WPKN Archives Archive Feed: liveculture

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis Episode 66: Scarily Fun

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 11:00:00 GMT

Happy Halloween! This month Live Culture offers conversations with two very different Hartford CT. based theatre groups to discuss their current productions at this challenging moment, when social distancing is necessary. Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic all arts organizations are facing very real survival hurdles as they try to engage audiences remotely.

For the first half I am joined by Taneisha Duggan, Producing Associate at TheaterWorks Hartford which currently offers the innovative RUSSIAN TROLL FARM- A WORKPLACE COMEDY By Sarah Gancher. To make this happen digitally, TheaterWorks joined forces with TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, Arkansas, with additional support from The Civilians—NYC’s experts of theatre “at the intersection of the theatrical and the real”—the collaboration creates a “site-specific work for the internet” inspired by the actual transcripts from the Russian government-backed Internet Research Agency in the run-up to the 2016 election. Zoom theatre has never looked like this. Billed as a unique live theatre experience with “digital magic,” the highly collaborative project is a cross between theatre, film, and multimedia design. Led by directors Jared Mezzocchi (Co-Director, Multimedia Designer) and Elizabeth Williamson (Co-Director, Dramaturg), the live performances will test the limits of digital performance and are the capstone of an intensive period of socially isolated, virtually connected, new play development.

more about RUSSIAN TROLL FARM here

For the second half I will be in conversation with Anne Cubberly and Mellissa Craig,two artists behind the popular puppet and performance based festival Nightfall, which normally takes place in one of Hartford's public parks and this year has been transformed into a movie! Nightfall features innovative giant puppets, music, performers and dancers and is a family-friendly extravaganza that has been going strong since 2012.

Anne is Artistic & Executive Director of Nightfall, and a master puppet maker with over 28 years experience. Her work includes kinetic sculpture, artist-in-residence experiences, installations, and performance.

Mellissa is an artist, educator and activist and an accomplished dancer in Modern, African, and Caribbean folk forms, as well as a trained stilt walker. She along with her collaborative performing group FriendZWorld Music created the opening scene (Invocation) for this year's film version of Nightfall as well as for last year's live performance.

more about Nightfall here

DID YOU KNOW?
Past Episodes of Live Culture are available as PODCASTS and have their own convenient PLAYLIST on Soundcloud. The show has featured many fascinating voice, places and projects, and offers a wealth of cultural armchair voyages at the tip of your fingers! click here https://soundcloud.com/wpkn895/sets/live-culture-with-martha
- a user-friendly guide of who/what/where is coming soon....

If YOU have an idea for a future episode please drop me a line- I am always eager to hear what's going on! Marthawlewis@gmail.com

Live Culture is a monthly discussion about the arts, Hosted by visual artist Martha Willette Lewis and airing on WPKN, Radio 89.5 fm Bridgeport, available online at Wpkn.org. The show airs on the final Saturday of each month from 11-12 noon and is available for two weeks on ARCHIVES and *EVER AFTER* as a PODCAST, for ON-Demand Listening.

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis episode 65: Born to Document!

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 11:00:00 GMT

This month on Live Culture I am in conversation with photographer J.J. Gonson who has a beautiful new book of photographs coming out, as a set with the anniversary re-release of Elliott Smith's self-titled album on Kill Rock Stars. Gonson has been documenting with a camera since she was a child, and as a teenager began filming the local Boston music scene. She later moved to the west coast and has shot images of bands and music world-wide. She became close to Smith and his band Heatmiser, even going on to become his manager- as well as documentarian -when he went solo. Her work become his first two -now iconic- album covers. Gonson's photographs of bands like Nirvana, Sonic Youth and Black Flag are legendary, but she also has documented many lesser known acts and has many, never-been-seen bodies of work. We discuss her practice over the course of her life, her preferences and process. Gonson now runs an event space -Once- in Somerville Massachusetts, which has- because of COVID- moved over to YOUTUBE to become the Once Virtual Venue (OVV). Please join us for this special conversation.

To see more about J.J.'s Images, the venue Once, The Elliot Smith Project, and some press please visit:

https://www.jjgonsonphoto.com/projects
https://www.morrisonhotelgallery.com/photographers/Q9GhNm/JJ--Gonson
https://www.facebook.com/jjgonsonphotography/
https://www.oncesomerville.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ONCEsomerville/
https://www.killrockstars.com/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/aug/26/jj-gonsons-best-photograph-a-smile-from-elliott-smith
https://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/elliot-smith-jj-gonson-exclusive-photos

DID YOU KNOW?
Past Episodes of Live Culture are available as PODCASTS and have their own convenient PLAYLIST onWPKN's Soundcloud page?The show has featured many fascinating voice, places and projects, and offers a wealth of cultural armchair voyages at the tip of your fingers! click here https://soundcloud.com/wpkn895/sets/live-culture-with-martha
- a user-friendly guide of who/what/where is coming soon....

If YOU have an idea for a future episode please drop me a line- I am always eager to hear what's going on! message me at https://www.facebook.com/livecultureradio

Live Culture is a monthly discussion about the arts, Hosted by visual artist Martha Willette Lewis and airing on WPKN, Radio 89.5 fm Bridgeport, available online at Wpkn.org. The show airs on the final Saturday of each month from 11-12 noon and is available for two weeks on ARCHIVES and *EVER AFTER* as a PODCAST, for ON-Demand Listening.

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis Episode 64: How to Make a Scaffolding of Care...

Sat, 29 Aug 2020 11:00:00 GMT

This month on Live Culture I am in conversation with Curator/Activist La Tanya S. Autry, and Artist/Activist Amanda D. King. La Tanya is Gund Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, where the exhibit she curated -Temporary Spaces of Joy and Freedom -is now on view. Amanda is an Artist, Activist, Founder and Creative Director of the groundbreaking art and advocacy initiative Shooting Without Bullets.

We discuss a recent upheaval at The Museum of Contemporary Art (moCA) Cleveland, where an exhibition of drawings by noted artist Shaun Leonardo, depicting police violence, was cancelled after concern over the content was voiced. This resulted in an outcry from the artist, subsequent apologies to him from the museum and the director stepping down. Both Amanda and La Tanya were involved in raising objections to showing the work in the museum, along with Miss Samaria Rice, the mother of Tamir Rice, who was the subject of one of the drawings.

Much has been written about the artist being censored, but there is more to it. This is a complex story which the two help untangle as we discuss institutionalized racism, community, and the impact of images. At the center of it all is the heartbreaking issue: what rights do family members of victims of violence have over the images of their loved ones? How do we sensitively navigate the line between public and private? And more broadly, what can we do about institutionalized racism in museums and the art world?

About my guests:
Amanda D. King is a Cleveland-based artist, activist, and educator. Her civically engaged practice utilizes arts education, cultural production, and cultural organizing to spread progressive ideas and messages of social justice.

Amanda is the Founder and Creative Director of Shooting Without Bullets, a for-impact organization utilizing cultural production, artist education and development, activism and advocacy to model an alternative arts ecosystem that accelerates movement Black and Brown youth and their communities need to thrive.

Amanda holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Art History from Bryn Mawr College and a Juris Doctor Degree from Case Western Reserve University where she received the Martin Luther King Jr., Diane Ethics, and Dean’s Community Service Awards.

More about Shooting Without Bullets here: http://www.shootingwithoutbullets.org/

As a cultural organizer in the visual arts, La Tanya S. Autry centers collective care in her decolonial, abolitionist curatorial praxis. In addition to co-creating The Art of Black Dissent, an interactive program that both promotes public discussion about the Black liberation struggle and engenders fighting antiblackness through the collective imagining of public art interventions, she co-produced #museumsarenotneutral, an initiative that exposes the fallacies of the neutrality claim and calls for an equity-based transformation of museums and the Social Justice and Museums Resource List, a crowd-sourced bibliography.

La Tanya has curated exhibitions and organized programs at moCA Cleveland, Yale University Art Gallery, Artspace New Haven, and other institutions. Through her graduate studies at the University of Delaware, where she is completing her Ph.D. In Art History, La Tanya has developed expertise in the art of the United States, photography, and museums. Her dissertation The Crossroads of Commemoration: Lynching Landscapes in America, which analyzes how individuals and communities memorialize lynching violence in the built environment, concentrates on the interplay of race, representation, memory, and public space.

