The Cherry Grove Art Walk TM-2008
The Cherry Grove Art Walk TM-2008 will be held this year on September 5-7th in Cherry Grove, NY on The Fire Island National Seashore. Visitors and residents to this predominantly summer seasonal resort community will have the opportunity to view some of the best emerging contemporary Fine Art from the NYC and Long Island artist communities. They will be able to listen to artists talk about their artwork. Artwork will be exhibited in seaside homes and on decks.
Three Cherry Grove Art Walk guides will lead the tours: Dan Evans, Philadelphia art historian, artist, art critic and writer for The Fire Island Tide, Peter Downes, Deputy Director of The Brooklyn Museum and Sherman Clarke, Head of Original Cataloging at New York University Libraries.
There will be a kick-off event to be held at "Beau Men" on Duryea Walk Friday night from 6-9PM in Cherry Grove, NY sponsored by Steaz, an organic green tea energy drink that has been USDA approved and a fair trade company.
PARTICIPANT BIOS
BARBARA ANN LEVY-Founder of The Cherry Grove Art Walk TM
Barbara Ann Levy is the Founder and Coordinator of The Cherry Grove Art Walk TM-2008 and is the Owner and President of The Barbara Ann Levy Gallery, www.balgallery.com, an 's-corporation' in the state of NY.
For nine years Ms Levy owned and managed two contemporary Fine Art galleries located in storefronts in Cherry Grove, NY on The Fire Island National Seashore and in the arts district in Chelsea, NYC, NY. Gallery shows have received reviews from important critics from major art publications such as Art In America, Art News, Art On Paper, The New Yorker Magazine, The New York Observer, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Fire Island News and The Fire Island Tide. It has shown the artwork of over 90 artists and has given choreographers, writers and poets a place to showcase their work.
Barbara is an accomplished artist, painter and photographer in her own right with an extensive art exhibition history, an arts educator who has taught studio Fine Arts skills as well as trained Art Therapy students in undergraduate and graduate college and university programs nationwide at The School of Visual Arts, Pratt Institute and Hofstra University in NY, Springfield College in Massachusetts and recently for AHEC in Doral Florida. She is licensed by the state of New York as a Creative Arts Therapist and won the prestigious New York Art Therapy Association Pam Clark Distinguished Service Award. She has worked with psychiatric populations and substance abusers in recovery using art therapy as a treatment modality. She has also conducted Grand Round lectures and workshops on Art Therapy in hospitals in NYC and Brooklyn, NY.
Barbara has a deep and abiding commitment to support and nurture the enrichment of the human spirit made manifest in 'good works', transformative ones and in this case Fine Art. She has shown her artwork in corporate settings and was invited by The Juvenile Justice Department in NYC to donate her artwork to their permanent collection. She has shown her art in non profit artist run organizations like Artist Space in NYC and in gallery settings like The Jock Truman Gallery formerly in NYC.
Ms. Levy believes that through art, the enrichment of humanity and eventual individual and community self-realization is entirely possible. She states, "Art creates community. It is a centering device like a potter's wheel in times of reorganization and transformation. Just look at public art like The Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC or the recent on-site art project "The Gates" by Christo in NYC. Through sharing experiences of art, viewers have found they have something essential in common, their humanity and are more alike than they are different. Art helps to organize people and communities. The act of viewing artwork with others is like the tradition of "breaking bread" in communion and celebration".
WALK GUIDES:
SHERMAN CLARKE
Sherman Clarke is an art librarian and cataloger currently working as Head of Original Cataloging at New York University Libraries. He earlier worked at the Amon Carter Museum, Rhode Island School of Design, Cornell University, and the University of Pittsburgh. He is active in the Art Libraries Society of North America, the Visual Resources Association, the College Art Association, and the Society of Architectural Historians. He has been the co-editor of the Queer Caucus for Art Newsletter for about a dozen years, compiling a booklist and calendar for each issue. In 2006, Sherman was the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award of the Art Libraries Society of North America.
