Artist as Leader

Alfonso Cervera and Irvin Gonzalez, two of the founding members of Primera Generación Dance Collective, both grew up in Southern California households where dancing was a vital part of family life, though neither was encouraged to pursue it professionally. Alfonso's first training was in ballet folklórico, a form he embraced as a child largely thanks to his own curiosity and insistence. Irvin, inspired by early seasons of “So You Think You Can Dance,” taught himself pirouettes in secret in his parents' garage. Both men eventually studied dance at UC Riverside (UCR), where they also first came out to their families, not only as queer but also as dancers. UCR is also where the two met and fell in love.It was during graduate school that Alfonso and Irvin, along with fellow dancers Rosa Rodriguez-Frazier and Patty Huerta, realized the creative power of coming together. Each brought a unique movement background and a shared desire to explore and celebrate their Mexican American identities on the concert stage. The resulting collective, Primera Generación, now almost ten years strong, continues to challenge conventional notions of contemporary dance with work that is joyous, confrontational and often intentionally messy. That messiness is key. The collective embraces the concept of “desmadre,” a Spanish term that can refer to disorder, exuberance or both, as both a choreographic strategy and a call to reflection and social change.In this interview, Alfonso and Irvin, now professors at The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH, discuss the origins of Primera Generación Dance Collective, how they've navigated nearly a decade of creative collaboration and why their messiest pieces are often their most meaningful. They also reflect on what it means to be first-generation artists in the Midwest today and how they hope the next generation of dancers can shape the collective's future.https://www.instagram.com/primerageneraciondance/

Alfonso Cervera and Irvin Gonzalez, two of the founding members of Primera Generación Dance Collective, both grew up in Southern California households where dancing was a vital part of family life, though neither was encouraged to pursue it professionally. Alfonso's first training was in ballet folklórico, a form he embraced as a child largely thanks to his own curiosity and insistence. Irvin, inspired by early seasons of “So You Think You Can Dance,” taught himself pirouettes in secret in his parents' garage. Both men eventually studied dance at UC Riverside (UCR), where they also first came out to their families, not only as queer but also as dancers. UCR is also where the two met and fell in love.It was during graduate school that Alfonso and Irvin, along with fellow dancers Rosa Rodriguez-Frazier and Patty Huerta, realized the creative power of coming together. Each brought a unique movement background and a shared desire to explore and celebrate their Mexican American identities on the concert stage. The resulting collective, Primera Generación, now almost ten years strong, continues to challenge conventional notions of contemporary dance with work that is joyous, confrontational and often intentionally messy. That messiness is key. The collective embraces the concept of “desmadre,” a Spanish term that can refer to disorder, exuberance or both, as both a choreographic strategy and a call to reflection and social change.In this interview, Alfonso and Irvin, now professors at The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH, discuss the origins of Primera Generación Dance Collective, how they've navigated nearly a decade of creative collaboration and why their messiest pieces are often their most meaningful. They also reflect on what it means to be first-generation artists in the Midwest today and how they hope the next generation of dancers can shape the collective's future.https://www.instagram.com/primerageneraciondance/

Even before his diagnosis of long COVID in 2020, cellist Joshua Roman had carved a unique niche in the classical music world. A former principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony turned soloist and curator, Joshua built a career that combined artistic excellence with a passionate commitment to making music relevant and accessible. Whether premiering bold new works or improvising in unexpected settings, he was—and remains—a restless innovator with an unshakable belief in music's power to heal, connect, and transform.Long COVID has altered nearly every aspect of Joshua's life, from his physical stamina to how he plans his days to the way he relates to his instrument. Yet instead of sidelining him, the illness has led Joshua to reevaluate the very foundations of his artistry. The result is a new clarity and focus—not only about which projects deserve his limited energy but also what kind of artistic legacy he wants to build. His latest initiative, “The Immunity Project,” exemplifies this shift: a collection of performances and reflections that foreground music's emotional and restorative capacity, drawn directly from his personal experience of illness and recovery. The project now also includes a recently released album titled “Immunity.”In this interview, Joshua opens up about the physical and existential recalibrations he's made in order to keep performing, why he now only practices when he truly wants to and how chronic illness has deepened his artistic mission. He also shares his hopes for a classical-music ecosystem that makes space for artists to be fully, honestly human — onstage and off.https://www.joshuaroman.com/

Cyrus Moussavi has carved out a career that is as improbable as it is original. Raised in Iowa in a bicultural Iranian American household, Cyrus grew up spending summers in Iran and the rest of the year steeped in his father's love of prog rock and his mother's passion for traditional Iranian music. That early immersion in disparate sound worlds laid the groundwork for a lifelong obsession with music—not as a performer, but as a listener, connector, and storyteller. After studying economics and philosophy in college, Cyrus gravitated toward filmmaking, not to make conventional movies but to explore how visual storytelling could capture, preserve and transmit music and the lives of those who make it.As a filmmaker, Cyrus has developed a body of work that's both deeply collaborative and boldly inventive. His films include “I Snuck Off the Slave Ship,” a science-fiction documentary co-directed with the visionary artist and musician Lonnie Holley that screened at Sundance and BlackStar, among many other festivals and galleries, and the upcoming “Somebody's Gone,” a feature-length film about gospel legend Brother Theotis Taylor that he is co-directing with Brother Theotis' son, Hubert. And as a music archivist and promoter, since 2019 Cyrus has led the influential reissue label Mississippi Records, where he works closely with artists and their families to bring overlooked and under-celebrated music from around the world to new audiences.In this interview, Cyrus discusses how his early experiences shaped his eclectic sensibility, what it means to ethically archive music across cultures and how he sees his work as both creative practice and cultural preservation. 

It's no secret that arts non-profits across the country are struggling to survive, but few closures have hit their communities as hard as the recent shuttering of Big Medium in Austin, TX. For more than 20 years, Big Medium was one of the most influential visual-arts organizations in the city. It produced the beloved and sprawling Austin Studio Tour, presented exhibitions that championed historically marginalized artists and served as an essential convener for the city's creative community. At the heart of its work for many years was curator and, more recently, artistic director Coka Treviño, whose passion for equity and for platforming emerging artists helped shape the organization's inclusive mission.In this conversation, Coka, who continues her own curatorial work via her company The Projecto, reflects on her tenure at Big Medium and the complex web of challenges that led to its sudden closure. From shifts in city grantmaking priorities to the skyrocketing cost of living that made staffing nearly impossible, the interview offers a candid window into just how difficult it has become for arts organizations—even in culturally rich, economically booming cities like Austin—to maintain operations. https://www.theprojecto.org/

Ryan J. Haddad is an actor and playwright whose work across theater and television consistently challenges outdated narratives around disability, queerness and identity. He made a striking Off-Broadway playwriting debut with “Dark Disabled Stories” at The Public Theater, which enjoyed a sold-out, extended run and earned him the Obie Award for Best New American Play. His autobiographical solo show “Hi, Are You Single?” has become a defining part of his artistic voice, touring nationally and earning critical acclaim. Ryan's television credits include memorable appearances on Hulu's “A Murder at the End of the World” and Netflix's “The Politician.”In addition to performing, Haddad is a dedicated writer and access advocate. His essays have appeared in The New York Times and Out Magazine, and he is a contributor to the anthology “Disability Intimacy,” curated by Alice Wong. His creative work and activism have earned him a Drama Desk Award, a Paula Vogel Playwriting Award from Vineyard Theatre and a Disability Futures Fellowship. He is also a proud alum of the Public Theater's Emerging Writers Group.In this interview, conducted just a few days before he premiered his latest solo piece, “Hold Me in the Water,” at Playwrights Horizons in New York City, Ryan reflects on the pivotal experiences that shaped his journey as an artist, from performing fairy tales in his childhood living room to commanding major stages and screens. He speaks candidly about navigating the entertainment industry as a gay man with cerebral palsy, building a career on his own terms and advocating for authentic representation and accessibility in the arts.https://www.ryanjhaddad.com/https://www.playwrightshorizons.org/about/production-history/2020s/2425-season/hold-me-in-the-water

