Maine performance artist Sara Juli makes a point of saying the word vagina at least once a day. “It’s a perfectly lovely word,” Juli says from her home in Portland, Maine, where she in moved in 2014 with her husband and two children after 15 years in Brooklyn.

“It’s not a curse word or an offensive word,” she says. “It’s a body part. How can you empower girls if they can’t say a part of their body? It should be celebrated, not shunned.”

Unfortunately for Juli as a new mother, that vagina gave her a lot of trouble, going into spasms that led to four years of urinary incontinence. Luckily for her as an artist, she found a way to use humor as the basis of a performance piece based on her actual diagnosis of tense vagina, the treatment for it, and the chaotic years of new motherhood.

Sara Juli performing Tense Vagina: an Actual Diagnosis at Asheville Masonic Temple in 2016, photo by Kristofer Alan Thompson

The piece, “Tense Vagina: an Actual Diagnosis,” premiered at the experimental SPACE Gallery in Portland in 2015 and has been touring ever since. “I was quietly suffering,” Juli says. “I assumed that peeing in your pants all the time was part of the experience of having a baby. Women say they suffer their whole life from this. What I love about using humor on a taboo topic is that it allows people to listen to you.”

Treatment for dysfunctional pelvic floor muscles at a pelvic floor rehabilitation center in Portland form the basis of Juli’s piece. At her first visit, she started choreographing her performance. She weaves in what she calls “the underbelly of motherhood, the loneliness in the early years of raising children.”

This hour-long solo uses humor, movement, sounds, songs, text and audience participation, Kegel exercises, and vibrators “in a non-sexualized way,” Juli says. “I think it’s empowering for women to think about their vaginas and what their vaginas need.” In program notes, she includes information about the location of local pelvic floor rehabilitation centers.

A native of Waterford, Connecticut, Juli trained in modern and improvisational dance, graduating from Skidmore College with a degree in dance and anthropology. To Juli, the two fields are related. “Dance is all about connecting with people,” she says, “and anthropology is about connecting with people in all cultures.”

Juli’s work has been performed in New York at such places as Performance Space 122, Danspace Project, Movement Research at Judson Church, and Joe’s Pub as part of the Dancenow/NYC Festival, as well as nationally and internationally. She will perform “Tense Vagina” at Ko Festival of Performance in mid-July in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Juli credits the move to Maine with invigorating her creation of new solo work. “In New York, thousands of voices are similar to yours,” she says. “My career has taken off since I moved to New England. My voice is stronger. The air quality alone makes you feel happy.”

When she is not working on new performance projects, Juli is building a fundraising consulting practice, Surala Consulting. In the practice, she advises national artists and non-profits on strategic fundraising solutions. “The arts are threatened in a major way,” she says, “and making sure that artists have a diverse fundraising profile is critical.”

Sara Juli–performance artist
Portland, Maine
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Top Image Sara Juli performing Tense Vagina: an Actual Diagnosis at American Dance Festival 2016, photo by Grant Halverson

The post Vagina Matters appeared first on Take Magazine.

“My entire life is my studio,” says Robert “Bob” Gregson, conceptual and graphic artist, modern architecture fanatic, sculptor, thinker, author, teacher, and prankster. He says this with a laugh. Indeed, Gregson laughs a lot when he tries to explain his art. If you spend any time at all with him, you realize that the world is Gregson’s canvas, and he intends to have fun painting it.

A public artist of near legendary status in Connecticut since his graduation from the University of Hartford in 1970, Gregson has enlisted thousands of strangers over the years to play along with his often audacious stunts. Best known for his years of work in Hartford through the Knox Foundation and, later, his own non-profit, Sidewalk, Inc., he seemed to be on a one-man mission to revitalize the Insurance City’s downtown.

Among his creations was “Thursday Is a Work of Art.” On that day each week in downtown Hartford, he and his co-conspirators unleashed all manner of gleeful mayhem, including skywriters, sword fighters, parachutists, bump dancers, street games, oversized furniture and clowns. “It was very controversial at times,” he says with another laugh. “I had to leave Hartford for a while.”

Gregson’s latest foray in the public sphere is “Out of Order,” at Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven. In it, Gregson invites visitors to create their own art space by remodeling his wall installations and sculptures, the latter mounted on the wheeled casters on the floor. All of the pieces are painted in geometric Mondrian-like patterns, in every conceivable permutation, from bold (yellow, red, black) to muted (grey, silver, brown). A prodigious amount of work went into installing the month-long show, which ends June 30. I counted 32 moving parts in the downstairs gallery alone. Think: Playscape for adults.

