New York, NY (January 31, 2017) – Art In FLUX brings uptown downtown at RUSH Gallery with an all-women show for the month of March. REFRESH curated by Art In FLUX and hosted by RUSH Gallery opens Thursday, February 23, 6:00-9:00PM at 526 West 26th Street, RM 311, NYC. The women in this exhibition were invited to present ideas within Art In FLUX’s 2017 curatorial theme of Re-Imagining A City, a yearlong curatorial exploration that examines how the structure of cities affects social justice, using art, play, and community engagement as a catalyst for innovating urban life. REFRESH presents a women’s perspective and their innate compulsion to create safe, peaceful and equitable spaces. As women they seem inclined to address problems by first reflecting inward … and then projecting outward as a united cohesive force, apparent at the Woman’s March and other recent public forums of solidarity.
Alicia Grullón, Aya Rodriguez-Izumi, Elan, Leslie Jiménez, Rejin Leys, Shani Peters, Sui Park and Suprina each approach the topic in a unique way, some reflecting inward, others directly addressing the current state of affairs, yet all responded in a personal and passionate manner. The artists present a deep emotional connection to their communities and the propensity to internally absorb the trials and tribulations of family, friends, community and world news, thus needing a momentary escape, a REFRESH button, as reflected in Leslie Jimenez’ We’ve Been Fighting Lately, where an “old” self sits atop a personal bubble… “To be outside and on top of my invisible sacred space…to be present in life… is more than a choice but a responsibility as a woman, mother, and artist.” – Leslie Jimenez. Through their art the artists analyze the disparities, injustices and suffering. They create environments and experiences that challenge the status quo. They listen, comfort, embrace, and absorb the pain. They REFRESH and face the world again.
Exhibition Dates: NYC- January 12th– February 10th, 2017
Opening Reception- Thursday, January 12th 6-8PM
RUSH ARTS GALLERY | 526 WEST 26TH STREET, SUITE 311 | NEW YORK CITY, NY, 10001
NYC Artists Include: KIMBERLY BECOAT, LEONARDO BENZANT, MICHAELA PILAR BROWN, JEROME CHINA, THOM CORN, ALLISON JANAE HAMILTON, THEODORE HARRIS, AAQIL KA, NORVIS JUNIOR & TERENCE NANCE, DONALD ODITA, DEBORAH SINGLETARY, NOAH SMALLS, and NYUGEN SMITH
Exhibition Dates: Philly- January 21st– March 18th, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 21st 6-8PM
RUSH ARTS PHILLY | 4954 OLD YORK ROAD | PHILADELPHIA, PA 19141
Philly Artists Include: XENOBIA BAILEY, GREGORY COATES, NIKI HUNTER, VANESSA GERMAN, FABIOLA JEAN LOUIS, JOHNNY MATTEI, ANTHONY CARLOS MOLDEN, MARILYN NANCE, GABRIEL PACHECO, FAHAMU PECOU, ALEXIS PESKINE, KENYA (ROBINSON), KEVIN SAMPSON, and RENEE STOUT
Curatorial Statement
My pistol may snap, my mojo is frail
But i rub my root, my luck will never fail
When i rub my root, my John the Conquer root
Aww, you know there ain’t nothin’ she can do, Lord,
I rub my John the Conquer root
– Muddy Waters, My John Conqueror Root
There is much confusion and misinformation about African spiritual traditions, throughout the Diaspora. In recent years, there has been a reawakening and shift in the light that is being shined on African sacred traditions. From Lukumi, Santeria, Ifa, and Vodou, as more and more practitioners initiate and various cultural institutions offer educational programming that introduce audiences to these mystical traditions, a dark veil is being lifted off some of the world’s oldest ritualistic religions. However, there has always been much confusion and misinformation about the spiritual practices consistently acknowledged and maintained by the descendants of enslaved Africans geographically situated in the United States of America. Hoodoo, according to Dr. Katrina Hazard-Donald “is the folk spiritual controlling, and healing tradition originating among and practiced primarily, but not exclusively, by captive African Americans and their descendants primarily in the southern United States.” With its own musicology, dance forms, herbal medicine, and functional practicality, Hoodoo is indeed a liberatory technology that has long time been embraced and utilized by Black folk for healing, power and freedom. It has been practiced and maintained by healers, clients, truth seekers, spiritists, and those seeking to establish agency within their own realities. This two venue-exhibition seeks to explore the myriad of ways, artists of African descent are accessing old time technology in their practice, using their art to function, not for art’s sake, but for the expressed purpose of performing magic. “High John the Conqueror Ain’t Got Nothing On Me: American Hoodoo and Southern Black American-centric Spiritual Ways” is one-part superstition, two parts mojo with a dash of storytelling and lots of root workin’.
