Past Events and Programs

Margot Norton, Allen and Lola Goldring Curator, the New Museum, New York 

• Wednesday, March 2, 2021, 12:00 - 1:00 pm 

Margot Norton’s talk focused on her role as a curator at the New Museum, and experience organizing the 2021 New Museum Triennial exhibition, titled Soft Water Hard Stone, co-curated with Jamillah James. Norton joined the New Museum in 2011 and has curated and co-curated many exhibitions with women artists such as Carmen Argote, Judith Bernstein, Pia Camil, Sarah Charlesworth, Tacita Dean, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Sarah Lucas, Goshka Macuga, Pipilotti Rist, Mika Rottenberg, Kaari Upson, and Erika Vogt, among other solo and group exhibitions. In October 2017, she curated Sequences VIII: Elastic Hours, the Eighth Sequences Real Time Art Festival in Reykjavik, Iceland, and the Georgian Pavillion at the 2019 Venice Biennale with artist Anna K.E.. She has contributed to and edited numerous publications and exhibition catalogs, and regularly lectures on contemporary art and curating. 

Jasmine Wahi, Holly Block Social Justice Curator, Bronx Museum, New York

• Wednesday, March 16, 12:00 - 1:00 pm via Zoom
• A curator, activist, TEDx speaker, and a founder and co-director of Project for Empty Space, Jasmine Wahi's practice predominantly focuses on issues of femme empowerment, complicating binary structures within social discourses, and exploring multi-positional cultural identities through the lens of intersectional feminism.

Carmen Hermo, Associate Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, The Brooklyn Museum, New York

• Wednesday, March 30, 2022, 12:00 - 1:00 pm
• Carmen Hermo curated the Brooklyn presentation of Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 (2018), Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection (2018–19), and Something to Say: Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine, and formed part of the curatorial collective for Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After 
  Stonewall (2019). 

Born in 1950, Ray Young Bear was raised on the Meskwaki (Red Earth People) Settlement in central Iowa. He graduated high school in 1969, the year he began publishing poetry, and attended Pomona College from 1969 to 1971. He has also attended the University of Iowa, Grinnell College, Northern Iowa University and Iowa State University. His books of poetry include Manifestation Wolverine: The Collected Poetry of Ray Young Bear (Open Road Media, 2015), The Rock Island Hiking Club (University of Iowa Press, 2001), The Invisible Musician (Holy Cow! Press, 1990), Winter of the Salamander: The Keeper of Importance (Harper & Row, 1980), and Waiting to be Fed (Graywolf Press, 1975). Young Bear is also the author of Black Eagle Child (University of Iowa Press, 1992) and Remnants of the First Earth (Grove Press, 1998), which received the Ruth Suckow Award as an outstanding work of fiction about Iowa. 

Young Bear has received numerous honors and awards, including a 2016 American Book Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an honorary doctorate in letters from Luther College, Decorah, Iowa. He has taught creative writing and Native American literature at The Institute of American Indian Art, Eastern Washington University, Meskwaki Elementary School, the University of Iowa, and at Iowa State University. Young Bear and his wife, Stella, also co-founded the Woodland Singers and Dancers. Among his accomplishments, Young Bear cherishes the ability to speak and write in his first language. He presently lives on tribally owned land that was established by his maternal grandfather, a hereditary Chief, in 1856. 

Janine Antoni is a visual artist who was born in Freeport, Bahamas, in 1964. She received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She is known for her unusual processes. Her body is both her tool for making and the source from which her meaning arises. Antoni's early work transformed materials like chocolate and soap and used everyday activities like bathing, eating, and sleeping as sculptural processes. She carefully articulates her relationship to the world, giving rise to emotional states that are felt in and through the senses. In each piece, no matter the medium or image, a conveyed physicality speaks directly to the viewer's body.

Antoni has shown nationally and internationally and is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship (1998), John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Award (2011), and Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2014). Antoni currently resides in New York and is represented by Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York, and Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco.

Her artwork is currently on view in "Hand in Hand" at Bienvenu Steinberg & Partner, New York, NY, "This Mortal Coil" at the Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, GA, "New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century" at the Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA, "The Eyes Have It" at Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, NY, the permanent collection in the Gorelik Gallery of the Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA, and the permanent collection of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens, Greece.

