PECHAKUCHA QUARTET: ART EXPERIMENTS BY EDUCATORS
FREE EVENT at CAA
Location and Time:CAA 107th Annual Conference in New York City.
Thursday, February 14, 5:30-7:00PM
1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019
Holland Suite, 4th Floor, Hilton New York Midtown Hotel
Four fantastic short talks by featured alumni of the Transart Institute, a global transdisciplinary art and research community. Artist/professor speakers include Fulbright Fellow Miriam Schaer, Decorative Arts Historian Allison Geremia, Else Foundation and ECOCA Cofounder Jeanne Criscola, and featured TED speaker Virgil Wong.
PROGRAM:
5:30 - 5:45 - Jeanne Criscola
5:45 - 6:00 - Miram Schaer
6:00 - 6:15 - Allison Geremia
6:15 - 6:30 - Virgil Wong
6:30 - 7:00: Reception
7:00 - 9:00: Dinner and/or Drinks at Omikasa
Omikasa 31 West 52nd St. Midtown (3 min walk)
https://www.omakasa.com/midtown
READING COLOR: TYPE IN AND ON COLOR
WITH JEANNE CRISCOLA
While we learn about color experientially from birth, later we are taught its properties with abbreviated diagrams in the shape of a pie or the form of a rainbow. Similar types of examples are used to teach students of communication design the rules and guidelines associated with typography. Sometimes these examples go further than simple black letterforms on a white background and employ color to the letters and the ground to illustrate effects color has in type. But in actuality these methods, devoid of a situational context, fall short of their intention to inform how the myriad configurations of type in sizes and styles—and the infinite spectrums of color—visually interact. This presentation is a prequel to my book about the synergistic intricacies of typography and color and means to integrate their pedagogy.
Jeanne Criscola is a designer/artist/educator whose work exploits their intersections. Her studio, Criscola Design, collaborations with organizations and authors on cultural production multiples under imprints Useless Press and OctoberWorks. Jeanne founded the Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven and co-founded Else Foundation, a global consortium publishing Else, a peer-reviewed journal of creative research initiatives in experimental and alternative projects and research. Her artworks take many forms and media that include installation, time-based media, performance, and the book with one she designed and produced for the Soros Foundations that is in the Franklin Furnace Collection of MOMA. Currently, Jeanne teaches design at CCSU in Connecticut.
PRACTICE-BASED RESEARCH IN THE CONTEXT OF CRAFTWITH ALLISON GEREMIA
While ‘craft’ is generally pushed into a terminal degree at the MFA status, a PhD program facilitates the necessity for further study. Throughout my course of study in contemporary narrative jewelry, it has become clear that practice is an element that is both natural and mandatory for the continued understanding of its context. As a historian and a maker, I have looked at the jewelry medium throughout many lenses and I find that my personal understanding has informed my dissertation. I have been allowed to activate my practice through inquiry.
Allison Geremia is a current Ph.D. candidate at Transart Institute studying contemporary jewelry of the United States and its sociological implications. She received her Masters at Parsons in the History of Decorative Arts and Design at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Her undergraduate studies in Art History and Jewelry/Metalsmithing from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth have allowed her to access craft in a hands-on and theoretical way. Her most recent publication is entitled “Through the Lens of a Jewellery Practice: An inquiry into photographic representation within a practice-based Ph.D.” in The Journal of Arts Writing by Students.
BOOKS OF MEMORY
WITH MIRIAM SCHAER
“Life is all memory,” Tennessee Williams wrote, and memory, he might well have added, nurtures the artistic process — memories, in my case, of the struggle to accept my infertility, and of a fragile collaboration with my mother, a former maternity nurse, as she slipped into dementia before passing away at 90. They led me to create a multidisciplinary body of work which includes portfolio of photographs, a series of layered prints using some of her garments, and two limited-edition books exploring our intertwined lives. Using pages from her final notebook, filled with the incoherence of a gone mind, is the starting point for my newest work, reminiscences printed and partly embroidered on translucent silk.
Miriam Schaer (www.miriamschaer.com) is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. She exhibits extensively and is represented in numerous collections, including both the Yale Museum and Yale’s Sterling Library, the Brooklyn Museum, Harvard University, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Tate Gallery in London, Duke University, and the University of California. Her work has earned a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Soros Foundation support, and artist residencies in Spain, Estonia, India and Egypt. She has taught the Art of the Book at Columbia College Chicago, the Pratt Institute and numerous institutions throughout the U.S. A Fulbright Scholar, Schaer spent part of 2017 in the Republic of Georgia, where she established the Artist Book Collection at Telavi State University. She currently serves on the board of directors of the Center for Book Arts in New York.
http://miriamschaer.com
http://miriamschaer.tumblr.com/
http://feltreports.tumblr.com/
http://whatsyourbaby.tumblr.com/
INTER-CORPOREAL TIME TRAVEL: PREGNANT MEN, AVATARS, AND REINCARNATION
WITH VIRGIL WONG
A Lazarus Syndrome patient awoke from death and told her doctors that all time occurs at once. "Upon the breath that is our last," she said, "We are reborn as another person – present, future, or past. So everyone, he and she, that's walked (or will walk this earth) is inside of you and inside of me. And every possible you and every possible me. Our purpose in life then, our meaning, is to see inside ourselves, in each other, the lives of every other human being."
In this talk, artist and health technologist Virgil Wong describes how drawing cadavers, creating VR avatars, visualizing people's pain with symptom data maps, and designing science fiction medical technologies has led to a speculative narrative on how all life and death in the universe are interconnected.
Virgil Wong creates art and technology to transform human health. As cofounder and CEO of Medical Avatar LLC, he pioneered “medical time travel” visualizations with health coaching programs that reduced rates of diabetes and heart disease in high-risk communities. For 15 years, he founded and led the Web and multimedia division at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College. Since 2000, he has been a part-time assistant professor at The New School, now teaching media design and virtual reality.
Virgil exhibits art about medicine and society in museums around the world – including the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, and Deitch Projects in New York. His film Murmur, based on a cardiovascular surgeon’s dream journal, premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.
At Columbia University, his doctoral research investigated cognition and intelligent technologies for health behavior transformation. He is currently Executive Director of Digital Experience at Element, a digital solutions provider serving healthcare organizations like Anthem, Harvard Pilgrim HealthCare, City of Hope, Northwestern Medicine, and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. To watch his TED talk, please visit: http://virgilwong.com