Carlos López Estrada definitely paid his dues – shooting scores of music videos and short pieces for a pittance while living at his mother's for years after film school – before he had the chance to direct his first full-length feature film, “Blindspotting.” That well-reviewed film landed him his first studio feature when Disney hired him to co-direct the animated film “Raya and the Last Dragon.” He is nonetheless the first to point out that a number of elements, including a film-school education and supportive parents, made his path to success easier than what awaited most of his cohort of up-and-coming filmmakers. He therefore focused on a new kind of creative endeavor: Antigravity Academy. Founded by Carlos in 2023, Antigravity is a hybrid business. It offers a range of educational initiatives designed to provide young, aspiring filmmakers — particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds — with the tools, mentorship and opportunities to develop their voices and tell their own stories. It also has a producing arm devoted to developing and bringing to life projects that would otherwise have difficulty finding funding. Antigravity's first produced film, “Dìdi,” a glowingly reviewed coming-of-age story by Sean Wang, proved that Carlos' mentoring and producing instincts are spot-on. “Dìdi” recently won two awards at the 2025 Film Independent Spirit Awards: Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay.In this interview, Carlos describes how his experiences in Hollywood shaped Antigravity Academy's mission and programs and explains why empowering new voices is not only helping to bring surprising stories to the screen but also making him a better artist.https://antigravityacademy.co/

Trained as a fiber and textile artist, Maria Amalia Wood has in recent years been working with paper, manipulating and dyeing wet wood pulp to build richly layered pieces. As important to Maria's creativity as her raw materials, however, is the community of Latina immigrants like herself that she has fostered through a series of creative workshops in her hometown of Madison, WI. Her latest communal and artistic enterprise is Unidas por Hilos (United by Threads), a monthly gathering of diverse Latina immigrants who embroider their stories, often learning new stitches along the way, in fellowship with one another. In this interview, Maria shares how her current work is a natural extension of the comfort and energy she found among skilled seamstresses in her native Honduras. She extols the power of embroidery as both a meditative practice and a form of storytelling and reminds us that no matter the activity, homemade food remains the one ingredient guaranteed to bring people together. https://www.mariaamalia.com/

For the last two decades, architect and educator JP Reuer has been exploring how artists can become vital, integrated members of their communities rather than isolated figures working on the fringes of society. That ethos now fuels his most ambitious project to date: Small School, a Raleigh-based arts organization that reimagines advanced arts education as more accessible, collaborative and deeply embedded in local culture.Through Small School, JP has rejected the traditional MFA model in favor of a nimbler, community-driven approach. The organization brings renowned visiting artists to the Triangle area to engage with local artists through workshops, public events and one-on-one studio visits, an exchange that empowers both emerging and established artists while fostering a richer creative ecosystem.In this episode, JP traces his journey from academia to founding Small School, sharing what he's learned about the evolving role of artists in society. He discusses the power of bringing artists out of ivory towers and into the heart of their communities and why rethinking arts education is essential to supporting a more inclusive and dynamic creative landscape.https://smallschool.org/

In November of 2024, Counterpublic, a St. Louis-based arts and civics organization, and the Osage Nation made a historic announcement. After three years of negotiations, the entirety of historic Sugarloaf Mound, the oldest human-made structure within the City of St. Louis, was being rematriated to the Osage Nation, whose ancestors built this and other mounds in the region. Counterpublic was not only a crucial negotiator in the process. In 2023, the organization, which every three years produces a three-month-long city-wide arts festival commissioned new work to be displayed at a site near Sugarloaf Mound in order for the city to engage with the site's cultural and historic significance. One of the artists Counterpublic commissioned was noted Oklahoma-based clay and textile artist Anita Fields, who is herself Osage.“Art Restart” reached out to James McAnally, Counterpublic's Executive and Artistic Director, and Anita Fields to learn more about why and how an arts organization as well as a range of artists were crucial to this successful Land Back effort. After all, what's a more striking example of arts and artists shaking up the status quo in their communities than this historic example of an arts-centered process of rematriation? In this interview, James and Anita share how art played a pivotal role in the historic rematriation of Sugarloaf Mound, from fostering trust and dialogue to reimagining the site's future. They reflect on the power of creative practice in Land Back efforts and offer insights for those looking to merge artistic vision with meaningful action.https://www.anitafieldsart.com/https://www.counterpublic.org/team/james-mcanallyhttps://www.osageculture.com/culture/historic-preservation-office

What happens when best friends in different disciplines decide to formalize their creative relationship and then invite a third artist into their artmaking experiment? A vibrant, equitable and joyful collective by the name of Art 25: Art in the 25th Century is born.Art 25's core artists are poet Lehua M. Taitano, visual artist Lisa Jarrett and multi-disciplinary artist Jocelyn Kapumealani Ng. Separately, Lehua, who is CHamoru; Lisa, who is Black; and Jocelyn, who has Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese roots had been exploring similar themes of identity and diaspora in their artistic practice. Fusing their talents and perspectives, however, allowed them access to an even deeper well of experience and imagination from which to draw inspiration.Since Art 25's founding, the collective's work has been seen at several institutions, including the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and in February of 2025 it will be exhibited at the Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum in Long Beach, CA.In this interview, Lehua, Lisa and Jocelyn describe how they joined their creative forces and explain the core anti-capitalistic values of Art 25 that not only place it firmly outside the artistic mainstream but continue to bring them joy.https://www.lehuamtaitano.com/art-25

Johnny Gandelsman is not only one of the world's finest violinists, as comfortable playing contemporary works as he is interpreting pieces from the Western classical canon. He is also an inveterate musical innovator. A long-time member of Silkroad Ensemble and a co-founder of string quartet Brooklyn Rider, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this past year, Johnny has long championed the dissolution of genre boundaries to celebrate music's unique power to bridge cultural divides. Over the years he has collaborated with and played the works of musicians from the Middle East to Appalachia, along the way stretching his own skills to adapt his instrument to a host of musical traditions.Johnny has also been a driving force in the commissioning of new works for the concert stage, founding his own label, In a Circle Records, to produce and release new compositions. In the doldrums of the COVID lockdown, when musicians saw a year's worth of scheduled work vanish, he hatched a plan. He set out to find dozens of arts institutions and music presenters to partner with him to commission 22 composers from all over the country to create new works for the solo violin. Four years later, the project has now resulted in an album titled “This Is America: an Anthology 2020-2021,” a three-CD set with a 40-page booklet produced by In a Circle Records. Pitchfork raves, “This Is America stirs feelings about our country that are almost hard to recognize: pride, hope, and the simple relief of consensus reality.” Since the album's release, Johnny himself has been playing sections of the album all over the country in marathon performances at many of the institutions who partnered with him on the project. In this interview, Johnny describes how he shifted from being a young talent focused on a traditional soloist's career to becoming an adventurer, challenging classical music's conventions to prove that experimentation and community are as essential to music as technique.https://johnnygandelsman.bandcamp.com/album/this-is-america-an-anthology-2020-2021-icr023https://www.inacircle-records.com/

The year 2020 was looking to be a banner year for musical and life partners Sarah and Austin McCombie, aka Chatham Rabbits. They had just made the biggest financial investment in their band, namely the purchase of a tour van, and were looking forward to months of being on the road and performing to promote their second album when the pandemic hit and their bookings vanished. What they did next, though, exemplifies their resourcefulness, generosity and innovative spirit. They installed solar panels on top of the van to power a sound system, hitched a flatbed trailer to their new vehicle and played free concerts in scores of neighborhoods around North Carolina. In the middle of lockdown, when the prospect of hearing live music seemed years away, you could email Chatham Rabbits a request, and chances are they'd show up on your street and give you and your neighbors a joyful, free concert.Happily, their professional life has resumed at full tilt. They recently completed their third album, titled “Be Real with Me,” which is scheduled for release on Valentine's Day in 2025, and they will spend February and March performing in venues all over the country.In this interview, Austin and Sarah describe how a commitment to community and authenticity has allowed them to keep taking risks and navigate a music industry that has yet to catch up to the needs of up-and-coming artists and their fans. https://www.chathamrabbits.com/https://www.pbsnc.org/watch/on-the-road/

