A talented and creative group of artists will be at the Penasco Theatre.
They are offering a few public workshops and events while they are here.
Tuesday, 1/22/19, 5p-7pLe’Andra LeSeur ‘Movement as Resistance’ WorkshopLocation: Peñasco TheaterJoin interdisciplinary artist Le’Andra LeSeur as she focuses on the power of everyday movement to free our bodies during times of strife. Participants will study and deconstruct multiple forms of movement and its importance in resisting complacency to give way for progression. All ages welcome.
Wednesday, 1/23/19, 5p-7pJosiah Golson – The Souls of Free Folk Reading and WorkshopLocation: Nikesha’s Studio in Taos, email for infoThursday, 1/24/19, 3pmCollective meets with students at Penasco SchoolFriday, 1/25/19 5pm-7pm CANCELLED !!! SorryApril Maxey Screenwriting WorkshopLocation: Peñasco TheaterSaturday, 1/26/19 1pm-5pmSaturday Open StudioLocation: Peñasco Theater
Please join the collective of artists – April Maxey, Jes Thayer, Josiah Golson, Joshua Solas, Le’Andra LeSeur, and Mandy Cano Villalobos – for an open studio on Saturday, January 26th, 2019 from 1pm to 5pm to get an in-depth look at some of the works they created while in residence at the Peñasco Theater. This open studio will consist of one-on-one conversations with the artists regarding their practice and goals for creating work. There will be light snacks served and an open conversation surrounding each artist’ approach to their work and how that approach encompasses general themes surrounding identity, community, and connection. All ages welcome.
AND JOIN ARTISTS FOR DINNER DISCUSSIONS :
Dinner Table Discussions (Talk + Action: 5 Part Series)
*Will be recorded live on FB; Event page coming soon
Monday, 7pm-8pm (Part 1)
What is community? What does community look like?
Tuesday, 7pm-8pm (Part 2)
Who are your people and how do you show up for your people?
Wednesday, 7:30pm-8:30pm (Part 3)
Inclusion in the arts and abound
Thursday, 7pm-8pm (Part 4)
Are we all awake/aware? If so, how are we using that awareness to manifest the needs of others? If not, then what is needed to become more aware?
Friday, 7pm-8pm (Part 5)
Militant/Revolutionary work and life’s calling/path – can they co-exist?
*Will be recorded live on FB; Event page coming soon
Monday, 7pm-8pm (Part 1)
What is community? What does community look like?
Tuesday, 7pm-8pm (Part 2)
Who are your people and how do you show up for your people?
Wednesday, 7:30pm-8:30pm (Part 3)
Inclusion in the arts and abound
Thursday, 7pm-8pm (Part 4)
Are we all awake/aware? If so, how are we using that awareness to manifest the needs of others? If not, then what is needed to become more aware?
Friday, 7pm-8pm (Part 5)
Militant/Revolutionary work and life’s calling/path – can they co-exist?
Below are the Bios of the artists who will be at the theatre.
April Maxey is a San Antonio, Texas native who graduated from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY with a BFA in Film/Video. Her writing & directing credits include three short films, Girl Scouting, Polaroid Girl, and This Is You And Me, which have collectively screened at over 50 festivals and won 7 awards. The screenplay for This Is You And Me, which she co-wrote with Summer Czajak, was 1 of 9 projects in the Berlinale Talents Short Film Station in 2015. April directed 2 episodes of the lesbian web series SameSame, which premiered at Newfest 2016. She just wrapped her most recent short, After You Left in September 2018. April also works as a freelance director of photography and editor, on branded content, short doc content, music videos, and more. April and Max Skaff co-founded their production company 422LUXE in 2016.
April will use the time and space away from New York City to focus on writing. She has a few concepts she plans to work on including a short about when her uncle married his partner of 25 years after gay marriage passed in the supreme court, and how my traditional Mexican American grandparents, in their 90s, to his surprise, came to the ceremony to support them. Outside of this, April will work on a pilot that follows of lives of a few modern-day sex workers, who choose to do the work that they do. I think it is important to have roles of sex workers that show them as normal, multi-faceted people in a way doesn’t shame them or judge them.
View April Maxey’s work, here: http://www.aprilmaxey.com/
Jes Thayer is an artist based in Massachusetts whose work includes painting, digital visual and audio media, and performance. She has a B.F.A. in Graphic Design from Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA. Work emphasizes the liminality of life, death, memory, and narrative as expressed in our own bodies, our environment, and with each other. Her oil painting Untitled was included in 5th Annual Juried Show at Gallery A3 in Amherst, MA and From:To at Gallery 301 in Beverly, MA. She participated in Art Prize 10 in Grand Rapids, MI, and a performance for Taryn Simon’s installation A Cold Hole at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA.
