Chad States, interviewed and blogged

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Nozlee Samadzadeh at The Morning News posted an insightful and in-depth interview with Chad States, who did a residency here at Light Work in June 2009. In the interview, titled “Men at Their Most Masculine,” Samadzadeh and an accompanying image gallery focus on States’s series of portraits and texts that seek the answer to the question, “Are you masculine?”

Later the same day, Jezebel ran an item on the interview and States’s work that has generated over 13,000 hits so far and a lively discussion on the definitions of masculinity and femininity in the comments section.

Read both sites for some interesting perspectives and commentary on this intriguing and beautiful series.

Intermissions gets under way

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Syracuse is the site of Intermissions, a multi-venue exhibition project featuring Barry Anderson’s colorful and enigmatic video and still work. The exhibition creates opportunities, sometimes in unexpected places, for a refreshing change of view from everyday life.

The first of Anderson’s installations, including a screening of his video Pigeon at the Everson Museum of Art and three billboards in various locations around Syracuse, are up. The exhibition is already making its presence known, with a long front-page article in today’s CNY section of The Post-Standard. Also posted online today is videographer Ellen Blalock’s interview with Barry Anderson – you can watch the in-depth discussion with the artist on Syracuse.com. Finally, open at the Menschel Gallery in SU’s Schine Student Center is Suspension, an exhibition of Anderson’s moving and eloquent aerial photographs.

Click here to see a list of all the venues for Intermissions, and keep your eyes open for Anderson’s work as you drive around town.

Carrie Mae Weems on Art:21

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Season 5 of the PBS series Art:21 opens with an episode entitled Compassion. The episode, which premieres on October 7, 2009, features interviews with artists William Kentridge, Doris Salcedo, and former Light Work Artist-in-Residence Carrie Mae Weems.

In her segment, Weems discusses the presence of compassion in her work and how the use of appropriated images can help to open a dialog between the past and present. Click here to see a preview of Compassion on the Art:21 website, which also features an interview with Weems and Dawoud Bey, himself a former Light Work Artist-in-Residence.

Three Light Work connected artists at Carrie Haddad

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Robert Flynt and Warren Neidich, former artists in residence at Light Work, and Gary Schneider, with whom Light Work published Genetic Self-Portrait, are exhibiting at Carrie Haddad Gallery July 16, 2009 through August 30, 2009. The exhibit, “Afterglow: Four Photographers & the Hand-Held Light,” also includes the work of David Lebe.

Melissa Stafford, curator, says about this exhibit:

The work of these photographers is vital and never still. Their images register something of what human life is and of what human life might be; present fully in every instant of time. The gleaming tracery evokes a gradual recognition of nose, mouth, chin, and neck coalescing into a recognizable form like “man”, or even an individual, like “Christopher”, but this body transcends those familiar, literal forms. Alfred Stieglitz, a hundred years ago, believed that personality could not be expressed by a face alone. The work in this exhibit agrees; it attempts to further sensitize photography – extending the medium to take in more and more of life’s fleeting glow.

The exhibit opens Saturday July 18 with a reception from 6 to 8 pm.

Carrie Haddad Gallery
318 Warren Street
Hudson, NY. 12534
518.828.7655

Testing 1, 2, 3 . . .

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Barry Anderson has been in town for about a week now doing tests at various sites for his upcoming exhibition Intermissions. Over fifteen separate venues all over Syracuse will show work by Anderson, a former Light Work Artist-in-Residence whose video and photo-based imagery occupies a space on the border between the commonplace and the surreal.

The first installation, the video Pigeon, will open at the Everson Museum July 25. Anderson’s video and sound piece Fragments, Spirits, Dust Bunnies, shown here in the installation process as Anderson answers interview questions, opens in the Light Work Main Gallery August 14. Click here to see the full schedule of Intermissions venues, including over 10 billboards throughout the Syracuse area.

The Light Work Annual 2009

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The Light Work Annual is one of the most anticipated issues of Contact Sheet of the year. In the Annual, we feature images by our Artists-in-Residence, as well as insightful essays about their work. We also highlight the winners of our Light Work Grants in Photography program. The Annual provides a snapshot of all the exciting, ground-breaking art, exhibitions, and events that happen at Light Work over the year.

