{"id":14950,"date":"2023-06-09T15:54:05","date_gmt":"2023-06-09T19:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/printcenter.org\/100\/?page_id=14950"},"modified":"2023-06-14T18:02:25","modified_gmt":"2023-06-14T22:02:25","slug":"98th-juror-interviews","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/printcenter.org\/100\/98th-juror-interviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Questions for the 98th ANNUAL Jurors"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"pl-14950\"  class=\"panel-layout\" ><div id=\"pg-14950-0\"  class=\"panel-grid panel-no-style\" ><div id=\"pgc-14950-0-0\"  class=\"panel-grid-cell\" ><div id=\"panel-14950-0-0-0\" class=\"so-panel widget widget_black-studio-tinymce widget_black_studio_tinymce panel-first-child panel-last-child\" data-index=\"0\" ><div class=\"textwidget\"><h2 style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In advance of the<span style=\"color: #b95ae8;\"> <a style=\"color: #b95ae8;\" href=\"http:\/\/printcenter.org\/100\/98th-annual\/\">98th ANNUAL<\/a><\/span> deadline of June 15th, we asked jurors Dr. Kimberli Gant and <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Diana Gaston <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">four questions.<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div id=\"pg-14950-1\"  class=\"panel-grid panel-no-style\" ><div id=\"pgc-14950-1-0\"  class=\"panel-grid-cell\" ><div id=\"panel-14950-1-0-0\" class=\"so-panel widget widget_black-studio-tinymce widget_black_studio_tinymce panel-first-child panel-last-child\" data-index=\"1\" ><div class=\"textwidget\"><div style=\"padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/835883036?h=8c0f91256d&title=0&byline=0&portrait=0\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><div id=\"pgc-14950-1-1\"  class=\"panel-grid-cell panel-grid-cell-empty\" ><\/div><div id=\"pgc-14950-1-2\"  class=\"panel-grid-cell\" ><div id=\"panel-14950-1-2-0\" class=\"so-panel widget widget_black-studio-tinymce widget_black_studio_tinymce panel-first-child panel-last-child\" data-index=\"2\" ><div class=\"textwidget\"><div style=\"padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/834912421?h=3e8290d6d8&title=0&byline=0&portrait=0\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div id=\"pg-14950-2\"  class=\"panel-grid panel-no-style\" ><div id=\"pgc-14950-2-0\"  class=\"panel-grid-cell\" ><div id=\"panel-14950-2-0-0\" class=\"so-panel widget widget_black-studio-tinymce widget_black_studio_tinymce panel-first-child panel-last-child\" data-index=\"3\" ><div class=\"textwidget\"><h4><span style=\"color: #b95ae8;\">Dr. Kimberli Gant\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>You are a leader who has been working for equity, diversity and inclusion in the arts. What do you think are effective curatorial strategies for advancing art and artists in the wake of the repeated reckonings with systemic racism and social injustice?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I think a strategy that can work is first \u2013 talking to artists. Artists are so incredible in being able to reflect, both visually and intellectually, what's happening in society. They oftentimes anticipate what's happening, or they are responding to what's happening. I appreciate the question about the systemic-ness of it, because, you know systemic-ness reflects that the issue is cyclical. These situations that we\u2019re in, maybe they have different names, maybe they look slightly different, but they are the same issues that we are responding to and dealing with on a regular basis, sadly. When you think about art history, you realize that again, these same issues have come up again and again with their economic challenges, and challenges in society, gender and race. There are limits, I think, to what the art world can do, but it has, and continues to offer a creative option for people, to be an outlet for them. Starting there, and seeing what\u2019s happening, what artists are creating, whether it\u2019s visual, whether it is literary or musical, and then providing spaces and opportunities for those reactions to play out. Whether that\u2019s a formal exhibition, a pop-up, or conversations with the creatives themselves, to say, \u201ctell us what you\u2019re seeing and what you\u2019re responding to, connecting with and providing.\u201d These strategies also remind people that the arts are an outlet. Maybe you are not able to create policy, but you can offer a mirror. You can offer another language in which to present the world as you see it, and perhaps that\u2019s an opportunity for people to see different options for resolution.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">There\u2019s only so much we can do, but I had the amazing opportunity to hear Homi K. Bhabha speak, and he said this phrase: \u201cwhat small acts of radical change can you input, can you offer?\u201d I can, in myself, as one person, create small acts of radical change, and those radical acts may not seem revolutionary in the grand schema, but within the art world, within the museum society, within myself, I know that I have made an effort to do something that will hopefully be long-lasting beyond myself, beyond where I exist in that moment in time. And I think that is what feeds you when you\u2019re in the trenches, and when you\u2019re frustrated, and angry, and you don\u2019t see the light at the end of the tunnel. You can say to yourself, \u201cokay, well my light may not be blinding, but I\u2019ve got some light, and I can slightly chip away at things.\u201d It reminds me that I can only do what I can do, and to be proud of that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>As a curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, how do you regard printmaking and photography in current discourse \u2013 as for most of their histories they have been set apart from mainstream art conversations.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I think that print and photography are so important \u2013 they are part of the mainstream. However you decide the hierarchy of art practice, and I think those hierarchies are really considered very outdated now because so many artists are learning all different types of media, and they\u2019re experimenting with them, working with them in new ways, and ultimately it is about \u201cwhat am I trying to present to the audience, and I\u2019ll use whatever tools in my arsenal to get me there.