Skinny Boy Lookin’ Like Deer In Headlights:
Julian Johnson at Real Art Ways

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Skinny Boy Lookin’ Like Deer In Headlights:
Julian Johnson

 

Real Art Ways presents a new installation by 2019 Real Art Awards recipient Julian Johnson.
Artist talk: Sunday, March 8 • 2:00 PM

Exploring his experiences with mental health, Marfan Syndrome, and religion, Julian Johnson’s photographic works offer the viewer an immersive narrative of healing. Ranging in subject matter and process, Johnson’s installation of images create a personal narrative that incorporates elements of still life, portraiture, landscape, and candid street photography that allows for wide interpretation.

About the Artist:

Born and raised in Austin, TX, Julian received his B.A. in Studio Art from Wesleyan University. He now lives and works in NYC. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the CICA Museum in Gimpo, South Korea and the Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University.

Click here to learn more about the artist.

Click here to learn more about the Real Art Awards.

The 2019 Real Art Awards is supported in part by the National Endowment of the Arts.

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Image: Infrared Sauna, digital photograph, 2019.

December Riverwood Poetry Series

 

Riverwood Poetry is a FREE series that takes place on the second Tuesday of the month September 2019 – May 2020. Each night begins with an open mic, followed by a poetry reading featuring regionally-or nationally-known poets.

December Poet | Lisa Starr
Lisa Starr is the author of three collections of poetry, including Mad With Yellow, her most recent. She also co-edited the anthology Where Beach Meets Ocean, celebrating the Block Island Poetry Project, the writing series she founded and
directed for 13 years at The Hygeia House, the inn she owned and operated. Starr was Rhode Island’s Poet Laureate from 2007-2013.

After living on Block Island for 30 years, where she ran an inn (The Hygeia House) and raised her children, Starr has recently and happily relocated to Westerly, RI, where she is nearing completion of Pot Luck, a collection of poems about children, and collaborating with her long-time companion, the poet and Rumi translator Coleman Barks, on a memoir about grief, time and friendship. And Mary Oliver. The newly appointed Artistic Director for the Arts Café Mystic, Starr moonlights serving tacos and sangria at a very cool local cantina. She also runs a monthly poetry salon at The Savoy Bookstore and Café in Westerly.

About Riverwood Poetry Series
Riverwood Poetry SeriesThe Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. Learn more at their website.

STILL BEGINNING: 30th Annual Day With(Out) Art

 

Free screening and post-film conversation led by Shanique Reid, Youth and Development Specialist of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England.

Real Art Ways is proud to partner with Visual AIDS for the thirtieth annual Day With(out) Art by presenting STILL BEGINNING, a program of seven newly commissioned videos responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic by Shanti Avirgan, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Carl George, Viva Ruiz, Iman Shervington, Jack Waters/Victor F.M. Torres, and Derrick Woods-Morrow.

Nguyen Tan Hoang, “I Remember Dancing”, 2019. Commissioned for Visual AIDS’ Day With(out) Art 2019. Still courtesy of the artist

The seven short videos range in subject from anti-stigma work in New Orleans to public sex culture in Chicago, highlighting pioneering AIDS activism and staging intergenerational conversations. Recalling Gregg Bordowitz’s reminder that “THE AIDS CRISIS IS STILL BEGINNING,”* the video program resists narratives of resolution or conclusion, considering the continued urgency of HIV/AIDS in the contemporary moment while revisiting resonant cultural histories from the past three decades.

Visual AIDS is a New York-based non-profit that utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over. In 1989, Visual AIDS organized the first Day Without Art, a call to the art world for mourning and action in response to the AIDS crisis. For Day With(out) Art’s thirtieth year, over 100 institutions worldwide will screen STILL BEGINNING, recognizing the important and necessary work of artists, activists, and cultural workers who have responded to AIDS while emphasizing the persistent presence of the epidemic.

*Gregg Bordowitz, The AIDS Crisis is Still Beginning (2019) was recently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago. Hear Bordowitz discuss the work here.

Shanti Avirgan, “Beat Goes On,” 2019. Commissioned for Visual AIDS’ Day With(out) Art 2019. Still courtesy of the artist

Artist Talk: Somewhere in the Sequence

 

FREE ADMISSION 

All are invited to attend an artist conversation and reception. Reception will begin at 2:30 PM with light refreshments and mingling before the conversation begins at 3 PM.