More about the Temporary Spaces of Joy and Freedom exhibition: https://www.mocacleveland.org/exhibitions/temporary-spaces-joy-and-freedom
More about The Art of Black Dissent: https://theartofblackdissent.wordpress.com/who-are-we/
More about Museums Are Not Neutral:https://artstuffmatters.wordpress.com/
More about The Social Justice & Museums Resource List: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PyqPVslEPiq0Twnn4YYVXopk3q426J95nISRxvkQI_Q/edit

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis Episode 63:The Making of "Shirley"

Sat, 25 Jul 2020 11:00:00 GMT

My guests this month on Live Culture are Film Director Josephine Decker and Film Editor David Barker to discuss their new film Shirley, which won the 2020 Sundance Film Festival
Special Jury Prize for Auteur Filmmaking.

In the Film, renowned horror writer Shirley Jackson is on the precipice of writing her masterpiece when the arrival of newlyweds upends her meticulous routine and heightens tensions in her already tempestuous relationship with her philandering husband. The middle-aged couple, prone to ruthless barbs and copious afternoon cocktails, begins to toy mercilessly with the naïve young couple at their door.

Shirley, which Opened Digitally on June 5th, Stars Elizabeth Moss in the title role, and was written by Sarah Gubbins, based on the book of the same name, written by Susan Scarf Merrell.

Josephine Decker has said about Shirley Jackson: "I remember reading some critic or biographer noting that Shirley wasn’t a political writer. But I believe that Shirley grounded the political in the personal and that this is why her work continues to resonate today. Her stories are so deeply human that they are also timeless. She battled racism, classism and sexism through the unusual, the psychological, the manipulative rhythms of the subconscious.”

Join Josephine, David and I for a conversation about the mechanics behind making the film, with its distinctive coloring, camera style, and wonderfully detailed sets and costumes. As the film came out during the pandemic we discuss the logistics of that, and how Jackson herself is memorialized in this deeply creative blending of her life and her fiction, creating a new reality that very much speaks to the now. A feast for the eyes and ears, the film also has a remarkable soundtrack including original music by Tamar-kali and tracks by Huddie Ledbetter, The Bell Sisters and Clarence Ashley.

watch the trailer here
for more about the film see here

Shirley

DIRECTED BY
Josephine Decker
WRITTEN BY
by Sarah Gubbins
ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK
by Tamar-kali

STARRING
Elisabeth Moss
Odessa Young
Michael Stuhlbarg
Logan Lerman

Distributed by NEON

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis Episode 58: A conversation with Power Boothe!

Sat, 25 Jan 2020 11:00:00 GMT

Live Culture 58:
A conversation with Artist Power Boothe!

This month onThis month on Live Culture I am delighted to welcome artist, educator and thinker Power Boothe to the program. The program promises to be a heady mix of art, technology, ideas and books as well voyaging from the past to the NOW and the future, talking life in the New York artworld that was, and getting an advanced look at some of his upcoming exhibits and projects here in Connecticut.

Power Boothe has exhibited his paintings for over four decades. His work is represented in public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the British Museum in the UK, as well as many private collections nationally and internationally. In addition to his studio practice, Power has spent years working in the theater- notably for Richard Foreman and the Ontological-Hysterical Theater Company in NYC . He has received awards for his designs for experimental theater, dance and video productions, including a Bessie Award for set design, a Film/Video Arts Foundation Award for film, and several Art Matters Grants for theater. He came to New York as a student in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 1967, He continued to live and work as an artist for the next three decades in New York City. He studied classical archeology at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece and linguistics and philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1989 he received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts degree from Colorado College for his mid-career accomplishments.

Locally, he exhibits at Fred Giampietro Gallery in New Haven and has a forthcoming exhibit at Five Points Gallery in Torrington. Boothe is currently Professor of Painting at the Hartford Art School, University of Hartford. He served as Dean of the Hartford Art School from 2001 to 2010, where he led a successful campaign to build the Renée Samuels Center, a studio facility focused on teaching art and technology. As Director of the School of Art at Ohio University from 1998 to 2001 he produced a symposium on cognitive theory and the arts: Art/Body/Mind. As Co-director of the Mount Royal Graduate School of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art from 1993 to 1998, he curated the exhibition, Art + Necessity. Boothe served as Lecturer in the Humanities at Princeton University from 1988–1994 and served on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts from 1979 -1988.

Among his other talents Power can also list RADIO. A former radio presenter himself, we welcome him back to the live airwaves as we welcome in 2020!

To see some of Power's work online and to find out more please visit: https://www.powerboothe.com/

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis Episode 57: Glad Tidings!

Sat, 28 Dec 2019 11:00:00 GMT

This month on Live Culture we end the year on a positive note with a tour and discussion with Hugh French, Director and Kristin McKinlay, Director of Exhibitions and StudioWorks Residency Coordinator for The Tides Institute and Museum of Art in Eastport Maine. This is a success story of a small institution revitalizing its community through art, using a variety of inventive and forward-thinking methods. Join me on an audio tour with Hugh and Kristin through their newly renovated StudiosWorks residency space, and the very-much-under-construction renovation of the old Masonic Building downtown, which will give them expanded exhibition space, collection storage, a museum shop and restaurant.

The Tides is dedicated to bridging borders and exploring boundaries. While many small arts institutions are struggling to survive in today's market-driven climate, TIMA offers a model for creating collective goods for artists and local residents, while preserving historic buildings and using green innovations with their construction projects. Located directly on the U.S./Canada border between New England and the Atlantic Provinces, the Tides Institute & Museum of Art weaves together a range of regional and international interests, resources, and initiatives to build critical mass, synergy and connectedness. Founded in 2002 in Eastport Maine, the Tides Institute & Museum of Art offers initiatives and programs to foster new innovative and cross-sector works; through its wide ranging collections, education and preservation e?orts; and through its partnerships and endeavors to strengthen the region’s economic prosperity, vitality and wider connections.

TIMA's StudioWorks Artist-in-Residence Program is now in its seventh year. Facilities include an 1887 downtown StudioWorks space, an 1819 North Church Project Space plus two historic buildings for artist housing. By the end of 2019, 57 artists from 17 different states and three foreign countries will have participated in the program.

TIMA's collections are extensive and wide ranging – from historical to contemporary, from the 18th century to today. The collections have a particular focus on art, broadly conceived, but also have strong interests with architecture and history. The focuses of the collections are on the U.S./Canada northeast coast with connections to the broader world.

TIMA has received two awards from the national ArtPlace initiative based in New York City that is a partnership of 16 of the largest private foundations in the U.S.. In the first nine years of ArtPlace's existence, TIMA remains the only institution in Maine to have received ArtPlace funding.
More about TIMA and the StudioWorks Residency Program can be found here: https://www.tidesinstitute.org/

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis replay of Episode 53: protest Readings

Sat, 30 Nov 2019 11:00:00 GMT

This month of Live Culture offers an interview with Gallerist Jeff Bergman about his ongoing Learn-As-Protest project which has people reading out loud to each other at Trump Tower. Popular with artists and writers, this protest has a wide roster of participants and texts and adapts itself as current events unfold. We discuss creative forms of peaceful resistance, share stories about reading in the tower and discuss why even carrying a book into the building is a powerful act. Jeff has been leading this event weekly since 2016 and has been featured in the Guardian, the New Yorker and The New York Times to name some of the press this action has garnered.

More about the project here:https://www.facebook.com/learnasprotest/

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis Episode 55: Local Goods

Sat, 26 Oct 2019 11:00:00 GMT

This Month on Live Culture Martha has conversations with two movers and shakers in the local cultural scene.

Firstly a conversation with Fernando Pinto, to discuss his forthcoming Harvest Feast- A Benefit for IRIS. This will take place Nov 24, 7pm at Mactivity, 285 Nicholl Street, New Haven and features an evening of Music, Art, Poetry and Comedy with the proceeds going to IRIS which helps refugees and other displaced peoples establish new lives and regain hope.

