traditional interview process and its fraught history and power dynamics. She then describes how she herself has honed her own listening practice when she visits and learns from Indigenous communities throughout the Americas.https://www.christinapatinohoule.com/https://www.lasimaginistas.com/https://www.giarts.org/blog/christinamaria-patino-xochitlzihuatl-houle/art-money-and-apocalypse-lots-questions-fewHosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

In February of 2022, Long Wharf Theatre, one of the country’s most respected regional theaters, released a bold statement. Starting with its 2022/23 season, the theater will not renew the lease on the space it has occupied for 57 years on the outskirts of New Haven, CT. Rather, under the leadership of artistic director Jacob Padrón, who joined Long Wharf in late 2018, the theater will commit at least for a few years to an itinerant production model that “will prioritize equity, accessibility and transparency, guided by three core pillars: revolutionary partnerships, artistic innovation, and radical inclusion.” Coming at a time when, especially in the wake of the pandemic, theaters all over the country are grappling with ways to reinvigorate and diversify their production models as well as their audience base, Long Wharf’s announcement made waves. Did this mark the beginning of the end of the traditional regional-theater model? In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Jacob — who is also the founder and artistic director of The Sol Project and whose career includes innovative producing stints at such august institutions as Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre and New York’s Public Theater — explains the impetus for this sea change in the theater’s production model. He also imagines a new path forward not only for his own theater but for the field as a whole.https://longwharf.org/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

In the twelve years since Austin-based landscape architect Daniel Woodroffe founded his firm, dwg, it has become a leader in sustainable design and low-impact development. The firm has worked on projects all over the world but has made a particularly deep impression on the landscape of its home city. One of dwg’s most remarkable years-long project finally came to fruition when in August of 2021 Waterloo Park, at 11 acres downtown Austin’s biggest greenspace, opened to the public. Daniel’s company served as the local landscape architect team for world-renowned landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh. Waterloo Park is a gorgeous urban oasis that features a 1.5-mile hike-and-bike trail, sinuous bridges, expansive lawns and a 5,000-seat amphitheater that has quickly become a premier music venue. The park is also universally accessible with barrier-free design. What a casual visitor might not necessarily know or notice is that the park was created to reclaim an urban overflow creek that over the years had not only often flooded but become a dumping ground. Now, thanks to dwg’s work, the creek’s water has been harnessed with engineering finesse to allow a wide array of plants native to Austin’s ecology to flourish as well as benefit local birds and pollinators.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Daniel explains how making urban spaces more sustainable and equitable is a recipe not only for economic dynamism but perhaps more importantly for good old-fashioned joy, an emotion he likes to cultivate in his offices as well.Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology with 15 years of experience working for some of the country’s top designers, Nyla Hasan in 2019 decided to create her own fashion line. A few complications — not the least of which was a pandemic — delayed the planned debut of the line, but in the fall of 2021 her dream became a reality when fashion brand the øther launched its first collection. The øther quickly made waves for its graceful blending of South Asian and Western influences and its use of both inventive as well as traditional South Asian techniques and handiwork. The line was profiled in The New York Times and Vogue, and — given that the clothes are all made to order — Nyla is currently preparing a third production cycle since the launch to meet demand.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Nyla describes how her own experience coming of age in two cultures informed the style and ethos of her line, making it truly distinctive, a candid reflection of its creator’s values. https://theother-collection.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Earl Maneein is a violinist and composer who loves nothing more than to lend his considerable chops as a classically trained musician to the sounds and venues of heavy metal and hardcore punk. None other than Robert Trujillo, bassist for Metallica, has called him “a kick-ass artist who pushes the creative boundaries.” Earl received a Bachelor of Music from Queens College and a Master of Music from the Mannes College of Music, where he studied with Daniel Phillips of the Orion String Quartet. He is the founder of and main composer for the string quartet SEVEN)SUNS, which plays both extant and new metal and hardcore work, and he is also a member of the Vitamin String Quartet, whose recent music was featured in the Netflix show “Bridgerton.” As a composer Earl has received commissions from a broad array of individuals and institutions, from internationally renowned violinist Rachel Barton Pine and pioneering hardcore band The Dillinger Escape to Plan to Dance Theater of Harlem and The Phoenix Symphony, helmed by past “Art Restart” guest Tito Muñoz. In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Earl describes how, knowing that he was never going to want to play in a traditional orchestra, he nevertheless challenged himself to get a classical-violin education so that he could craft his singular artistic identity with absolute confidence.http://www.earlmaneeinmusic.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Amelia Winger-Bearskin in an artist, technologist and researcher who specializes in working in and with artificial intelligence. She lives in Jacksonville, FL, where she is a Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Arts at the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida.Her work, though incredibly varied, always focuses on finding ways to use AI to benefit communities and the environment. In 2017 she founded a nonprofit, IDEA New Rochelle, that created a VR/AR Citizen toolkit to engage the community as co-designers of their future city. The project, in partnership with the New Rochelle mayor’s office, won a highly competitive $1 million Bloomberg Mayors Challenge grant. Amelia is Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma, Deer Clan, part of the Haudenosaunee Confederation, and through much of her work she interrogates the supposed neutrality of technology and AI and strives to imbue new technology with the values of her Native culture. In 2019 she created Wampum.Codes, which is both an ethical framework for software development based on Indigenous values of co-creation and an award-winning podcast of the same name. In the podcast, Amelia interviews Indigenous artists and technologists about how they manifest their Native cultures’ values in their work. In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Amelia draws a line between her youthful activities — providing music for her mother’s storytelling sessions and experimenting with her engineer father’s discarded prototypes — and her current mission to transform us all from mere consumers of technology to engaged participants creating a better world with new tools.https://www.studioamelia.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Troy Summerell has become well-known in his hometown of Virginia Beach, VA for his vibrant and joyful murals of flowers and ocean creatures that can be seen throughout the region, from the sides of large buildings to basketball backboards. He loves bringing joy to those who need it and has therefore often worked in hospitals that serve children. He recently completed his largest commission to date, a 100-foot-long mural enlivening an entire hallway in Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk, VA. Even the hospital’s ambulances are now wrapped in Troy’s unmistakable designs. His work also brightens the pediatric emergency room and the pediatric ICU at University of Florida Health Jacksonville, and in 2019 he traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico to paint a mural for the international nonprofit, Smile Train.Troy is also a small-business owner, having launched OnieTonie Designs™ in 2014 to support his at-the-time nascent career as an artist. OnieTonie has now become a recognizable brand that sells an ever-expanding list of merchandise, from socks and beach towels to coffee mugs and T-shirts, all sporting Troy’s signature aquatic creatures.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Troy describes how at a challenging crossroads in his life he, a self-taught artist, heeded his design and marketing instincts and risked a life-changing leap. https://onietonie.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