Lesley Dill is an American artist working at the intersection of language and fine art in printmaking, sculpture, installation and performance, exploring the power of words to cloak and reveal the psyche. Dill transforms the emotions of the writings of Emily Dickinson, Salvador Espriu, Tom Sleigh, Franz Kafka, and Rainer Maria Rilke, among others, into works of paper, wire, horsehair, foil, bronze and music—works that awaken the viewer to the physical intimacy and power of language itself.

Dill has had over one hundred solo exhibitions. Her artworks are in the collections of many major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2017 she was named a fellow of The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and is a Joan Mitchell Foundation Creating A Living Legacy artist and grant recipient.  Her opera, Divide Light, based on the poems of Emily Dickinson, was performed in San Jose in 2008. In April of 2018 the New Camerata Opera Company performed a re-staged version in New York City which was captured in a full-length film by Ed Robbins.

In November 2019, Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans presented a collection of her work titled Drawings: Some Early Visionary Americans. In 2021, the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa will stage her exhibit Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me, which amplifies voices of the North American past as they wrestle with divinity, deviltry, and freedom.

The artist is represented by Nohra Haime Gallery in New York and Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans.

Lesley Dill lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Diane Burko’s practice is at the intersection of Art, Science and the Environment focused on climate change. As a research-based artist, she collaborates with scientists, using their data, visiting their labs and bearing witness. She has investigated the ice fields of Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard and Alaska as well as Antarctica, Argentina’s Patagonia, and the melting glaciers in New Zealand’s southern alps. She next tackled our ocean’s coral reef eco-systems, making expeditions to Hawaii and American Samoa. She most recently spent a month exploring Chile’s Rapa Nui and Atacama Desert - yet another area of the world threatened by climate change.  
 

Such experiences augment her ongoing study of the natural world inspires a studio production resulting in over 100 exhibitions throughout the country. Her work is found in such institutions as The Art Institute of Chicago, Denver Art Museum, Delaware Art Museum, Hood Museum, Michener Art Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Tang Museum, the Tucson Museum of Art and the Zimmerli Museum.  

Public engagement is integral to her practice. Burko often participates in symposia with the scientific community to create a bridge between art and science, and contributes to podcasts, blogs, interviews – all speaking to the urgency of global warming, urging her audiences to reject fossil fuel dependency and be responsible citizens. 

“My inclination to witness, translate, and communicate scientific information is expressed through paintings, photographs and time-based media. It’s how I personally and professionally counter climate doubt – it’s my way of entering into the public discourse with the goal of moving the viewer to reflect, take responsibility and act.” 

JD Talasek is the director of Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (2101 Constitution Ave, NW, Washington DC), a program that is focused on the exploration of intersections between science, medicine, technology, and visual culture. He was the creator and organizer of the international on-line symposium on Visual Culture and Bioscience and co-editor of the published transcripts (distributed by D.A.P., March 2009). The second in this series of on-line symposia, Visual Culture and Evolution, was held from April 5 through April 14, 2010. Talasek is creator and moderator for a monthly salon called DC Art Science Evening Rendezvous (DASER) held at the NAS focused on cross-disciplinary discussion and community building. In 2014, Talasek will assume the position of Scholar in Residence at the Umlauf Museum and Sculpture Garden, Austin, Tx where he will help develop a Texas Art Science Evening Rendezvous program similar to the one in DC.

Talasek holds an MFA in studio arts from the University of Delaware, an MA in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester, and BS in Photography from East Texas State University. He is currently on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University in the Museum Studies Masters Program.

Talasek has curated several exhibitions at the National Academy of Sciences including Imagining Deep Time (2014), Visionary Anatomies (toured through the Smithsonian Institution, 2004 - 2006), Absorption + Transmission: work by Mike and Doug Starn, The Tao of Physics: Photographs by Arthur Tress, Cycloids: Paintings by Michael Schultheis. At the University of Delaware, he organized and curated Observations in an Occupied Wilderness: Photographs by Terry Falke and LightBox: the Visual AIDS Archive Project. Additionally, Talasek serves on the Contemporary Art and Science Committee (CASC) at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

He is the art advisor for Issues in Science and Technology Magazine published by the University of Texas at Dallas, Arizona State University and The National Academies. Talasek is chair-elect for Leonardo’s Art Education and Forum. He is a member of: the College Art Association; Society of Photographic Educators; the Society for Literature, Science and Art; and the American Association of Museums.