Written by Shantrelle P. Lewis
About the Guest Co-Curator
A native of New Orleans, Shantrelle P. Lewis (b. 1978) is a 2014 United Nations Programme for People of African Descent Fellow and 2012-13 Andy Warhol Curatorial Fellow. She is a U.S. based curator and researcher who travels internationally researching Diasporic aesthetics, spirituality and the survival and nuances of Transnational African Diasporan communities. Her traveling curatorial initiative The Dandy Lion Project, examines Global Black Dandyism through photography and film. Other exhibits and projects have been on view in institutions throughout the U.S. and Europe. She has written for Slate, NKA: Journal for Contemporary African Art and Art Papers. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, BBC, The Art Newspaper, Art Net and Huffingtonpost. At present, Shantrelle is researching ties between the Dutch Caribbean and the African Diaspora at-large. Since 2011, she has traveled extensively throughout the Dutch Caribbean Diaspora. Currently, she is directing and producing, The Black Dutchman, a documentary about the Dutch blackface tradition Zwarte Piet and Black identity in the Netherlands. Forthcoming is her first book, Dandy Lion, to be published by Aperture in Spring 2017. Shantrelle is a Lukumi priest of Shango.
About the Co-Curator
Danny Simmons, Jr., is an American abstract painter from Queens, NY, who once coined his particular style of painting as “neo- African Abstract Expressionism.” His talent and passion for the arts reaches beyond the canvas; He is a published author, poet, painter and art philanthropist. He has become a leader in the art world with his philanthropic ventures, artistic talents and creative mind and drive.
Simmons is the eldest of three sons. Raised by parents who emphasized the importance of education as well as individualism, Danny embraced fine arts while watching his mother, also an artist and painter. He’d eventually take on her love for painting and his father’s love for the written word – becoming renowned in both avenues of expression.
The New York Times, in reviewing one of his art exhibitions, stated that Simmons “injects freshness” into his abstracts, and that they are “meticulously rendered and decoratively impressive.” Today, his works appear in prominent locales around the globe, including: Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn Museum, Chase Manhattan Bank, Deutsche Bank, Schomburg Center for Black Culture, The Smithsonian, United Nations, and, on an international scope has shown work in France, Amsterdam and Ghana. In 2015, he will serve as a scholarly consultant for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, DC.
Simmons brings an equal passion to the written word,
thanks to his father, also an outstanding poet. The elder Simmons’ example during a time of racial strife and social upheaval impressed upon Danny the importance of maintaining integrity and serving as an advocate for truth and right.
These experiences prompted Danny to pen the critically acclaimed ‘Three Days as the Crow Flies’ and ‘I Dreamed My People Were Calling But I Couldn’t Find My Way Home’. In his most recent release, titled ‘Deep in Your Best Reflection’, Simmons takes on an even more personal tone in a compilation of real-life texts and emails shared with a former girlfriend.
Danny Simmons also played an instrumental role in the nation’s newfound love for poetry, particularly in the conceiving of and co-producing the hit HBO show Def Poetry Jam, a weekly TV series that exhibits an eclectic blend of old-school poets (such as legendary expressionists Nikki Giovanni and Amiri Baraka) and new-school poets. Its success is quite evident: Def Poetry is now offered as an elective at the University of Wisconsin, and Simmons won a Tony Award for the Broadway version of the show.
Simmons is co-founder, along with his siblings, music mogul Russell, and hip hop legend Joseph Simmons aka “Rev Run”, and president of the Rush Arts Gallery. He is also founder and VP of the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization “dedicated to providing disadvantaged urban youth with significant arts exposure and access to the arts.” He is a former board member of the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Public Library, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Conference of Artists. And his own works have been obtained by art lovers and renowned celebrities everywhere, including: music industry executive/producer Lyor Cohen, film director/producer Stan Lathan, musical producer Andre Harrell, actor Ron Perlman, renowned businessman Olivier Sarkozy, actress Annabella Sciorra, actor Will Smith, and many others.
Danny Simmons holds a Bachelor’s degree in social work from New York University, a Masters in public finance from Long Island University, and is the recipient of an honorary PhD from Long Island University. He continues to thrive at his ‘home gallery’ in Philadelphia, PA.