Real Art Ways presents Somewhere in the Sequence, a group exhibition curated by David Borawski. Funded in part by a grant from the Artist’s Resource Trust (A.R.T.) Fund, a fund of Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Somewhere in the Sequence brings together artists from across New England to explore personal, political and artistic stances, resistance to the status quo, meaning and aesthetics, and strategies for artistic and social communication.

Incorporating sculpture, video, installation, painting, and photography, Somewhere in the Sequence explores a wide breadth of material and conceptual approaches.

Exhibiting artists include Fafnir Adamites, Monique Atherton, Katie Bullock, Alyssa Freitas, Debbie Hesse, Matt Neckers, and Soo Sunny Park.

Image: Plato’s Dichotomy, 2018, Soo Sunny Park

Artist Talk: Jeanne Jalandoni

 

FREE ADMISSION

All are invited to attend an artist conversation and reception with Jeanne Jalandoni, one of six 2019 Real Art Awards recipients. Reception will begin at 2:30 PM with light refreshments and mingling before the conversation begins at 3 PM. Joining her in conversation is Dr Jason Chang, Director of the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut.

Click here to learn more about Sowing Mythology.

From Jalandoni’s Artist Statement
Combining media and materials parallels bicultural identity; a mixture of experiences that were essential to my upbringing and cultural inheritance. I am expected to sustain them, but am subject to disassociate because I am “American” before I am “Filipino.” This tension between “real” and “imagined” elements in my paintings invites viewers to question bicultural tangibility, while allowing me to explore and take authorship of my identity.

About the Artist
Jeanne F. Jalandoni (b. New York, NY) lives and works in Uptown Manhattan. She works primarily with oil paint and textile. Jalandoni received her BFA from New York University with a concentration in painting. In 2018, she was an artist-in-residence at 36 Chase & Barns Residency (North Adams, MA; affiliated with Erica Broussard Gallery, Santa Ana, CA). Her studio is located at Cornerstone Studios in Washington Heights, NY.

Click here to learn more about her work.
Click here to learn more about the Real Art Awards.

The 2019 Real Art Awards is supported in part by the National Endowment of the Arts.

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Image: Mourning Dove, 2019, Jeanne Jalandoni

Somewhere in the Sequence

 

Artist Talk: Saturday, November 23 | 2:30 PM 

Real Art Ways presents Somewhere in the Sequence, a group exhibition curated by David Borawski. Funded in part by a grant from Artist’s Resource Trust (A.R.T.) Fund, a fund of Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Somewhere in the Sequence brings together artists from across New England to explore personal, political and artistic stances, resistance to the status quo, meaning and aesthetics, and strategies for artistic and social communication.

Incorporating sculpture, video, installation, painting, and photography, Somewhere in the Sequence explores a wide breadth of material and conceptual approaches.

Exhibiting artists include Fafnir Adamites, Monique Atherton, Katie Bullock, Alyssa Freitas, Debbie Hesse, Matt Neckers, and Soo Sunny Park.

November Riverwood Poetry Series

 

Riverwood Poetry is a FREE series that takes place on the second Tuesday of the month September 2019 – May 2020. Each night begins with an open mic, followed by a poetry reading featuring regionally-or nationally-known poets.

November Poet | Patrick Donnelly
Patrick Donnelly is the author of four books of poetry, Little-Known Operas (Four Way Books, 2019), Jesus Said (a chapbook from Orison Books, 2017), Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin (Four Way Books, 2012, a Lambda Literary Award finalist), and The Charge (Ausable Press, 2003, since 2009 part of Copper Canyon Press).

Donnelly is director of the Poetry Seminar at The Frost Place, Robert Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, NH, now a center for poetry and the arts. With his spouse Stephen D. Miller, Donnelly translates classical Japanese poetry and drama. Donnelly’s awards include the 2015-2016 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, a U.S./Japan Creative Artists Program Award, and a 2018 Amy Clampitt Residency Award. Donnelly was 2015 – 2017 poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts.

About Riverwood Poetry Series
Riverwood Poetry SeriesThe Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. Learn more at their website.

October Riverwood Poetry Series

 

Riverwood Poetry is a FREE series that takes place on the second Tuesday of the month September 2019 – May 2020. Each night begins with an open mic, followed by a poetry reading featuring regionally-or nationally-known poets.

