Conversations, Readings,
Spoken Word Performances and Music

Conversations and Readings by:
Linda Weintraub, Sigrid Sarda, Jennifer Elster, Heide Hatry.

Spoken Word Performances and Music by:
Danielle Blau and Nora Fox, Jane LeCroy, Dusty Wright, Robert Brashear, Aimee Hermann, David Lawton, Peter Spagnuolo

Linda Weintraub is a curator, educator, artist, and author of several popular books about contemporary art. Weintraub served as the Director of the Bard College museum where she curated over sixty exhibitions. She was the Henry Luce Professor of Emerging Arts at Oberlin College and is currently on the faculty of the Interdisciplinary Master of Fine Art program at the University of Hartford. Weintraub maintains a homestead on an eleven acre property where she practices permaculture. These principles guide her studio practice.

Sigrid Sarda is best known for her life-size human figures made of wax in the tradition of the reliquary. Originally a self-taught painter, after the death of her father, Sarda then taught herself the 17th Century techniques of the ceroplast. Sarda exhibits internationally, is on file at the Mutter Museum, and has works in many private collections worldwide. Currently she maintains an open residency at the Gordon Museum of Pathology, lectures at the New York Academy of Medicine, and makes television appearances related to the wax works.

Jennifer Elster is an American experimentalist, thinker, artist, filmmaker, writer, photographer and performer. Elster, obsessed with the truth, explores boundaries in all mediums and has collaborated with such artists as David Bowie and Yoko Ono. Elster spent years of deep, and, at times, bizarre excavation into the recesses of her mind and the minds of her subjects, analyzing the depths of human nature. Using words, paper, canvases, photographs, audio, video and performance art, Elster explores ways to deal with the severity of reality. Currently, Elster has been performing and hosting art happenings in the underground studio The Development in New York City to further bring awareness to our current world crisis and fight for human rights.

Heide Hatry is a New York based German artist. Among her fundamental preoccupations are the meaning of beauty, the effects of knowledge upon perception, and the human exploitation of the natural world. She taught art practice in Germany while simultaneously conducting an international business as an antiquarian bookseller. She has curated numerous exhibitions, has shown her own work at museums and galleries around the world, has created nearly two hundred artist’s books and edited more than two dozen printed books and art catalogues. She documents her own art in collaborative conceptual artist’s books involving some of the most interesting thinkers and authors in the world.

Danielle Blau graduated from Brown University with an honors degree in philosophy, and from NYU with an MFA in poetry, she curates and hosts the monthly Gavagai Music + Reading Series, and teaches at Hunter College. Her collection mere eye was selected for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Award and published in 2013 with an introduction by poet D.A. Powell. Her poems won first place in the 2015 multi-genre Narrative 30 Below Contest. Poetry, short stories, articles, and interviews by Blau can be found in such publications as The Harvard Review, The Literary Review, Narrative Magazine, The New Yorker‘s book blog, The Paris ReviewThe Wolf, and Plume Anthology of Poetry.

David Cieri is a violinist and pianist and has performed original compositions at such venues as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. Cieri’s plenty film-scoring works include Ken Burns’ The Vietnam War, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, The Address, Prohibition, The Emperor of All Maladies, and The Heart of the Matter. His original score for Raymond De Felitta’s Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story was longlisted for an Oscar nomination in 2013. His recently completed scoring a documentary entitled, Oklahoma City, will premiere at The Sundance Film Festival in 2017 and run in theatres beginning February 3, 2017.

Robert Brashear is a pastor and singer-songwriter resuming his career after 30 years. He performs solo and with his “floating musical collective,” the Home (Away) Band.  He has performed in the US as well as in other countries and has collaborated with a wide variety of artists of different genres.

Aimee Herman and David Lawton are the music and poetry collective HYDROGEN JUNKBOX, guided by the spirit of Brant Lyon. We aim to stir, rumble, and rouse!

Jane LeCroy is a NYC based poet, singer and performance artist who fronts the avant-pop band, The Icebergs, and the psychedelic experimental music project, Ohmslice. Jane is a poet-in-the-schools through Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Her publications include Names, and Signature Play, a multimedia book of lyrical poems, nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The Icebergs just released their debut album, Eldorado.

Peter Spagnuolo is the author of All the 1,000 Nothings of the Hour, forthcoming from Pressed Wafer Books, 2017. His poems appear in Poetry, the Threepenny Review, the London Review of Books, and in fine letterpress editions.

Dusty Wright is a singer-songwriter, content creator and curator from New York City. He is the co-founder and owner of the smart culture website CultureCatch.com, contributor to the Huffington Post, former DJ at David Lynch’s Transcendental Music Radio, and the former editor of Creem and Prince’s New Power Generation magazines. He’s also written and/or produced documentaries, indie films, webcasts, fiction, and podcasts. He’s released five solo albums and one with his folk-rock quartet GIANTfingers. His music is available on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Bandcamp, etc.