Brainard Carey

Tammy Nguyen

December 4, 2020 By Brainard Carey Leave a Comment

Tammy Nguyen is a multimedia artist whose work spans painting, drawing, printmaking, and publishing. Intersecting geopolitical realities with fiction, her practice addresses lesser-known histories through a blend of myth and visual narrative.

She is the founder of Passenger Pigeon Press, an independent press that joins the work of scientists, journalists, creative writers, and artists to create politically nuanced and cross-disciplinary projects.

Born in San Francisco, Nguyen received a BFA from Cooper Union in 2007. The year following, she received a Fulbright scholarship to study lacquer painting in Vietnam, where she remained and worked with a ceramics company for three years thereafter. Nguyen received an MFA from Yale in 2013 and was awarded the Van Lier Fellowship at Wave Hill in 2014. She has exhibited at the Rubin Museum, The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre in Vietnam, and the Bronx Museum, among others.

Her work is included in the collections of Yale University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, MIT Library, the Seattle Art Museum, the Walker Art Center Library, and the Museum of Modern Art Library.

“This is how the village people bury their dead”, Watercolor, vinyl paint, pastel, and metal leaf on paper stretched over wood panels, 24″ x 20″ , 2020

Martha’s Quarterly, Issue 17, Fall 2020, “There are No Edges on the Moon”

Escape

December 4, 2020 By Brainard Carey Leave a Comment

We are braced for we know not what. The months behind us have been unlike any we have lived through before and those ahead hold new horizons of uncertainty. In this moment, as we wait for the wave to crash, each of us must find our way to tread the dark and thorny path ahead. To be present is, by many accounts, the most important way to live one’s life. And yet perhaps there are times when our best ally is escape. There is little to be done than wait and so escape – whether into the comfort of art or literature – is indeed a friend in this moment.

Ann McCoy spoke to us from Brooklyn. She was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019 and taught at Yale for a decade. Currently she is working on a drawing and a series of projections and says that for the first time she is working on something truly autobiographical. The work is based on a dream she began having when she was about 5 years old in which her adopted father was a king in an Alice in Wonderland world. He had been killed by the Queen and ground into a powder by the Queen in her recurring dream. As an adult she learned of the dreams of an ancient alchemist who also dreamed of people being ground up. From this she began to discover the meaning behind her own dream. The connection between alchemy and her own father didn’t stop there. To hear more about this and McCoy’s other work, listen to the complete interview.

Ali LeRoi is a director of film and television. At the moment, the pandemic has put quite a lot of projects on pause though he has recently sold a show to CBS titled Honorable. The show was inspired by the impact of black women in society, including the duty of holding office while simultaneously balancing a life at home. Aside from this he is in the development process with a handful of other projects/studios. LeRoi’s debut feature film, The Obituary of Tunde Johnson was screened at the Toronto Film Festival and will premier in 2021. LeRoi has five Emmy nominations and one win. He is best known for his work in television on Everybody Hates Chris, Are We There Yet, and Survivor’s Remorse. To hear more from Ali LeRoi on his rich career, the current situation and how it relates to politics and entertainment, and why black women are an important and chronically overlooked audience, listen to this compelling interview.

A Few Words to Keep in your Pocket:

There is no harm done by escaping to created worlds. The promise of comfort may lie upon their shores.

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. Ann McCoy is reading The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy. Ali LeRoi spoke of the book Open City by Teju Cole.

Deadlines

Amant Residency in New York is accepting applications for its inaugural program. Both emerging and established artists are invited to apply to this program located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Those selected will complete a three month residency during which they will live among the cultural riches of the city alongside international colleagues. For more information, visit the website. Deadline for applications is December 18.

What Will You Do When The Time Comes?

December 3, 2020 By Brainard Carey Leave a Comment

A light at the end of the tunnel – as the world anticipates a vaccine and the ability to return to some semblance of normalcy, now is the perfect time to begin planning your next steps. There will be a time when we can once again move through our days free of lockdown requirements, and there will be the opportunity to freely engage with the world once again. So what are you waiting for? Use your time to line up the next stage of your art career. Here are three opportunities to get you started.