October Poet | Michael R. Brown
Michael R. Brown attended the University of Michigan where he earned a Ph.D. in English and Education. He has published five books of poetry: Falling Wallendas, Tia Chucha (1994); The Man Who Makes Amusement Rides, Hanover Press (2003); Susquehanna, Ragged Sky (2003); The Confidence Man, Ragged Sky (2007), and The Martin Bormann Dog Care Book (Resolute Bear Press, 2018.)

Michael joined the slam poetry movement in Chicago and spread the phenomenon throughout New England. He and Patricia Smith established The Cantab (1992) in Cambridge, MA, carried the slam to Sweden, and led a U.S. national championship team in 1993. He and Erkki Lappalainen organized the first Poetry Olympics in Stockholm in 1998. He also created Dr. Brown’s Traveling Poetry Show, a two-hour theater production. From 2008 until 2016, he and his wife Valerie Lawson put out Off the Coast, an international poetry quarterly. They now run a book publishing press.

About Riverwood Poetry Series
Riverwood Poetry SeriesThe Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. Learn more at their website.

September Riverwood Poetry Series

 

Riverwood Poetry is a FREE series that takes place on the second Tuesday of the month September 2019 – May 2020. Each night begins with an open mic, followed by a poetry reading featuring regionally-or nationally-known poets.

September Poet | Margaret Gibson
Margaret will read poetry from published books that contemplate our relationship with Nature in a time of climate crisis and environmental grief. The poems make a connection between our most intimate personal relationships and the Living World.

Margaret Gibson, current Connecticut Poet Laureate, is the author of 12 books of poems, all from LSU Press, most recently Not Hearing the Wood Thrush, 2018. A poem from that collection, Passage was included in The Best American Poetry, 2017. The title poem from her previous collection, Broken Cup, 2014, won a Pushcart Prize for 2016. Broken Cup was a Finalist for the 2016 Poet’s Prize.  Awards include the Lamont Selection for Long Walks in the Afternoon (1982), the Melville Kane Award (co-winner) for Memories of the Future (1986), and the Connecticut Book Award in Poetry for One Body (2008).  The Vigil was a Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry in 1993. She has also written a memoir, The Prodigal Daughter, University of Missouri Press, 2008. Gibson is Professor Emerita, University of Connecticut, and lives in Preston, CT.  Click here to learn more about Margaret Gibson.

About Riverwood Poetry Series
Riverwood Poetry SeriesThe Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. Learn more at their website.

Speak Up – Tests

 

Don’t miss this fantastic night of storytelling to kick off the school year and Speak Up’s fall season!

Speak Up returns to Real Art Ways with Tests: Stories About Trials, Tribulations, and Old Fashioned Quizzes. School will be back in session and all are invited for a night of hilarity and heartbreak.

The cast features Speak Up veteran storytellers Anne Stuart of Boston, Nina Lichtenstein of Maine, and Hartford area locals Matthew Dicks and Barbara Klau. Joining them will be professional storyteller and New Yorker Carla Katz and first timers Ellen Feldman Ornato and Christine Thibodeau.

Hosted – as always, by Elysha Dicks.

Artist Talk: Morgan Bulkeley

 

FREE ADMISSION

All are invited to attend an artist conversation and reception with Morgan Bulkeley. Morgan will be in conversation with curator David Borawski about his work and process involved in his exhibition, Space Around A Porcupine.  The reception will begin at 1:30 PM with light refreshments and mingling before the conversation begins at 2 PM.

From the Artist’s Statement:

“I try to make paintings that are beautiful, frightening and funny all at once, similar to The Theater of the Absurd, which assumes things are so bad that you can only laugh. I see in nature and in the best of humanity an incredible beauty; but I also see in our technology and aggression a will and ability to destroy that beauty, either actively or inadvertently. The refuse of our consumerism, wafting down our streets, caught in the twigs of trees in our deepest forests or swirling in giant gyres in the ocean, is a steady reminder of our growing and smothering effect on our only habitable planet. I paint to try to make people think of the fragility in which we exist.”