\u201d I find that works on paper, drawing, printmaking and all of its facets, and photography to be critically important. I often will talk to collectors, especially those who are really just starting to get into collecting, to consider these mediums \u2013 because of the techniques, and the idea of multiplicity, they still allow for a lower price point in certain instances, and I say that\u2019s a great way to start in collecting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>When reviewing a wide range of work for a competition like this, what do you take into consideration? Form? Process? Content? All of the above?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I always look for art that really makes me want to take a second look, things that make me say \u201cOh!\u201d \u2013 things that draw me closer \u2013 that I want to step away and spend time with. When I have a visceral reaction to a work of art, that\u2019s when I start to want to spend more time with it. So, that can come from a combination of things \u2013 from questions about images causing me to look closer and ask what are they? What mediums are they using? What\u2019s the composition? How are they organized? So, it\u2019s really a combination of all the ways in which a good image is created \u2013 from what it\u2019s trying to convey to me in terms of content, or if it\u2019s an abstract work, am I excited about the brush strokes, or the lines, or the shape and the color? So again, it\u2019s a combination of everything, but ultimately when it's all put together, does it excite me and intrigue me?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>What projects are you excited to be working on right now and\/or in the coming months?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Right now, I\u2019ve got a show that I\u2019m very excited about, which we have on view right now: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brooklynmuseum.org\/exhibitions\/a_movement_in_every_direction\"><em>A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration<\/em><\/a>, which is an incredible traveling show. Originally organized by the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art by curators Jessica Bell Brown and Ryan Dennis. We\u2019re thrilled at the Brooklyn Museum to have it. It was my first time working with a project where it was all commissioned work \u2013 so, all brand-new work, including video, sculpture, mixed media, installation, painting, photography \u2013 pretty much every medium you can think of. It asks the artists to think about the legacy of the Great Migration. A lot of questions and very thoughtful ideas are brought up about the things that we are taught and know about that moment in history. But also, it is so much about what we don\u2019t know, what we\u2019re not taught. Many of the stories are about family and fragmentation of family, whether or not that story happened to the artist, or to other African, other Black families, but also just about what we\u2019re living through now. We\u2019re having so much more migration throughout the world because of environmental factors, economic factors, things that were very much part of what happened in the Great Migration. It\u2019s another generation of it, in a more global expanse. It reminds you that there are so many linkages and synergies across time and the world about these ideas, that whether or not your family stories relate to this or to a different legacy of migration, you have that story in your family. Hopefully, it is encouraging our visitors to learn what they don\u2019t know about their own stories within their families.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><div id=\"pgc-14950-2-1\"  class=\"panel-grid-cell panel-grid-cell-empty\" ><\/div><div id=\"pgc-14950-2-2\"  class=\"panel-grid-cell\" ><div id=\"panel-14950-2-2-0\" class=\"so-panel widget widget_black-studio-tinymce widget_black_studio_tinymce panel-first-child panel-last-child\" data-index=\"4\" ><div class=\"textwidget\"><h4><span style=\"color: #b95ae8;\">Diana Gaston<\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Your distinguished career includes deep experience in both, printmaking and photography, what do you find intriguing about current trends in these fields?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I came out of a museum-based background, art history was my major, but I feel like I really gained the most experience from a series of internships in print rooms where I was working with works on paper: prints, photographs, drawings. I came up through a course of study that emphasized the objects and first-hand exposure to that object. I\u2019ve always thought of prints and photographs very much in the same breath, that\u2019s really how I understand works on paper. I\u2019ve brought my photo background along with my current work in print \u2013 I do see the two disciplines informing each other, so I was very excited to see how you combine the media in the ANNUAL call. In my current role at Tamarind I am seeing things in a different way, and experiencing the making of a print first-hand. Another layer of experience in learning about the history of print is to actually watch one being made \u2013 to watch a print being pulled, or watch an artist struggle with the matrix; and to be a witness to that collaborative process.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of trends or new directions, I would say at Tamarind we\u2019re experiencing more dimensionality in prints, in part because we\u2019re working with artists such as sculptors who have a 3-dimensional way of thinking about the world and working. We\u2019ve found some really ingenious ways to incorporate another dimension into what\u2019s perceived as a very flat surface. I also think that there\u2019s an exciting new direction in scholarship, with the very traditional form of art history taking a more expansive view of prints \u2013 really thinking of them as physical objects, and thinking of them not so much as illustrations, reproductions, or an image of something, but as an actual object. And I think that goes back throughout history looking at books as well. I would point to Jennifer Roberts\u2019 Mellon Lectures that she did for the National Gallery in 2021; I think we were all enthralled with her thinking, and just how much dimensionality and breadth she brought to her study of prints, I found that really transformative in terms of how we think of prints and their potential. I would say the same of Julia Brian Wilson, who is a scholar and art historian at the University of California Berkley. She has written for us around Ellen Lesperance, a printmaker who worked at Tamarind, who also brought a kind of dimensionality and a photo reference to her image making. It was really exciting to hear how Brian Wilson dissected her work.