Fernando is in the planning stages and is looking for interested performing artists to be considered. Fernando is responsible for the wealth of creative musical talent appearing in concert at Mactivity, and also books an impressive range of acts at Cafe 9, also in New Haven.

More about the event at https://www.fernandopintopresents.com/
More about IRIS here: http://www.irisct.org/

Her second guest is Suzanne Kachmar, Executive Director of City Lights Gallery and organizer of the Bridgeport Art Trail, now in it’s 11th year!

This takes place Nov 7-10, featuring: a kick-off party at Read’s Artspace, events at Housatonic Community College,The Housatonic Museum of Art, The Am Fab Building, The Gallery @999, The Harbourview Market, The Discovery Museum, The Schelfaudt Gallery at U of B, and The NEST arts factory to name a few participating venues. Special events include a music video mash up at the Bijou Theater, a vaudeville frolic, bike tours , an electronic billboard, and a WPKN vinyl record sale at the American Fabrics Building during their bustling open studios!
More at http://bridgeport-art-trail.org/

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis Episode 53: protest Readings

Sat, 27 Jul 2019 11:00:00 GMT

This month on Live Culture- an interview with Gallerist Jeff Bergman about his ongoing Learn-As-Protest project which has people reading out loud to each other at Trump Tower. Popular with artists and writers this protest has a wide roster of participants and texts and adapts itself as current events unfold. We discuss creative forms of peaceful resistance, share stories about reading in the tower and discuss why even carrying a book into the building is a powerful act. Jeff has been leading this event weekly since 2016 and has been featured in the Guardian, the New Yorker and The New York Times to name some of the press this action has garnered.

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis Episode 52: Digital Stitches

Sat, 29 Jun 2019 11:00:35 GMT

This month join me as I discuss artmaking, embroidery and the influence of the internet with artist Michelle Beaulieu-Morgan. Michelle can be defined many ways, including being a queer Mainer who is now based in CT and who - through her embroidery- is a self-proclaimed “Purveyor of Excessiveness”. Additionally, she is an Activist/Doyenne of Social Media/Visual Artist /Radio DJ /Writer/Spouse and Parent. Michelle has a PhD. in American Studies from Yale University and currently works as a Digital Accessibility Specialist.

Our discussion was recorded on a recent rainy afternoon, where we met to verbally unravel some of the complex interlacings formed by these various threads. Michelle - who began embroidering about 4 years ago- has had a meteoric rise through social media, and we talk about how Instagram has nourished her practice from its inception. This includes her first foray in digital needlework with her 1 year of stitches embroidery project, which used crowd-sourced content and went viral, giving a head-start to the over 24,000 followers she has today. We pick up with most recently, the story behind her commission by 4-time Grammy-Award winning artist Keb Mo, to make original art for his latest album cover. Oklahoma, which came out this month and features Michelle’s detailed custom embroidery, plus a variety of logoed items and memorabilia inspired by her images.

We peruse the how’s, when’s and why’s of what she does, the materiality involved, as well as the therapeutic aspects of hand-work and discuss her first- ever, brick-and-mortar solo art exhibition, coming up, IRL, this fall at the Whitney Humanities Center in New Haven. Her story is an inspiring tale of traditional needlecrafts, hard work, internet communities and a genre-breaking vision that connects them all.

More about Michelle here: https://www.instagram.com/mutuallyassureddeconstruction/?hl=en
More about Michelle’s radio show can be found here: https://www.wpkn.org/shows/michelle-morgan/
More about Keb Mo’s Oklahoma here: https://kebmo.limitedrun.com/store
More about the Whitney Humanities Center Art Gallery here: https://whc.yale.edu/gallery-whitney

see this episode's live culture Press Release here

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis: episode 50 Spring Sprung

Sat, 27 Apr 2019 11:00:00 GMT

https://mailchi.mp/ddcd21fd9550/this-saturday-on-live-culture-spring-sprung?e=8602659560

This Month on Live Culture I am delighted to present a conversation with curator/artist Fritz Horstman and artist Leila Daw about the forth coming exhibit Water Access at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art New Haven, located at 51 Trumbull Street. The show runs from May 5 - June 23, 2019. There will be an opening reception on Sunday, May 5, from 2-4pm.

The exhibit includes work by: Richard Barlow, Marilyn Crocker, Leila Daw, Daniel Eugene, Alexander Harding, Amy Jean Porter, James Prosek, Scott Schuldt, Gina Siepel, Joseph Smolinski and was curated by Fritz Horstman.

The artists in Water Access deal head-on with the ubiquitous and vital resource of water. Working in photography, sculpture, painting, drawing and beadwork, they show their sensitivities to the complicated human relationship with water. Some of the work is overtly political in its environmental concern. Others depict its sublime qualities, its mundane aspects, the life it supports, or the ways in which we interact with it. More about the exhibit here

During the second half of Live Culture there will be a discussion direct from the Colorblends House & Spring Garden's Artist's Reception & Spring Celebration in Bridgeport with the projects organizers and artists. The celebration is on Saturday, April 27th. from 10-6 pm, and offers a colorful garden of tulips and bulbs and an art exhibition featuring work by local artists: Benjamin Casiano, Bob Keating, Chandler Davis, David Joel Pratt, Jahmane, Jennifer Williams, JodiAnn Strmiska, Katie Jurkiewicz, looketha, Michael J Clocks, Nancy Moore, Patrice Barrett, Tara Blackwell and Vasilisa Romanenko in the newly renovated Colonial Revival mansion on the grounds.
Colorblends House & Spring Garden is located at 893 Clinton Avenue in Bridgeport, CT.
The event is free and open to the public and street parking is plentiful.. More about Colorblends House and Spring Garden here

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis Episode 42:Powerful Women

Sat, 25 Aug 2018 11:00:00 GMT

This month's show starts with a conversation with Stephanie Wiles the new Henry J. Heinz II Director of the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, a post she began this summer, on July 1st!

We talk about the future she envisages for the art gallery, and find out what might be in store for us under her tenure, as well as the challenges that lie ahead for museums and arts venues in this current social and economic climate. YUAG has a rich and encyclopedic collection that offers a myriad of possibilities, and Stephanie's record is one of innovative partnerships and initiatives.

Stephanie Wiles comes to Yale with over 20 years of experience leading college and university art museums. In her prior roles, Wiles has led efforts to connect the visual arts to other areas of university life by developing interdisciplinary courses, reimagining gallery spaces to be more inviting to visitors from campus and beyond, and spearheading exhibitions and publications to showcase research.

She has served on several committees at Cornell Tech, a science and technology graduate school in New York City, tasked with bringing art to the campus and into the curriculum. Wiles has successfully created educational and research opportunities across disciplines that take advantage of museum collections. She secured funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop eight semester-long courses that bridged the arts, humanities, science, and engineering.

Wiles began her career in the department of drawings and prints at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City; she later assumed leadership positions at Wesleyan University, Oberlin College, and, most recently, Cornell University.

One of the most visible of her projects at Cornell was the negotiation and completion of Cosmos, a site-specific light sculpture by Leo Villareal, made up of 12,000 LED lights. The work, named in honor of scientist Carl Sagan and visible across campus and from many parts of Ithaca, is a beacon attracting visitors to the museum.

For more information about YUAG please visit here

During the second half I speak with The Fairfield Museum’s Exhibitions Curator Laurie Lamarre, about the new exhibit: Flappers: Fashion and Freedom which opened August 16 and runs through February 2019.

This exhibition showcases women’s fashion of the 1920s and explores how “flappers” – locally and beyond – embraced a glamorous and rebellious identity. The New Woman of the 1920s represented a daring freedom of movement, behavior, and athleticism, and championed a new fashion aesthetic and attitude. The new styles included shorter skirts, freedom from corsets and bobbed hair. Flappers had social lives independent of the domestic landscape, that included frequenting dance halls, speakeasies and sporting events.