About the Artist:

Morgan Bulkeley was born in the Berkshires of Massachusetts in 1944. He was raised on a small farm in the town of Mount Washington, where his parents, both naturalists, raised many wild, orphaned animals. He graduated from Yale University in 1966 with a B.A. in English Literature. After a stint in the Coast Guard, he spent a year in Newark New Jersey, drawing and working with VISTA Programs. Subsequently, he spent 14 years in Cambridge Massachusetts painting and sculpting. In 1985 he returned to his childhood home where he lives with his environmentalist wife Eleanor Tillinghast.

Click here to learn more about his work.

Jaanika Peerna: Cold Love

 

Real Art Ways presents drawing, installation and performance by Estonian-born, NY based artist and educator Jaanika Peerna.

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 19, 6-8 PM
Performance: Sunday, February 2, 2:30 PM

Peerna’s work encompasses drawing, installation, and performance, often dealing with the theme of transitions in light, air, water and other natural phenomena. Her performances often involve the audience in participatory reflection on the current climate meltdown. Her art practice stems from the corporeal experience of existence and reaches towards enhanced awareness of the fragility, interconnectedness and wonder of life.

“I am a vessel gathering subtle and rapturous processes in nature, using the experiences and impulses to make my work.  I record mist turning into water.  I let wind move my body so that it leaves traces on paper. I swim through thousands of layers of gray air and mark each one down. Sometimes public performances with musicians and dancers draw me out from the safe silence of my space and expand my drawing practice with sound and movement. I am interested in the never-ending process of becoming with no story, no beginning, no end—just the current moment in flux.”              
– Jaanika Peerna

About the Artist
Jaanika Peerna has exhibited her work and performed extensively in the entire New York metropolitan area as well as in Berlin, Paris, Tallinn, Barcelona, Venice, Moscow, Dubai, Sydney, Canberra, Montreal, and Cologne. Her work is in numerous private collections in the U.S. and Europe and is part of the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris. Her performance Glacier Elegy was recently acquired by the Glyn Vivian Museum in the UK. Her work is represented in the U.S. by JHB Gallery and ARC Fine Art and globally by IdeelART. She was awarded the FID Grand Prize in 2016 for her work in drawing, and she has been a teaching artist at the Dia Art Foundation for many years. Peerna currently works as cultural attaché for Estonia in New York.

Click here to learn more about her work.

 

Jeanne Jalandoni: Sowing Mythology

 

Real Art Ways presents new work by 2019 Real Art Awards recipient Jeanne Jalandoni.
Exhibition extended to February 14, 2020.

Artist Talk: Saturday, November 9 | 2:30 PM

Rooted in her experience as a second-generation New Yorker, Jeanne Jalandoni creates paintings and installations that investigate the complicated ideas surrounding Fillipino American identity. Jalandoni uses a mixed media approach that evokes the nature of experiencing a bicultural existence. Her paintings mimic imagery from the Boxer Codex, an anonymous 16th century Spanish manuscript that ultimately created stereotypes of pre-colonization people of the Phillipine Archipelago. Image: The Duster, 2018. Acrylic, oil, trim on canvas and stitched fabric, 60″ x 36″.

From Jalandoni’s Artist Statement
Combining media and materials parallels bicultural identity; a mixture of experiences that were essential to my upbringing and cultural inheritance. I am expected to sustain them, but am subject to disassociate because I am “American” before I am “Filipino.” This tension between “real” and “imagined” elements in my paintings invites viewers to question bicultural tangibility, while allowing me to explore and take authorship of my identity.

About the Artist
Jeanne F. Jalandoni (b. New York, NY) lives and works in Uptown Manhattan. She works primarily with oil paint and textile. Jalandoni received her BFA from New York University with a concentration in painting. In 2018, she was an artist-in-residence at 36 Chase & Barns Residency (North Adams, MA; affiliated with Erica Broussard Gallery, Santa Ana, CA). Her studio is located at Cornerstone Studios in Washington Heights, NY.

Click here to learn more about her work.
Click here to learn more about the Real Art Awards.

The 2019 Real Art Awards is supported in part by the National Endowment of the Arts.

n.e.a.-logo

Kyle Andrew Phillips: Standing Room

 

Real Art Ways presents Standing Room, a series of large scale paintings by Brooklyn based artist, Kyle Andrew Phillips.