Out of Order opening

Outside of two years at the Art Institute of Chicago, earning his master’s degree, Gregson has lived in the Nutmeg State since his undergraduate years in Hartford. “I never felt a part of where I came from, New Jersey, and I was not good at suffering alone in Brooklyn like a hipster,” says Gregson, who was also creative director for Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism for 22 years. “I had a lot of friends here. Early on, people became a medium for me. I started off in art school doing traditional representational work and was even highly mocked for it by other students. At some point, I was taking one of my pieces down from the wall and noticed that some of the other students had started to play with them. It was more fun than just hanging stuff on the wall, more dynamic. I thought, ‘The art work is a prop for this experience.’”

That was the proverbial lightbulb-over-the-head moment for Gregson. “I began to ask, ‘What is it that I’m contributing with my art?’” The answer was a framework that gives people permission to play.
After looking back over the past half-century of his art career, Gregson concludes, “I have led a lot of lives.”

“Just A Phase” offers a closer look at Gregson’s many lives; the short film was created by his nephew, also named Robert Gregson.

Robert Gregson-Artist
Orange, Connecticut
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The post Connecticut’s Merry Prankster appeared first on Take Magazine.

In a former lifetime in which the person inhabiting the Oval Office had an actual vision based on facts, the arts were recognized as an integral measure of our society. President John F. Kennedy, for instance, said this about the arts: “We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda. It is a form of truth.”

Truth, of course, has taken a hit since 45 took office. That whole “alternative facts” bit. But numbers, or so the saying goes, don’t lie. So with that in mind, we took a quick look at the potential math implications of 45’s federal budget.

First the overview:

• Number of programs and agencies due for elimination: 62
• Number of programs within the Environmental Protection Agency alone: 50

Other programs due for funding cuts—or outright elimination—focus on everything from literacy to low-income home energy improvements to investigating chemical accidents. The enormous breadth and scope of impact on those least able to manage without these programs is breathtaking.

But since we’re an arts and culture magazine, we’re going to focus our hyperventilation on the potential impact of these devastating cuts to art and culture in New England. The proposed budget calls for eliminating all funding for the National Endowment for the Arts ($152 million) and the National Endowment for the Humanities ($155 million).

What NEA funding means to New England:

For fiscal year 2017, New England states received $2.591 million in NEA grants overall, according to the NEA website. Here’s who got what:

• Connecticut: 15 organizations, $310,000
• Massachusetts: 62 organizations, $1,672,000
• Maine: 11 organizations, $242,000
• New Hampshire: 6 organizations, $120,000
• Rhode Island: 9 organizations, $152,500
• Vermont: 4 organizations, $95,000

But the math adds up even less when you look beyond straight grants. Ann Wicks, communications manager for the New England Foundation on the Arts (NEFA)—one of six regional arts organizations funded by the NEA and private donations—explains. Arts organizations can potentially receive NEA dollars in three ways:

• an outright allocation of a grant the organization applies for itself
• an allocation from NEFA through NEA dollars provided to NEFA
• from NEA dollars given to state arts organizations, such as the Massachusetts Cultural Council

Wicks says about 15 percent of NEFA’s annual budget comes from NEA dollars. Beyond grants, NEFA uses those dollars to support artists in other, less direct ways, Wicks says. The Creative Ground Directory, for instance, is a free resource that lists artists and other creators around New England so that it’s easier to find appropriate collaborators for projects. In FY2016, NEFA made a total of 462 grants equaling $3.4 million. New England states received $829,947 of those NEFA grants.

In other words, the loss of funding to New England arts and humanities organizations could be even larger. “NEA support is very important to New England and the creative sector,” she says.

It’s a point that is echoed nationally. The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), a national nonprofit that assists state arts agencies, offers this math about how NEA dollars improve the economy at large:

• The arts return $22.3 billion in tax revenue to federal, state, county, and municipal governments.
• Rural areas, low-income communities, and schools would feel the effects of this funding loss disproportionately from reductions. State arts agencies (using state and federal funds) award more than 25% of their grants to rural areas, 54% to low-income communities, and 45% to arts education projects.
• Every NEA dollar leverages more than $9 in matching funds, meaning that the impact of the NEA loss is just the beginning of the potential financial loss for arts organizations.