He was born in 1966 in Dallas, Texas.

Ilya Kaminsky, Professor,Bourne Chair in Poetry and Director of Poetry at Tech 

Kaminsky was born in the former Soviet Union city of Odessa. He lost most of his hearing at the age of four after a doctor misdiagnosed mumps as a cold, and his family was granted political asylum by the United States in 1993, settling in Rochester, New York. After his father’s death in 1994, Kaminsky began to write poems in English. In the late 1990s, Kaminsky co-founded Poets For Peace, an organization that sponsors poetry readings in the United States and abroad. He has also worked as a Law Clerk at the National Immigration Law Center and at Bay Area Legal Aid, helping the poor and homeless to overcome their legal difficulties. Ilya Kaminsky is the author of the widely acclaimed Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019), a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry, which Kevin Young, writing in The New Yorker, called a work of “profound imagination.” Poems from Deaf Republic were awarded Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize and the Pushcart Prize. He is also the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), and Musica Humana (Chapiteau Press, 2002). Kaminsky has won the Whiting Writer's Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and the Foreword Magazine’s Best Poetry Book of the Year award. In an interview with the Poetry Society of America on poetry and politics, Kaminsky notes, “Poetry is the art of language. It was Brodsky, I think, who said that poetry and politics have only two things in common, letter p and letter o. I agree with this. But, poetry is also the art of attentiveness. Attentiveness, Celan teaches us, is the natural prayer of the human soul. I don't think there is much poetry of attentiveness that isn't political. (The decision not to be political is also political.)

Katie Farris, Associate Professor of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Institute of Technology 

Farris studied midwifery, plant biology, and mycology, and taught philosophy, ocean science, and creative writing at UC Berkeley and Brown University. She is currently Associate Professor of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Institute of Technology. Katie Farris is an award-winning fiction writer, poet, and translator. She is the author of the hybrid-form text boysgirls, (Marick Press, 2011; Tupelo Press 2019). boysgirls has been lauded as “truly innovative” by The Prague Post; as “a tour de force” by Robert Coover; and as “a book with gigantic scope” by the Louisville Courier-Journal.  Her translations in New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, 1990-2012 (Tupelo Press, 2013) received Poetry East/West's International Translation Award, which is awarded in China, annually, for a “translator of exceptional skills.” A winner of the 2018 Anne Halley Poetry Prize from The Massachusetts Review, the 2017 Orison Anthology Award in Fiction, and Fairy Tale Review's 2018 Flash Fairy Tale Contest, she has published work in Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Western Humanities Review, Literary Review, Verse, The Massachusetts Review, and many other publications. Her translations and original work have appeared in anthologies published by Penguin and Graywolf. In an interview with Women’s Quarterly Conversation, Farris was asked what first drew her to writing: “In terms of writing, my first love is language, words themselves, strange syntaxes and sounds—it’s always difficult for me to tear myself away from tinkering with linguistic minutia long enough to create stories. On the other hand, my reading has always revolved around plot—by and large, I will take a plot-driven novel over a linguistic meditation, because they’re fun, and provocative, and absorb me completely. The book that combines entertainment with fine language is rare and welcome indeed.” 

Born and raised in Ohio, at the age of 22, Jamele Wright Sr. moved with his family to Atlanta, Georgia. While raising a family, Jamele produced art, jazz, and poetry events throughout Atlanta. Realizing that many young artists were not being represented, he started a gallery called the Neo-Renaissance Art House. After curating the gallery for over a year, Jamele was inspired to pursue his own artistic career. After several solo and group exhibitions, Mr. Wright graduated from Georgia State University with a B.A. in Art History. He concentrated on African and African American Contemporary Art. Jamele graduated with an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, New York. He completed a fellowship at Project for Empty Spaces in Newark, New Jersey. In August 2020, Wright was one of three artists selected for a collaboration between MARTA Artbound and Decatur Arts Alliance to create public artworks for the East Lake, Decatur, and Avondale MARTA stations. Wright's work will be featured in the upcoming Marietta Cobb Museum of Art (MCMA) exhibition, The Four Elements: A Group Exhibition, on view from April 10, 2020, through June 20, 2021. The artist is represented by September Gray Fine Art Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia.  