Big Smiles, opening Sunday, January 8th 4-6pm at The Corridor Gallery Project Space, 334 Grand Ave, Brooklyn, NY is the first exhibition of recent paintings by Michael Mut coming from the “Faces of the Big Smile Universe” series. These large-scale portraits, layered with repetitive meditative patterns and writings, exude the act of smiling and a meant to be contagious.
Each portrait is of a real person who has overcome personal hardships to carry on with positivity as exhibited through the large grin. Mut, was moved by “mechanics of the smile, the structure, muscles, attachments, and the neurological connection to the brain. I believe the action of smiling creates a positive reaction on a molecular level akin to the feeling we call love.” Mut believes that this “combination of molecules give off positive magnetic energy that the eye can’t see.” These positive vibrations can be felt from seeing people smile. When one sees one person smiling it can cause for us to mimic the action. The large grins exuding happiness, self-accomplishments, friendliness, and openness, are meant to inspire those feelings in the viewer.
Michael Mut has been an artist in Brooklyn since 1990. He is also the founder of the Art Education and Wellness minded non-profit The Love Yourself Project. Through his art and his dedication to The Love Yourself Project, Michael Mut strives to share positivity and mindfulness in all that he does.
There will be an artist talk at Corridor Gallery about the Big Smiles exhibition on Sunday, February 12th from 4-6pm. For inquiries about this exhibition please contact charlotte@rushartsgallery.org or via phone 845-480-1258.
Fem-Fragments examines a group of women artists who explore and dissect the historical and current understandings of femininity. While discovering the nuances imbedded in gender norms, these six artists break down our typical perceptions through fragmented representations. Through these fragmentations we are called to question our preconceived notions of femininity, from ideas based on a woman’s appearance to the roles they are traditionally understood to have.
Capucine Bourcart’s panels of finely stitched photographs are apart of a series called Haute Couture, where digital images of different neighborhoods in New York City and are quilted together to become the clothes of that area. She joins a traditional feminine practice with one of the more contemporary forms of art-making to reflect on the city its appearance. Also exploring photography as her medium, Aisha Jemila Daniels’s self-portrait series Acceptance examines an internal evaluation; as she floats in a blank space our attention is focused on her clothes, her body, and her submerged face of flowers. These black and white images asks us to look at her as a whole—the concealment and exposition of her body, the heritage bonded to her dress, and the strength in her poses—and not just her face, as we so often do when we evaluate a woman.
Focusing on perceptions of beauty as a status symbol, Mira Gandy uses images of glamorous black women from vintage beauty advertisements. Through a breakdown of collage and painting, she is interested in the consistent signifiers that determine a woman’s beauty. She examines these signifiers (in particular hair type and skin complexion) through the lens of race, attempting to comprehend the desires of both races wanting to look more like the other. Similar to Gandy, Gail Skudera uses antique black and white photographs, yet it is combined with patterned weaving. Her woven photo collages brings craft to the forefront, as we examine her layered female subjects that float through each stitch, becoming more apparent while remaining hidden.
Camille Eskell incorporates trauma through her truncated mannequins and various sculptures of female body parts to question social and cultural expectations surrounding the figure. This beautifully damaged parts, transformed by their natural tattoos and collaged garments, undermines the integrity of form to challenge assumptions about appearance and how it interacts with reality. Michaela Pilar Brown also strives to challenge normative understandings of the body and how it functions in specific spaces and environments. As seen in her works on paper, the body is broken down and joined with other familiar objects to combat mythologies about the female figure.
The Opening Reception will take place Sunday, January 8th from 4-6pm. In conjunction with Fem-Fragments there will be an artist talk with the artists and curators on Sunday, January 29th from 4-6pm. For further information about this exhibition please contact charlotte@rushartsgallery.org or via phone 845-480-1258.
New York, NY (September 28th, 2016) — Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation is proud to present 21st Century Abstract Painting and Sculpture, curated by Gerald Jackson. 21st Century Abstract Painting and Sculpture highlights over a dozen female abstract artists. The show is on view from September 29-October 21, 2016 at Rush Arts Gallery, 536 West 26th Street, Suite 311, New York, NY 10001.
The curator sought to reframe the history of American abstract art, particularly the New York School in the mid-twentieth century. The artists included in 21st Century Abstract Painting and Sculpture represent Jackson’s selection of some today’s best practitioners in the genre of abstraction. Jackson calls them The Essentialists, named after The Irascibles–a group of artists from the twentieth century New York School. The Essentialists inherit and reimagine the values of abstraction from the New York School.