Cutting the NEA and NEH seem especially confusing given this math offered by NASAA: The NEA receives 0.004% of the total Federal budget, which is less than ½ of one hundredth of a percent.

That math also doesn’t add up when you consider the numbers presented by The Guardian. The British paper reports the following expenses incurred by taxpayers less than 50 days into 45’s residency:

• $56.6 million (or a cool $500,000 a day) to protect Trump Tower. That was through March 1. Assuming that Mrs. 45 stays until June for Mini-45 to finish school, that dollar amount could add another $46 million, bringing the total to $102 million.
• $3+million estimated cost for EACH weekend jaunt to golf work at his Mar-a-Lago Resort (a place where he doubled entry fees from $100,000 to $200,000 the day after he was elected).
• $97,380 for hotels for Secret Service to protect Eric Trump (that would be his son on those business interests 45 still hasn’t divested himself of) while he visited a condominium development in Uruguay. This is just one trip.

And finally this statistic: 45’s proposed military spending increase in his federal budget? $54 billion.

Something definitely doesn’t add up.

Does this irritate you as much as it does us? Here are a few links if you want to #TakeAction. See you on the streets.

Pen.org
artsactionfund.org
Change.org
The Official White House Petition to Save Arts Funding
Contact Your Representative
Arts Advocacy Day – Washington, DC
#SaveTheNEA

Top image courtesy Royal Talens

The post #TakeAction: Doing the NEA Defunding Math appeared first on Take Magazine.

If you’re looking for classical art, this isn’t it, and that’s exactly the point. ToUch Performance Art is making the classics accessible by yanking them from the theater and throwing them down on the dance floor of a pulsing night club. It’s sexy, it’s interactive, and it’s all based on classical art. Imagine sipping a beer and shaking your booty while a *hot* aerialist twists and slides to electronic music from silks above your head, and a trifecta of go-go dancers makes symbolic love to a conductor on the other side of the room. Makes that worn, velvet-upholstered, slightly musty auditorium seating at the symphony seem a little less appealing, doesn’t it?

The two ultra talented girl-bosses behind this organized madness are Marissa Rae Roberts and Elizabeth McGuire. They’ve been dead set on revolutionizing the way you experience theater since they met while working towards their BFAs at the Boston Conservatory of Art at Berklee. Although coming from two very different worlds of performing art—Marissa from musical theater and Liz from dance and choreography—the two shared an insatiable urge for the immersive, for meshing their art forms together to create a truly dynamic, visceral outcome. “We needed to create something where we could honor the classics and also break the rules,” says Roberts, “and put it into a context that a contemporary audience would really enjoy, and be inspired to listen to an opera or watch a ballet after our show.” Six years later, ToUch is reinventing your fine art experience to be electric, interactive, booze-infused, and, frankly, way more fun.

Photo courtesy of ToUch Performance Art

ToUch’s claim to fame is their six-years-running show, AcousticaElectronica, a strobe-light-glitter-encrusted intersection of old art, contemporary vices, and timeless tropes in classical theater. The AcousticaElectronica storyline draws inspiration from a number of pieces and symbols in classical art, theater, and music, while integrating modern dance and electronic music in a club setting with a full bar. Arnold Schöenberg‘s Pierrot Lunaire, Oscar Wilde‘s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Georges Bizet‘s Carmen are just a few inspirations for Acoustica that the average classical theater and opera buff might notice. Unfamiliar with the revered work AcousticaElectronica draws upon? No problem. The delightful sensory overload of music, lights, and performers whirring around you begs you to succumb and indulge anyway. “One of our goals was to bring classical art to a group of people that wouldn’t normally experience or see it,” says Roberts. “From the beginning, we’ve had people who are fist pumping at an opera singer who have no idea what opera she’s singing, but they’re enjoying it.”

Much like a favorite bar or club, this show is deserving of more than just one go. “It’s like Cubism,” McGuire says. “In a sculpture that’s Cubist, there’s 360 degrees of something. And that’s how AcousticaElectronica is. You come once, you’re gonna see many faces of that sculpture, but you’re not gonna get it all. That’s part of the reason people love to come back and should come back.”

