Andre Bogart Szabo creates paintings and wall mounted sculptures that explore the transformative power of repetition. Embracing informal materials such as gravel, fireworks, and foraged materials, Szabo creates expansive abstract fields that are chaotic, expressive, and minimal all at once. He received his BA in Post-Production from Emerson College’s Visual Media Arts department in 2012. Szabo currently lives and works in New York. He was born in Washington, D.C. in 1990.
Successful Artists Have This In Common
Successful artists don’t give up. They don’t let the word no get in their way. To build an art career, one must expect and accept that there will be plenty of bumps in the road, plenty of opportunities that just weren’t the right ones for you – and when that happens it is imperative that you pick yourself up and keep going. The only opportunity you will never get is the one you don’t apply for.
Flash opportunity: Constellations, a journal of poetry and fiction is currently looking for black and white images – line drawings or photos that will reproduce well at a reduced size are optimal. At this time, the journal is not accepting submissions of color work. Each submitted piece must have a title to accompany. Visit the website for more information.Deadline for submissions is September 10.
London Photo Festival is partnering with English Heritage to bring their very first outdoor photography exhibition. The theme is Womanhood – what does it mean to you? Submit images along with the stories behind them. The top 10 images will be on display for six months at Marble Hill House in Twickenham, south London. There is a nominal fee for entry. For more information, visit the website. Deadline for submissions is September 14.
The City of Boston announces a call to artists to create public art for a rebuild of the Adams Street Branch of the Boston Public Library, located in Dorchester. There is an informational session scheduled for September 9, interested artists are encouraged to attend. This call is open to all artists both domestic and international. For more information, visit the website. Deadline for proposals is September 16.
Praxis Center is in the business of nurturing artists’ careers. For years we have taught artists at every stage how to get ahead in the art world – whether that means assisting with grant applications, helping artists understand the financial world of an art career or directing them to opportunities, our mission is to make sure artists have the skills and tools they need to succeed. Join us today and see what we have to offer.
Brainard Carey is an author, artist and educator. He is the director of Praxis Center for Aesthetics. He has written six books for artists; Making it in the Art World, New Markets for Artists, The Art World Demystified, Fund Your Dreams Like a Creative Genius, Sell Online Like a Creative Genius and Succeed with Social Media Like a Creative Genius.
Photo credit: wikimedia commons
Geoffrey Moss
Geoffrey Moss defines himself as “… simply a working New York artist”; painter, photographer of motorcycle culture (The Biker Code), former art restorer, Metropolitan Museum of Art, syndicated captionless political satirist of MOSSPRINTS, conceptual illustrator, children’s book author, set designer, essayist and university teacher.
Ultimately all my work is about drawing…the purity of drawing in both paintings and works on paper. Over time, the work has become comfortably less representational, focusing more on the reduction of shapes, forms to reflect the interaction of color, the energy of paint; the way the paint – the physicality of painting — documents the personal dialogue of spontaneous movement, finding form as a visual statement as in the architecture of water. It’s about my dedication to the anatomy of shapes I arrange and rearrange. I work in series, a process beginning with sufficient numbers of drawings to continue idea-to-canvas. My lexicon stems from restrictions of the Bauhaus, 18th C. erotic Japanese prints, Russian Constructivism, religious symbols, Chinese medicine labels and vintage comic books. Experience confirms my personal truth, that art begets art, feeding a compulsion to generate and continue the dance.
I received Pulitzer Prize nominations for MOSSPRINTS, (Watergate and 9/11) resulting in the publication of a collection of my early works, The Art and Politics of Geoffrey Moss, as well as an invitation to paint Bus with White Walls for the Smithsonian Institution exhibition In the Spirit of Martin.
Moss holds degrees from The University of Vermont (B.A., Distinguished Alumnus) and Yale School of Art and Architecture (B.F.A., M.F.A.).
Shook
“No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn’t understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.” -Jacques Derrida
We are soothed by our own sense of what is real. Each of us approaches the world with a deeply rooted, predetermined set of views and perspective that shapes how we encounter every moment. When this foundation shakes, it can feel as though everything we thought we understood rests on a knife’s edge. Naturally our instinct is to reject anything that threatens our fragile sense of reality, but isn’t this the moment when true creativity takes place?
