KOLAJ LIVE ONLINE
Artists in the Archives: Community, History & Collage
Thursday, 20 October 2022 at 7PM EDT (2300 UTC)
Presented in partnership with the Henry Sheldon Museum’s Stewart-Swift Research Center
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In Fall 2022 and Spring 2023, Kolaj Institute is presenting a series of Kolaj LIVE Online events in partnership with the Henry Sheldon Museum’s Stewart-Swift Research Center as part of the exhibition, “Artists in the Archives”. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Stewart-Swift Research Center, the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History invited an international network of collage artists to engage with historic material in the archive and to create a folio of collage prints that reflect on the idea of community in a 21st century world. Learn more about the project HERE.
Local history museums, archives, and collections are vital to building healthy communities and to anchoring our understanding of the world around us in the place where we live, work, and play. Collage artists have unique skills that are particularly useful in our historical moment. They understand that something beautiful, something meaningful can come from chaos; that destruction is easier than creation, which takes patience, precision, thoughtfulness, and intuition. What happens when we bring those two groups together?
The prints are on exhibition at the Museum until 7 January 2023 and the subject of a book published by Kolaj Institute.
Join project curator Ric Kasini Kadour, Stewart-Swift Research Center Archivist Eva Garcelon-Hart, Kolaj Institute Coordinator Christopher Kurts, and artist Jeanna Penn for a conversation about the intersection of art, collage, history, and archives.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Eva Garcelon-Hart
Eva Garcelon-Hart has overseen the Sheldon Museum’s Stewart-Swift Research Center archival collections since 2011, where she has particular interest in bringing the Center’s overlooked stories and visual collections to public attention. While there Eva curated several exhibits including: “Charity & Sylvia: A Weybridge Couple,” “Conjuring the Dead: Spirit Art in the Age of Radical Reform,” and “Elephant in the Archives: Silences, Erasure & Relevance.” During 2021-2022 she and her colleagues organized a popular virtual talk series, the “Elephant in the Room: Exploring the Future of Museums.” Eva holds an MA in the History of Art and an MLIS from the University of California at Berkeley.
Taylor Rossini
Taylor Rossini grew up in Guilford, Connecticut and received a BA in art history from Middlebury College. Rossini worked at the Henry Sheldon Museum from 2017 to 2022, starting as a volunteer, then museum intern, and finally as the museum’s Collections Associate. She is currently in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture.
Christopher Kurts
Christopher Kurts is a storyteller, an artist, the Coordinator for Kolaj Institute, and the co-founder and lead organizer of the Mystic Krewe of Scissors & Glue, a group of creatives in New Orleans who meet monthly to collage, converse and foster community. Inspired by science fiction and fantasy, Kurts plays with genre and escapism in order to tell archetypal stories that reach into history and ruminate on the future.
Jeanna Penn
Jeanna Penn is a contemporary artist who lives and works between Oakland and Los Angeles, California. She has been creating art for over twenty-five years in various forms including mixed media collage, soft sculpture, photography, zines and documentary film. Much of Jeanna’s work is centered around recontextualizing found imagery and documenting material histories. She received her BA in African American Studies from Morgan State University and continued graduate work in African History at Howard University and Historical Documentary Filmmaking at George Washington University.
Ric Kasini Kadour
Ric Kasini Kadour, a 2021 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Fellow, is a writer, artist, publisher, and cultural worker. Working with the Vermont Arts Council, Kadour curated four exhibits: “Connection: The Art of Coming Together” (2017) and Vermont Artists to Watch 2018, 2019 and 2020. In 2017, he curated “The Art of Winter” at S.P.A.C.E. Gallery in Burlington, Vermont. In 2018, Kadour curated “Revolutionary Paths: Critical Issues in Collage” at Antenna Gallery in New Orleans, which bought together collage artists whose work represents the potential for deeper inquiry and further curatorial exploration of the medium; followed in 2019 by “Cultural Deconstructions: Critical Issues in Collage” at LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans, which furthered the conversation. Since 2018, he has produced Kolaj Fest New Orleans, a multi-day festival & symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society. As Curator of Contemporary Art at Rokeby Museum in Ferrisburgh, Vermont in 2019 and 2020, he curated three exhibitions, “Rokeby Through the Lens” (May 19-June 16, 2019), “Structures” (August 24-October 27, 2019), and “Mending Fences: New Works by Carol MacDonald” (July 12-October 25, 2020). He also curated “Contemporary American Regionalism: Vermont Perspectives” (August 17-October 20, 2019); “Where the Sun Casts No Shadow: Postcards from the Creative Crossroads of Quito, Ecuador” (November 1-30, 2019); and “Many Americas” (August 20-November 27, 2022) in the Wilson Museum & Galleries at the Southern Vermont Arts Center. “The Money $how”, co-curated with Frank Juarez, was presented at the AIR Space Gallery at Saint Kate-The Arts Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (April 10-September 12, 2021). For Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival in Birr, County Offaly, Ireland (August 13-20, 2021), he curated “Empty Columns Are a Place to Dream”, which traveled to the Knoxville Museum of Art in January-February 2022. At 516 ARTS in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Kadour co-curated with Alicia Inez Guzmàn two exhibitions: “Many Worlds Are Born” (February 19-May 14, 2022) and “Technologies of the Spirit” (June 11-September 3, 2022). At the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History, he curated “Artists in the Archives” (September 2, 2022-January 7, 2023). Kadour is the editor and publisher of Kolaj Magazine. He has written for a number of galleries and his writing has appeared in Hyperallergic, OEI, Vermont Magazine, Seven Days, Seattle Weekly, Art New England (where he was the former Vermont editor) and many others. Kadour maintains an active art practice and his photography, collage, and sculpture have been exhibited in and are part of private collections in Australia, Europe and North America. In January-February 2020, he was artist-in-residence at MERZ Gallery in Sanquhar, Scotland. He holds a BA in Comparative Religion from the University of Vermont. Kadour splits his time between Montreal and New Orleans. www.rickasinikadour.com