Photo courtesy of ToUch Performance Art

It’s not all glitter and roses for the ToUch folks, however: they’ve come up against some challenges gaining popularity. “It’s hard to own a theater company in the United States,” explains Roberts. “We don’t have the financial support from the government that a lot of other countries have, so our decision to be a for-profit arts company was a risk. I think we had to work really hard to crack the code of what would make us financially sustainable, but also allow us to create the work we want to create. Through collaboration, we solved that puzzle. What we came up with is art and immersive theater that takes place in a commercial setting, in a nightclub where people can drink. It’s not a theater setting.”

In a deliberate pursuit to reject the “starving artist” stereotype, Roberts and McGuire founded a sister company of ToUch Performance Art to supplement and support their livelihoods as creators, called ToUch Events. So far, this immersive event design company has created custom event experiences for The Trevor Project, Boston Lyric Opera, and the Breast Cancer Research Fund, among others. “We’ve been engaging in philanthropic events more and more,” says McGuire. “We did a fall fundraiser event with The Trevor Project, which is an LGBT outreach organization, and that really inspired us. So I think we’re trying to turn our focus to those philanthropic events that we believe in, and that we feel are really important.”

BLO Gala 2015: La Traviata | photo courtesy of ToUch Performance Art

ToUch Performance Art is like seeing the symphony, opera, and ballet combined, where you can bust a serious move with a glow stick hanging from your neck and a craft cocktail sloshing onto the floor from your hand. It’s classical art that stays true to its origin while going out of its way to appeal to the modern consumer. Touch them and they’ll ToUch you back.

AcousticaElectronica has returned to its favorite local haunt, Oberon of the American Repertory Theater. Upcoming show is one June 2nd. Reserve your tickets here.

ToUch Performance Art – theater company
Boston, Massachusetts
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Top photo courtesy of ToUch Performance Art

The post Fist Pumping at an Opera Singer appeared first on Take Magazine.

Allison Hornak searches for materials suspended between life and death that are scattered throughout Connecticut forests and neighborhoods. Desiccated leaves, preserved nests, discarded plastic, matted clumps of hair and bones are all objects of affection for Hornak, who deftly reimagines their existence through sculpture and performance. “Lately, I have had an immense desire to marry the decaying objects I find with the brightly colored sterile objects of my studio,” she says. “Acrylic paint, neon tape, plastic. . .They come together to inform one another about the contingency of time.”

With Picked Bones Inside, Objection in Blood and Cadmium (from “Small Boxes” series), 2015 | bone, blood, acrylic and aerosol paint, pine, oak, cotton, plastic, 15 ½” x 12 ¾ ” x 10″ | Photo courtesy the artist

Hornak grew up along the southern base of the Paugussett State Forest, next to the soft blue rush of the Housatonic River. The abundant nature of Connecticut’s forests and rivers has profoundly shaped her practice as a maker. “The woods are dark and lonely at first,” she notes. “But then, they are not. Eventually, the woods and the things you find in it (bird sounds, dead things, fungus, unexpected flowers or patches of unique light and color) feel, if you focus, like an extension of your body. Or, the body is an extension of these things, of it all.” An homage to her extensive time exploring the verdant landscape of her childhood home, Hornak’s sculptural series Small Boxes (2012-2015) bathes objects seemingly dead or forgotten—such as animal bones and discarded cement—in candy-colored acrylic hues, giving them new life.

Since receiving her BFA from Montserrat School of Art in 2010, Hornak has immersed herself in the New England art world; from directing a gallery in Sandy Hook, to an ongoing engagement with performance and sculpture, Hornak pulses with creative electricity. In her recent performance piece Fuck Your Apology (A Composition in Five Movements for Vladimir Umanets), viewers watched Hornak paint the wall of the gallery with a concoction made from raw honey, honeybee bodies, compost, and other found materials while she repeatedly recited W.S. Merwin’s poem “End of Day”.

Fuck Your Apology (a Composition in Five Movements for Vladimir Umanets), 2016 | 20-minute performative action, raw honey, honeybee bodies, compost, glass containers, sunglasses, bandanna, cotton shirt, pants, pumps, acrylic and aerosol paint, finished white wall, “End of a Day” by W.S. Merwin | Photo courtesy the artist

Fuck Your Apology was the opening performance piece of the curated series Colony Collapse at Hygienic Art gallery last April, which was organized loosely around the devastating number of bee deaths occurring nationwide due to colony collapse disorder. Earlier in the year, Hornak was given a jar full of diseased honeybees from artist Silas Finch from a colony that had perished in Connecticut. During her performance, the overwhelming odor of bee decay filled the gallery, causing some onlookers to leave. Hornak feels that the unexpected odor and visceral reaction to her performance made it a success. “I find beauty in the visible vulnerability of performance,” she explains. “As a trained painter, I feel like I have been taught to make highly private and isolated work. When you are performing, in a way you are forced to face yourself.”