Jackson states:
“Nina Leen’s iconic photo of The Irascibles was reproduced in Life magazine, January 15, 1951. It pictured a group of fourteen heavy hitting male painters, DeKooning, Rothko, Pollock, etc. and one woman – Hedda Sterne, posed at a meeting of the New York School. But that was yesterday and this is today. I wanted to flip that script and represent the artists as all women except for one man. This is only appropriate given the age we now occupy – an age in which 21st century abstraction is increasingly defined by women and ethnic diversity.”
The artists include: Rai Alexandra, Pat Badt, Linda Geary, Elizabeth Hazan, Cecily Kahn, Annika Kappner, Marthe Keller, Addie Langford, Jill Nathanson, Jennifer Riley, Julie Shapiro, Rebecca Smith, Kim Uchiyama, Lynn Umlauf, and Gerald Jackson.
An opening reception will be hosted at Rush Arts Gallery on Thursday, September 29th from 6-8pm. During the exhibition’s duration the gallery will host an artist talk on Saturday, October 15th from 4-6pm. For more information, please email olayne@rushphilanthropic.org.
About Gerald Jackson
Born in Chicago, Jackson gained notice when his work was included in two influential 1970s exhibitions–the 1970 Afro-American Artists: New York and Boston at the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, Boston, and the 1971 Black Artists: Two Generations at the Newark Museum. Recently, his works have been in group exhibitions at the Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA, and Rush Arts Gallery, the Chelsea Art Museum, and Kenkeleba House, all New York. A 1973 illustrated book of his is also in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
About the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation
Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation was founded in 1995 in New York City by media mogul Russell Simmons and his brothers, artist and activist Danny Simmons and Joseph “Rev. Run” Simmons, and committed to bettering the lives of underserved inner-city youth through meaningful exposure to the arts and hands-on art education programs, and to as providing professional support to artists at the beginning of their careers, mostly artists of color. The Rush Gallery Program provides open calls, residencies, professional support and exhibition opportunities to artists and curators focusing on those that are emerging and frequently marginalized, especially artists of color, by the commercial art field. Rush’s rich 20 year exhibition history has exhibited nearly 2,000 artists and aided in supporting the careers of artists.
Brooklyn Artist Draws Lines Through Gentrification, Racism with View From Nowhere Exhibition at Rush Arts Gallery
NEW YORK, NY (August 23, 2016) Following her summer residency at Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, artist Oasa DuVerney debuts a new collection of work entitled, The View From Nowhere on Thursday, September 8 at Rush Arts Gallery. The View From Nowhere is a showcase of social justice-driven large-scale drawings and mixed media works created to give a “visual voice” for those who continue to be silenced. The opening reception on September 8 will begin at 6:00 p.m. The exhibition closes on Friday, September 23 with the artist in conversation with Oasa DuVerney and Kate Fauvell at 4:00 p.m.
Oasa views her art as a mediation negotiating the many challenges on the fault lines of class, gender, and race, in our hyper-linked, strife-beset environment. The View From Nowhere features Oasa DuVerney’s epic graphite-based works created during her residency. The artist said of her work:
As a black woman, I recognize that people who look like me we are often invisible. We are silenced. That’s part of what I’m responding to: that constant silencing, the idea that we should not be in public spaces, that we cannot exist or live in peace, at least not entirely as we please. The View From Nowhere simultaneously references the perspective of the marginalized, those who are ignored and looked over and the historic claim of the white male perspective being neutral – untarnished by race, gender or nationality. Building on the story of Renisha McBride seen only through a screen door before being murdered by Theodore Wafer, the screens in my drawings are symbolic of the filter between the white male gaze and others.
The work is born of DuVerney’s lived experiences and observations, with themes ranging from criminalization of black and brown, bodies, gentrification, housing scarcity, and other pressing social justice issues facing women and people of color in New York City and the United States at-large.
Archived Memories, a solo exhibition with Kate Fauvell, in the Rush Arts Gallery Project Space September 8th – 23rd 2016. There will be an opening Reception Thursday September 8th 6-8pm and an artist talk on Saturday Sept 17th from 4-6pm. Rush Arts Gallery is open Wednesday- Saturday 12-6pm.
This exhibition Archived Memories includes large scale interior pieces using collage, paint, and found objects that echo memories of place, home, and childhood. Kate Fauvell is nostalgic for the Queens home of her grandparents and relishes in the memories held within relatable stories told in the kitchen, or the sites of grandma’s apron.