Jes plans to use her time to explore physical, mental, and emotional connections with mortality through voice, digital media, performative drawing, and audience participation. Expanding ideas of text as image by lengthening the time it takes to produce a letter aims to draw parallels to the process of learning a language and what those images mean to the individual’s context in an environment. Details will be included of heritage, namely sign painting, singing, imagery of past record. Poem 88 will be painted out on fabric printed with images of other paintings and “breadcrumbs” left by the artist in a quest to conquer amnesia. Impromptu performances include interviews, ritual, song, and spoken word. Interview questions and topics include: What remnants are left after death? What is perpetuated when we grieve together? How we approach death, or imagine its passing or occurrence? How do we live when parts of us die and decay? Can we forget pain? What is communal? What is dignity in death?
3. Joshua Solas
Joshua Solas graduated from Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University in Grand Rapids, MI with an Illustration major and Graphic Design minor. The Jamaican artist has a love for visual storytelling and his work explores imaginative & social themes. Though he has explored several other mediums such as contemporary painting, animation, sculpture, animation, and photography, he works mainly in oil paints, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator as well as in pen and ink. Solas has had experience showcasing work in spaces both in the US and in Jamaica which include with Avenue for the Arts, Rumsey Street Collective at ArtPrize 9, the Fed Galleries @ KCAD, Jamaica Cultural Development Commission, New Wave and the Institute of Jamaica. He currently creates visual content for reggae and hip-hop recording artists and his goals include working with RedBull, PUMA, and environmental design.
Josh plans to use this time to explore feelings and more through painting and drawing. His work, Jonny (a reference to Johnny Appleseed as well as Johnny Was A Good Man by Bob Marley), is a personification of disenfranchisement, namely through the experience of people of color. The apple is the main reference – When artists illustrated God telling Adam and Eve to not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it’s fruit started to be depicted as an apple, even though no one said it was an apple. And in some ways, our lives are held in high stature but at the same time we may be at risk of being discarded, or worse, used for target practice, like an apple. The collection of pieces he intends to create depict situations that he believes everyone can relate to in some way – feeling lost in a crowd, feeling like one sticks out too much; feeling in control of situations but feeling helpless at the same time; feeling like an outsider, but being too much in one’s head at the same time; feeling welcomed in one’s tribe, yet feeling exiled.
4. Josiah Golson
Josiah Golson is an artist, lawyer, and writer from Chattanooga, Tennessee. He is the founder of the 800 Collective, a diverse group of artists using art as a means of civic engagement and public discourse. Josiah’s work comprises of creative workshops, public art projects, and community development.
Josiah plans to use his time to continue work on his self-published illustrated book of poems, The Souls of Free Folk. He will work on extending this story visually through screenwriting exercises and storyboarding different themes present throughout the book.
View more of Josiah’s work, here: http://www.josiahgolson.com/
5. Le’Andra LeSeur
Le’Andra LeSeur is a multidisciplinary artist working and living in Jersey City, NJ. Her work explores black identity informed by the effects that regulated systems of oppression have on black women, specifically. Outside of creating her own work, LeSeur has made notable contributions to the arts through her active participation in curating exhibitions and workshops for women of color that speak to the power in existing through expression in a world that shuns black women for these exact actions.
Le’Andra will use this time to create a new documented performance piece that focuses on movement as resistance. It will be a site-specific outdoor piece. Outside of that, she plans to simultaneously fit in mini work in progress pieces surrounding photography and sculpture as a way to think through ideas surrounding her identity and what the action of creating helps her explore within the overall concept of movement as progress and resistance.
View more of Le’Andra’s work, here: https://lleseur.com/
6. Mandy Cano Villalobos
Mandy Cano Villalobos is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses installation, performance, and object/textile-based work. Her versatile projects center upon notions of life’s ephemerality and identity shaped by location and culture. Cano Villalobos’ work has been featured in numerous venues including Van Der Plas Gallery (New York, NY), the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum (Clinton, NY), Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore, MD), the Ukranian Institute of Modern Art, (Chicago), The Museum of New Art (Detroit, MI), Hillyer Art Space (Washington, DC) and La Casa Pauly (Puerto Montt, Chile). Cano Villalobos has been an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center, Post Contemporary, Wassaic Project, Ragdale, and ACRE. She has also received grants from multiple organizations including the Puffin, Frey and ISE NY Cultural Foundations. Her work has been reviewed in The Washington Post, Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic, Culturehall, Performa Magazine, and Bad-at-Sports, among others. Cano Villalobos received her MFA from The George Washington University in Washington, DC. and currently resides in Grand Rapids, MI.
Mandy plans to use her time during the residency to continue two separate projects. The first, “Simple Actions”, is a series of performances that explores the ritualistic possibilities of repetitive, often futile, labor. Performances are site responsive, so I would wait until arrival to develop ideas. Past performances include filing a brick to dust and hand-picking seeds from jam. The second project consists of three shrouds, one for my mother, one for me and one for my daughter. Much like Japanese boro, these shrouds are hand stitched from used family clothing and will be deconstructed and reassembled over the course of our lives as our bodies change. I have been working on these at various times over the past two years, and need to dedicate an uninterrupted portion of time to finish them.
View more of Mandy’s work, here: http://www.mandycano.com/
