ARTIST PROFILES

ANNE ARDEN McDONALD

Brooklyn, NY

From ages 15 to 30, McDonald made photographic self portraits by building installations in the landscape or in abandoned interiors and performing privately for her camera in these spaces. These images reflect her interest in installation and performance, and she published a book of this work in 2004. More recently she has been making process-inspired images and site-specific installations which include photography and sculpture. Her work has been exhibited in contexts that range from self portrait, staged, ritual, plastic camera, antique process and experimental photography; to sculptural installations as large as a room and as small as a pocket watch. McDonald’s work has been exhibited widely: she has had 44 solo exhibitions in 10 countries (about 200 total shows in 14 countries) and has appeared in many publications, over 215 places in 20 countries, including in Aperture, European Photography, and Eyemazing Magazines. Her work is in the collections of 6 major museums, including The Houston MFA, The Denver Art Museum, The Detroit Institute of Art and the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris. She was a Lapine Fellow at the Millay Colony and was given a grant of studio space from the Sharpe Foundation. She has also taught for 6 years at Parsons School of Design in New York, and has lectured about topics such as staged photography, self portraiture, Czech and Slovak photography, alternative photography, women and photography, and her own work.

JUSTINE REYES

New York, NY

Reyes received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2004 and a BFA from Syracuse University in 2000. Reyes has exhibited her work nationally and internationally including Proyecto Circo at the 8th Havana Biennial, Cuba; Contemporary Istanbul, Turkey; Queens International 4 at The Queens Museum of Art, the S-Files Biennial at El Museo del Barrio, the Humble Arts Foundation’s 31 Women in Art Photography and the Flash Forward Festival in Toronto. She was an artist in residence at the Center for Photography at Woodstock in 2008 and exhibited the series Vanitas there in 2010. Reyes was awarded the Juror’s Choice Award from Center’s project competition, a workspace residency from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) and Visiting Scholar status at New York University. She was also a recipient of a QCAF grant from the Queens Council on the Arts with public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs for her series Home, Away from Home and was named one of PDN’s (Photo District News) Top 30. Her work has been published in Harper’s Magazine, Real Simple and the Wall Street Journal Magazine.

JOHN F. SIMON, JR draws every day. His "Divination Drawings" are a years-long practice of daily hand drawings which the artist uses to meditate, but also as source material for larger works. Drawings from the Divination series begin intuitively; a pencil drawing or watercolor is started and then guided by the unconscious thoughts and emotions of that day. Simon’s interests include the scientific, spiritual and natural worlds, with mathematics usually playing the connecting role. Where many people see technical proficiency, others see art historical references, the beauty of scientific minutia, and the delicate nuances that occur from years of color studies. The drawings shared daily through the artist's website www.iclock.com, are the source of his symbolism and his engine for artistic growth. When an image persists in these drawings, Simon translates it into something larger and more dimensional. He works in diverse media such as: software, computers, paint, pencil, wood, HDU, formica, and linoleum and frequently uses computer controlled fabrication tools like a laser cutter and CNC router. Simon is one of the pioneers in the development of Software Art and is renowned in this area for articulating the use of code in digital and multimedia works since the mid 1980s. This early community of artists and curators created the first wave of software applications, web-based projects and digital approaches to art making, which continue to expand in new directions every year. As an example, in 2011 Simon completed an app for Icelandic singer Björk’s new album, Biophilia; the first app album ever created. His seminal work "Every Icon" was included in the Whitney Biennial (2000). Simon’s artworks can be found in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Collezione Maramotti, The Brooklyn Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. In October 2005 the Whitney Museum of American Art and Printed Matter published Simon’s artist’s book and software CD, "Mobility Agents” based on the notebooks of Paul Klee. He holds an MFA degree from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and a Masters degree in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis. He is represented in New York by Sandra Gering, Inc.

 

AUSTIN THOMAS
Brooklyn, NY
Thomas’s delicate constructions in sketchbooks, in wood or steel, on old book pages, in photographs and with ink and collage, have an immediate and ineffable charge, the kind that makes you take a step back and reconsider what you’re looking at. Most of her pieces are modest, humble in materials and self-effacing in effect.  This modesty puts all the weight on the moment of viewing.Thomas’s art encourages us to address the “thing in itself.”  Her work engenders a spiritual uplift.  Shaped, forged, fabricated, scribbled upon, or drawn over, Thomas facilitates so many marks, suggesting a subtler world, rich with nuance and precision, with enough room to insert our own narratives or borrow one from the nearest library. The generosity of her aesthetic sensibility is stunning and points to a future where hope might reside.