The letter “Dear Jim….” Is a heartfelt love note that was carried with the recipient (the artist’s grandfather) for years that shows the love that built the home over a 45+ year long marriage. A home fills with objects quickly and to the artist “these objects had been through so much that the objects themselves had become a part of my family, they showed the passing of time and had became familiar symbols for home. The objects bared stories.”
These family stories of place time and what creates a home are what makes Archived Memories. Come walk into the memories of place to feel the warmth of home in the Rush Arts Gallery Project Space.
Magical realism is not merely a literary genre, but instead a very real actuality for we – the black and brown people of this earth. We smuggle the spiritual into every waking moment just as Afro-Futurism smuggles the intellectual and the axé (after Paul Carter Harrison and Sandra Jackson Dumont) – the beauty and the power of our multitudinous voices – into the every day. Imagine scenes of lush color flooded by the light of the sun – in Bridgetown, in Brooklyn, in Brixton, in Bamako. Intersections of the past, present and future grounded in the magic that was already in the soil, in the air, passed on by our ancestors through breath, bonds, blood, ritual well after we came across the Atlantic all of these many times. We carry it with us wheresoever we go – this abundant color, rhythm, swagger, this ambulatory cosmology. Who and what we are now is a combination of Ley lines and the mixtures of all the noises and the gods we carry in our blood from the Americas, West Africa and India and whatever other watersheds we came from. Because of this, we see and hear magic in everything across water, space and time. Through the work of selected visual artists, Black Magic: AfroPasts/AfroFutures explores magical blackness through the lens of days gone by and imaginings of what is yet to come across the Diaspora.
Black has long been associated with Artists and New York. Medium: Black pulls together a diverse group of artists who have all come to use the color black almost solely in a body of artworks to create dramatic works with profound statements. Ranging from mourning traditions, traditional hairstyles, human depth, and spiritual meditations on contemporary and ancient traditions.
In the first gallery a large-scale installation by Victoria-Idongesit Udandion, inspired by the Onile-Gogoro hairstyles photographed by Okhai Ojeikere has reflecting traditional Nigerian hairstyles. Near the installation are the slick painterly sculpted wall-mount forms of Gabriel J.Shuldiner; who manipulates the versatility of black substances including inorganic synthetic carbon and acrylic based hybrid paint. Complimenting Shuldiner’s slick forms are the meditative sculptural paintings of LeRone Wilson. He uses the ancient traditions of encaustic building delicate forms, which in this case are also self-reflecting on the power of blackness. Entering the space are the works of Spencer Merolla, who has been exploring the color black, particularly as it pertains to Victorian mourning traditions, by creating large geometric patterns created from funeral clothes.
The second gallery reflects on the mysteries of human depth. Three “Etchings on Canvas” by Parris Jaru, who works solely with natural pigments, focus on numerical and astrological symbols combined with artist poetry and musings of human nature etched into the canvas. The morphing black sculptures of Charlotte Becket, are hypnotic as they celebrate and question the status quo, using automation, information, consumerism, progress, pathos, humor and aesthetic seduction. Complimenting the naturalist forms of Beckett hangs a large black square by Stan Squirewell, Rush AIR 2015, uses found objects and alternative materials to reflecting on both natural and handmade universal shapes found in contemporary society. Selections from the “Jane Doe/John Doe” series by Dominique Duroseau which re-humanizes characters that have been abstracted, broken, and hollowed finish the black reflections on what is means to be human.
The Opening Reception will be Thursday April 14th 6-8pm. This exhibition will include an artist discussion of black in contemporary art Saturday April 30th at 4pm. There will also be a discussion of ancient art techniques and pigments with Parris Jaru and LeRone Wilson and a film screening of “A Trail of Pigments” a documentary film by Kiritin Beyer on a search for natural pigments in India, on Saturday May 7th at 2pm.
Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation was founded in 1995 in New York City by media mogul Russell Simmons and his brothers, artist and activist Danny Simmons and Joseph “Rev. Run” Simmons, and committed to bettering the lives of underserved inner-city youth through meaningful exposure to the arts and hands-on art education programs, and to as providing professional support to artists at the beginning of their careers, mostly artists of color. The Rush Gallery Program provides open calls, residencies, professional support and exhibition opportunities to artists and curators focusing on those that are emerging and frequently marginalized by the commercial art field. Rush’s rich 20 year exhibition history has exhibited nearly 2,000 artists and aided in supporting the careers of artists.
All Gallery Events are Free and Open to the Public.