The year 1920 marked a watershed in the ongoing struggle for American women’s equality, as women secured the right to vote and claimed full citizenship alongside men. As they moved increasingly into colleges, workplaces, and public life, a new generation sought further social freedoms to move, dress, and behave as they pleased, flouting earlier standards of social behaviors for "respectable" women. Driving cars, smoking, and dancing, the flapper represented a youth-oriented search for freedom and parity. The flapper was as much cultural style as a reality, and women across social lines embraced the fashions of flappers and in doing so, embodied "modernity".

Despite this, nearly a hundred years later, we still inherit the internal contradictions that she faced as we continue to seek and advance American women's equality economically, in the workplace, at home and in self-determining our bodies. This exhibit examines that parallel and focuses on the intricate and exquisite fashions of the day and the lives of such women locally in Fairfield County, making for an innovative look at feminist history in visual format.

For more information about The Fairfield Museum please visit here

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis Episode 41: Cultural Reckoning

Sat, 28 Jul 2018 11:00:00 GMT

This month features a conversation with the Arts Council of Greater New Haven Director Daniel Fitzmaurice about Create the Vote CT, a nonpartisan public education campaign to raise awareness and support for the arts among voters and candidates running for public office. Daniel is one of the co-founders of this initiative which attempts to bring together CT's many arts organizations to
collectively make their voices heard.

On July 31st the public is invited to attend
Arts, Culture, & the Future of CT’s Economy: Gubernatorial Candidate Forum.
The event goes from 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.at the
Co-Op High School's Mainstage Theater,
177 College Street, New Haven, CT. and is free and open to all.
Please RSVP here.

The Forum will be an opportunity for the creative community to show the candidates that their commitment to the arts, culture, and creativity matters. Each candidate was given a questionnaire with six questions to respond to.

Confirmed attendees are: Joseph Ganim, Oz Griebel, Rod Hanscomb, Tim Herbst, Ned Lamont, Marisa Manley, and David Stemerman. The program will be hosted by WTNH-TV anchor Ann Nyberg, who is also a committed champion of the arts in Connecticut.

This is a gubernatorial election year and thus an excellent moment to discuss the strengths and challenges the state faces and to collectively form a vision for our community. While candidates spend much time talking about jobs, the economy, and education, they rarely talk about arts and culture as part of their campaign. Seeing the need to make arts and creativity part of the discussion, Connecticut Arts Alliance (CAA) and the Connecticut Alliance for Arts Education (CAAE) have launched Create the Vote CT. and instigated Arts, Culture, & the Future of CT’s Economy: Gubernatorial Candidate Forum to get the public involved.

Over 100 arts and culture organizations - including WPKN!- have signed up to be co-sponsors of this inspired event. Daniel knows all too well the challenges that face so many arts organizations throughout the state, as budgets get slashed, and yet it bears repeating that arts and culture are what bring so much revenue and other collective goods to our towns and cities. Join us as we discuss this exciting and timely project and the various candidates, questions and challenges that lie ahead in activating and informing the public before the election.

Are you registered to vote?
it's easy and it's online here at https://voterregistration.ct.gov

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis episode 40: Lost Again

Sat, 30 Jun 2018 11:00:00 GMT

During the summer I like to travel and this year is no exception. Being away from the station offers the chance to look back at past Live Culture episodes and to chose one for re-airing. This one seemed a natural fit: it is full of history, adventures, and stories of making art on the road, making it a great choice for summer listening. Lost Again is a re-broadcast of a show from January 2018 with British artist Abigail Reynolds about her BWW Art Journey- a prize that took her along the Silk Road on a motorcycle hauling a Bolex camera to document the sites of lost libraries. Her epic journey has resulted in a book, a film and an art exhibition. Abigail was live in the WPKN studios with me, during her recent US visit to libraries in New York, and was gracious enough to journey the extra miles to Bridgeport!

Her book, now published by Hatje Cantz, and the film: Lost Libraries are a part of the current exhibition Wish You Were Here: Journals, Journies and Expeditions, a group show up at the Gallery Upstairs at the Institute Library in New Haven until August 31st. more information on that is at Institutelibrary.org.

On her remarkable trip Abigail visited the following library sites:

Stone Steles, Xian, China- found about 1080
Xianyang Palace, Xian - lost 206BC
Baisigou Pagoda, Yinchuan, China - lost 1970
Mogao Caves, Dunhuang, China- lost 11th century, found 1900
Palace Library, Khanate of Kokand, Uzbekistan - lost 1876
Nishapur,Iran - lost 1154
Hidden Libraries of Tehran - hidden 1979
Roman libraries of Turkey: Celsus in Ephesus (lost 262AD) Pergamon (lost 41BC), Nysa (lost 1402AD)
Library of the Serapeum in Alexandria, Egypt - lost 392AD
Cairo Genizeh, Egypt - found 1900
Institute of Egypt, Cairo - lost 2011
Bibliotheca Ulpia, Rome, Italy - lost around 600AD
Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum, Italy - lost 79AD, discovered 1752

More on Abigail.
More on the book Lost Libraries
More on the BMW Art Journey

Come arm-chair travel with us as we discuss her project.
Live Culture will air live next month on July 28 with an all-new show....

Thanks for Listening!

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis Episode 39: What would you do?

Sat, 26 May 2018 11:00:00 GMT

This month on Live Culture my first guest is Toto Kisaku whose theatre production REQUIEM FOR AN ELECTRIC CHAIR is being featured in this year's International Festival of Arts & Ideas. The production runs June 22-23 at the Iseman Theatre at 1156 Chapel Street in New Haven.

A set designer, actor, and producer, Toto Kisaku was imprisoned for creating art that questioned the practice of child exploitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. he was moments away from being killed by his government when his executioner showed him an unexpected moment of mercy. He has since found political asylum in the United States, where he has created a theatre production about this pivotal moment in his existence. This June the public is invited to experience his remarkable story at the world premiere of his new play.

Kisaku has organized theatre in communities across Congo and performed internationally before coming to the U.S. in December 2015. Toto created K-Mu Théâtre in 2003, a theatre company popularizing the performing arts in urban areas of Kinshasa. He is the winner of the 2010 “Freedom to Create Award” in Cairo, Egypt. In 2003 he was selected to represent Congo in the 20th edition of the Limoges Festival and to perform in two pieces by Bernard M. Koltes. Kisaku was also in the French version of “Topdog / Underdog” by Suzan L. Parks at the Forum de Blanc Mesnil, the Théâtre Louis Jouvet and the Théâtre de l’Athénée in Paris. Kisaku has also participated in the Avignon, Limoges, Paris Quartier d’Eté, Taz à Oostende, ICAF, Pilotobes, A/D Werf, Right About Now,Toseka, Mantsina, and Connexion Kin festivals.

REQUIEM FOR AN ELECTRIC CHAIR is co-directed by Hanifa Nayo Washington and Will MacAdams. The creative team includes Susan McCaslin, Yaira Matyakubova, Sara Zunda, Jamie Burnett, David Sepulveda, and Robert Barsky.

And in the second half, I am in conversation with Amy Kaplan and Trace Burroughs the two artists responsible for producing Reveries an exhibition event in Westport, CT., which opened on May 24th, benefiting Project Return. Trace and Amy are working to reconnect the community and energize the downtown Westport environment through art. Reveries is at 153 Post Road East and runs from May 24 - June 3, in downtown Westport. The show features 15 local artists, and a portion of sales will be donated to Project Return.

Project Return empowers young women in crisis to rebuild their lives by providing a safe, secure, and structured environment where they learn life skills, heal family relationships, and strengthen other life-long connections needed for healthy independent living.

The fifteen artists exhibiting works in the gallery are: Amy Kaplan, Trace Burroughs, Heidi Lewis Coleman, Noah Steinman, Liz Leggett, Dan Long, Katherine Ross, Lisa Silberman, Charles Douthat, Julie Leff, Scott Glaser, Melissa Newman, Holly Hawthorne, Erich Davis and Diane Pollack.

Trace Burroughs was raised in Westport has been involved in the arts since the age of 10, and has curated several shows in the area and participated in dozens. Through the years he has been involved in various creative endeavours: Author, Nickelodeon voiceover performer, comedy writer, broadcast designer, drummer and now a singer.

