ARTLAWS

Nancy Baker Cahill is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist whose hybrid practice focuses on systemic power, consciousness, and the human body. As a new media artist, Cahill creates immersive and interactive  experiences, video installations, and conceptual blockchain projects rooted in the practice of drawing. Her monumental augmented reality artworks extend and subvert the lineage of land art, often confronting the climate crisis,  social issues,  and civics. Nancy’s work calls for a more equitable future for all, as realized early on in her career  with her collaborative art series “Exit Wounds” in conjunction with the non profit Homeboy Industries led by Father Greg Boyle. https://homeboyindustries.org/Cahill is Founder and Artistic Director of 4th Wall, a free AR public art platform exploring site interventions, resistance, and inclusive creative expression. Her geolocated AR installations have been exhibited globally and have earned her profiles in the New York Times, Frieze Magazine, and The Art Newspaper, and she was also included in ARTnews’ list of 2021 'Deciders'.  Cahill's work has been exhibited internationally at museums and galleries, and her solo exhibition ‘Slipstream: Table of Contents’ was recently acquired by LACMA.  In 2021, she was awarded the Williams College Bicentennial Medal of Honor and received the City of Los Angeles’ Master Artist Fellowship. She is a 2022 LACMA Art and Tech Grant recipient and this year, she’ll have her first solo mid-career retrospective at the Georgia Museum of Art. Follow our official instagram account @artlawspodFollow our official Instagram account @artlawspod

KIKI SMITH is one of the most influential visual artists in the contemporary world.  Since the 1980s, Smith has created a prolific and provocative body of work that explores embodiment and the natural world.  Utilizing a broad variety of materials and mediums – including sculpture, printmaking, photography, drawing and textiles – Smith’s unique style draws on mythology, folklore, fairytales and religious iconography, while also exploring the human form in all of its frailty and mystery.We had the privilege of speaking with Kiki Smith on the eve of the unveiling of her rare and momentous public work  – a monumental mosaic installation inside the new Grand Central Madison train station in New York City, commissioned by the MTA . This work includes five individual large scale mosaics depicting several Long Island landscape scenes including River Light, inspired by the way the sunlight hits the East River; The Water’s Way rendered in stunning shades of indigo; The Presence, which shows a deer among striking  gold reeds; The Spring featuring  fowl surrounded by forest during  springtime growth;  and The Sound which showcases Long Island’s waterway in a magnificent 28-foot wide mural.Smith has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions worldwide including over 25 museum exhibitions. Her work has been featured at five Venice Biennales and in 2017 was awarded the title of Honorary Royal Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts in London.  In 2006, Smith was recognized by TIME Magazine as one of the “TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World.” Her numerous awards include the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (2000), the Nelson A. Rockefeller Award (2010), the U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts (2013), and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the @intsculpturectr (2016).  Kiki is also an adjunct professor at NYU and Columbia University. We join the artist as she walks through the Lower East Side of Manhattan on a late afternoon.Follow our official Instagram account @artlawspod

GABRIEL GONZALEZ is a Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter and leader of a new break-out collective of world class musicians embodying the truth of the Los Angeles Latin experience –  La Verdad.  Since 2015 Gonzalez has also been a lead singer for Boogaloo Assassins, the famed 12-piece Latin Boogaloo, Salsa, and Latin Soul band with whom Gonzalez  is about to release a new album.Since the beginning of his career as a child performer in Mexican films, Gonzalez (also known as Gabrielito) established himself as a notable actor and singer on both stage and screen.  In addition to appearing in Allison Anders’ classic indie film Mi Vida Loca, Gonzalez also toured with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-winning musical In the Heights. This ARTLAWS podcast interview was recorded live at the Circo De Los Muertos concert at Sofitel Los Angeles in Beverly hills.Follow our official Instagram account @artlawspod

ISABEL VINCENT is an award-winning writer and investigative journalist and the author of the new  book "Overture of Hope: Two Sisters' Daring Plan That Saved Opera's Jewish Stars from the Third Reich."  The book uncovers the amazingly true story of Ida and Louise Cook -- two British opera fans who masterminded their own plan to rescue dozens of German and Austrian Jews from a terrible fate.Vincent began her career in the 1990's as a foreign correspondent for the  Globe and Mail, covering the conflicts that led to the Kosovo War.  Since 2008, she has worked as an investigative reporter for the New York Post with a focus on exposing corruption, fearlessly pursuing the truth in an age where truth is under attack. Some of Vincent's other books include "See No Evil: The Strange Case of Christine Lamont and David Spencer"; "Bodies and Souls: The Tragic Plight of Three Jewish Women Forced into Prostitution in the Americas"; "Gilded Lily: Lily Safra: The Making of One of the World's Wealthiest Widows" and her moving culinary memoir "Dinner with Edward",  which along with “Overture of Hope”  have been adapted for the big screen. Vincent's writings have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Independent, and many other international publications.  She is also the recipient of numerous prestigious honors, including the Canadian Association of Journalist’s Award for Excellence in Investigative Journalism and the National Jewish Book Award.Follow our official Instagram account @artlawspod