Umico Niwa spoke to us from Richmond, Virginia where she just graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with an MFA in Sculpture and Extended Media. Despite the pandemic, Niwa says this has been a surprisingly good time for her and her partner, Peat Szilagyi, to make work in the studio. They have just completed a body of work that has just been shipped for exhibition at Holding Contemporary in Portland, Oregon. The title of the show is Solar Coochie and it explores solar punk – a genre that imagines a future where we can subsist off of solar and other forms of renewable energy and reside in biosphere dwellings. There are many intersections to the work of Niwa and Szilagyi; Niwa’s work has focused on plant life as offering a different mode of gender/identity/expression/sexuality or a different mode of existing. To hear more about this work and more from Umico Niwa, listen to the complete interview.
Reaksmey Yean spoke to us from Cambodia at the end of July 2020. He reported that Cambodia has been relatively lucky in terms of lower rates of infection and that things were slowly returning to a new normal. When we spoke, he was busy with a few personal projects including work on a novel, but his main focus has been trying to get his gallery open. The pandemic was a major setback, but Yean, undaunted, continues to move forward toward this goal. The gallery will house work by artists from around Southeast Asia. Yean works as a curator, artist, writer, researcher and art activist and was the founder of an art collective. To hear more from Reaksmey Yean about his work, his philosophy on art and other pieces of his complex career, listen to the complete interview.
A Few Words to Keep in your Pocket:
When we are forced to re-examine what we believe to be true, that is when we start to really live.
Interviews are available on iTunes as podcasts, and for Android please click here. All weekly essay pieces in a shareable format are here. The full archive of interviews here.
Books to Read
What are you reading? Add your titles to our reading list here. Umico Niwa is reading various studies on deep neural networks (DNN). Reaksmey Yean claims to be “a boring person” when it comes to reading – his recent reading The Truth in Painting by deconstructionist philosopher, Jacques Derrida, says otherwise.
Deadlines
Every year, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation awards approximately 175 fellowships. Thousands of artists apply for this prestigious honor, but that is no reason you shouldn’t be one of them. The application process does require some very specific written documents to accompany your work, but this is one to put on your lifetime list for sure. Visit the website for more information. Deadline for this year is September 17.
Weekly Edited Grant and Residency Deadlines – review the list here.
Brainard Carey is an author, artist and educator. He is the director of Praxis Center for Aesthetics. He has written six books for artists; Making it in the Art World, New Markets for Artists, The Art World Demystified, Fund Your Dreams Like a Creative Genius, Sell Online Like a Creative Genius and Succeed with Social Media Like a Creative Genius.
Do You Need Some Help?
Whether during a time of hardship, or simply as a next step in your art career, grants are part of the bread and butter of many professional artists. They come in all sizes – some grand and carrying quite a lot of prestige, others more modest or even intended for emergency funding. Below find a few upcoming grant deadlines for you to investigate, whether you are an artist early in your career or more advanced – or in need of emergency assistance.
Every year, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation awards approximately 175 fellowships. Thousands of artists apply for this prestigious honor, but that is no reason you shouldn’t be one of them. The application process does require some very specific written documents to accompany your work, but this is one to put on your lifetime list for sure. Visit the website for more information. Deadline for this year is September 17.
Artadia Awards are unrestricted grants of $10,000 for artists who live in one of the cities that the grantor partners with. Applications for each city are open online during particular cycles throughout the year. The next cycle is for artists who live and work in Atlanta and will open on September 15. For a complete list of partner cities and more information, visit the website. Deadline for the Atlanta cycle is October 15.
Artists Fellowship meets monthly from September to June to review applications from professional artists and their families in need of emergency aid due to illness, natural disaster, bereavement or unexpected extreme hardship. Artists must demonstrate need as well as professional status – meaning that their primary income is generated through sales and that they have an active exhibition archive. For more information, visit the website. Deadlines are rolling beginning in September.
Praxis Center believes in supporting artists at every stage of their careers. We know that the art world and be an unforgiving place, but we also know that it is filled with opportunity if you know where to look. We not only highlight some of those opportunities, we guide you step by step through the application process. Join us today and let your career move to the next level.
Brainard Carey is an author, artist and educator. He is the director of Praxis Center for Aesthetics. He has written six books for artists; Making it in the Art World, New Markets for Artists, The Art World Demystified, Fund Your Dreams Like a Creative Genius, Sell Online Like a Creative Genius and Succeed with Social Media Like a Creative Genius.
Photo credit: Pinterest