In June of 2021, Enrique Márquez arrived on the campus of the renowned Interlochen Center of the Arts in Interlochen, MI as its new Director of Music. Founded in 1928, Interlochen offers students from grades 3 through 12 a wealth of arts-education opportunities through several programs, including its boarding school, the Arts Academy, and its Summer Arts Camp.Before becoming an admired arts administrator and educator, Enrique was a professional violist who made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2005. He served as principal viola of The Orchestra of the Americas and the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra, performing in over 25 countries in the Americas, Asia and Europe with such conducting giants Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel, Gustavo Dudamel and Valery Gergiev. In his native Mexico, Enrique went on to become the youngest Director General of the Veracruz Cultural Institute. He also founded the Orquesta Filarmónica de Boca del Río, which quickly became treasured not only for its performances but also for its impact in the community as a cultural and educational hub. He also earned a Master’s in Cultural Policy and Management from City University London and a master’s in education at Harvard University Graduate School of Education. In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Enrique describes how a fundamental belief in music’s power to draw out every young person’s most vibrant qualities has determined his career path. https://www.interlochen.org/news/interlochen-center-for-arts-names-enrique-marquez-director-music?fbclid=IwAR2CKijIQEjWsce8Y_uo0432wBfIZpKYhDeVmB23vdB5nlygLL-xKY1j8X4https://www.filarmonicadeboca.org.mx/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Born and raised in Barbados, Valencia James studied modern dance in Budapest, Hungary and had the opportunity to perform work by some of the world’s most adventurous choreographers in international venues. However, it wasn’t until she started asking questions about what role artificial intelligence might play in shaping the future of the performing arts that she truly found her passion.Today Valencia works with innovative technologists and scientists to create collaborative performance pieces that blur the boundary between artificial intelligence and the human performer and that hint at how different the experience of performance may be for future artists and audiences alike. She and her collaborators have presented their research and AI-infused work at conferences all over the world. Two days after this interview, dancing in front of a camera in her home in Redwood City, CA, she premiered a brand-new live immersive piece titled “Suga’: A Live Virtual Dance Performance” in the New Frontier exhibition of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, proving that the worlds of film and live performance are very much already blending. In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Valencia explains how her work with technology has influenced her creativity and how an ethos of accessibility is proving useful in guiding her and her collaborators on their exploratory forays.https://festival.sundance.org/program/#new-frontier-info/61ae1eff14aef7791a1c579bhttps://valenciajames.com/https://volumetricperformance.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Sahba Aminikia is an Iranian American composer, musician and educator based in San Francisco whose own musical training spanned three continents. He first studied composition in the city of his birth, Tehran, and then relocated to Russia to attend the St. Petersburg State Conservatory. After emigrating as a refugee to San Francisco in 2006, Sahba then earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.His passion for blending genres and cultural influences in his work — he is as well-versed in traditional music from Iran and classical music from Europe as he is in the oeuvres of Pink Floyd and Queen — quickly garnered attention from musicians and ensembles all over the world. Among the performing groups to have commissioned him are Kronos Quartet, Brooklyn Youth Chorus and Symphony Parnassus, and his compositions have been performed all over the world.Sahba is also the founder and artistic director of the annual Flying Carpet Children Festival that since 2018 has been bringing music — and world-class musicians — as well as circus arts to the Turkish border city of Mardin to delight and engage refugee children from Iraq and Syria.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Sahba explains how his own experience as refugee has informed his belief that music is a form of spiritual liberation with the unique ability to unite peoples and cultures across all borders.https://www.sahbakia.com/https://www.flyingcarpetfestival.org/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxDN8k63jJMHosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

José Ome Navarrete Mazatl is the co-artistic director of NAKA Dance Theater in San Francisco, CA. Since he and fellow dancer Debby Kajiyama founded NAKA in 2001, the company has worked with a wide array of communities in the Bay Area as well as internationally to explore urgent social-justice issues.Among the communities and organizations with whom NAKA has partnered to create performance projects over the years are the Eastside Arts Alliance, a cultural and empowerment space for Black youth in East Oakland; Mujeres Unidas y Activas, a social- and economic-justice organization of Latina immigrant women; and Skywatchers, a group that works with formerly unhoused residents of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district to center their urgent concerns.NAKA has presented and discussed its work all over the world, including at the Hemisphere Institute’s 2007 Encuentro in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and in 2008 and 2014 as the San Francisco representative in SCUBA’S multi-state tours. José was a 2018 U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Fellow, a 2019 Dance/USA Artist Fellow, and just this year, José was one of only six choreographers to receive a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, José describes how the always surprising and often unpredictable input of the community members with whom he works has made him a more nimble, inventive and impactful artist.http://nakadancetheater.com/Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.