DAN EVANS
Dan Evans taught Art History for over 34 years at Adelphi University, Garden City, Long Island and Community College of Philadelphia.
During that time he gave numerous tours at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of the Univ. of Pennsylvania and many others. He also gave lectures at The College Art Association, the Popular Culture Association on many topics, ranging from the art of Frida Kahlo, Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence, to the art of the North American Indians.
His art criticism has been printed in magazines and newspapers including the Arts Exchange (Philadelphia) and the Fire Island Tide.
PETER DOWNES
Peter Downes, a Long Island native, has been working for the past five years at the Brooklyn Museum in the areas of Administration and Institutional Advancement.
Peter served on the Advisory Board of All-City, an ongoing citywide exhibition on the history of Graffiti Art and was one of the founders of Island Repertory Theatre Company, a not-for-profit theatre organization on Fire Island where he is also currently on the Board.
Peter graduated from The State University of New York, College at Oneonta with a BS in Art History and attended City University of New York where he received the MA in Art History.
ARTISTS:
DAN EVANS
"The outsider art work of Dan Evans is full of surprises.
In his "View of Toledo" bright red and lavender roofs pull
the viewer into a world of saturated color. Dr. Louise Resden
has described the surrounding trees in "Bradley Near the Sunken
Forest" as having a 'nightmare intensity.' In other paintings,
gargoyles and fountains compete for the mysterious space within the
paintings, as do the amazing colors and dense patterns.
Though the sensibilities of Neo-Expressionism and such
artists as Basquiat could be seen as influences, these
works are original in style and intent. Evans says he wants
his vibrant colors, textures and size distortions to startle,
challenge and delight viewers." *
*Dr. Louise Resden is a PhD, and author of articles on
many subjects, including paintings done in the time of John Milton.
STEPHEN TASHJIAN
Stephen Tashjian will be a lead artist who will exhibit a group of pop inspired pieces at Cielo e Mar for The Cherry Grove Art Walk tm-2008
Stephen Tashjian is an American artist. His drag queen character Tabboo! became known in the East Village underground scene of New York City in the 1980s. He is also a puppeteer, painter and singer.
Tashjian attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston where he became friends with fellow students Nan Goldin and Jack Pierson. He moved to New York's East Village in 1982 to pursue a career as an artist, and became a regular performer at the Pyramid Club, appearing next to other drag legends like Rupaul and Lady Bunny. Tashjian also performed several times at the annual Wigstock drag event, and appeared in Wigstock, The Movie, released in 1994.
Tashjian has painted murals on city buildings and exhibited his paintings in many galleries internationally. Under the name Tabboo! He designed flyers, record album covers and advertising for underground venues. One of his better-known artworks is his graphic design for the successful Deee-Lite "World Clique" album cover. The curly lettering on the album cover became an iconic image for the band and the rave culture of the early 1990s.
The photographer Nan Goldin included photographs of Tabboo! in her books and he is featured on the cover of her book The Other Side in drag.
Tashjian continues to perform in New York and shows his paintings in art shows, most notably a 2006 group show curated by Jack Pierson at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York, featuring dozens of camp art pieces from his private collection. The show featured works by Matthew Barney, Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, Jack Pierson, and Mark Morrisroe.
Tashjian's work has also been documented in the New Museum's "East Village Show" and New York University (NYU)/Grey Art Gallery's "Downtown Show."