“My work is concerned with the Black American vernacular experience. The work entails collecting found materials, Georgia red clay, and Dutch Wax cloth, by creating a conversation between family, tradition, the spiritual and material relationship between Africa and the South. My process is influenced by the way Hip Hop gathers different cultures through sampling and is charged with an energy channeled and passed through the Pan African lineage. The “In Transit” Series and my textile work is inspired by the Great Migration of Black Americans, who left the familiar in the hope of something better.” — Jamele Wright, Sr. 

September Gray’s life’s work is a reflection of her enduring passion for the arts. Following a noteworthy career in the performing arts, Gray launched a successful fine art consultancy practice wherein she was celebrated for her ability to assist corporate and private collectors with articulating and executing single acquisition and long–term collecting strategies. Since opening September Gray Fine Art Gallery in 2011 she has been able to provide a comprehensive range of fine arts services.

September Gray Fine Art Gallery (SGAG) is the nation’s premier gallery specializing in contemporary works by established, mid-career and emerging African American and African diasporic artists. Located in Atlanta, in the Miami Circle arts district, SGAG presents historically and culturally significant works as a means for championing the preservation of the African diasporic cultural legacy and narrative.

Gray’s career in the arts and as an art consultant informs her role as gallerist. An avid collector, Gray has a talent for “speaking the language” of both artist and collector and a knack for connecting the gallery’s clients to works by artists whose vision and methodologies resonate with their individual tastes, complement their existing collections and honor their overall investment strategy and appetite for risk.

September has watched the art scene grow from small to burgeoning, and has been in the forefront of it all by providing dedication from the start to clients and artists.

September previously worked in the entertainment industry for over 12 years touring around the world with various artist including Peabo Bryson, Kenny G, Robert Flack, Pattie Austin, Michael McDonald and Oleta Adams just to name a few. In addition, she has worked in a supportive capacity spanning over 15 years for various theater and arts organizations such as the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and The Rialto Center for performing Arts in Atlanta as well as the Advisory Board for the Alliance Theater. September also served on the Art Advisory committee with honoring Elizabeth Catlett and the Benin Exhibition in Chicago, which only traveled to four venues in the world.

September also highlights events, lectures and collection strategies in her electronic quarterly journal, The Gray Book.

September is a big advocate of being involved and attending art events and understanding the art, artist and being an informed collector. As an art activist and lifelong student of fine arts, September holds several Museum Memberships across the country.

Gray holds a B.A. in Art History from DePaul University. A committed art education advocate, Gray serves on a number of non-profit boards and is co-founder of The Gray Foundation, an organization committed to building a world of enriched life options for youth through the promotion of art and education. September also sits on the Board of the Steffen Thomas Museum in Madison GA

September is an avid reader and loves to travel and who enjoys researching all things related to the arts and supports education through the arts

Jessica Stephenson received masters and doctorate degrees in African art history from Emory University in 2000 and 2006, with a minor in ancient Egyptian art and ancient American art. She received BA and BA Honors degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa in 1992 and 1993 with a dual major in art history and anthropology. Dr. Stephenson has pursued a two-pronged career as curator and academic. She worked in a number of museums including the Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa. In 2003 she was appointed Associate Curator of African and Ancient American Art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, and in 2009 promoted to Curator of African Art. She has taught a wide range of non-western/global art history courses at the University of the Witwatersrand, Atlanta College of Art and Design, Bauder College, Emory University and at Kennesaw State University. She joined the School of Art and Design at KSU as full-time faculty in 2013 and served as Coordinator of the Art History program from 2016 to 2019. In AY 2018-2019 she served as Faculty Executive Assistant to the Dean and in 2019-2020 as Interim Associate Dean, College of the Arts. She is serving as Interim Graduate Program Coordinator for the 2021-2022 academic year.