<\/p>\n<p>The third thing that I would mention in the terms of thinking about new directions is how much the digital image has impacted the way we see. It\u2019s something that our masterprinter Valpuri Remling has articulated so eloquently \u2013 how the digital image and the computer screen have given us a level of precision and perfection, so that we\u2019re looking at a generation of viewers and makers who will come to print differently. It\u2019s taking a digital native and having them make something with their hands, or working artists who don\u2019t draw, who do everything digitally, and we\u2019ve found ways to work with them with really interesting outcomes. I think the digital influence, certainly on many levels: on the physical prints, the information, the speed of which we absorb images, has certainly been impacted by digital technology, but I think it has also affected the way we see.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>When reviewing a wide range of work for a competition like this, what do you take into consideration? Form? Process? Content? All of the above?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s probably all three. I think a visual or aesthetic response is probably the most immediate, and probably how we all respond to images, whether we\u2019re aware of it or not. And then the content, but also seeing if the work is coherent and makes sense together. There might be a clear narrative, maybe not an immediate message, but something that feels consistent from image to image. I think part of the challenge with this kind of jurying is responding to work in digital form, not in-person, and it is very difficult to really fully embrace an image without seeing the paper or scale, or having the ability to really scrutinize it in dimension. You have to rely on knowing that you\u2019re translating the image, and imagining what it would look like in real life. I think that\u2019s where the content comes in, knowing that it\u2019s saying something.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>What projects are you excited to be working on right now and\/or in the coming months?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Tamarind recently celebrated its 60th anniversary as an institution. We are embarking on some really interesting projects to make our research and our history much more accessible. We\u2019re taking a close look at our digital archive, and the documentation that we\u2019re well known for, and figuring out ways to make it more accessible to researchers.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve had the great privilege of working with a few artists here in New Mexico, on a series of small catalogs. We just published one with Maja Ruznic, who\u2019s primarily known as a painter, but she has made a series of monotypes with us over the last few years that I think are really groundbreaking in terms of medium, how they hold color, and how they use the medium. We are also doing a series of annual residencies that are longer than usual. Our typical residencies are about 2 weeks, but we have one residency that allows us to have the artist here for a month. And those projects come with little catalogs, so we\u2019re excited about those extended residencies.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>As the Director of Tamarind, you are in the enviable position of carrying on the legacy of the expansive thinker and creator, June Wayne, while celebrating the vast possibilities of contemporary lithography. What in particular do you find noteworthy about lithography at this moment?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Tamarind is in a great moment of having a very dynamic masterprinter, Valpuri Remling, who trained here, and education director, Brandon Gunn, who is also a Tamarind masterprinter. Tamarind has really benefited over the last 60 years from having a very stable and long-term staff, we have had people stay in their position for a period of decades. Valpuri is working with a kind of whole new group of artists \u2013 she\u2019s working with a number of international artists, and together they are bringing a very clean and bright aesthetic that sometimes defies what a lithograph can be. They find incredible delicacy or transparency, which I think is one of the hallmarks of lithography. But some of the prints that we are making \u2013 maybe it\u2019s the way the artist approaches it, maybe it\u2019s the color palette, maybe it\u2019s the scale \u2013 but we are really calling attention to some of the intrinsic attributes of litho, but in a brighter way. W are making fewer prints, but we are making more complex prints. Ellen Lesperance is a good example of that, she worked with us for a month, and made three exquisite prints, very meticulous, very, very labor intensive, but in the end, very accessible and immediate.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div id=\"pg-14950-3\"  class=\"panel-grid panel-no-style\" ><div id=\"pgc-14950-3-0\"  class=\"panel-grid-cell\" ><div id=\"panel-14950-3-0-0\" class=\"so-panel widget widget_black-studio-tinymce widget_black_studio_tinymce panel-first-child panel-last-child\" data-index=\"5\" ><div class=\"textwidget\"><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>The original interviews have been edited for length.<\/em><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><div class=\"hrule clearfix\" style=\"\"><\/div><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #b95ae8;\"><a style=\"color: #b95ae8;\" href=\"http:\/\/printcenter.org\/100\/98th-annual\/\">Return to the 98th ANNUAL Prospectus<\/a><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In advance of the 98th ANNUAL deadline of June 15th, we asked jurors Dr. Kimberli Gant and Diana Gaston four questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-14950","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/printcenter.org\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/printcenter.org\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/printcenter.org\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/printcenter.org\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/printcenter.org\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14950"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/printcenter.org\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15003,"href":"https:\/\/printcenter.org\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14950\/revisions\/15003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/printcenter.org\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}