Get Yours Now: Art Opportunities
The relative slowdown of arts-related matters in August recently prompted me to put together a long, admittedly meandering list of items you might want to add to what could nonetheless be quite a robust art agenda for the month. It included notes about some current and forthcoming shows—visual art, dance, music, film, et cetera—at many different venues, and it traveled around NYC’s boroughs a fair bit before heading upstate. It even veered off at a fork in the road to include a note or two about farming and, of course, the New York Knicks. And every single thing in there was crucially necessary. How else was I going to bring up Amar’e Stoudemire’s art collection and love for gardening?
Anyway, there are lots of useful shows and suchlike to note in that piece, so click here in case you missed it. (In case you’re Amar’e Stoudemire, I know a guy named after a couple saints who’d be happy to advise you on your collection of contemporary art in exchange for bushels and pecks of fruits and vegetables. Not kidding.)
Well, once again in light of there being a few fewer exhibitions to visit in the next few weeks, I’m now offering notes regarding a perhaps less entertaining but certainly productive way for you to spend some time until NYC art heats back up in September to become it’s usual too-hot-to-handle.
That is, I’m offering a handful of art opportunities for you to look into, apply for or reply to. Public art projects, a fellowship, open-studio related open calls, and a residency or two. There’s generally way too much along these lines out there for anyone’s list to be comprehensive, which also means that it can sometimes seem more useful to look at shorter roundups. So here’s my abridged list of intriguing art opportunities that came across my desk of late. Some are free to apply for, some not but have quite a payoff, and some are as simple as saying, ‘Me too!’
So give them all a thorough read-through, and make use of the August doldrums to ensure that you’re busy painting a huge mural in Manhattan, for instance, sometime in the coming months.
OPEN STUDIO EVENTS
BOS & Making the Future
You’ve certainly heard of Arts in Bushwick and Bushwick Open Studios, but you’re probably much more accustomed to hearing about them in late spring and early summer, since BOS is typically in June. This year, though, is the 10th anniversary of BOS, and AiB wanted to pack as much special programming into it as possible—which will include the release party for Making History Bushwick, a 400-page book produced by the organization—so they decided to schedule BOS 2016 in October instead. You’ve no need to apply for BOS, of course; you can just register for that. However, AiB is now holding an open call for a massive exhibition called Making the Future, this year’s version of the Seeking Space show. It’ll be hosted by a new Bushwick art space, ExoMars Gallery, and curated by a couple rather tireless artist-curators whose names will be quite familiar to you: Julie Torres and Michael David. Also, Loren Munk’s epic painting above will provide the show’s consummately on-point centerpiece. See here for information on how to get your work in the mix. See below for how you’ll feel if you let a certain mode of historically awkward passivity leave you out. (Image via labourlist.org)
Gowanus Open Studios
Produced by Arts Gowanus—which one could perhaps call that side of Brooklyn’s AiB—Gowanus Open Studios is probably the city’s second largest such event after BOS. And this year, it comes right after BOS! So if your studio is in that area, or if you’re crafty or connected enough to figure out other ways to get your work on the walls of some Gowanus art space over the second weekend of October—this is easier than it sounds, because putting together a casual group show in someone’s studio is a piece of cake, and you can even celebrate it with a big silly cake, because genteel snacks like wine and cheese are so boring—then just do it. See here for information about registering. See below for how’ll feel after successfully doing so. (Image via www.express.co.uk )
INTERDISCIPLINARY
SDC/VAC: sKIN
SDC is the SagaDance Collective. VAC is the VERVE Art Collective. The former gave rise to the latter, which is a group of very interdisciplinary-minded movers and makers—i.e. dancers and visual artists—devoted to collaborative practices and multi-mediated productions. So if you’re a visual artist working in truly any medium, or a dancer or a musician, or even a lighting or sound expert, you might have something useful to bring to the stage for sKIN, the forthcoming SDC/VAC showcase that will take place at the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn this October. Check it all out here. Tell them how sKIN might benefit from your mind and body.
STUDIO SPACE & FELLOWSHIP
Museum of Arts and Design
Columbus Circle might not be the first place you’d think to look for studio space, but it could be just the place where you’ll score a subsidized one for four months—as well as receive all kinds of creative support, and most certainly open your work up to a much broader audience—thanks to the Museum of Arts and Design’s residency program. If you meet certain criteria beyond those for residency consideration, you might also be eligible for one of MAD’s quite generous Van Lier Fellowships. Information on all of that is here.
PUBLIC ART
Ideal Glass
Have you ever thought about doing a mural? Does the idea of being funded to do one in the East Village sound appealing? Does it sound even better once you know that the application process is free and easy, that necessary criteria are few, and that the range of conceptual and formal expression is broad? Then look into the open-call mural program at Ideal Glass, an art studio and locus for collaboration situated at 22 East 2nd Street. Application details are here, and images of other murals that have gone up there are here. At the top of this piece, by the way, is a photograph of a politically charged project realized at the site by Sophia Dawson. It’s called Every Mother’s Son. The image above the PUBLIC ART heading is of David Paul Kay’s mural there back in March. (Images courtesy Ideal Glass.)
DOT Art
If you had two guesses for which NYC organization runs one of the most broad-ranging and yield-wise ubiquitous public art programs in the city, would one of your guesses be that it’s the Department Of Transportation? Well, it is, and it’s the DOT’s programs like Barrier Beautification, Arterventions and Community Commissions that keep many public areas of our fine town looking much more alive and colorful than they might otherwise. The deadline for this fall’s edition of Barrier Beautification is approaching, so get cracking some designs for how to transform a number of those rather easily dismissible objects into something that stops drivers, bikers and walkers in their tracks. (Wait, is that a good thing? Also, what was your second guess?) DOT Art details here.
CURATORIAL
Trestle Projects
If you’re a curator without a space of your own, perhaps, but with a number of curatorial projects you’d like to unfold in physical form in an excellent Gowanus venue over the course of a year, then the Curator-in-Residence program administered by Trestle is precisely the opportunity you might not have known you were looking for. This non-profit organization fosters all kinds of other arts opportunities as well, so look around on their website if the CIR doesn’t quite correspond to your practices or purview. (Image above is of a wall of works in the current group show at Trestle Gallery, Small Works. Image courtesy Trestle Gallery.)