Her research specialty is the emergence of novel art forms in contexts of rupture and change; intercultural arts; art, heritage and tourism; art and agency; and histories of museum collecting and display. These issues informed her research with rural art collectives in Botswana, South Africa, and Namibia and in archives and museum collections within the United States and Europe. Her current research focuses on the intersection of late 19th century African carved ivory tusks and colonial-era photography. She has curated many exhibitions including two reinstallations of the permanent collection of African art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum (2003 and 2008), Spirited Vessels: the Ritual and Practice of African Ceramics (2004), Divine Intervention: African Art and Religion (2011) and served as consulting curator for African Cosmos: Stellar Arts, a collaboration between the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian, and the Michael C. Carlos Museum (2015). In 2014 she co-curated South African History Under Apartheid: A Tribute to Nelson Mandela at the Turchin Center for the Arts, Boone, North Carolina and in 2016 presented Sleight of Hand  at the Zuckerman Museum of Art, bringing together late 19th century Congo carved ivories  from several museum collections and photography from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, Smithsonian. She has chaired numerous conference sessions and presented papers at national and international venues, including the College Art Association (CAA), South East College Art Association (SECAC), African Studies Association of America (ASA), and Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) and at more specialized conferences in Europe and Africa. Her publications include numerous reviews and encyclopedia entries on African modernism and Modernists, as well as research articles based on primary research conducted in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, for example, "Mirror Dance: Tourists, Artists, and First People Heritage in Botswana," which appears in the edited volume The Anthropology of Art/The Art of Anthropology (2013), "Landscape Claimed and Reclaimed in Botswana” in the edited volume Formations of Identity: Society, Politics, and Landscape (2016), and "The Museum Mannequin as "Body Without Organs," Bridget Cooks and Jennifer Wagelie (eds.) Mannequins in Museums: Power and Resistance on Display (2021). Her current publication project is the book Looking Both Ways: Carved Ivory Sculptures and Colonial Photography in the Congo (1880 - 1910) for which she is conducting archival and collections research in museums across the United States and Europe.

Seneca Vaught is Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University who combines his expertise on the intersection of race, policy, and community engagement. 

He is one of few scholars with graduate fields in both African and American history in addition to applied concentrations in organizational development and documentary filmmaking. .

Vaught has interned at TransAfrica Forum and is currently the coordinator of the African & African Diaspora Studies program at KSU.

Anthony Goicolea is a first-generation Cuban American artist who was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Anthony utilizes a variety of media- including painting, photography, sculpture and video installation- in the creation of his compelling and many times foreboding visual narratives. Goicolea will discuss his work in these varied mediums and the principal ideas and explorations addressed in his work which include personal history, heritage, identity and cultural tradition. These are reflective of his own personal familial experiences— his extended family fled Cuba, not long after Castro came to power, and immigrated to the US. His works are also powerful and engaging contemplations on displacement and alienation. 

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American artist Carson Fox received her MFA from Rutgers University, her BFA from University of Pennsylvania, and a four-year studio certificate from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.  Over her career, she has had thirty solo exhibitions and has participated in over one hundred group exhibitions.   Her work can be found in the permanent collections of The Museum of Arts and Design, The Royal Museum of Belgium, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum among others.  Additionally, Fox has created multiple permanent installations of artwork in public and corporate venues, including with the NYC Metropolitan Transportation Authority, University of Arkansas, Temple University and Boston University.  She has received honors acknowledging her accomplishments, including international residencies in China, Wales, Germany and Belgium, multiple artist grants and other awards, and has been invited to speak about her career at universities and museums across the United States and abroad.  Her work has been reviewed in publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the New Yorker magazine.  

Fox lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.  She is represented by Linda Warren Projects, Chicago, IL, Stanek Gallery, Philadelphia, PA and Cynthia Winings Gallery, Blue Hill, ME.

Amy Pleasant received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1994) and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University (1999).

She has held solo exhibitions at Geary Contemporary (NYC/Millerton, NY), Laney Contemporary (Savannah, GA), Institute 193 (Lexington, KY), Jeff Bailey Gallery (Hudson/NYC), whitespace gallery (Atlanta, GA), Augusta University (Columbus, GA), Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (IN), Birmingham Museum of Art (AL), Atlanta Contemporary (GA), Auburn University’s School of Liberal Arts (AL), Rhodes College (Memphis, TN),  Candyland (Stockholm, Sweden), and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (AL) among others.