Amy Kaplan is an artist who is also a member of several local arts organization including Westport Artist Collective and elected RTM member in Westport. She sits on the Board of the Ridgefield Guild of Artists.

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis: Episode 37: Structive (De, Con & In)

Sat, 31 Mar 2018 11:00:00 GMT

On this month's show the first guests are Artist/Curator David Borawski and Artist Liz Sweibel to talk about their exhibit Abductions and Reconstructions up now at Real Art Ways in Hartford. Featuring the artists Meg Hitchcock, Ryan Sarah Murphy, Liz Sweibel, Abductions and Reconstructions offers fresh takes on abstraction, collage, and sculpture with works that are at once intricate and tough. The three artists present a diverse range of aesthetic considerations: Meg Hitchcock often uses letters from one text, such as the Bible, to craft passages in another text, like the Quran. Regarding this process, Hitchcock says:

“…by deconstructing and recombining the holy books of diverse religions, I undermine their authority and animate the common thread that weaves through all scripture.”

Ryan Sarah Murphy’s cardboard reliefs could be aerial views of farmland, architecture plans, or political maps of imaginary nations. She crafts these objects with a sense of seriousness and play befitting the found, casual nature of her materials. Liz Sweibel uses both found and acquired materials in her precarious sculptures and assemblages. Sweibel says

“The process is low-tech, immediate, and improvisational, and primarily takes form as spare, abstract sculpture, installation, and drawing.”

Abductions and Reconstructions is at RealArtWays, 56 Arbor St, Hartford and runs from Feb 15- April 8.

More about Real Art Ways here

During the second half we talk on the phone with artist Aliza Shvarts whose forthcoming exhibit at Artspace New Haven, Aliza Shvarts: Off Scene runs from May 11 - Jun 30. . Aliza recently ran a workshop based on her Banners Project as a part of the current Code Breakers Exhibit at The Ely Center for Contemporary Art, which invited women and gender variant people to exchange of stories in which the internet left them vulnerable to public shaming, and how these individual experiences of shame can be transformed to galvanize a collective demand. The title Aliza Shvarts: Off Scene, references the artists’ investment in performance, one that shifts our attention from the center to the social, historical, and material surround. At once linguistic and bodily, “off scene” refers to the circulation of gossip, rumor, viral text, and other forms of knowing. Using text, video,and audio she explores issues of how the body means and matters, how the subject consents and dissents.

The opening reception is Friday, May 18, 5-8pm. On Friday, May 18 from 6-8pm, Shvarts will host a roundtable discussion with Robert Post (Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School), Reva Siegel (Nicholas de B. Katzenbach Professor of Law, Yale Law School), which will consider the aesthetic, legal, and ideological frameworks that choreograph the body’s capacity to produce meaning within the fictive or the real. This event is free and open to the public. Artspace is located at 50 Orange Street in New Haven, CT.

more about Artspace here

This episode of Live Culture also features a new song performed by Jody Stecher in protest of the gun violence t in this Country. Cousins Jay Feldman and Jody Stecher found they each were hit hard by the Florida school shootings. Jay began writing a song expressing his feelings about it. Jody helped him finish the song. Also on the show will be an excerpt of music from the soundtrack to the film Ladybird by Jon Brion, and a song from The Mammals.

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis Episode 36: Happy 3rd Birthday!

Sat, 24 Feb 2018 11:00:00 GMT

This month we celebrate Live Culture's 3rd Birthday by having discussions with two artists involved with the creation of NEW exhibition spaces. As we have talked about in previous episodes, traditionally modeled galleries are closing at rapid rates everywhere including New York, London and Los Angeles, due to financial stresses caused by art fair costs and rising real estate prices. This has led artists to activate new models to create and maintain real exhibition spaces so coveted by visual artists. For this show, we look at the role of the small gallery for Connecticut’s many artists, and the ways in which our state can sustain and champion it’s rich art community.

This month we talk with artist Rita Valley about her exhibit at the new Capsule Gallery in the East Village in New York, currently featuring her show Complicity Loves Company, which runs through March 10th. Capsule Gallery is a new project in partnership with Litchfield County Auctions. We will discuss with Rita her art and exhibit, the mechanics of the gallery and what advantages having a new space in the East Village offers a Connecticut-based Auction House.

We then talk with Artist and Gallerist Melanie Carr about her new exhibition space in Essex Connecticut. Melanie Carr Gallery is a project space dedicated to the practice, exhibition, and sale of contemporary art. Melanie Carr Gallery is focused on promoting the importance of contemporary art and examining its impact on society, while providing it. We will talk with Melanie about how opening the space has affected her own practice, what impact the gallery has had so far and the role she sees for small brick-and-mortar galleries in Connecticut.

About the birthdays guests:
Rita Valley has exhibited previous work at Artspace (New Haven), Odetta Gallery (Brooklyn) and a solo artist show at Real Art Ways RAW (Hartford). She has received two State of Connecticut Individual Artist Grants and her art is held in numerous public, private, and university collections. She is a graduate of Bennington College in Vermont, and currently resides in Southbury, Connecticut.

http://www.ritavalley.net/index.html
https://capsulefineart.com/

Melanie Carr is a Connecticut based artist who received her MFA from the College of Art and Design at Lesley University. Carr began her studies in visual art after serving in the United States Navy as an Operations Specialist in Pearl Harbor, HI. Carr spent over 10 years at the New Britain Museum of American Art, as Curator of New Media. Carr’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Soapbox Gallery, NY, Stockman Gallery, New Britain, CT, City Arts on Pearl, Hartford, CT, Westport Arts Center, Westport, CT, and Pegasus Gallery, Middletown, CT. Carr has work in the collections at the New Britain Museum of American Art, The Loomis Chaffee School, and the Boston Public Library, as well as many private collections.

http://www.melaniecarr.com/
https://www.melaniecarrgallery.com/

This show features music by:

Errol Garner, Blondie and Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings.....

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis Episode 35: Lost Libraries

Sat, 27 Jan 2018 11:00:00 GMT

This month Live Culture offers an in studio conversation with British Artist Abigail Reynolds who is currently in the USA to launch her new publication Lost Libraries published by Hatje Cantz. Abigail, who Live Culture listeners will remember from Episode 18: The Mother's Bones, about her film project in a Cornwall Quarry, recently won the prestigious BMW Art Journey, a prize which sent her on a trip through China, Uzbekistan, Iran, Turkey, Italy, and Egypt following the Silk Road in search of destroyed libraries. She traveled for five months, visiting libraries that were lost due to political conflict or natural disasters. This book presents the photographs and recollections of her experiences.

About the BMW Art Journey:
Two artists are awarded the prize each year: one from Art Basel in Hong Kong and one Art Basel in Miami Beach. An independent panel of judges shortlists three artists from each fair, who are then tasked with crafting an itinerary for their proposed journey. Reynolds was unanimously selected from the 2016 Hong Kong shortlist, for a project she titled “The Ruins of Time: Lost Libraries of the Silk Road.”

Reynolds is best known for her collages, which splice together archival images in geometric, three-dimensional patterns. She is particularly interested in the passage of time, scouring old bookstores and flea markets for encyclopedias or guidebooks that offer decades-old views of a given landscape. She also incorporates images of what she terms “communal structures”—protest marches, highways, colleges.

On her New York visit Abigail will be participating in A Night of Philosophy & Ideas at the Brooklyn Public Library on Saturday January 27th. This is part of a 12-hour marathon, of 20 minute lectures happening from 7pm to 7am. The event is open to the public, more information is here.

As an accompaniment to our discussion this month's show features a selection of book and library themed music from James Horner ( for the film The Name of the Rose), Brian Anderson, Yellow Ostrich and My Morning Jacket. join us to find out more about this incredible adventure, the book, and the artworks that have resulted from the journey!

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis number 34: The Net Neutrality Episode

Sat, 30 Dec 2017 11:00:00 GMT

"Net Neutrality"-- what does this mean and why should you care?

This month I am in discussion with Thomas Kadri, a Ph.D. in Law candidate at Yale University whose his research spans the intersection of media, technology, and the First Amendment.