To describe Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson as dancers is to name only a small sliver of their creative portfolio. To be sure, they are proficient, trained dancers and have created and performed several works for Kinetic Light, the disability arts ensemble that Alice founded in 2016 and continues to lead. In Kinetic Light's first piece, titled “Descent,” Alice and Laurel danced in their wheelchairs on a raked stage with a large ramp — stage design by Laurel — and since then have proved to be increasingly adventurous in exploring their relationship to gravity. In recent pieces, they have boldly moved into the vertical axis, sometimes flying into the air — in or out of a wheelchair — thanks to ingenious mechanisms, likewise created by Laurel.Because accessibility is central to Kinetic Light's artistry rather than a supplemental consideration, Alice and Laurel have also become accessibility and technological innovators. Kinetic Light is a disability arts company created by disabled artists for audiences with disabilities, and as such every performance is created from the ground up for everyone to fully enjoy. For instance, the company's lighting designer, Michael Maag, who uses a wheelchair, lights mobility devices with the same care he lights a human body and also pays attention to the needs of neurodiverse audiences; some seats are equipped with haptic devices to allow an audience member to feel the vibration of the score; and Laurel has developed Audimance, a multi-track audio-description app that gives blind and visually impaired guests control over how to experience and enjoy the performance. In this interview, Alice and Laurel describe the path that led them to Kinetic Light and explain why artists and institutions, rather than viewing accessibility as a requirement or need, would be wise to embrace it as an aesthetic principle.[post-interview edit: Laurel started working in tech in 1996, not 2016 as she accidentally states in the interview.]https://kineticlight.org/

For fiber artist Aaron McIntosh, quilting is an act of defiant documentation. Growing up in an Appalachian family with a generations-deep tradition of quilting, he learned the craft as a boy and went on to develop his own ethos and mission, studying first at the Appalachian Center for Craft in Tennessee and then earning his MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.In recent years, Aaron has placed his own personal history and metaphorical body into fabric sculptures that blend his familial and cultural background with his identity as a queer Appalachian artist. His work has been exhibited in a variety of institutions, from the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Toledo Museum of Art to Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul. In 2015, he started the “Invasive Queer Kudzu” project, a community storytelling, archiving and art-making project focusing on queer communities, past and present, in America's Southeast. In this interview, Aaron, who is currently an associate professor at Concordia University in Montreal, describes why and how he claimed the South's most notorious weed as his artistic inspiration and clears up any misconceptions about the fiber arts ever having taken a back seat to other fine arts throughout human history.https://aaronmcintosh.com/home.html

Christopher Tin is an award-winning and genre-bending classical composer whose work has been featured in a variety of settings and media, from august concert halls to the world of video games. His orchestral piece “Baba Yetu,” which Christopher originally composed for the game “Civilization IV,” was the first ever musical work written for a video game to win a Grammy Award. It has since become a staple in choral and orchestral venues. He received his second Grammy for his debut album, “Calling All Dawns,” a multilingual song cycle. Christopher has been as adventurous in his producing as he has been in his composing. He turned to Kickstarter to help him create his subsequent two albums, “To Shiver the Sky” and “The Lost Birds,” both of which explored ecological themes. Through his crowdfunding, he not only raised all the funds necessary to pull off both expensive projects but also deepened his relationship with his many ardent fans while making new ones, bringing them along on intimate tours through his entire creative and production process. “The Lost Birds,” which features the acclaimed British vocal ensemble VOCES8, was nominated for a 2023 Grammy and has been performed all over the world. This past spring at the Kennedy Center, the Washington National Opera premiered Puccini's unfinished masterpiece “Turandot” with a new ending composed by Christopher and written by Susan Soo He Stanton. The production and its new ending was a hit with critics and audiences alike.In this interview, Christopher reveals how after decades of experimentation and success he's finally stopped worrying whether his work was too popular to please the classical-music establishment, and he explains how he's cultivated a legion of fans who encourage him to take ever bigger risks.https://christophertin.com/

Matthew Fluharty is the founder and executive director of Art of the Rural, an organization that works to support and promote the work of artists and culture bearers across the country and that also aims to bridge cultural divides across urban and rural areas.Initially created as a blog in 2010, Art of the Rural has since then developed several long-term projects in collaboration with artists and community leaders, particularly in the upper Midwest (Art of the Rural is based in Winona, MN) and in Kentucky Appalachia. Projects have included “High Visibility: On Location in Rural American and Indian Country,” a collaboration with the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND, the first major museum exhibition highlighting contemporary art practice across these geographies; and two cultural-exchange programs – the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange and the Minnesota Rural-Urban Exchange – that have afforded scores of artists a chance to immerse themselves meaningfully in settings once unfamiliar to them.In this interview, Matthew offers an eye-opening look at the connections between rural and urban communities, challenging the idea of a “divide” and showing how collaboration and cultural exchange are reshaping how we think about art, place, and belonging. He also details the kind of shift in perspective institutions and funders must embrace to ensure that the many artists in rural America and Indian Country continue serving their communities.https://www.artoftherural.org/

Theater artists Annalisa Dias and Tara Moses are the co-directors of Groundwater Arts, an organization they founded in 2018 — along with Anna Lathrop and Ronee Penoi — to braid together goals that at first might seem disparate: decolonizing the arts-and-culture field and striving for a climate-just future.Guided and inspired all along by an advisory council as well as a youth council, Groundwater Arts has created countless opportunities — whether through creative projects, consulting or virtual and in-person gatherings — for cultural institutions to learn how they can start dismantling structural inequities that for generations have exacerbated the climate crisis and have primarily harmed communities of color. Groundwater Arts adheres to the principles listed in “Green New Theater,” a document the co-founders wrote to guide American theaters in responding to the climate crisis.In this interview, Annalisa and Dias describe the diligence and integrity with which they created and continue to run Groundwater Arts, offering a blueprint for artists and institutions looking to align their practices with justice, sustainability and true collaboration.https://www.groundwaterarts.com/https://www.groundwaterarts.com/green-new-theatre.html

Calling Robert Gipe an author or novelist is a bit like calling Neil deGrasse Tyson a YouTuber. Yes, Robert wrote a widely praised self-illustrated trilogy of novels — “Trampoline,” “Weedeater” and “Pop” — that follows the travails of a young woman growing up in rural Appalachia. He completed that authorly feat, however, after decades working as an educator, community builder and theater-maker in and around Harlan, KY, where he continues to reside.Originally from Kingsport, TN, Robert moved to Southeastern Kentucky in the late '90s after receiving his master's in American studies at the University of Massachusetts. Initially he worked in marketing and fundraising for the legendary community media organization Appalshop in Whitesburg, KY and then became a professor and program coordinator of the Appalachian Center at Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College in Cumberland. Soon thereafter he created Higher Ground, a community theater organization that since 2002 has created and produced plays with and for the community on local topics ranging from opioid addiction to environmental degradation.In this candid interview, Robert describes the challenges of encouraging community-wide fellowship in a politically divisive era and celebrates the role of art and artists in creating safe spaces for people of all stripes to celebrate their authentic selves.https://www.robertgipe.com/

You might be forgiven for guessing SHHH! Ensemble to be a collection of musically minded librarians, but you'd be way off the mark. Because SHHH! Ensemble makes noise. A lot of it. On a variety of instruments. And people are loving it. Which might be especially surprising given that SHHH! mostly plays contemporary classical works, a genre that can be intimidating to many audiences. So how do they do it?SHHH! comprises Ottawa-based life partners Edana Higham, a pianist, and Zac Pulak, a percussionist, making them possibly the world's only professional piano/percussion duo. Since launching their ensemble in 2016, Edana and Zac have made waves in Canada's classical-music scene, playing in venues and festivals from coast to coast and garnering raves from critics and audiences alike. They have collaborated with renowned contemporary classical composers, including John Beckwith, Monica Pearce and past Art Restart guest Frank Horvat.Here they explain how they decided to join musical forces and how they've developed the “avant-accessible” style that at each performance invites an audience to take a meticulously curated and delightful musical journey with them. 