Group shows include Brackett Creek Exhibitions (Bozeman, MT), Hesse Flatow (NYC), SEPTEMBER (Hudson, NY), Mindy Solomon Gallery (Miami, FL), Tif Sigfrids (Athens, GA),  Hemphill Fine Arts (Washington, D.C.), Adams and Ollman (Portland, OR), Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (AL), Cuevas Tilleard Projects (NYC), The Dodd Galleries (Athens, GA), Zuckerman Museum of Art (GA), Knoxville Museum of Art (TN), Weatherspoon Museum of Art (NC), Hunter Museum of American Art (Chattanooga, TN), Columbus Museum of Art (GA), National Museum of Women in the Arts (D.C.), The Mobile Museum of Art (AL), and the U.S. Embassy, Prague, Czech Republic.

Her work has been reviewed in publications such as World Sculpture News, Sculpture, The Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, Artforum, Art Papers, Bad at Sports and BURNAWAY.

Awards include a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2018), South Arts Prize for the State of Alabama (2018), Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award (2015), Mary Hambidge Distinguished Artist Award (2015), Cultural Alliance of Birmingham Individual Artist Fellowship (2008), and Alabama State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship (2019/2003).

Her first monograph, The Messenger’s Mouth Was Heavy, was released in 2019, co-published by Institute 193 and Frank. 

Pleasant also co-founded the curatorial initiative The Fuel And Lumber Company with artist Pete Schulte in 2013.

Her work has been reviewed in many publications including Art in America, Art Papers, Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail and Sculpture.

“The range and depth of this work is breathtaking….”

- Douglas Winslow Cooper, Ph.D., Formerly, Associate Professor of Environmental Physics, Harvard University

“…the best book on deathbed experiences anywhere.”

- Jeffrey Long, M.D., Cofounder of the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation

“…extremely powerful in making the case for life after death….”

- J. P. Moreland, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Biola University

“Anyone interested in solid evidence for the reality of the spiritual realm should read this book.”

- Michael Sabom, M.D., Former Assistant Professor of Cardiology, Emory School of Medicine

“…one of the most startling, challenging treatises it has been my privilege to read in recent years.”

- David Cashin, Ph.D., Professor of Intercultural Studies, Columbia International University

Tony Orrico is a visual and performance artist, choreographer, and dancer. Merging the act of drawing with choreographic gesture and bio-geometrics, his work has reached mass circulation for its ingenuity within the intersections of performance and drawing. His work explores how consciousness and physical impulses manifest into visible forms. He often uses his own somatic research, Suspension Practice, as point of entry into his visual work. Orrico has performed/exhibited his work across the US and internationally in Australia, Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Mexico, The Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. His visual work is in collection at of The National Academy of Sciences (Washington DC) and Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC, Mexico City) as well as prominent private collections such as Grazyna Kulczyk, Kablanc/Fundación Otazu and Bergmeier/Kunstsaele, among others. He has presented at the CCCB, Centre Pompidou-Metz, The New Museum, Cranbrook Art Museum and Poptech 2011: The World Rebalancing. Orrico was one of a select group of artists to re-perform the work of Marina Abramovic during her retrospective at MoMA (2010). As a former member of Trisha Brown Dance Company and Shen Wei Dance Arts, Orrico has graced such stages as the Sydney Opera House, Teatro La Fenice, New York State Theater, and Theatre du Palais-Royal.  

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Joseph Karg is an accomplished illustrator who specializes in the comic art, album covers, tour posters and design for animation. He has most notably worked on the Emmy award-winning show, Archer, for FX, and in 2016, he was voted Creative Loafing's Best Illustrator of Atlanta. His clients include MARVEL, FX, NETFLIX, AMC, Judd Apatow Productions and Viacom.

When Joseph is not working on a commercial project, he spends his time teaching others and training himself in new disciplines. Since the summer of 2020, he’s joined KSU’s School of Art and Design as a tenure track assistant professor of animation and illustration.

Joseph is currently working on his largest project to date: a four volume graphic novel series with the publisher Dark Planet.

Chris Malone is an Atlanta-based cartoonist who has worked on a variety of shows including the Emmy-winning Archer, Cyanide and Happiness, Adam Ruins Everything, Game Grumps, Baby Shark, and more. He focuses primarily on preproduction, such as storyboards/animatics, background design, and character design. He just recently started a new studio with a few other animators called Raging Viking Productions, where he is the lead background artist.