The FCC has repealed consumer protections that prohibit internet service providers - or ISP's- from discriminating against or favoring websites by blocking or throttling internet traffic. These ISP's will also be allowed to charge fees to websites and online services for faster and more reliable network access. We will discuss the ramifications of this, in particular for artists, non-profits and other small-scale producers of online content.

To sweeten this rather sobering topic for our final show for 2017, I am including some musical selections from my picks for the top 10 albums and songs for the year. Please join us for this live interview in a bustling downtown cafe surrounded by people sipping lattes, talking and playing with their phones, laptops and other devices.We close out this year by looking ahead to the challenges of 2018 for WPKN, creative artists and all who use the internet.

featuring music by Iggy Pop, Wolf Alice, Ezra Furman and Nadine Shah.

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis -- Episode 32 greetings from the Labyrinth part two!

Sat, 28 Oct 2017 11:00:00 GMT

In a broacast recorded Live from Mr Gilbert's office in historic Erector Square during the City-Wide-Open-Studios- Festival weekend, this edition of Live Culture featured discussions with Erector Square artists Mark Williams, Jane Miller, Oi Fortin, Sidney Harris, Tim Spratlin and Jacquelyn Gleisner. Open studios is a huge annual event where artists open their workspaces to the public. Erector Square offers miles of hallways, studios and art in an event that showcases both the historic building and the wealth of talent that resides within.

More about CWOS:
https://artspacenewhaven.org/cwos-home/
More about Mark Williams:
http://www.markwilliamsart.com
More about jane miller:
http://janemiller.xyz/
More about Oi Fortin:
http://oifortin.com/
More about Sidney Harris:http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/index.php
More about Jacquelyn Gleisner:
http://www.jacquelyngleisner.com/
More about Tim Spratlin: https://www.connecticutfurniturecompany.com/

Live Culture Episode 31: Sound Objects

Sat, 30 Sep 2017 11:01:00 GMT

Guests: Huihui Cheng and Spencer Topel.

During this September edition of the show I talk to two artists who experiment with sound and objects in very different ways. We begin with an interview with Huihui Cheng, an experimental composer I caught up with this summer at the Camargo Foundation in France. This is a recorded conversation in front of her prepared piano as she adjusts it for the premiere of a commission at the Royaumont Festival in France.

For Messenger 2017, Cheng has taken apart an upright piano, created a kind of chained harness for the musician to wear, binding the instrument to the player and allowing for unique methods of interacting with the instrument. This was played by Pianist Claudia Chan in the premier which took place on the 7th of September.

Cheng lives in France and Germany and has had her works performed internationally. In addition to deconstructing pianos, Her unique take on composing has included using the audiences to play the composition via their cell phones. Your Smartest Choice was a performance for four musicians, electronics, and an audience with smartphones which happened at the Eclat Festival in Stuttgart on February, 2017 with members of the 2e2m Ensemble of an original composition by Cheng.

We hear various selections from Cheng’s oeuvre during the show including an opening a selection from Etüde@S played on Tárogató and live electronics, and closing out with some pieces from Your Smartest Choice.

Huihui Cheng studied composition with Guoping Jia and Caspar Johannes Walter and electronic composition with Marco Stroppa and Piet Johan Meyer. She attended SWR Vocal Ensemble Academy and Cursus, practical training in composition and computer music at IRCAM, Paris. Her music has been played by Ensemble Courage, Ensemble TIMF Korea, Ascolta Ensemble Stuttgart, New Ensemble Amsterdam, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Saarbrücken radio symphony orchestra, Radio France, Vocal Ensemble EXAUDI. She has won the first prize of Con Tempo, 2007 in China and the Grand Prize of Isang Yun International Composition Competition 2011, She received the Giga-Hertz Produktion Preis in 2016 , and she has a fellowship for Musiktheater der Heute from 2016-18. Recently she has been awarded scholarships from the Baden Württemberg Art Foundation, Schloss Wiepersdorf, Künsterhaus Schöppingen and Foundation Camargo. She will publish her Portrait DVD by WERGO in the series “Contemporary Music Germany” in 2019.

During the second half of the program we have a live conversation with Spencer Topel who is Assistant Professor of Music at Dartmouth College. From October 25th to November 3rd, 2017 his installation PART DES ANGES will be at the World Music Hall, of Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.

What drew me to Spencer for this month’s show was his collaboration with musician Seth Parker Woods and the construction of a cast ice cello for the performance by Seth of ICED BODIES: Ice Music for Chicago which happened on August 12th at the Arts Club of Chicago in Illinois. In 1972, Fluxus artist/printmaker Jim McWilliams devised a piece for cellist Charlotte Moorman called Ice Music for London. It involved bags of frozen ice cubes fashioned in the shape of a cello, which Moorman, nude, “played” with a plexiglass “bow” for multiple hours. On the 45th anniversary of the original work, Seth Parker Woods and Spencer Topel readdressed McWilliams’ concept with an immersive experience. Woods, in a wetsuit, played an obsidian Ice Cello. As it melted, the amplified sounds of dripping water and falling ice filled the space. The audience was invited to come and go as they pleased during the 4 hours when Woods performed this epic work in its first major realization in 19 years.

We will discuss this and Spencer's many projects involving sound and object-making.

Spencer Topel is an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore relationships between architecture, space, and form. He is a recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Danish International Visiting Artist Residency in 2013 (DIVA), the Palmer Dixon Prize from the Juilliard School for best composition, BMI and ASCAP Awards, and was an artist-in-residence with the Meitar Ensemble in July 2014 (Tel Aviv). Topel has produced works for many of America's premiere music and art institutions, including the Drawing Center NY, the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Juilliard Symphony, Oregon Symphony, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, TILT Brass, FLUX Quartet, and the Callithumpian Consort. Notable national/international collaborations include HUB New Music (Boston), FIGURA Ensemble (Copenhagen) the Contemporarte Ensemble (Venice) and the Meitar Ensemble and the Israeli Conservatory (Tel-Aviv). Topel received degrees from Cornell and The Juilliard School before joining the Tenure-Track Faculty at Dartmouth College, where he is currently an Assistant Professor of Music.

Links:
More about Spencer Topel and his projects: https://www.spencertopel.com/
More about Seth Parker Woods and Iced Bodies: http://www.artsclubchicago.org/exhibition/iced-bodies-ice-music-for-chicago/

More about Hui-hui Cheng and her music:https://huihuicheng.com/
more about the Royaumont Festival: https://www.royaumont.com/fr/presentation-festival-2017/presentation

Live Culture-- Episode 29: A Movable Feast

Sat, 29 Jul 2017 11:00:00 GMT

This months guests are:
Jeff Bergman, Director at Pace Prints, NY, and Artist Tom Burr.

The show will begin with a conversation with Gallerist Jeff Bergman, to discuss the recent spate of mid-size art gallery closures in New York and what the future is for brick and mortar galleries in the city that traditionally has been the hub for the visual arts in the United States. What does this mean for artists, collectors and those galleries which remain?

A lot is up in the air now, and we discuss the possibilities in these challenging times.
Two good recent articles on the situation are here and here.

Additionally, we will discuss Jeff's impending visit to Connecticut: he is one of the invited curators to visit this year's City-Wide-Open-Studios Festival in New Haven this October, where he will be perusing the local talent en situ.

My second guest will be Artist Tom Burr to discuss is current installation at the empty Pirelli Building in New Haven. Tom Burr/New Haven is part of Bortolami Gallery’s initiative Artist / City, which pairs an artist with a single space for one year. The gallery describes the initiative as:

"a new, experimental alternative for artists to show their work in American cities outside the standard five-week gallery show. Pairing an artist with a space in a different city for a year, we hope to set forth a progressive exhibition structure, expand our programming, and grow geographically without opening full-scale operations. The aim is to create a structure in which our artists can investigate their work without restriction."

The iconic Pirelli Building, designed by Marcel Breuer in 1968–70, sits unused, adjacent to Interstate 95 and serves as a dramatic gateway to the city of New Haven, Connecticut. Over the course of 2017, artist Tom Burr—a native of New Haven—has worked on the ground floor of the building, creating a series of site-specific artworks for the location. This endeavor represents a continuation of Burr’s reflections on site, subjectivities, and the eroded distinction between private and public spheres.