On January 26 of 2024, San Francisco Ballet premiered a commissioned work by Canadian American choreographer Aszure Barton. It was titled “Mere Mortals” and explored the science and ramifications of AI through the ancient myth of Pandora. With a brand-new score by world-renowned British electronica composer Sam Shepherd, aka Floating Points, and video and sound design by Barcelona-based Hamill Industries, “Mere Mortals” was a big gamble for new artistic director Tamara Rojo as she closed out her first season with the Ballet. It paid off. Not only was “Mere Mortals” a hit with critics, with the San Francisco Chronicle calling it “a passionate success,” but it also proved to be a box-office bonanza, so much so that San Francisco Ballet brought the production back to the stage just three months later for several encore performances. Perhaps more importantly, many in the audience were first-time ballet-goers, many of whom saw the piece more than once.In this arts climate when so many dance companies are struggling to get even their regular audiences back in the door, what was it about “Mere Mortals” that made it such a hit? In this interview, Aszure opens a window into her choreographic practice and how it may have contributed to an event equally invigorating to her dancers and her audience.Aszure is the artistic director of Aszure Barton & Artists, which she founded very early in her career as a creative outlet for the collaborative and anti-hierarchical instincts she'd had to repress in her dance education. Two decades later, Aszure Barton & Artists, which includes a core staff of creative collaborators, has created work all over the world with a wide array of artists and institutions, including Mikhai Baryshnikov, Nederlans Dans Theater and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Aszure is currently the choreographer in residence at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and is also developing a new piece in partnership with trumpeter and composer Ambrose Akinmusire. 

In 2016, while earning his doctorate in music at the University of Southern California, Alexander Lloyd Blake founded the choral group Tonality. His initial aim was to create a choral ensemble that would represent and celebrate the full diversity of Los Angeles' population. That done, Tonality started to focus each concert on social-justice issues, from global warming to gun violence, always providing audiences with an array of resources to encourage activism and change.Tonality's repertoire is as varied as its membership, ranging from Gregorian chant to contemporary pieces in a variety of styles and genres, but Alex's commitment to harnessing the power of choral music to foment social change has remained central. In just eight years, Tonality has garnered nationwide attention. In 2020 Tonality received the Chorus America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, and in 2022 Alex and Tonality's work were featured on “The Kelly Clarkson Show.” They've released two albums, and just this past spring, Tonality won its first Grammy for performing on composer Carla Patullo's album “So She Howls.” The ensemble has collaborated with a number of world-renowned composers, including Reena Esmail and Michael Giacchino, and has performed with such artists as Pete Townsend, Lara Downes and Björk. They have also sung for TV and film soundtracks, including “Space Jam: a New Legacy.”Here Alex explains what led him to found Tonality and details the intricacies of leading a choral ensemble that has to remain increasingly nimble and focused.https://www.ourtonality.org/https://alexanderlblake.com/

Costume designer Kristen P Ahern has been thinking about sustainability since childhood, when her parents, her mother in particular, instilled in her a passion for environmental responsibility. As an adult, she has centered that passion in her art, in 2018 founding Conscious Costume, an information-and-resources clearinghouse with a clear vision: “Every costume created in harmony with people and planet.” Although Kristen now lives in Pittsburgh, PA, she still has deep roots in Chicago, where she designed for several theaters and also managed a few costume shops in the area. Chicago is also where Conscious Costume's costumes-rental facility continues to operate, giving area designers and theaters greater access to reusable materials and costumes. It is also in Chicago that Kristen, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, created Artist Resource Mobilization (ARM), an organization that matched out-of-work designers and costume-shop artists with mask-production opportunities. In the pandemic's most dire year and a half, Artist Resource Mobilization was able to provide garment artists with $35,000.In this interview, Kristen explains what responsible costume design and production entails and offers a primer in how designers and costume shops can take small-to-large steps to ensure they protect the well-being of their onstage and behind-the-scenes artists as well as the environment.https://www.kristenp.com/https://www.consciouscostume.com/

Of all the tasks to undertake in the current arts climate, leading a brand-new multimillion-dollar performing-arts center through its opening and first season must be one of the most daunting. Yet, Bill Rauch, the inaugural artistic director of the Perelman Arts Center (usually referred to as PAC NYC) in Lower Manhattan managed to launch with a bang through an astonishing array of music, dance, theater and opera performances. He also capped the first season with a personal triumph, co-directing with Zhailon Levingston an inventive reimagining of the musical “Cats” set in New York's drag ballroom scene. The production, titled “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” garnered enthusiastic reviews and was immediately extended.Although Bill has decades of experience as an artistic director and producer, his previous posts were markedly different from the current. Right out of college, he founded Cornerstone Theater Company, a firmly community-centered company that was initially nomadic, creating theater with and for small and often rural towns before it put down roots in Los Angeles in 1992. Cornerstone continued to make homegrown community-partnered theater in Los Angeles as well as in satellite projects around the country. Then in 2007 Bill became the artistic director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which is a bit of a unicorn in the American theater ecosystem as one of the very few theaters in the U.S. with a full-time acting company. It is also one of a handful of destination theaters in North America, with patrons traveling from all over the country to rural Southern Oregon to enjoy a theatrical vacation. At OSF, while still centering Shakespeare's works, Bill diversified the theater's offerings and bolstered its new-play development program.“Art Restart” was eager to speak with Bill to learn how he has adapted his heavily community-centered vision to the demands of leading New York's newest cultural landmark, which opened during a particularly perilous time for so many of the city's performing-arts institutions. Here he describes why and how PAC can thrive in today's New York as a singularly welcoming hub for the countless communities throughout New York City and its environs.https://pacnyc.org/https://pacnyc.org/bio/bill-rauch/

Tariq Tarey is a documentary photographer and filmmaker based in Columbus, OH. Over the years, he has captured thousands of portraits of refugees from around the world whom the U.S. government resettled in Central Ohio.Tariq himself arrived in the States in the mid '90s as a refugee from his native Somalia. He therefore has a particular empathy for his subjects, many of whom like him hail from Somalia but also from a myriad global locations, from Nepal and Iraq to the Democratic Republic of Congo and more recently Ukraine. His passion is not only for his work's artistic expression, though, but also for its documentary value. Tariq wants to ensure that the refugees' faces and the histories they contain are photographed and then archived with the same care shown to their antecedents who in centuries past arrived largely from Europe through Ellis Island.   Tariq has also conducted photographic projects in refugee camps around the world and has directed documentary films, including "Women, War and Resettlement: Nasro's Journey" and "Silsilad," which have been featured on PBS, and most recently "The Darien Gap," which was showcased at the 2nd United States Conference on African Immigrant and Refugee Health. His photos have been exhibited in several institutions, including the Ross Museum and Wright State University, and several are now part of the permanent collections at the Columbus Museum of Art and the Ross Museum.  His deep knowledge of the refugee experience stems not only from his own personal excellence. For years now he has worked as the Director of Refugee Social Services at Jewish Family Services in Columbus, Ohio. He also serves on Ohio's New African Immigrants Commission and the Franklin County Board of Commissioners' New American Advisory Council. In this interview, Tariq describes how he launched his photographic career soon after arriving in Ohio and explains why his work remains crucial as history keeps repeating itself.https://tariqtarey.com/

Antonia Wright is an award-winning Cuban American multimedia artist based in Miami, FL whose work has been exhibited all over the world, from the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and the Pérez Art Museum in her hometown to the Havana Biennial and the Faena Arts Center in Buenos Aires. The focus of her work tends to be the human body and how it responds to extremes of emotion, control and violence promulgated by systems of power, and in the past, she has often used her own body — often in startling and violent ways — to illustrate her themes. Her tools are varied, including video, photography, light and sculpture, and are constantly evolving. In 2021 she transformed a cement mixer into a giant musical instrument for her project “Not Yet Paved,” and recently she has been creating site-specific installations with the kinds of barricades that have long been used as methods of crowd control at protests the world over.Her interest in examining the autonomy – and lack thereof – of the human body, particularly the female body, extends to her personal life. She has long been an advocate and activist for reproductive rights and serves on the board of Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida.Art Restart was eager to speak with Antonia soon after Florida banned abortion after six weeks of gestation. We wanted to hear how a changemaking artist continued or recommitted to her work when the sociopolitical winds around her shifted dramatically. In this interview she explains how she's long channeled her anger into her practice and describes how she remains committed to the curiosity and fearlessness that initially launched her from poetry into performance and installation art.https://antoniawright.com/