Utilizing the trompe l’oeil technique and inspired by artists such as Peter Doig, Andy Kaufman and Marc Sijan, Kyle Andrew Phillips explores the concept of time spent with art in the gallery setting. He invites the audience to linger with the work which depicts local people in the Hartford community. From his artist statement, he says, “The average time it takes a person to look at a painting is 15 to 30 seconds… How can one experience [the work] longer?”

About the Artist
Kyle lives in Brooklyn and has been exhibiting in group shows in New York and Connecticut. His work is in public and private collections throughout the area, including the New Britain Museum of American Art and the Episcopal Church in Connecticut. Kyle attended of the University of Hartford Art School where he graduated with honors and multiple awards.

 

Papo Vázquez & Mighty Pirates Troubadours Concert & Parranda

 

Real Art Ways invites the community for a holiday concert and parranda, with the return of trombonist, composer and arranger Papo Vázquez & Mighty Pirates Troubadours.

“If you examine the signal moments of Afro-Latin music in New York since the mid-1970s, you’ll often find the trombonist Papo Vazquez in the picture, brash and precise, helping to drive the music, giving it snap and ferocity.”
– Ben Ratliff, The New York Times

people playing instrumentsThis is a special night filled with traditional Puerto Rican food, music and dance.

Local Musicians
Bring your instruments and join in!

Parranda
Parranda, of Parranda de aguinaldo (Christmas folk music), is an Afro-Indigenous musical form played during the holidays in various Caribbean countries including Puerto Rico, Cuba, Trinidad, and the coastal area of the states Aragua and Carabobo in Venezuela.

Papo Vázquez
During the 1970s, Vázquez was a key player in the New York’s burgeoning jazz and Latin jazz scene. He performed with jazz luminaries Slide Hampton, Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Foster, Mel Lewis, Hilton Ruiz and toured Europe with the Ray Charles Orchestra. He is also a founding member of Jerry Gonzalez’s Fort Apache Band, Conjunto Libre, and Puerto Rico’s Batacumbele.

Vázquez is known for fusing Afro-Caribbean rhythms, specifically those from Puerto Rico, with freer melodic, harmonic elements and progressive jazz.

Recently, Vázquez was honored by Arturo O’ Farrill and the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra as one of the great sidemen of Latin jazz. His most recent recording, Spirit Warrior has received accolades from fans, critics and Jazzdelapena.com, Latin Jazz Network, The Latin Jazz Corner and the New York City Jazz Record, who cited it as “one of the Best Latin Jazz Albums of 2015.” – Latin Jazz Network

Band of Pirates

Papo Vazquez – Trombone
Andy Farber – Ten. Sax
Rick Germanson – Piano
Ariel Robles – Bass
Willy Rodriguez – Drums
Carlos Maldonado – Percussionist
Obanilú Allende – Perc.
Jose Mangual Jr. – Vocals & Perc.
Joe Diaz – Cuatro

Click Here to Learn More

Kylie Ford: Artist Talk and Reception

 

Join us Saturday, July 20 starting at 2:30 PM for an artist conversation and reception with Kylie Ford, one of six 2018 Real Art Awards recipients. Ford will be joined by Visual Arts Manager Neil Daigle Orians in a conversation about the materials, concepts, and research involved in creating the work in Spaces / Places. Reception will begin at 2:30 with light refreshments and mingling before the conversation begins at 3:00.

The work in Spaces / Places explores the formal and conceptual relationship between place and space as they operate formally within art objects. In her sculptural practice, Ford is exploring the historic, architectural and functional correlations between Ford’s home region of West Virginia and Real Art Ways.

To learn more about her work, visit her website here.

 

Mike Estabrook

 
From July 18 – September 29 in our Video Room, Real Art Ways is screening 3 of Mike Estabrook’s videos:

Staircase, 4 min. 5 sec.,
The Good, Etc., 5 min. 10 sec.,
B-Potemk, 6 min. 51 sec.

These works explore Estabrook’s experiments in video, including appropriating from video and film, hand drawn animation, projection, and more. Originally a site-specific installation, Staircase offers a bizarre narrative jumping between prehistoric and contemporary scenes through hand drawn imagery. The Good, Etc. utilizes the iconic showdown scene from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and reimagines it using hand drawn animated interventions. The climactic scene of B-Potemk is further distorted into chaos by Estabrook’s imagery. The overall effect is a surreal trip that exploits the viewer’s sense of nostalgia

About the Artist

Mike Estabrook was born in Quincy, Illinois and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work spans several media, including animation, painting, drawing, performance and installation. Estabrook’s work has also been shown at several venues, including P.P.O.W. gallery, the Queens Museum of Art, P.S.1, Arario Gallery, Nurture Art, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. He has been in residence at The MacDowell Colony, both the workspace and the Governors Island residency at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and NY Arts Beijing.