We discuss his choice of the site,of coming back home to make art relating to one's past, the use of an unoccupied space to create art, and how this will translate into what he does in the gallery spaces he also shows in. Additionally, in 2017, he has present solo exhibitions at Maureen Paley in London; the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster; and Galerie Neu in Berlin.

More about the project and visiting the site can be found here: www.bortolamigallery.com/artistcity/

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis -- Episode 27 Things that fly: Flags and Overpasses

Sat, 27 May 2017 11:00:00 GMT

This month’s episode features a conversation with Dave Coon, one of the organizers of Broad Stripes and Bright Stars a major art exhibition opening in late June in New Haven, and, in the second half we offer a talk with Site Projects’ Laura Clarke and artist Robert Greenberg about the public artworks in the works for the highway underpass on state street, which is getting a major permanent installation by Shelia De Bretteville.

Broad Stripes and Bright Stars is being organized by Dave Coon and Aicha Woods and will run from June 29- August 12 at the Ely Center For Contemporary Art. This large group show features national and internationally known artista and will occupy the whole building and will include pop-up shop of artist-made flag related goods.

Ely Center of Contemporary Art
51 Trumbull Street, New Haven, CT

More about it here: https://www.elycenter.org/events/broad-stripes-and-bright-stars

Site Projects is hosting an event which will feature Robert Greenberg’s new film on June 10th at Union Station New Haven, free and open to the public.

More about that here: http://siteprojects.org/events/2017/5/24/community-celebration-for-lighting-your-way-at-union-station

And more about the massive underpass project here:http://siteprojects.org/sheila-de-bretteville-lighting-your-way

This show features musical clips from Fleetwood Mac and Wilco.

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis -- Episode 26

Sat, 29 Apr 2017 10:59:30 GMT

The nature of art : This month we have two sets of guest who bring together the visual arts and music.

We begin with Home Winds, a book of photographs that comes with it's own song!

This new publication from Planthouse Gallery celebrates the trees on an old New Jersey Farm, and speaks of time, the importance of stewardship and the longing for home. I will be in discussion with acclaimed photographer Benjamin Swett, singer/songwriter Heather Woods Broderick about this project.

Over the course of a year, Swett captured the essence of Home Winds Farm through a series of portraits of the maples, beeches, lindens and black cherry trees that have populated the land for decades. The farm has been preserved under the New Jersey Farmland Preservation Program, ensuring the land would be protected forever for agricultural use. Broderick’s tribute song is a soulful ballad inspired by memories from her own upbringing on forested land in the Northeast. Proceeds from the release of the song Home Winds will beneï¬ÂÂÂÂt institutions devoted to ï¬ÂÂÂÂghting climate change. Home Winds, the book and record, come out on April 28, to coincide with the exhibition at Planthouse Gallery, April 28 – June 20, in New York City.

Benjamin Swett is a New York-based writer and photographer with an interest in combining photographs and text. His books include New York City of Trees (2013), The Hudson Valley: A Cultural Guide (2009), Route 22 (2007), and Great Trees of New York City: A Guide (2000). He has worked as a newspaper reporter and was a writer and photographer for the New York City Parks Department for thirteen years before taking up photography full-time in 2001. His book New York City of Trees won the 2013 New York City Book Award for Photography and his photographs are included in public collections such as the Museum of the City of New York as well as in corporate and private collections.

Heather Woods Broderick is a singer/ songwriter born in the state of Maine to a musical family, She currently lives in Oregon. A professional touring musician, Heather's work often invokes ideas of home and place. She sings, plays piano, cello, guitar and flute and has worked accompanying other artists as well as launching her solo career. She has two albums out: Glider and From the Ground.

During the second half we speak with Fritz Horstman a visual artist who also has an audio component to his work-- writing, playing and singing as a part of the duo Spacelover, with Meredith Andrews. Much of Fritz’s recent work has centered around water and fluid systems such as rivers. He has described his work as addressing “the ever-moving seam between nature and culture”. He currently has work up at ODETTA gallery in Brooklyn as a part of the show River Woman, and was selected to participate in the current deCordova Biennial at the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, where he has projects both in the gallery space and outdoors. He has also traveled to do work at residencies in Japan and in the Arctic Circle, and more locally as resident artist at the Yale Peabody Museum.

More about this months guests can be found at:

http://www.benjaminswett.com/
http://www.heatherwoodsbroderick.com/
http://planthouse.net/home-winds/

http://www.fritzhorstman.com/
https://spacelover.bandcamp.com/

Live Culture--Episode 25 BANISH THE TROLLS: MORE ART, MORE LOVE!

Sat, 25 Mar 2017 11:00:25 GMT

Happy second Birthday to Live Culture!
This month we start the show with two guests to discuss their politically charged art exhibits in CT, and the role that gallery exhibits play in resistance. Lucy Q. McClure, one of the three main organizers of hugely popular Nasty Women New Haven and Joe Bun Keo curator of "Alternative Facts", a smaller exhibition within a bigger event entitled "In Grace We Trust”. The Nasty Women's art exhibits have taken off nationally and globally in reaction to the current administrations misogynist and violent comments and their curtailing of women's rights. New Haven is one of over 50 cities to join the movement to organize a Nasty Women exhibition. Over 300 artists have participated and the opening night drew a record breaking number of over a thousand into the exhibition space. This grass-roots project is raising money in support of Planned Parenthood and features a variety of events and activities including a reading room and a performance evening.

"Alternative Facts", a part of "In Grace We Trust" is up now at the newly established Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven. Curator Joe Bun Keo writes : “'Alternative Facts' are falsehoods. Critical media is now being called fake news. Lies are now accepted as truths. Think about the Rene Magritte painting, “The Treachery of Images (This is Not a Pipe) "... There is much uncertainty in a time when stability is needed. The works in this exhibition are physically presented, but how they settle in the viewer is up for conceptual debate.”

The two artist/organizers will discuss how the visual art world is manifesting itself locally in this critical moment in time.

During the second half we speak with MILCK the singer songwriter of the hit “Quiet”which became the unofficial anthem of the Women's March in DC. and since has been the subject of many flashmob choral performances globally. Originally MILCK organised a group of 26 singers including members of the GW Sirens and the Capital Blend and sang a series of guerrilla performances around D.C. during Saturday's Women's March. Calling themselves the #ICantKeepQuiet Choir, they partnered with the Pussy Hat Project for the event. Once the videos of the song went viral online, they sang live on Samantha Bee’sFull Frontal.

Since then MILCK has launched a website and major social media campaign and website for #ICantKeepQuiet as a place to collect and share personal stories of inspiration. The campaign aims to raise awareness against abuse of women and minorities, and encourage empathy, tolerance and understanding towards one another. Proceeds from the project will benefit Step Up, a nonprofit that provides after school and mentorship programs for underprivileged teen girls. On April 8th, choirs and individuals will activate at 1pm in their respective time zones to sing out, speak up, and express themselves. One may participate both online and offline- more here

Additionally, MILCK’s debut single, “Devil Devil” has served as the soundtrack to the season finale of The Royals, Netflix’s Marco Polo trailer, and Fox’s Lucifer, as well as an upcoming episode of Pretty Little Liars. “Devil Devil” peaked as the #1 popular tune onTunefind.com twice in 2016, as well as having garnered over 520K streams on Spotify, and over 1 million YouTube views. MILCK's impressive list of press includes BBC News,NPR, The Huffington Post, and Rolling Stone, to name a few.

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis --Episode 23, january 2017

Sat, 28 Jan 2017 11:00:00 GMT

Public Art/Art Public

Let's pretend it's summer!

This month on Live Culture we start off 2017 with a rebroadcast of Episode 4 from June 2015, which seems at once very relevant to right now and very far in the past indeed. This slice-of-warm-weather show features a conversation with Selby Nimrod, curator and project manager of Art Sites New Haven, a web-based initiative which offers interactive maps of public art in the greater New Haven area, and Laura Weir Clarke, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Site Projects, an organization which commissions international artists to do public art projects around the city of New Haven. Art Sites New Haven is a spin-off from Site Projects and offers access and information about the broad range of free, public outdoor works which surround us.