Phil Chan is a choreographer, director and ballet scholar who seven years ago decided to turn a longstanding frustration into a wellspring of activism. Although American entertainment had made great progress in eliminating the use of blackface, demeaning and wildly inaccurate depictions of Asians and Asian-ness continued to appear on ballet stages. He therefore teamed up with prima ballerina Georgina Pazcoguin to create Final Bow for Yellowface, an organization that started working with ballet companies in America and Europe to eliminate offensive depictions of Asians in their repertoires and help them find inventive and respectful ways to stage culturally problematic ballet classics.Their work has paid off, notching up notable successes here and abroad and changing the culture in ballet companies to value and welcome a broad array of artists. Phil distilled his ethos and tactics in his book “Final Bow for Yellow Face: Dancing Between Intention and Impact.”As a director and choreographer, Phil has put his own stamp on once-problematic Orientalist standards. Last year, he directed “Madama Butterfly” at Boston Lyric Opera in a production that The Boston Globe called “an invigorating and meaningful reclamation of Puccini's beloved opera.” Earlier this year he co-choreographed with Doug Fullerton the ballet “La Bayadère” at Indiana University, maintaining Auguste Petipa's choreography but moving the setting from a 19th century India sprung from a European imagination to the homegrown American exoticism of 1920s Hollywood.In this interview, Phil describes how he developed the mission and methods of Final Bow for Yellowface and explains how reexamining the standard ballet repertoire through a multicultural contemporary lens honors and benefits the artform as a whole.https://www.yellowface.org/

Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate's compositions are finding evermore ardent fans among the public and musical institutions alike. This interview took place just days after his return to his Oklahoma City home from an eventful week in New York. While there he heard the New York Philharmonic play the string-arrangement premiere of his piece “Pisachi.” He also not only experienced the Carnegie Hall premiere of his “Clans” performed by the American Composers Orchestra; he also performed in it, singing alongside his 10-year-old son, Heloha. Onstage as well were several fellow members of the Chickasaw Nation dressed in traditional regalia.Jerod's work has been performed all over the country, and the rest of this musical season will remain busy for him. Dover String Quartet is touring his new quartet, “Woodland Songs”; Oklahoma's Canterbury Voices premieres his first opera, “Loksi' Shaali' (Shell Shaker);” and he will curate an all-American-Indian program in Washington D.C. for the PostClassical Ensemble.In this interview, Jerod, who is a 2022 inductee into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame, describes how he developed his distinctive multi-traditional composition style as well as his hyper-local and collaborative ethos. https://jerodtate.com/

A major theme that reappears in episode after episode of Art Restart is the fact that audiences/consumers, institutions/businesses and sometimes even artists themselves often fail to recognize that art is labor, not a pastime or an unconventional way to earn a living. A recent labor action by America's premier ballet company served as a fresh reminder.On February 6 of this year, by an overwhelming majority, the dancers and stage managers of American Ballet Theatre voted to authorize a strike. Among their demands were an increase in wages that had been frozen since the Great Recession of 2008 as well as an adjustment to their working hours. Represented by their union, AGMA (American Guild of Musical Artists), after approximately three weeks of negotiations, the ABT company members and management were able to reach an agreement and avert a strike. The terms of the new agreement include cost-of-living increases of between 9 and 19% (varying by rank) across three years​, their workday being shifted a half-hour earlier and reduced by one half-hour on Saturdays and new parental-leave benefits and a commitment to keep pregnant dancers on contract until the time of the dancer's choosing​.In this interview, Art Restart speaks with Griff Braun, AGMA's national organizing director, who was himself once an ABT company member. He speaks about the nuts and bolts of how and why dancers unionize and describes the challenges and opportunities of organizing as an artist in 2024 America. https://www.musicalartists.org/griff-braun-national-organizing-director-professional-bio/

For painter Ka'ila Farrell-Smith, the land on which she lives and works is the raw material for her art, both metaphorically and literally. In November 2016, ten days spent at Standing Rock, ND protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline and meeting and working alongside fellow Native artists changed her life. Ka'ila, who is Klamath Modoc, learned about the Jordan Cove Energy Projects, a liquid natural gas LNG pipeline that was threatening her ancestral homeland in southern Oregon, and in 2018, she moved to Modoc Point, where she jump-started a new chapter in her activism and artistry journey, scoring a couple of big wins in the first year. She created her “Land Back” series of paintings, in which she started incorporating pigments and minerals from the land around her, and she was successful in blocking the Jordan Cove Energy Project. Now, in 2024, represented by the Russo Gallery in Portland, OR, she's had her work exhibited in museums all over the country, including at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. One of her pieces is also in the Portland Art Museum's permanent collection. On the activist front, she is suing the State of Oregon for illegal surveillance and is also combating lithium mining in Native regions of Southern Oregon and Nevada.In this interview, Ka'ila explains why she left the artistic hub of Portland to live in rural southern Oregon and describes how her activism and artistry have evolved hand in hand.https://www.kailafarrellsmith.com/

In February of 2024, after a year of touring the country, the musical group Rising Appalachia, an ensemble that marries American folk music with a wide array of world influences, made an announcement that might have been surprising only to those who don't know them well. Sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith, who created Rising Appalachia over 15 years ago, had decided to take a sabbatical year, though they would honor the concerts already on the books in 2024. Longtime Rising Appalachia fans have been supportive because they know this is a band that has never taken shortcuts in how they manage their artistry and their lives. Since early on in their careers, Leah and Chloe have been advocates for and practitioners of the slow music movement, an ethos of touring and music-making that places sustainability, local engagement and creative control at the heart of their business. The current sabbatical is the latest tool in their slow music toolbox.Yet though last year's tour was hugely successful and they've just released an album titled “Folk and Anchor,” Chloe and Leah's decision was undeniably gutsy and far from conventional in the music industry. In this interview, the sisters, speaking from their homes in the North Carolina mountains, discuss why this was the right time for a yearlong break, how they prepared for it and the ways in which they and their bandmates keep the slow music ethos at the heart of their artistic practice.https://www.risingappalachia.com/tourhttps://www.risingappalachia.com/

Through her wildly multicolored and multitextured interdisciplinary work, April Bey loves to explore speculative realms. For example, in a recent installation of hers, titled “Atlantica, the Gilda Region,” she invited the viewer to imagine they'd just landed as aliens on the faraway planet Atlantica, an opulent galactic wonderland full of Black and Brown bodies savoring luxury and leisure. First exhibited at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, the show then traveled to the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno this past fall.Art Restart was eager to speak with April specifically because of a project she created to transform one particular speculation into reality: What if the people who collected her art looked like her and/or had similar backgrounds to hers? What if the world of art collecting invited collectors who for a host of reasons had felt excluded from or intimidated by it? She named the new venture the Equity in Collecting Program, and it is already bearing fruit, with April currently reviewing the third round of applicants to the program.April spoke to Art Restart from Los Angeles, where she lives and works, including as a tenured professor at Glendale College. Here she explains why and how she created her singular program and explains how her radical invitation to new collectors is changing not only the art-collecting culture but also her relationship with her fans as well as with her own art.https://www.april-bey.com/

For New Orleans-based film composer Sultana Isham, plunging into research on her subject matter is as important as creating her score. Trained as a classical violinist, she moved from her native Virginia to New Orleans to steep herself in one of her passions, the peoples, history and culture of Créolité throughout the Americas and abroad. Once in New Orleans, Sultana Initially busked in various venues around New Orleans and then started playing with Les Cenelles, an ensemble devoted to Creole folk music and work by composers of color. She began to write her own pieces, and in 2017 she put out her first EP, “Blood Moon,” a mixture of avant-garde classical and pop fusion, attracting the attention of director Zandashé Brown, who hired her to write the score for the horror short “Blood Runs Down.” Other directors soon came knocking on her door.Director Angela Tucker hired her to be both researcher and composer on the documentary, “All Skinfolk Ain't Kinfolk,” a PBS documentary about a historic New Orleans mayoral race between two Black women. Among Sultana's other credits are “The Neutral Ground,” which also aired on PBS and received an Emmy nomination for best historical documentary, and the PBS series “Making Black America,” narrated by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.Sultana's scholarship continues unabated. LSU Press is developing an essay she co-wrote with Dr. Denise Frazier – “Mémwa Nwa: Agency, Sound and Women in AfroCreole Louisiana Folk Music” – into a book. A month before this interview, she concluded her residency at Ace Hotel New Orleans by co-curating an exhibit titled “Them Handy Sisters,” celebrating the careers of noted performers and musicologists Dr. Geneva Handy Southall and D. Antoinette Handy.Here, Sultana explains how she developed her musical skills hand-in-hand with her research practice and why heeding her heart and feeding her curiosity continue to open incredible new doors for her.https://www.sultanaisham.com/