Prelude, Poem of Vitamins, 2015 | ceramic, cardboard, paper, bone, wood, shell, potpourri, tape, charcoal, cotton, rope, rubber, glass, cloth, stone, 11 ½”” x 9” x 8 | Photo courtesy the artist

Hornak’s upcoming work, a collaborative project with friend and fellow artist Jessica Gaddis, opens at Hygienic Art gallery on February 16. The show, lovingly entitled Collaborative Economy, is the brainchild of both Gaddis and Hornak, who have found creative and emotional solace in one another over the years—especially in the face of post-election political and social turmoil. “Most people have been talking about feeling frustrated with the economy during this election, and I get it,” notes Gaddis. “I looked up the term ‘economy,’ which I always felt was a deeply patriarchal term; it actually means ‘management of household resources,’ which I find to be incredibly warm and matriarchal.”

Hornak and Gaddis feel that their collaborative work will ignite a sense of partnership for both artists and viewers. “With Collaborative Economy, we are trying to face another person with our highly personal and highly private practices,” says Hornak. “It is a gesture towards the social, and bridging these practices that have such a belief in art, but are searching and wanting for something that is of the moment, that allows for something more.” Gaddis adds that “by coming together, hopefully we can instill a sense that we all need one another, that it is this sort of dependency, not isolation, that will get us through this idea that we are supposed to be independent into a space where we are actually just free.”

Wasp and the Stirring Sea, 2013 | wasp nest, foam, pine, plywood, aerosol paint, paper, acrylic 9 ¼” x 7” x 8 ½ | Photo courtesy the artist

Allison Hornak, performance artist
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Top photo A Struggle (a Painting in Two Acts), 2014 | 12-hour performative action, wood, rope, earth, acrylic, water, brushes, palette knives, cotton shirt, denim pants, glass and plastic containers | Photo courtesy Chris Randall

The post Pulp, Plastic, and Poetry appeared first on Take Magazine.

Recently, it’s been the cultural trend to rope off the beginning of the year to catch up on all the moments, movies, music, and writings we missed last year. So, once you’ve caught up with Moonlight and/or finally get around to listening to the newest And The Kids album (released summer ’16), consider looking ahead to our Artists to Watch for 2017.

Though we do have favorites of our own, we could not adequately survey the region for artists to watch without consulting a few of our many trusted curators and friends: Abigail Ogilvy, Owner of Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Boston’s South End; Randi Hopkins, Director of Visual Arts at Boston Center for the Arts; and Ian Alden Russell, Curator at Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery.

All of these artists sculpt, paint, record, and perform works worth following, especially considering our current social and political climate. Since we’ve recently been reminded that we cannot rely on the centralized leadership of our democracy to defend our integrity as human beings, or the integrity of thought through the defense of facts and mutual respect, we look to artists like these as our true cultural gatekeepers. The artists on our list are people we can trust to use bold expression, tenderness, and knowing imagery to question the status quo. Sometimes they hold up a mirror to our culture. Other times, they hold up a loudspeaker or a puppet mask, a paintbrush, a bouncy ball, or a digital camera.

These cathartic, sarcastic, pointed, paradoxical, and, most of all, inimitable artists are who we’re watching in 2017.

Nabeela Vega, Visiting Thahab (series, ongoing) | Photo courtesy Robin Allen LaPlante

Nabeela Vega | Boston, MA

Using photography, performance, and video, Boston-based artist Nabeela Vega creates immersive works that examine elements of our individual experiences of the social world as it intersects with identity, personal politics, and queerness. Oftentimes, the work calls into question our taken-for-granted notions about bodies, media, and gender. As Hopkins points out, “Vega’s rich exploration of the contemporary presence and experience of the Muslim femme takes forms that are performative, collaborative, generous, vulnerable, and exquisitely beautiful. The artist takes risks with their own body to think about our greater body as citizens and humans, work that feels vital and particularly brave today.”