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday – Saturday
12-6pm
For press inquiries please contact: info@rushphilanthropic.org
Everyday Redefined
Visual art exhibit, on display March 13th – April 17th at Corridor Gallery features artists: Olaniyi Akindiya, Jackie Branson, Pia Coronel, Niki Lederer, Valerie Piraino, and Margot Spindelman. Curated by Rachel Rath.
Brooklyn, NY– Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation is pleased to present Everyday Redefined, an eye opening art exhibition illustrating the multifunctional uses of everyday items – March 13th through April 17th at Corridor Gallery (334 Grand Ave, Brooklyn, NY). Niki Lederer, Valerie Piraino, Pia Coronel, Jackie Branson, Olaniyi Rasheed Akindiya (Akirash), and Margot Spindelman each manage to create a unique comment on everyday life by using common objects in a new way – either as a raw material to work with, or as an inspiration to create. The artwork on display creates a reflection of our lives, both alone and as connected to one another.
Niki Lederer, a MFA graduate from Hunter College, finds inspiration in discarded plastic bottles. Gathered from curbside recycling all over the north side of Williamsburg, her sculptures make a powerful statement about the mass consumption and mass waste created in contemporary life. The bottles take on a life of their own, either as large-scale behemoths, lightweight aerial pieces, or as flattened grids that resemble large format textiles. The variety in usage only serves to highlight the commonality of the base materials. Stripped of their labels, many of these bottles are almost immediately identifiable due to the high levels of advertising and branding surrounding their bottles, humorously brought to attention in the play on words in Westcoast Red Tide, 2015.
Pia Coronel, a conceptual artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, goes on meditative forest walks to find her artistic building blocks. She uses materials such as found wood, stones, shells, and soil to create her pieces. The natural materials are carefully selected, serving to highlight our connections (or lack of) to nature. There is an element of searching to her work, of an individual trying to find their place of origin. The wood, stones, shells, and soil become elevated from their everyday status.
Valerie Piraino, has obtained an MFA from Columbia University and a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. She grew up between Sub-Saharan Africa and the United States. Inspired by her own transnational identity, the African Diaspora, economy and natural resources, Piraino sculpts fruit such as papaya and coconut that can either be viewed as common or exotic, depending on one’s perspective. By coating them in black and gold paint, she references the long history of mining on the African continent. Covered in organic debris, these objects could be seen as being dredged up from the earth. Using materials like sawdust, natural grasses, and resin, the surface takes on skin-like qualities. This “skin” – pocked, diseased, bruised, and adorned – reminds us of those who harvest these resources. Piraino hopes to elucidate contemporary African life by connecting large-scale issues to everyday lives. Her sculptures give form to the experiences of powerful institutions destroying people’s access to their own countries’ resources.
Jackie Branson, holds a BFA from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. She uses both her Armenian heritage and her daily life in the 21st century to reinvent the average carpet. These Karpets are not the soft, woven pieces one might imagine. Yes, they include textiles, but are also built with heavy, hard, sharp materials such as saw blades and electronic parts, everyday materials in Branson’s life. The resultant sculptures are a paradox – a traditionally soft, welcoming item rendered with aggressive materials.
Olaniyi Rasheed Akindiya, also known as Akirash, has studied at the University of Agriculture and the Institute of Textile Technology Arts and Design. Akirash focuses his work on moments in time. He is concerned with the accelerated pace of development and social infrastructure that differentiate rural and urban life. He is also concerned with the overriding power systems that govern our everyday existence. This is reflected in his usage of a multitude of materials. “Omo Laso” is a mixed media tapestry painting, woven from found objects, threads, and acrylic paint. It offers a quiet, inner truth, inspired by rhythm, harmony and repetition.
Margot Spindelman, has obtained an MFA from San Francisco art Institute and has graduated Magna cum laude, with a BFA from the University of Michigan. Her series “Roofs, Berths and Currents” gives voice to the tenuous places, landscapes that shift planes before solidity (and security) coalesce. There are references to rain and water, roofs and windows, decay and distress. Elements emerge, submerge, and disappear. The drawings are made on small, irregular pieces of paper, taped down and coated in gesso. The resultant surface does not resemble any traditional drawing surface. The rhythm of these pieces is created by the play of marks, the tough or elegiac line of a fountain pen meeting an incursion of color, creating found shards of a story.
Meet the artists at the Opening Reception on March 13TH from 4-6pm at Corridor Gallery, 334 Grand Ave, Brooklyn, NY. There will be an Artist Talk Sunday April 10th 4-6pm.
For press inquiries please contact: info@rushphilanthropic.org