Zeke Peña is a Xicano cartoonist and illustrator who, for most of his professional life, has focused on the lives and stories of El Paso, TX, where he grew up and lived for decades. A self-taught artist with an undergraduate degree in art history from UT Austin, he has built a rich portfolio of varied works that, as he describes them, are “a mash-up of political cartoons, border rasquache and hip-hop culture.”He has illustrated several award-winning books, including “My Papi Drives a Motorcycle,” which The New York Times called a best children's book of 2019, and “Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide,” a Boston Globe–Horn Book Nonfiction Award Winner and a Moonbeam Children's Book Gold Award Winner. Both were written by Isabel Quintero, who has become a close collaborator. In 2023 he illustrated bestselling author Jason Reynolds' “Miles Morales Suspended: A Spider-Man Novel.” His editorial work has appeared in a wide array of publications, including VICE, ProPublica and Latino USA. Here he describes the evolution of his ambitious journalistic endeavor, “The River Project,” about the increasingly politicized Rio Grande and all it represents. He also discusses how he's adapted to the latest moral book-banning crusade and how he wishes for publishers to honor their writers' and illustrators' collaborative spirits. https://www.zpvisual.com/

One of the bona fide theatrical hits of 2023 was a play titled “Public Obscenities” by director-turned-playwright Shayok Misha Chowdhury. It opened at Soho Rep in Manhattan in January of 2023 to the kind of glowing reviews and audience responses a playwright can only dream of. The same production was remounted that fall at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington D.C., and as of this writing, it is currently running at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn. A New York Times Critic's Pick from its first outing, the play continues to draw raves in its latest iteration. Helen Shaw of The New Yorker calls it a triumph. A few days after this interview, Misha won an Obie for his direction of the play, this after the play's cast received a 2023 Drama Desk Award for best ensemble. What makes the success of “Public Obscenities” so remarkable is that that there's nothing about the play that screams “Guaranteed Surefire Hit!” For one thing, with its relatively large cast of seven and with its multimedia elements, it's not cheap to produce. Then also it is bilingual, partly in English, partly in the playwright's native Bangla. Granted, Bangla is the sixth most spoken native language in the world (thank you, Wikipedia), but it is not a language familiar to most Americans. Plus, though sections of the play in which Bangla is spoken are supertitled, there are other scenes without any translations at all. Also, the play is very queer. It follows an Indian-American PhD candidate as he returns with his Black American boyfriend to a family home in Kolkata, India. There he plans to interview sexual minorities for his dissertation. The play is therefore very frank about sexuality and features two non-gender-conforming characters.And it's three hours long.But despite these details — or maybe exactly because of them — the play is an unqualified hit.Here Misha details how he hewed to his vision for the play no matter its evolving demands and hints at a road map for struggling theaters and the artists who wish to create work for their stages.https://www.shayokmishachowdhury.com/https://www.tfana.org/current-season/public-obscenities/overview

In 2009, while expecting their first child, visual artists and life partners Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova and Frances Trombly co-founded a new artist space in their hometown of Miami. They named it Dimensions Variable after their short-lived visuals-only blog that had showcased the kind of challenging art they rarely saw supported or valued in their city.Using a donated space in Miami's Design District, Leyden and Frances worked in their personal studios in the back, and in the small front space, Dimensions Variable started curating exhibits. Leyden was committed to imbuing their new venture with the ethos that had guided a previous Miami-based venture named Box that he'd co-run years before. Dimensions Variable would support great art and artists without placing the demands of the market ahead of the artists' needs or aspirations. Since its founding, Dimensions Variable has had to relocate several times for reasons beyond their control due to the increasingly treacherous real estate market in Miami. Since 2019, though, they have operated out of their largest space yet comprising 4,500 square feet in Miami's Little River/Little Haiti neighborhood. In 2019 they also registered as a non-profit organization and since then have continued to support a wide range of artists with residencies, exhibits and, since DV is also a gallery, sales.Here Frances and Leyden discuss very frankly the lessons they've learned in the last 14 years in how to make Dimensions Variable sustainable through thick and thin while remaining as welcoming and enriching as possible to the art and artists they are passionate about supporting.https://dimensionsvariable.net/

Architect Andrew Schachman and multidisciplinary artist and educator Faheem Majeed are two of the four artists who, along with poet avery r. young and sculptor Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, co-lead Chicago's Floating Museum. As its name suggests, the Floating Museum does not have a brick-and-mortar fixed space; rather it creates inventive projects through which to explore and strengthen the relationship between art, community, architecture and public institutions in sites throughout Chicago. One example of past Floating Museum projects is “Cultural Transit Assembly,” which activated not only the Chicago Transit Authority's green line but also parks and spaces along its track. Some green line CTA cars served as pop-up performance spaces and galleries, and giant movable sculptures as well as community-art events could be spied from the train throughout its route, inviting riders to visit neighborhoods that perhaps were new to them. Another example is “River Assembly,” which over a month saw an industrial barge dock at different sites along the Chicago River, bringing a host of performances and interactive exhibits to several neighborhoods, celebrating the entire city as one giant museum campus, all corners of which have always been hubs of culture and art.In a sign of the Floating Museum's cultural influence not only citywide but also nationally and abroad, its four leaders were tapped to be the co-directors of the fifth Chicago Architecture Biennial, one of only two architecture biennials in the world, the other being the century-old Biennial in Venice, Italy. Here Faheem and Andrew describe the municipal savvy and community trust they had to cultivate for the Floating Museum and its many projects to move throughout Chicago. They also discuss how as a quartet they manage a growing institution that must remain nimble and responsive enough to continually engage with its home city. https://floatingmuseum.org/

Cellist Leo Eguchi has played all over the world in a variety of settings, from frequent appearances with the Boston Pops and the Portland Symphony to playing for some of pop music's biggest stars, including Demi Lovato and Peter Gabriel. A career as a performer only, however, did not satisfy his itch to make music that would move an audience with its intimacy and immediacy, so he co-founded not one but two chamber music ensembles and began commissioning work from a broad array of contemporary composers.He continues to co-lead Sheffield Chamber Players, which is based in Boston and performs in community members' homes throughout the region, and the Willamette Chamber Music Festival, which performs in several Oregon wineries through its August season. The commissioning and performing of new work remain central to both ensembles.Leo created the “UNACCOMPANIED” project, through which he commissions immigrant and first-generation American composers to create solo cello pieces that explore the very notion of American-ness. Among the commissioned artists are well-known composers such as Gabriele Lena Frank and William Bolcomb as well as newer talents, including Milad Yousufi, a recent refugee from Afghanistan whom Leo met while completing a residency in Kabul in 2012. He also commissioned a suite titled “Shared Spaces” that pairs new work by composer Kenji Bunch with the personal recollections of David Sakura about his time imprisoned with his family in a WWII internment camp. As for the Willamette Chamber Music Festival, in each season it highlights the work of a different composer in residence.Here Leo explains how he developed the ethos that drives his artistry and leadership and details how he continues to put his passion into practice. https://www.leoeguchi.com/https://www.sheffieldchamberplayers.org/https://www.wvchambermusic.org/