Tanja Hollander | Auburn, ME

“This month sees the premiere of the entirety of Tanja Hollander‘s Are you really my friend? at MASS MoCA, the Maine-based photographer’s epic endeavor to photograph all 626 of her Facebook friends,” says Russell. “Bringing her across the nation and around the globe, the work probes the issue of friendship and connection in our digitally mediated age. Questioning the boundaries between personal, public, and online life, the project presents us with intimate portraits she took of the personal spaces and environments of the people she is connected to via social media.”

Teatime, 2016, Acrylic and mixed media on steel 18 x 12 in. | Photo courtesy Abigail Ogilvy

Katie Wild | Pawtucket, RI

“Wild’s striking, cinematic paintings transform the tradition of figure and portraiture to achieve a contemporary understanding of the human condition,” says Ogilvy. “In her most recent series, Steampunk, Wild references photographs she took of real people at a steampunk festivals. In 2016 she was a recipient of the Fay Chandler Emerging Artist Award in Boston, MA.”

Kai Franz | Providence, RI

“Originally from Cologne, Germany, Kai Franz makes sculptures and drawings that confront and complicate the relationships between process and artifact,” says Russell. “Testing and questioning the potential of computer-aided design while appearing as formal aesthetic statements in their own rights, Franz’s works and projects are strong examples of the tradition of critically and technologically-engaged art making in Providence.”

Mutsu Crispin, Mapping the Day, 2015, bouncy balls, plexiglass, stainless steel, 41″h x 41″w x 2.25″d | Photo courtesy Mitchell Giddings Fine Arts

Mutsu Crispin | Brattleboro, VT

Atlanta, Georgia transplant turned Southern Vermonter mutsu crispin (aka John DiGeorge) is a performance artist, filmmaker and. . .bouncy-ball sculptor? Last year, DiGeorge found a way to make those familiar, seemingly childish forms simultaneously fun and subversive. We’re sure we can find some comfort in these delightfully bright pieces as the year turns potentially darker. “. . . the balls float forward and back within their designs or wanderings, rhyming with their cast shadows, ghostly glows, nearby hardware and reflections,” says the artist. “These dear objects from our childhood are animated and transmogrified, speaking in a chorus at once lighthearted, humorous, mysterious, and ecstatic.

Matt Neckers, Crash Site, 2015, 72 H x 24 W x 24 in | Photo courtesy the artist

Matt Neckers | Eden, VT

“Neckers’ Portals hidden in forests, a rocket in a tree, a parachute caught in branches—Matt Neckers’ installations interrupt the serenity of the woods,” says Russell. “Fascinated by the impact of mechanization on our imagination, Neckers opens up earnest, generous, and sustained conversations about the world we inhabit, the others that may exist, and the precarious journeys between.”

Arien Wilkerson | Hartford, CT

“I am Arien aka TNMOT AZTRO aka ARI AZTRO.”

Wilkerson is one of Hartford’s many young Renaissance Men. His list of current projects is too long to add here; suffice it to say that Wilkerson, at age 25, is an uber-accomplished dancer, film artist, activist, artistic director, and overall creative mastermind. In the words of our dear friends at Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, “He’s too black, too vocal, and too flagrant. He’s also one of the few indispensable figures in Hartford’s ever-continuous push to art and cultural prominence. Say hello to the city’s new brash monarch.”

Toby Sisson, 2015 Black Tears, Ink and beeswax on paper 7″x5.5″ each, approx. 6.5’x16′ overall | Photo courtesy the artist

Toby Sisson | Providence, RI

“Toby Sisson‘s encaustic paintings and drawings rigorously explore the metaphoric potential of abstract form,” points out Russell. “Often contrasting shades of black with shades of white, Sisson’s works are informed by personal narrative and her mixed race heritage. Her images and forms offer open-ended prompts for poetic reflection on the assumed oppositions and conflicts with which we struggle—personally, emotionally, and socially.”

Michael Stasiuk, Marco the Magician, 2012, 25″ x 24″ x 10″ metal crumber pan, darning egg, rhythm stick fragments, assorted wood fragments | Photo courtesy Abigail Ogilvy

Michael Stasiuk | Portsmouth, NH

“His multimedia sculptures assemble found objects into playfully illustrated characters,” says Ogilvy, “each with a unique personality. His choice of material imparts a sense of nostalgia and memory, imaginatively re-purposing everyday objects that accompany us throughout our lives.”