Visual artists who can demonstrate experience or interest in interdisciplinary practices to work toward the creation of a sound installation and multidisciplinary performance are invited to apply for HoME, a project based in Hungary, Austria, Serbia & Spain. There are eligibility requirements for this project so be sure to carefully check the website. Deadline for applications is December 15.

Paradise AIR invites artists to apply for residency in Matsudo, Japan for up to 90 days – including a 14 day quarantine period per the Japanese government. The residency takes place in vacant floors of a hotel occupied by a pinball gaming establishment on the floors below. The theme for this residency is unraveling time. Visit the website for full details and to apply. Deadline is December 25.

Praxis Center recognizes the need for career artists to be constantly looking for what’s next. While this may at times feel like a challenge, there can also be a certain freedom to creating your own path forward. It takes a tremendous amount of work to successfully navigate an artistic path. That’s why our team of experts is ready to assist you with every step of this journey of a lifetime.

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

Philemona Williamson

December 1, 2020 By Brainard Carey Leave a Comment

Philemona Williamson is a narrative painter who has shown widely in the United States and abroad. Her work explores the tenuous bridge between adolescence and adulthood, encapsulating the intersection of innocence and experience at its most piercing and poignant moment.

The lush color palette and dreamlike positioning of the figures ensures that their vulnerability – of age, of race, of sexual identity – is seen as strength and not as weakness. “My figures navigate a world of uncertainty as they search for understanding—both internally and in ever-shifting environments. I see the figures as vehicles to explore the existence of the most vulnerable adolescents, those evolving people of color, grappling with what will define and identify them. My paintings give voice and space to invisibility.”

Williamson has exhibited her work for over 25 years at the June Kelly Gallery in NYC and recently, at her mid-career retrospective at the Montclair Art Museum in NJ. She is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Pollock Krasner, National Endowment For The Arts, New York Foundation For The Arts and Millay Colony as well as serving on the advisory board of the Getty Center for Education. Her work has been shown in many solo and group exhibitions such as The Queens Museum of Art, Wisconsin’s Kohler Art Center, The Sheldon Museum in Nebraska, The Bass Museum in Miami, The Mint Museum in North Carolina, The Forum of Contemporary Art in St. Louis, The International Bienal of Painting in Cuenca, Ecuador and most recently at the Anna Zorina Gallery in NYC.

She is represented in numerous private and public collections, including The Montclair Art Museum; The Kalamazoo Art Institute; The Mint Museum of Art; Smith College Museum of Art; Hampton University Museum; Sheldon Art Museum; Mott-Warsh Art Collection, and AT&T. Her public works includes fusedglass murals created for the MTA Arts in Transit Program at the Livonia Avenue Subway Station in Brooklyn, a poster for the MTA Poetry In Motion and — for the NYC School Authority — a mosaic mural in the Glenwood Campus School. She currently teaches painting at Pratt Institute and Hunter College in NYC.

For Philemona’s latest project, she created a series of paintings for the children’s book Lubaya’s Quiet Roar, just out from Penguin Random House.

Ali LeRoi

December 1, 2020 By Brainard Carey Leave a Comment

Ali LeRoi is an Award-winning writer/director/producer best known for his work on the critically acclaimed series, CW’s “Everybody Hates Chris”, TBS “Are We There Yet?” and the breakout Hit for STARZ, “Survivor’s Remorse”. Ali has five Emmy nominations as well as one win, he’s a two-time winner and five-time nominee for NAACP Image Awards, as well as scoring several nominations from the Golden Globe, WGA, and others. Ali’s major motion picture credits include producing and co-writing “Head of State” and “Down to Earth,” as well as producing cult- favorite, “Pootie Tang.”

His feature film Directorial Debut “The Obituary of Tunde Johnson” premiered at The Toronto Film Festival and is slated for release in 2021.

The book mentioned in the interview is Open City by Teju Cole.