As our “Art Restart” interviews have made clear time and time again, artists' relationship with capitalism is uneasy at best. Should we really allow the market to dictate whose artistic output is valuable? Can and should art be treated like widgets? Or like a new app? To the second question, Frances Pollock and Keith Hamilton Cobb might answer, “If the artist is up for it, why not?” Frances, an opera and musical-theater composer, is the CEO of a nascent company called Midnight Oil Collective (MOC) that cribs from the funding practices of tech accelerators, which after all are hubs of creativity, to connect creators with money not from nonprofit sources but from private investors. MOC also trains its artist partners to regard their creative work as intellectual property akin to the tech innovations of an inventor. This means that an artist working with MOC learns how never to relinquish the rights to her work from start to finish and also learns how to scale it as needed. The artist does not wait for a producer or non-profit entity to determine if and how the project will grow, turning over the reins to the project in the process; she remains its captain and determines what the project requires in its own startup lab, so to speak. Keith, an actor and playwright with a lengthy and distinguished television, film and stage resume, is not only on MOC's artistic board; he is also in the first artist cohort to fund and develop a new piece through the company. He is the director of “The Untitled Othello Project,” a hybrid theater-making-and-education innovation endeavor that brings together creative minds of diverse backgrounds and disciplines to examine and interrogate the esthetic, moral and pedagogical values promulgated by the Western canon, using the Shakespeare play as a jumping-off point. “The Untitled Othello Project” is currently in residence at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT.  Here Frances and Keith explain why this is the perfect moment for MOC's brand of disruption in the art world and describe how the company funds and supports the projects under its wing.https://www.midnightoilco.com/

The raw materials of Philippa Pham Hughes' art are human bodies and minds. Since 2007, when she hosted her first gathering of strangers, Philippa has worked as a social sculptor and cultural strategist. What this means is that, through methods drawn from the arts and the humanities, she curates what she calls creative activations. These are carefully planned spaces and events to which groups of complete strangers from different walks of life meet face to face and break bread, often quite literally. In these activations, with Philippa's guidance, participants can touch the third rails of polite discussion, whether they be politics or religion, because the intent is always to keep everyone safe and increasingly aware of and committed to open communication and the makings of a better world. In a time when the bully pulpit of social media makes it easy to dehumanize the perceived enemy, Philippa's work centers our shared humanity.Philippa is currently Resident Artist at the University of Michigan Museum of Art and is Visiting Fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins. She has worked with several institutions in her current hometown of Washington, DC and in a variety of settings all over the country, in activations both large and intimate.Here she describes how she refined the work of others to create her own practice of social sculpting and explains how she maintains her optimism and vigor when it seems like all Americans want to do is scream past one another from vast distance. https://www.philippahughes.com/https://umma.umich.edu/https://snfagora.jhu.edu/

In 2022, Steven Melendez was named artistic director of New York Theatre Ballet, becoming only the second person to lead the institution. In several ways, he was destined to become its next leader since his relationship with the company started when he was only 7 years old and founding artistic director Diana Byer recruited him to train at NYTB's school through the company's LIFT scholarship program. As an adult he then went on to dance professionally with NYTB for 15 years. His dance career also included numerous international stints, including as a soloist dancer with Ballet Concierto in Buenos Aires, Argentina and as a principal dancer with the Vanemuine Theater Ballet Company in Tartu, Estonia.In other ways, however, Steven's rise to his current leadership position has been extraordinary, if not highly improbable. When he started studying at NYTB, Steven was living with his mother in a homeless shelter in the Bronx and would reside there for three years. Thanks to the LIFT program as well as his inborn talent, he was able to traverse innumerable barriers as he crossed several times a week from the South Bronx to the rarefied world of Park Avenue and back again. Steven's own journey is explored in the feature documentary film “LIFT: a Journey from Homelessness to the Ballet Stage,” which was released earlier this year. The film, which spans six years, tracks Steven as he works with three young dancers in the LIFT program who, just as he himself once did, have to traverse the minefield of economic insecurity to study an artform that in ways financial, cultural and historical would have normally been completely inaccessible to them. Here Steven candidly describes the new barriers he is having to overcome in his new role as a cultural leader and envisions how to make ballet a thrilling and relevant artform for all audiences across cultures and backgrounds. https://stevenmelendez.com/https://nytb.org/https://www.liftdocumentary.com/

Precious Perez is a singer, songwriter, educator and disability activist who has recently been performing and recording under the moniker “La Reggaetonera Ciega,” the Blind Reggaeton Singer. A graduate of the Berklee School of Music, she has already released one album, 2 EPs, one cover and eight singles, with a ninth on the way. Her single “Sin Preguntar” won Best Latin Song just last month at the Latin Music Awards KY.Precious is also President of RAMPD, Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities, whose mission is “to amplify Disability Culture, promote equitable inclusion and advocate for accessibility in the music industry.” Founded just two years ago by recording artists Lachi and Gaelynn Lea, RAMPD has already succeeded in making the last two Grammy Awards more accessible than ever to participants, audience members and viewers alike.Here Precious describes how from a very young age she learned to be adamantly her fullest self in private and in public so as to advocate for her needs and those of the blind musicians who will follow in her footsteps.https://preciousperezmusica.com/https://www.afb.org/consulting/afb-accessibility-resources/afbs-social-media-accessibility-standards

To describe Meow Wolf as an artistic juggernaut might not be entirely hyperbolic. Founded in 2008 by a group of Santa Fe-based artists looking to show their work outside of the traditional art ecosystem, the collective created its first permanent exhibition in Santa Fe 2016 when famed author George R.R. Martin pledged $2.7 million to purchase an abandoned bowling alley. Meow Wolf titled the installation “House of Eternal Return,” and the surreal, immersive, semi-narrative, multi-artist, multimedia and multi-room experience it provided quickly garnered many fans and repeat visitors. Since the success of “House of Eternal Return,” Meow Wolf has opened several more gigantic installations: two in Las Vegas, one in Denver and as of July 2023 one Grapevine, TX titled “The Real Unreal.” Meow Wolf continues to be artist-run and employs artists both in their headquarters in Santa Fe and also in the locales where they install their new exhibits. In order to understand the extent to which the company's model of audience engagement and artist support might be a gamechanger nationally, “Art Restart” interviewed three Texas-based artists who contributed their talents to the creation of “The Real Unreal.”Kwinton Gray is a composer and sound designer based in Dallas; Will Heron, who is based in Austin, is a graphic designer and muralist; and Katie Murray is a painter and muralist based in Fort Worth.https://meowwolf.com/visit/grapevine

When the Writers Guild of America strike began in early May of 2023, screenwriter, playwright and essayist Dorothy was in the middle of promoting an Apple TV+ mini-series titled “Extrapolations,” on which she'd worked as executive producer and writer. As a result, she had to cancel all appearances relating to the show, which was especially disappointing to her given that it was the first major scripted TV show about climate change. Instead, she braved the blistering heat of summer in Burbank, CA and started walking the picket lines.Dorothy's TV producing and writing credits also include the acclaimed Hulu series “The Handmaid's Tale” and “The 100” for the CW network. Her work on “The Handmaid's Tale” earned her not only multiple Emmy nominations but also a Producers Guild Award as well as a Writers Guild Award. Her plays have been performed all over the country, including at the sadly now-defunct Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, KY; IAMA Theatre in Los Angeles; and the Red Fern Theatre Company in New York City.Here she describes how in 15 years streaming channels went from being a writer's playground to an ever more precarious means to earn a basic living. She also explains why the current strike is crucial not only for Writers Guild members but also any worker whose profession is in danger of ever becoming just another gig. 

