This month’s ArtSalon will be at the The Baustein Building of Holyoke, MA. Presenting artists are mostly working artists and organizations doing incredible work out of Holyoke. The evening begins at 6:30pm with mingling and light refreshments, and presentations start at 7pm. A brief Q&A period with the artists follows the presentations.
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Holyoke Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. The Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts and Fierst, Kane and Bloomberg.
Presenting artists: Imo Imeh, Joanne Holtje, Katy Moonan & Diana Rodriguez of ArteSana, Susannah Auferoth, Seth Koen, Black Lake: Susan Jennings & Slink Moss
Imo Imeh
Imo Imeh is a Nigerian-American visual artist and scholar of African Diaspora visual culture and aesthetics. He is an alumnus of the Yale University Graduate School, and presently an Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Westfield State University in Massachusetts.
Imo grew up in the Bronx, in a rich and thriving community of people from Ibibioland, the home of both of his parents. This exposure to his culture from a young age has greatly influenced how he views the world, as American-born Ibibio Diaspora, and the type of investigatory art that he creates. One of his most recent projects includes 17 Years Boy, a time-based, public performance art project that speaks to the issue of Black boy subjectivity in the United States culminating in a dramatic finish. http://www.iamimo.com/
Katy Moonan and Diana Rodriguez of ArteSana
Diana Rodriguez is Assistant Director of ArteSana, a social enterprise partnering with women in Holyoke to support pathways to community leadership and self-sufficiency through weaving reclaimed textiles. With an Associates Degree in Business Management, she’s held a variety of positions and is now also an accomplished weaver through her work with ArteSana.
Katy Moonan is the Founder and Director of ArteSana, a social enterprise partnering with women in Holyoke to support pathways to community leadership and self-sufficiency through weaving reclaimed textiles. A graduate of Smith College, Katy is a passionate advocate for community-led development and the arts and has worked with numerous non-profits in the Pioneer Valley.
ArteSana is a social enterprise dedicated to expanding employment and leadership opportunities for women in Holyoke. Women are trained and then employed to weave ArteSana’s interior decor products using reclaimed textiles and traditional hand operated looms. https://artesana.co/
Seth Koen is originally from Maine and recently relocated from Sacramento, CA to Easthampton, MA. After receiving his BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, he went on to earn my MFA from Mills College in Oakland, CA. Koen has shown widely, including shows in the San Francisco Bay area at Gregory Lind Gallery, c2c Project Space (in collaboration with Gary Peterson), Rena Bransten Gallery, the Richmond Art Center, Headlands Center for the Arts, Adobe Books, the LAB, and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery. In addition, Koen has shown in New York with Jeff Bailey Gallery and Foley Gallery; the Brewery Project, Los Angeles; Chela, Baltimore; Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque; and Galerie Hafemann, Wiesbaden, Germany. I have been the recipient of the Trefethen, Cadogan and Kala Art Institute Fellowships, and the Jay Defeo Prize. For the past 12 years, Koen was the studio assistant to the sculptor Ron Nagle. http://www.sethkoen.com/
Joanne Holtje
Attributes of Joanne Holtje’s paintings include the exuberant use of color, joy in the physicality of paint, and expressive mark making. Since 2006 she has exhibited in local, regional, and national shows including The Massachusetts Artists Biennial, The Fitchburg Art Museum and the Danforth Museum. Her work appears in the book, Creating Abstract Art by Dean Nimmer. Straddling the best of the valley’s rural and urban environs, Joanne lives in Belchertown, works from her studio in Holyoke, and shows her work in Northampton at the Oxbow Gallery where she has been a member since 2014. www.joanneholtje.com/
Susannah Auferoth
“My new, large-scale paintings use an underlying grid of motion imagery based on video I took at skate parks in Holyoke, Massachusetts. By covering silhouettes of figures mid-jump with layers of translucent oil paint I am able to still the composition at the surface but allow movement to be present beneath. The paintings hover between two narrow, luminous planes and allow me to continue my exploration of juxtaposing the dynamic and the static through color and composition.”
Black Lake is a collaborative duo Slink Moss and Susan Jennings, integrates sculpture, painting, original music and lyrics, spoken word, amplified electric guitars, percussive jams, movement, shadows, noise, costumes, hand made percussive instruments—all bathed in the abstract shimmering light of Jennings’ video art. They have presented their multi-media installations and performances in both art and music venues such as Lesley Heller Workspace, Freight +Volume, RISD Art Museum, The Tank, Incident Report, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, David Nolan Gallery, X-Initiative, 179 Canal, and Anthology Film Archive among other venues. Additionally, Black Lake is featured on the soundtrack of Pip Chodorov’s award-winning documentary, “Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film.”
Black Lake was awarded residency at DNA Gallery in Provincetown, MA in the summers of 2012, 2014 and 2017. Black Lake is a 2013 recipient of an Artist Resource Trust grant through the BerkshireTaconic Foundation. Their 4th musical release “Tree” is imminent. http://www.studios-efanyc.org/susan-jennings/