J.R. Uretsky and Scott the cat | Photo courtesy the artist

J.R. Uretsky | Providence, RI

If you read Take, you already know we’ve had a crush on J.R.’s awkwardly signature brand of brave, big-feeling, truth-telling performance for a long time. Yet it’s not only her magically strange, emo-queer performances to watch out for in 2017. Specifically, it’s J.R.’s puppets that will lend you space to emote and bring us all solace as 2017’s social and political climate sags and twists. “The characters that emerge through her performances are relatable yet also alien and non-specific,” says Hopkins, “forging an ambiguous space where emotion is the remaining constant.”

Titus Kaphar, Space to Forget, 2014, oil on canvas, 64 x 64 x 2 3/4 inches | Photo courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery

Titus Kaphar | New Haven, CT

Kaphar creates new histories with each work he paints and sculpts. It’s through his careful reinterpretation of the past, mixed with artful exclusion and deconstruction of specific images that makes his work powerful, “In my work I explore the materiality of reconstructive history. I paint and I sculpt, often borrowing from the historical canon, and then alter the work in some way.” says Kaphar “I cut, crumple, shroud, shred, stitch, tar, twist, bind, erase, break, tear, and turn the paintings and sculptures I create, reconfiguring them into works that nod to hidden narratives and begin to reveal unspoken truths about the nature of history.”

Inside shot of Love Shack instillation featuring video loop of “Waking Up And Getting Up Has Never Been Easy”, instillation and video by Coe Lapossy | Photo courtesy the artist’s website

Coe Lapossy | Boston, MA

Ever wonder what it’d be like to wake up in a super-cozy, literally endless bed? Well, Lapossy has theorized it, and has many more other immersive, speculative works ready for the upcoming year. “Lapossy brings feminist sass and romantic charm to smart sculptural and installation work,” says Hopkins. “Pop culture seeps into her artistic vocabulary with ease, for example weaving 20th-century art history together with early 90s romantic-fantasy film in a setting that evokes the vaudeville vibe of the magician’s trick.”

Nabeela Vega – Boston, Massachusetts
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Tanja Hollander – Auburn, Maine
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Katie Wild – Pawtucket, Rhode Island
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Kai Franz – Providence, Rhode Island
Website

Mutsu Crispin – Brattleboro, Vermont
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Matt Neckers – Eden, Vermont
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Arien Wilkerson – Hartford, Connecticut
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Toby Sisson – Providence, Rhode Island
Website

Michael Stasiuk – Portsmouth, New Hampshire
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J.R. Uretsky – Providence, Rhode Island
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Titus Kaphar – New Haven, Connecticut
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Coe Lapossy – Boston, Massachusetts
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VISITING THAHAB AT SUPERNOVA PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL | PHOTO COURTESY THE ARTIST

The post Artists to Watch 2017 appeared first on Take Magazine.

Soto is a person who needs to know more: how it works, how it can be fun, beautiful, useful, how it can help. He does all the heavy lifting to show us the creative potential of cutting-edge technology. “I have an experimental new media practice,” he says. “My studio is similar to a maker space with tools ranging from a hammer to custom micro-controllers. In short, I experiment with art and technology and I love innovation. I’m always pushing myself to do something new in each project. I love to create an idea for an art installation that I don’t know how to implement. Then I have to figure it out.”

Balam Soto | Photography by Jade Soto

Balam Soto made his way to New England quite a few years ago from Guatemala. “I am a Mayan,” he explains. “I was married in Guatemala 21 years ago to my wife, Shelli, who is from Connecticut, and so 20 years ago we moved to Wethersfield. We then moved to Hartford 12 years ago because of the artist community and diversity, which we love.” Although he calls the local arts community he’s part of “lively,” he still finds time to have an impressive list of international exhibitions as well.

Soto’s artwork introduces new, interesting, and unique interpretations of technology as an artistic medium. Most hit three out of the five senses; doubtless he’s working on taste and smell, too. They’re objects that make you think (how?!), and are also genuine kinetic sculpture, with audio, visual, and tactile cues that show how energy moves through space. Infinitely approachable, you can directly project yourself into some of his works. He designed a performance piece of wearable, Theremin-esque body suits that manipulate sound and digital animation in response to the individual’s moves. A more recent work, Exp.Inst.Wood, is an instrument of sorts, with a number of wooden knobs and upright acrylic tubes that are programmed to react loudly, but tonally and colorfully, when touched. Witnesses of his work are the potential energy; the observer becomes catalyst. We can interact, and, in doing so, become projectors.