Actor and educator Charles Andrew Gardner is starting his fourth term as president of the Chicago local branch of the union SAG-AFTRA.He grew up in Chicago and studied acting at Northern Illinois University. He is a company member with TimeLine Theater and has acted on several of Chicago's important stages. He has appeared on the Chicago-filmed TV shows “The Chi” and “Chicago P.D.,” and his film credits include “Long Ride Home” and “Olympia.” He has also shot several national commercials for brands including Hyundai and Liberty Mutual, and he has many credits as a voiceover artist.This interview took place a little over five weeks after SAG-AFTRA, having failed to reach an agreement with AMPTP (the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers), went on strike on July 14, 2023. At the core of the disagreement between the actors and the producers is the amount of residuals actors should receive for streamed content. Also on the negotiating table are the burdens on actors of self-taped auditions, the amount producers should contribute to the union's healthcare and pension funds and how the use of AI-generated likenesses of performers should be regulated.Here Charles explains why he chose to remain in his hometown as he set out on his acting career and how a passion for education continues to inform his leadership style as he shepherds his fellow union members through this latest challenge.https://www.charlesandrewgardner.com/

Terri Lyne Carrington is one of the most respected jazz musicians in the world. Her drumming career started at the age of 10, which is when she officially got her musicians' union card, and in the decades since, she's earned countless accolades, including four Grammys, a Doris Duke Artist Award and an NEW Jazz Masters Fellowship. She has performed on over 100 recordings and has toured and recorded with jazz legends, including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Stan Getz and Esperanza Spalding. In recent years she has turned her attention to correcting gender inequities in her field. In 2018 she founded the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice at her alma mater, Berklee School of Music in Boston. She remains the Institute's artistic director, ensuring that new generations of female, trans and non-binary musicians are welcomed to contribute their talents to the genre. She's also passionate about recognizing the contributions women have already made to jazz. To wit, she edited a recently published collection of music titled “New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets by Women Composers.” Alongside that project, she recorded an album titled “New Standards, Vol. 1” that features several compositions in the book. “New Standards” won Terri Lyne her most recent Grammy, and not surprisingly she plans eventually to record all 101 compositions. Terri Lyne also recently curated a multi-artist multimedia installation titled “New Standards” that initially opened at the Carr Center in Detroit, where she is artistic director. This interview took place the morning after the closing party celebrating the exhibition of “New Standards” at Emerson Gallery of Contemporary Arts in Boston.https://www.terrilynecarrington.com/

Woodworker, furniture-maker, artist and educator Aspen Golann trained at the renowned North Bennet Street School in Boston and specializes in building furniture with the techniques of 18th and 19th century American fine woodworking. Her pieces aren't mere modern iterations of a centuries-old tradition, however. They also often exhibit very modern feminist touches that acknowledge and subvert the power and function of furniture, traditionally made by men, that is created for domestic spaces, historically the domain of women. Aspen's work has earned her the admiration of the arts-and-crafts establishment. Her work has been featured in American Craft magazine, Fine Woodworking magazine and Architectural Digest. In 2020 she was the recipient of the Mineck Furniture Fellowship from the Society of Arts and Crafts, and this year The Maxwell Hanrahan Foundation gave her one of its prestigious $100,000 unrestricted Awards in Craft. She teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and in national and international craft workshops.Three years ago, thanks in part to the Minreck Fellowship, Aspen created The Chairmaker's Toolbox, a three-pronged project that provides free tools, education and mentorship for BIPOC, gender-expansive and female chair- and toolmakers seeking to build sustainable businesses. Here Aspen describes how she herself homed in on her exact passion and explains the inventive ways in which The Chairmaker's Toolbox makes a career in woodworking a little less daunting for craftspeople who have traditionally been excluded from the field. https://www.aspengolann.com/

Barely four months into his tenure as the artistic director of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Adam W. McKinney is already implementing revolutionary ways to build on the company's existing strengths with his gaze firmly set on its overall health a hundred years from now.Adam has a remarkable resume as a ballet dancer, a choreographer, a professor, an activist and an arts leader. He danced with some of the world's most renowned ballet companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Alonzo King LINES Ballet and Béjart Ballet in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was the co-founder and co-director of DNAWORKS, an arts-and-service organization based in Fort Worth, TX, dedicated to dialogue and healing through the arts. Among DNAWORKS' many projects is the interactive “Forth Worth Lynching Tour: Honoring the Memory of Mr. Fred Rouse.” Thanks to an app with augmented-reality features, the tour allows audiences — whether in person or virtually — to visit four sites in Fort Worth associated with the December 11, 1921 lynching of Mr. Rouse. DNAWORKS also produced “The Borders Project,” which uses a variety of creative performances and events to explore the histories of manmade borders and their effects on the human spirit and body. “The Borders Project” has so far worked on the U.S./Mexico and Israel/Palestine borders.Adam was also awarded the NYU President's Service Award for his dance work with populations who struggle with heroin addiction.Before accepting his new post in Pittsburgh, he was the Associate Professor of Dance and Ballet at Texas Christian University, a tenured position he took on after having served as the inaugural Dance Department Chair at New Mexico School for the Arts in Santa Fe.In this interview he describes the core beliefs and practices he believes will make ballet a rigorous, sustainable contemporary artform accessible and welcoming to all for generations to come.https://www.pbt.org/

Norma Baker-Flying Horse's designs are the stuff of fashion runway dreams. They display the sophistication, impeccable tailoring and gorgeous lines of her fashion idols, including Chanel and McQueen, but what makes them exceptional is that they incorporate gorgeous details that bespeak her Native heritage. Norma Baker-Flying Horse, whose company, Red Berry Woman, bears her given Native name, is a member of the Hidatsa, Dakota Sioux and Assiniboine tribes, and her creations often bear designs from these cultures rendered via traditional techniques, including intricate beadwork and/or appliques of smoked hide, sometimes even feathers or shells. And all in a spectacular color palette.Norma has been designing bespoke pieces in and for her community for years, but recently her reach has gone national and international. She showed at Paris Fashion Week in 2019; in 2022 she won Designer of the Year at Phoenix Fashion Week and was also the co-recipient of a Cultural Recognition Visual Arts Grammy; and just in the past year Miss Minnesota wore a Red Berry Woman gown in the Miss America pageant. Here she explains how she wed her forebears' cultural skills and know-how with a taste for glamor she unexpectedly cultivated as a little girl in toy heels on the North Dakota prairie to create a singular brand. She also describes the rigors of being a self-taught and self-guided business owner who won't even let a C-section keep her from delivering a gown on schedule.https://redberrywoman.com/

Dancer/choreographer Michael Manson is an internationally recognized authority in Detroit Jit, a dance genre birthed in his hometown over 50 years ago. His talent earned him a national audience when he appeared on “So You Think You Can Dance” in 2015, and as a performer and teacher he has worked all over the States and as far away as Paris and La Paz. Once a student of famed dancer/choreography Rennie Harris, he now tours with Rennie Harris Puremovement in performances of “Caravan,” starring jazz scholar Terence Blanchard.Last year, Mike, in conjunction with the non-profit Living Arts, was one of five recipients of a prestigious Joyce Foundation grant for artists working in the Great Lakes region. Thanks to the grant's support, Mike has been able to commit to his passion, namely teaching young people in Detroit about their city's rich cultural history and ensuring that Detroit Jit is recognized, respected and studied as a distinctive American dance genre. The Joyce Foundation grant also allowed him to create “Rhythm of the Feet,” a concert-length dance production that not only centers Detroit Jit but also, thanks to a cast of professional dancers from around the country, places it in the context of other seminal American footwork styles, such as tap, Chicago footwork, House, Memphis Jookin and Lindy Hop.Here he describes how he developed his passion for cultural preservation in tandem with his dance skills and explains why he takes pride in seeing his students overtake him … as long as they remain respectful of the Jit.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSSGccDQNXM&t=51shttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ioq0MK1mhdghttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/p7ZHQqOEX_0

Early in her career, Maura video essayist and performance artist Maura Brewer explored the relationship between representations of women in Hollywood films and the structures of contemporary capitalism. Through several often-tongue-in-cheek video pieces, she focused on the actor Jessica Chastain, who at the time was being typecast in films such as “Zero Dark Thirty” as a steely go-getter who paid a steep personal price for her ambition. In recent years, Maura's focus has shifted from representations created by capitalism to the underlying financial structures that uphold it. To wit, she is deep into a years-long project titled “Private Client Services” that explores how the rich launder money through art acquisition and sales. In this project, which Maura is documenting meticulously through video and writing, she herself is doing the very thing she is studying, namely laundering money through art. Maura is not entering this world entirely dewy-eyed, however. For several years, in addition to being an artist, she has worked as an experienced professional private investigator, garnering skills that are proving invaluable in her forays into the world of money laundering. Her work has been exhibited at spaces including MoMA and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and is in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her projects have appeared in The Guardian, CBS News and The Paris Review. She is a 2023 Guggenheim fellow, a 2022 Creative Capital fellow, and a recipient of the Fellowship for Visual Artists at the California Community Foundation and the City of Los Angeles Master Artist Fellowship.In this interview, she details how she, once a fiber artist, harnessed her own investigative talents to create performance and video art about a crime that uses art as its primary instrument. https://maurabrewer.com/