
Michael Broder

Author Website for Brainard and Delia Carey
Christian Bök is the author of Eunoia (2001), a bestselling work of experimental literature, which has gone on to win the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence.
Bök is currently working on The Xenotext — a project that requires him to encipher a poem into the genome of a bacterium capable of surviving in any inhospitable environment.
Bök is a Fellow in the Royal Society of Canada, and he teaches at Charles Darwin University.
Hilda O’Connell was born in the Bronx of Irish immigrant parents. She received a BFA degree from Pratt Institute and in her senior year, she was introduced to painting by her teacher and future mentor, Jack Tworkov. After graduation, she continued her studies with Jack at his studio on the Bowery.
In the late 50’s she moved to a loft on East 10th Street which housed the studios of Wm de Kooning, Milton Resnick and Esteban Vincente. Located across the street was the Aegis Gallery where she became a member and exhibited from 1961-1967. In order to develop her skills as a painter and to deepen her knowledge about art, she enrolled as an art history major at New York University. Later she received a scholarship to Yale University where she received her MFA. Upon graduation she continued painting and worked as a part-time teacher.
Her subject in painting is language. She begins her paintings free from any preconceived plan, which allows different possibilities to emerge. A large stencil letter often initiates her process, setting off a series of transformations of random marks and clusters of fragmented letters. Disruptive techniques like collage and the palimpsest, a form of overwriting, contribute to the enigma by the blurring of forms beneath. This strategy of chance in an indeterminate world, represents a freedom of choice and opens possibilities otherwise smothered by calculation.
The books she is reading are; Anton Ehrenzweig, The Hidden Order of Art, Lynn Gamwell, Exploring the Invisible (art, science and the spiritual) and Rollo May, The Discovery of Being.
Paul Rucker is a visual artist, composer, and musician who often combines media, integrating live performance, sound, original compositions, and visual art. His work is the product of a rich interactive process, through which he investigates community impacts, human rights issues, historical research, and basic human emotions surrounding particular subject matter. Much of his current work focuses on the Prison Industrial Complex and the many issues accompanying incarceration in its relationship to slavery. He has presented performances and visual art exhibitions across the country and has collaborated with educational institutions to address the issue of mass incarceration. Presentations have taken place in schools, active prisons and also inactive prisons such as Alcatraz.
His largest installation to date, REWIND, garnered praise from Baltimore Magazine awarding Paul “Best Artist 2015.” Additionally, REWIND received “Best Solo Show 2015” and “#1 Art Show of 2015” from Baltimore City Paper, reviews by The Huffington Post, Artnet News, Washington Post, The Root, and The Real News Network. Rucker has received numerous grants, awards, and residencies for visual art and music. He is a 2012 Creative Capital Grantee in visual art as well as a 2014 MAP (Multi-Arts Production) Fund Grantee for performance. In 2015 he received a prestigious Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant as well as the Mary Sawyer Baker Award. In 2016 Paul received the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist fellowship and the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, for which he is the first artist in residence at the new National Museum of African American Culture.
Residencies include MacDowell Colony, Blue Mountain Center, Ucross Foundation, Art OMI, Banff Centre, Pilchuck Glass School, Rauschenberg Residency, Joan Mitchell Residency, Hemera Artist Retreat, Air Serembe, Creative Alliance, and the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy. In 2013-2015, he was the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Artist in Residence and Research Fellow at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
He was most recently awarded a 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, TED Fellowship, and the Arts Innovator Award from the Dale and Leslie Chihuly Foundation.
This fall, Rucker’s work will be featured at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University in its inaugural exhibition, Declaration.
Paul Rucker is a iCubed Visiting Arts Fellow embedded at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University.