As one would suspect, Soto is an artist and entrepreneur who keeps active. Together with his partner, Shelli McMillen Soto, he founded an online company that creates and sells DIY kits called Open Wire Lab. The builds boost the maker movement, and embrace STEAM: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, together with art. In addition, Soto has led numerous community youth projects. 2017 is shaping up to be an especially creative time for him: he’s been selected for the American Arts Incubator program by ZERO1: The Art and Technology Network, and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), and will go to Guatemala for a month in 2017 to implement an arts and technology project. You can see some of his work coming up at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of “Teknopolis,” at the end of February 2017.

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Top image photography by Jade Soto

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On June 3rd, 2016, J.R. and her band Feminist Conference got the ball rolling at the Boston Center for the Arts Gala with a stage full of raucous. The unsuspecting crowd of movers and shakers of the Boston arts scene faced a barrage of discomfort and amazement as J.R. Urestsky crooned sappy 80’s ballads at full blast, eventually stripping off the majority of her floral print outfit to reveal red briefs and bare legs.

Feminist Conference performing at the BCA Ball | Photo by Michael Blanchard Photography

The response was a mixed bag of surprise and uncomfortable wonderment. Uretsky notes, “I like to set up all of my performances to be failures…where the ego or whatever you want to call it, the Leo in me, feels really bad about the fact that I worked my ass off for that performance and no one wanted to listen to me sing, you know, karaoke in my underwear. Like, why? This tension makes embarrassment function as the root of the performances, the almost disaster, the performer falling to pieces in front of you, that’s where the work really hits – for me anyway. ”

Much of J.R.’s work centralizes around what she calls “expressive confessions”, powerful performances that weave a messy ensemble of narrative arcs such as heartbreak, loneliness, and grief. “The characters that emerge through these performances are relatable yet also alien and non-specific, forging an ambiguous space where emotion is the remaining constant,” says Uretsky. “In short, I make ‘feelings porn’. Like pornography, pleasure is the main pursuit of my work. I want to make work that is entertaining, that feels good and that provides space for people—for me—to emote.”

Photo courtesy of the artist

Despite her emotionally charged subject matter (endearingly referred to as “sad bro art”), Uretsky creates an absurdist dreamworld of feelings through bright colors and character expressions frozen in time. Hailed in by the not-so-threatening nature of these gloriously fluorescent puppets, J.R. creates a sense of intrigue, while also suspending viewers in a space of discomfort. “I am sort of always feeling sort of weird about bodies and I think that manifests in the sculptures…the gestures are sort of folding in on themselves a little bit…they are bright and still kind of noisy. To me, they feel like they are not noisy on purpose. I think they look that way just because they do, not because they have a big personality”.

Uretsky utilizes performance, sculpture, music and puppetry to expose the messiness of human emotion that decentralizes the polite nature of our expected social selves; a composite and affective production that visualizes the internal struggle to be human, to be alive. Her puppets and sculptures are often constructed to be worn, so that their life is found in collaboration with body movement and sound. Her current exhibition “What I Found Out there” resides at the Boston University College of Fine Arts at the Annex. Leaning into scholar Sarah Ahmed’s writing on queer grief, Uretsky has constructed a series of visual art that integrates video, audio, and puppetry to examine pain and melancholia. With new music by Feminist Conference and intricately constructed puppets made of new and found small objects, Uretsky explores how the process of grief and mourning alter the body.

Still from J.R. Uresky’s video “Bromance”

J.R. currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island and spends most of her time laying on the floor with Scott the Cat while watching Star Trek Next Generation and feeling feelings. After dropping out of bible school for Christian Education at BIOLA University in Los Angeles, she received her BFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Practice and an MFA in Sculpture and Video from the University of Connecticut.  As a self-proclaimed masculine-of-center dyke, Uretsky spends a lot of time contemplating larger conversations about masculinity, visibility, queerness, and feminism. “I am trying to figure out if the layering of familiar objects, sounds, and environments mixed with the abstract and monstrous nature of my work can illustrate the emotional experience of other. What if everyone experienced what it felt like to be other? To be queer? Would we then feel less alone?”

J.R. Uretsky is a multi-media artist  living in Providence, Rhode Island. Her work is currently on exhibition at Boston University College of Fine Arts through December 11th. Be sure to follow J.R. on Twitter. 

Top photo courtesy the artist

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