Come warm up with us next to your radio and dream of sunny excursions to sites historic and contemporary around town- or skip the mid-winter doldrums, bundle up and tour them all now!

To view the Art sites website and app visit: http://artsitesnewhaven.com/
To learn more about Site Projects: http://www.siteprojects.org/index.htm

with music excerpts by:

No Valentine – more here: https://novalentine.bandcamp.com

(thanks to No Valentine for their permission to use this song in its entirety)

The Natural Spiritual Orchestra ( Bill Lee and Branford Marsalis)
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Naomi Shelton & The Gospel Queens
Nina Simone
John Legend & The Roots

Live Culture: Episode 21 This Land Is Your Land

Sat, 26 Nov 2016 11:00:00 GMT

Live Culture 21: This land was made for you and me

This month offers an audio visit with Mark D. Mitchell, the Holcombe T. Green Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale University Art Gallery of his exhibit Yosemite: Exploring the Incomparable Valley. Commemorating the 150th anniversary of Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History and the 100th anniversary of the creation of America’s National Park Service, Yosemite: Exploring the Incomparable Valley considers one of the country’s most celebrated natural landmarks through the fields of both art and science.

Beginning in 1855, artists, scientists, and scenic tourists alike traveled to the Yosemite Valley in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains to experience its majestic landscape in person. President Abraham Lincoln extended the first protection to the region in 1864, preserving the valley, with its sheer granite cliffs and soaring waterfalls, as well as the neighboring Mariposa Grove of ancient sequoias. Taking as its starting point Albert Bierstadt’s large-scale Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point Trail (ca. 1873), a cornerstone of the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, the exhibition shows how Americans found inspiration in the western landscape and also sought to understand its marvels—through paintings, prints, and photographs as well as the botanical and geological specimens that early scientists brought back from their expeditions. The exhibition was made possible by the Art Gallery Exhibition and Publication Fund and the Friends of American Arts at Yale Exhibition Fund.

Yosemite: Exploring the Incomparable Valley runs October 7, 2016–December 31, 2016

Episode 21 features musical clips by Ryder McNair from the 2015 film Yosemite, as well as songs from the bands The National Parks and Yosemite. Join us on the 26th to give thanks for one of America's greatest collective assets, our National Parks System.

Find our more by visiting:
http://artgallery.yale.edu/…/yosemite-exploring-incomparabl…
https://www.nps.gov/yose/index.htm
https://www.nps.gov/featurecont…/yose/anniversary/index.html

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis- Episode 19- With a Paddle

Sat, 24 Sep 2016 11:00:00 GMT

This Month I am in conversation with Artist and Canoeist Scott Schuldt. As we make our way along the Scantic River in CT we discuss his practice, which involves specimens and artifacts found on his river trips, and the special treasure hunt with them that he has created for this year's Game-On themed City-Wide-Open-Studios which happens throughout October In New Haven.

Each day several lucky players could win their artifact, beautifully contained in one of Scott's unique specimen boxes to show off and protect their treasure.Open Studios and Scott's game are free and open to the public.Additionally, for the past several years Scott has been working as Facilities Coordinator for City-Wide-Open-Studios' Alternative Space, acting as engineer for the many installations that take place in The Goffe Street Armory.

In addition to his specimen boxes. Scott's oeuvre also includes hand-carved and painted paddles, intricate bead-work, and an ongoing blog recording his over 700 canoe trips documented in words and pictures. Our voyage was included in his blog: The View From The Canoe and can be read here
More about Scott's visual art here
More about 2016's Game-On themed City-Wide-Open-Studios here

Peppered throughout the interview are bits of river-themed music- of which there was so much to choose from, plus references to our two mutually favorite river movies: Apocalypse Now and The African Queen. Don't miss this final summer adventure in audio....

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis --Episode 18

Sat, 27 Aug 2016 10:55:00 GMT

Glitches solved: This month Martha is in conversation with artist Abigail Reynolds about her forthcoming film project The Mothers Bones. This episode was recorded live from the boot of Abigail's car on the coastal cliffs of Cornwall and features selections from the original musical score for her film composed by St Keverne Brass Band leader Gareth Churcher, and played by the band in the Dean Quarry. Don't miss this special end-of-summer conversation about art, place, time, mythology, industry,and collaboration...

find out more about the film here http://www.mothersbones.com/
find out more about the music http://www.mothersbones.com/composition

and the St Keverne Brass Band here http://www.stkeverneband.com/

Abigail Reynolds lives in St Just, Cornwall, and has a studio at Porthmeor in St Ives. She studied English Literature at Oxford University before pursuing Fine Art. Her interest in books & libraries prompts her collages and sculpture which are often composed of found photographs spliced to create fresh narratives.
Recently she has worked with Rambert as their inaugural artist-in-residence, and The Guardian Picture Library.
She has work in the Government Art Collection, Yale University Art Gallery, New York Public Library and many private collections.

Live Culture- Episode 13

Sat, 26 Mar 2016 11:00:23 GMT

This month’s guests are artist Mohamad Hafez who has an exhibit at Real Art Ways, Hartford, and Robyn Shapiro, deputy director of the Lowline, a project taking place in Manhattan to create the world’s first underground park.

We begin in conversation with Mohamad Hafez, whose exhibit Desperate Cargo opened at Real Art Ways in Hartford on March 17th. Syrians worldwide continue to struggle to comprehend the recent aftermath of the Arab spring and its impact on their home country. What initially began as a Syrian uprising against injustice, tyranny, and marginalization of the country’s populace is now resulting in the largest humanitarian crisis of the 21st Century.

An artist and architect, Hafez was born in Damascus, raised in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and educated in the United States. Hafez’s art reflects the political turmoil in the Middle East through the compilation of found objects, paint and scrap metal. Using his architectural skills, Hafez creates political microcosms of life in this fraught environment. Desperate Cargo is a multimedia installation that incorporates a life raft, miniature elements, and photography, focussing on the war and the current refugee crisis facing us all now.

Desperate Cargo is on view until April 24th at Real Art Ways Hartford,to find out more:
http://www.realartways.org/event/mohamad-hafez/2016-03-12/

visit Mohamad's website here: http://www.mohamadhafez.com/

The charity organization Aid All Syrians here: http://www.aidallsyrians.org/

During the second half of the show, Martha will be in discussion with Robyn Shapiro, deputy director of The Lowline - the world’s first underground park, slated to open in 2020, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. We will discuss the technology, artistry, and challenges that are involved in such a massive undertaking and why this could be a model for other such projects globally. Robyn oversees many of The Lowline’s core activities, from community engagement to strategic projects, including The Young Designers Program, which focuses on solar power projects with students.

The Lowline proposes innovative solar technology to illuminate the historic Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal, just below Delancey Street. The site was opened in 1908 but has been unused since 1948 when trolley service was discontinued. Despite six decades of neglect, the space still retains remnant cobblestones, crisscrossing rail tracks and vaulted ceilings. It is also directly adjacent to the existing JMZ subway track at the Essex Street subway stop– so park visitors and subway riders would interact daily. This hidden historic site is located in one of the least green areas of New York City— presenting a unique opportunity to reclaim unused space for public good.

Designed by James Ramsey of Raad Studio, the proposed solar technology involves the creation of a “remote skylight.” In this approach, sunlight passes through a glass shield above the parabolic collector, and is reflected and gathered at one focal point, and directed underground. Sunlight is transmitted onto a reflective surface on the distributor dish underground, transmitting that sunlight into the space. This technology would transmit the necessary wavelengths of light to support photosynthesis, enabling plants and trees to grow. During periods of sunlight, electricity would not be necessary to light the space.

Currently The Lowline Lab is open -- a free community gathering space that displays cutting-edge solar technology and serves as a laboratory for lighting and horticulture experiments. The Lab also features cultural and community events. By 2020, The Lowline aims to have completed negotiations with the MTA and the City to build and operate the underground park.

Visitors may visit The Lowline Lab during the weekends, until 2017: http://www.thelowline.org/get-involved/lowline-lab/