He is also an Assistant Professor of Animation over at Kennesaw State University, where he teaches animation and comic classes. He enjoys sharing his work experience in the classroom to help his students learn modern and relevant practices in the field.

Additionally, he has been working closely with the KSU's School of Visual Arts' new 3D printing farm. Using this technology, he is teaming up with the Wareswald archeological site in Saarthal, Germany to 3D scan broken statues, repairing missing pieces, then printing completed versions for study.

When he isn't working on cartoons or teaching, he can probably be found reading comic strips and at home, with both of his dogs asleep in his lap.

Judith Brodsky is an artist, author, printmaker, and founding director of the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper which she relocated from New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as the newly named Brodsky Center at PAFA. The Center is highly acclaimed for a prominent history of consistently and extensively supporting women artists, artists of color, and artists who have historically been under-represented in the arenas of printmaking, papermaking, contemporary art and in museum collections. Producing over 300 collaborative editions in handmade paper and print with a broad range of established and emerging artists, diversity has always been the prevailing hallmark of the Center’s mission and remains a testament to Brodsky’s far-reaching dedication to inclusivity. She will discuss The Brodsky Center, as well as her recent book, Junctures: Case Studies in Women’s Leadership, in which she and Ferris Olin profile female leaders in music, theater, dance, and visual art. The diverse women included in the book have made their mark by serving as executives or founders of art organizations, by working as activists to support the arts, or by challenging stereotypes about women in the arts. The contributors explore several important themes, such as the role of feminist leadership in changing cultural values regarding inclusivity and gender parity, as well as the feminization of the arts and the power of the arts as cultural institutions.

“There will never be too many books teaching Women’s Herstory. Brodsky and Olin’s case studies describe the outrageous and humiliating strangleholds all women have endured and continue to face. Brodsky and Olin champion us to reach our goals.” -Elizabeth A. Sackler, PhD ― Founder, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum 

“New histories need to be written. Preserving stories that complicate and enrich mainstream narratives is vitally important, and the inspired and inspiring contributions groundbreaking women have made to our cultural world deserve to be celebrated. In addition to leading this charge themselves in their own remarkable careers, with the publication of Junctures in Women’s Leadership: The Arts, Judith Brodsky and Ferris Olin have given us the gift of expanding the canon through these remarkable case studies in creative leadership in the arts.” -Catherine Morris ― Sackler Senior Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art Brooklyn Museum 

Geo Sipp is the Director of the School of Art and Design at Kennesaw State University.

Geo Sipp is an artist and illustrator who has worked for top international advertising agencies and clients, and his work has been published by many of the leading newspapers, magazines and book publishers in the United States and abroad. Among his clients include: ABC Television, Atlanta Ballet, BBDO Advertising, BellSouth, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Fortune, General Electric, Harris Corporation - Trans-Siberian Railroad, Los Angeles Times, Metropolitan Opera, National Football League, Newsweek, New York Times, Reader's Digest, Sports Illustrated, St. Martin's Press, Time-Warner, United States Postal Service, U.S. News & World Report and the Walt Disney Company. Geo’s research and scholarship on sequential art has appeared in numerous national and international peer-reviewed publications and has resulted in international speaking engagements and exhibitions. His current work is primarily intended for inclusion in a graphic novel entitled Wolves in the City, which has the French-Algerian War as its subject.

His work has been exhibited at the Adam Baumgold Gallery in New York, Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, Weinberger Fine Arts in Kansas City, the Algerian Cultural Ministry in Algiers, Algeria,  Clemson University, International Print Center, New York, McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, Sharjah Museum of Art in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, Vero Beach Museum of Art, Vero Beach, Florida and the Zuckerman Museum of Art at Kennesaw State University. His work has also been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the United States as well as in Algeria, Belgium, China, England, France, Spain, and Tunisia. He has lectured and given workshops at many universities including: the University of Kansas, Dartmouth College, École de Recherche Graphique Brussels, Institut St. Luc Brussels (ESA St. Luc), University of London, London College of Communications, and the University of London-Paris.

Sipp is a recipient of the Missouri Governor's Award for Excellence in Education. His artistic awards include numerous gold and silver ADDY’s for his work in the field of Illustration.

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