FERNANDO CARPANEDA
Fernando Carpaneda is an artist born in Brasília, Brazil. He works with clay sculptures. His main theme is always the human being. He watches people in the streets, bars, concerts, and places where people sell their bodies. Fernando makes portraits of rent boys, punks, junkies, thieves and outcasts. Instead of attaching himself to muses, he focuses on male nudes to compose his art pieces, having the human being, the masculine, as the main goal in his work. All his portraits are like a relic, a holy place, a moment caught in time. He uses objects that have a connection to the portrayed person to composing his work, such as cigarette butts, condoms, beer cans, underwear, semen, empty toothpaste boxes. In other words, things that are part of these people's real world, and his own. He uses such objects and remains as a beginning for his portraits. Clay is used as technique. He uses it the same way it was used in the 17th Century (for painting baroque saint images). He even dresses his sculptures with cloth from his own clothes. He creates and sews all the clothing that is used in the pieces. He also includes human hair to some of the pieces, his own hair (this was very often done in the 17th Century), and a current relic that has its value in time, as to maintain a time, ordinary people who lived it. Fernando writes about his pieces using street language as a background, another urban element often used. His connection to the artwork is important to any creative process. He believes that the artist himself is a piece of art. He has been going to places where the portrayed people use to go for the past 25 years.
In 2006 Fernando Carpaneda had one of his sculptures published in the book Treasures of Gay Art, a publishing of The Leslie Lohman Gay Art Foundation. The book shares the jubilation, with the triumphant arrival of The Leslie Lohman Gay Art Foundation. The new book, as the unparalleled collection of conspicuously gay art debuts in print for the first time. Designed and printed in Italy, the publication was guided by renowned curator Peter Weiermair exclusively for The Foundation. Paintings, sculptures, drawings, watercolors, photographs and prints from Jean Cocteau to Andy Warhol.
MORE ABOUT FERNANDO'S GAY DOLLS
The artist Fernando Carpaneda created Charlie, the gay doll, and both gay icons and notorious homophobes in contemporary history inspired his composition. The doll's body is based on the Russian journalist and photographer, Slava Mogutin, who is the most famous gay celebrity in Russia and was chosen by Carpaneda in honor of the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, who banned demonstrations of gay pride in his country. The Brazilian priest, Edino Fonseca, a notoriously homophobic Brazilian politician who proposed using taxpayer money to establish clinics to cure gay people of their homosexuality, inspired the gay doll face.
The doll is featured in seven versions: a skinhead, in tribute to the largest homophobic group in the world, another version dressed in a gothic priest robe, like that used by the priest, Marcelo Rossi, a Brazilian Catholic icon, and an Arab version in tribute to the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And lastly, a Jewish version, Fundamentalist Christian, Young Black Man and In Drag: Gazelle. The doll is also dedicated to the Pope, as he is one of the most homophobic religious leaders in history.
Charlie, the Gay Doll, comes with two penis options, flaccid uncircumcised or erect. The penis model was based on the artist's own penis. The name Charlie is a tribute to the president of The Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation.
These are unique sculptures signed by the artist. All are cast in a durable resin and hand painted with tattoo's. The doll is 12 inches tall.
ADRIAN MILTON
Adrian Milton graduated from Columbia University where he majored in Art History.
He began his career in the art world working with Betty Thompson, creator of Multiplications, a mass produced art object sold at MOMA and many other museums around the world. Thompson and Milton would stage Happenings in their loft in Chelsea making use of abstract geometric foam objects to engage the participants.
After leaving Multiplications he spent several years making props, painting sets, and performing with the Angels of Light Theater Troupe in California.
Mr. Milton spent a year in India studying Tantric art, which combined his interest in abstract geometric shapes and unlocking the spiritual in art. It was in India that he learned to paint on fabrics and he successfully painted fabrics for Henri Bendel and other retail outlets throughout the United States.
For many years Mr. Milton has painted murals. Like many other artists in the Post-Modern movement his style has ranged from realistic to abstract expressionist. He has explored subjects ranging from circus art, advertising graphics, political agitprop as well as issues of gender and sexual orientation.
Mr. Milton has traveled extensively in Central America, Europe, North Africa, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Presently he divides his time between New York in Florida. In addition to his art career Mr. Milton is a passionate advocate of animal welfare and has worked with animal rescue for many years.