Binwanka: Artifacts

 

Real Art Ways presents Artifacts, a video installation by Bridgeport-based artist Binwanka, curated by David Borawski.

Utilizing a variety of video processing, Binwanka’s work explores the generative nature of video and our relationship with moving images. Consistently abstract, Binwanka creates experiential programming using video synthesizers, glitching, and data bending. The resulting videos exist somewhere between organic and unpredictable, and technologic creatures of code and process.

About the Artist

In addition to working in visual art, Binwanka hosts a monthly electronic music program through WPKN 89.5 FM, a nonprofit radio station based in Bridgeport. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and he recently completed an artist residency at Artspace New Haven. To find out more about the artist, visit his website.

Kylie Ford: Places/Spaces

 

Real Art Ways presents new work by 2018 Real Art Awards recipient Kylie Ford.

Places/Spaces is an exhibition that explores the historic, architectural and functional correlations between Kylie Ford’s home region of West Virginia and Real Art Ways. The work explores the formal and conceptual relationship between place and space as they operate formally within art objects.

Ford says, “My work focuses on visually articulating the essence of an object, space, or region through abstraction. I am able to learn about my environment through the use of forgotten, fragmented materials found within surrounding areas. My goal with this body of work is to harmonize similarities between locations, using their translation as an art object to highlight social, economic, and cultural characteristics of place.”

About the Artist
Kylie Ford lives and works out of Fairmont, West Virginia. She holds undergraduate degrees in Art Education and Studio Art with a 3D concentration from Fairmont State University and a Master of Fine Arts from Maine College of Art. Ford has also completed a summer intensive residency at Chautauqua School of Art in Chautauqua, New York and has recently been juried into the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh.

Ford’s work has been exhibited in venues including Boston University Art Galleries, Manifest Gallery, Huntington Museum of Art, Marshall University, Blackhills State University, Flatbed Press and Galleries, among others. She has received awards and educator recognitions from Chautauqua Institution, The Albert K. Murray Fine Art Educational Fund, and the West Virginia Art Education Association. Ford is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Fairmont State University.

More about the Real Art Awards here.

The 2018 Real Art Awards is supported in part by the National Endowment of the Arts and The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation.

Nomad/9 MFA: PARK: Bridging Communities

 

The opening reception of P.A.R.K. Bridging Communities takes place at our June Creative Cocktail Hour.

Collaborating with Mary Mattingly and the Nomad/9 MFA program at the Hartford Art School, Real Art Ways presented the premiere of the Park River Tool Kit. This site-responsive project continues a longstanding relationship between Real Art Ways and the students of the Hartford Art School while offering tools for viewers to explore their ideas, including foraging maps, water samples, and historical information.

Real Art Ways will continue this project with Mattingly and the current Nomad/9 MFA class with a new installation of objects, projections, and sculptures for the pop-up exhibition, P.A.R.K.: Bridging Communities.

About the Exhibit
P.A.R.K. Bridging Communities comprises one year of research and design work by four international women artists/MFA candidates in the Nomad/9 MFA Program at the University of Hartford, including Fatric Bewong, Blair Butterfield, Zahar Al-Dabbagh, and Sophy Tuttle. It catalogs the process of the students’ work with artist/faculty Mary Mattingly to create a public art project for Hartford inspired by the Park River.

This exhibition is presented simultaneously at the Silpe Gallery at the Hartford Art School and here at Real Art Ways.

From the P.A.R.K. Bridging Communities Artists
What can it mean to deeply connect to the place you live, or to the place you are visiting? Tasked with considering a bridge between North Hartford and the University of Hartford as a public art piece, we engaged in a deep research process in order to consider the river and its users.

We went on an investigative journey of archive and field research into surrounding lands, resources, histories, and ecologies in order to learn more about animals, plants, residents, businesses, and organizations near the Park River. From a physical bridge to an observation station, animal habitats, and an artist residency, the resulting exhibition is a culmination of our research process.