The Light Work Annual 2009, which will ship early in July, is bursting at the seams with 96 pages. It features photographs by our 2008 Artists-in-Residence including Scott Conarroe, Kelli Connell, Lola Flash, Cristina Fraire, Admas Habteslasie, Deana Lawson, Paula Luttringer, John Clark Mayden, Christine Osinski, Oscar Palacio, Xaviera Simmons, Amy Stein, Krista Steinke, and Garie Waltzer. Contributing essayists include Dawoud Bey, Julie Bolcer, Josh Brilliant, Leslie Rose Close, Karen Irvine, David L. Jacobs, Allison N. Kemmerer, Stuart Krimko, Peter MacGill, Maria Moreno, Alison Devine Nordström, Franklin Sirmans, Alec Soth, and Spring Ulmer.

If you subscribe today, you will receive The Light Work Annual 2009 as your first issue of Contact Sheet. Click here to see the 2009 subscription program offers, with beautiful prints and books that can make your subscription to Contact Sheet even sweeter.

Picturing New York: Christine Osinski

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Christine Osinski, who was a Light Work Artist-in-Residence in September 2008, has photographed the activities of an all-female swimmers club on Staten Island for several years. An image from Osinski’s swimmers series is included in the exhibition Picturing New York: Photographs from The Museum of Modern Art and in the accompanying catalog.

You can see the exhibition at La Casa Encendida in Madrid through June 14 until the show travels to the Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto in Italy for a viewing from July 11 to October 11. The Irish Museum of Modern Art will host the final installation of the exhibition from November 25 to February 7, 2010.

Light Work Grant Winners Announced

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And the winners are: Karen Brummund (Ithaca), Laura Adams Guth (Manlius), and Stephen Shaner (Syracuse). You can read more about the grants and the winners here.

The judges, Richard Gray, Gina Murtagh, and Demetrius Oliver, spent an entire day reviewing the 50-plus applications that were received this year for the grants. All were impressed by the quality of the applications, which made for lots of discussion throughout the judging process.

Congratulations not only to the winners but to all who applied for the 35th Annual Light Work Grants in Photography.

Image: Stephen Shaner

Deana Lawson and Desires at Chashama

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The photographs of former Light Work Artist-in-Residence (2008) Deana Lawson appear in the exhibition Desires at Chashama in New York City. The show is curated by Robert Curcio and features painting, sculpture, and photographs by seven other artists including Ricky Allman, Sandra Bermudez, and Carla Gannis. The exhibition asks viewers to question and perhaps reformulate what they think they know about desire, especially the representation of desire. It should be intriguing to see how this idea plays out across the different media. The show opens May 6, with a reception on May 5 from 6 to 8.

Desires
May 6-24, 2009
Chashama
112 West 44 Street at Sixth Avenue
New York, New York 10036
212.505.7196

Dinh Q. Lê at Elizabeth Leach Gallery

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Dinh Q. Lê opens a solo exhibit on May 7, 2009, at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, Oregon. The reception will held the same day from 6 to 9 pm. The show, titled Signs and Signals From the Periphery, will be up until May 30. Dinh participated in Light Work’s artist-in-residence program in 2000.

Elizabeth Leach Gallery
417 N.W. 9th Ave
Portland, OR
503.224.0521

Kerry Skarbakka on The Today Show

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Kerry Skarbakka - Studio, 2002

Kerry Skarbakka - Studio, 2002

Kerry Skarbakka, who was a Light Work Artist-in-Residence in July 2006, appeared on NBC’s Today Show on April 21, 2009.  He sat down with Matt Lauer to discuss how he makes the images in his series The Struggle to Right Oneself, which depict Skarbakka tripping or falling. Follow the links below to see a video of his interview, or the slideshow of his work compiled by NBC.

Interview Video
Interview Slideshow
Kerry Skarbakka’s website

Migdalia Valdes at Intersection

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Former Light Work Artist-in-Residence (2005) Migdalia Valdes celebrates a decade of her daily photographic project with the exhibition Every Day in Black in White at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. Valdez has made at least one photograph a day for the past ten years. The exhibition features prints from this diaristic practice and also elaborate journals made by Valdez in conjunction with the photographs. Visitors to the show can leaf through the journals for an intimate look at the artist’s creative process. The exhibit runs from April 4 to May 23, 2009.
Intersection for the Arts
446 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
415-626-2787