Susan Davis is the Founder & President of DESERT X,  a site-specific, contemporary art exhibition that is held in the Coachella Valley of Southern California every two years. Since 2017, DESERT X has pushed the boundaries of art beyond the gallery walls to present work that engages with the public in desert environments, through unique installations created by acclaimed artists from around the world.While responding to and amplifying the dramatic range of land and seascapes within  the desert environment, Desert X is also a visual articulation of the critical issues facing our world today -- including conservation, climate change, segregation, false historical narratives,  and indigenous land rights.Since 2020, Susan Davis has expanded Desert X beyond California – producing two biennial exhibitions in the striking landscapes of the AlUla region of Saudi Arabia.  With Desert X returning in 2023, we spoke with Susan about the process of creating a site specific endeavor of this enormous scale,  the responsibility of art to spark crucial dialogue  and why she always welcomes a little controversy. Follow our official Instagram account @artlawspod

Vera Mulyani is considered the world’s first Marschitect.  She is the Founder and CEO of Mars City Design, a global  innovation platform  whose purpose is to research, conceptualize, and design eco-sustainable cities for life on Mars.  Mulyani’s concept of urbanism on Mars also advocates a self-sustaining lifestyle on Earth.Growing up in the polluted slums of Jakarta with the trauma of civil war as her brutal reality, Vera relied on her imagination as a means of survival and vital escape.  Her persevering dreams  of a bigger world and brighter future led her, against all odds, to Paris where she enrolled at the Beaux-Arts as an undergraduate and later studied Architecture, engineering and Urban Design at France’s prestigious Ecole d'Architecture de Nantes where she received her graduate degree. Vera is also a filmmaker, and has written and directed three award winning films – two of which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.  She also cast both Emmy award winning actress Julia Garner and Oscar winner Jon Batiste  in their first on-screen roles.  In addition, Vera has  exhibited her paintings and photography in galleries around the world. * Vera is featured as part of REBEL YELL – a new series from ARTLAWS that features young emerging artists who are changing the face of our cultural landscape.Follow our official Instagram account @artlawspod

Kathleen Turner is an award-winning American actress and director, celebrated for her acclaimed work in film, television and theater.  With an over forty year career, Kathleen's bold and brave choices as an artist has led to a groundbreaking body of work that has changed cultural perceptions of how women are portrayed on the screen and stage.  Always insisting on playing by her own rules, the two time Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominee has created some of the most iconic performances in history.  Kathleen Turner's extensive filmography includes her quintessential debut performance as Matty Walker in Body Heat.  Her other memorable films include Crimes of Passion, Romancing the Stone, Prizzi's Honor, Peggy Sue Got Married and War of the Roses.   On the Broadway and London stages, Kathleen is known for her  intrepid performances,  including such starring roles as Maggie in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, both  for which she received Tony nominations.  Additionally, she originated the role of Mrs. Robinson inThe Graduate for the London and New York stages.We spoke intimately with Kathleen about her drive to challenge herself and  her passion for reinvention , overcoming demons and struggles,  her commitment to activism, which means just as much to her as her art,  and why she’ll never quit.Follow our official Instagram account @artlawspod

David Levinthal is a New York–based photographer whose work explores the relationship between photographic imagery and the fantasies, myths, events and characters that shape the  collective American consciousness.  Refining a personal photographic style and vision, Levinthal utilizes toy figures and structures as subject matter for the creation of a surrogate reality.  Levinthal has endeavored to create a 'fictional world' that simultaneously calls into question our sense of truth and credibility.Levinthal's photographs of soldiers at war, cowboys and Barbie dolls reference and reexamine the iconic images and historical events that have shaped postwar American culture.  Through his expansive series such as Hitler Moves East, Modern Romance, Wild West and History, Levinthal’s photographs also reveal the false memories and stereotypes that lurk beneath the surface, challenging viewers to confront the stories we tell about ourselves and our country.    Levinthal is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his photographs reside in the permanent collections of  New York's The Museum of Modern Art,  the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and  the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris,  the Art Institute of Chicago, LACMA, the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, among others.In 1997, The International Center for Photography in New York presented the first retrospective of his work titled David Levinthal: Work from 1977 – 1996.  The George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, organized the most recent retrospective, David Levinthal: War, Myth, Desire, in 2018.  And In 2019, the Smithsonian American Art Museum organized American Myth & Memory: David Levinthal Photographs to showcase seventy-four color photographs.  Follow our official Instagram account @artlawspod

Eric Fischl is one of the most influential painters of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Inspired by his own middle-class upbringing on Long Island, Fischl’s provocative  paintings expose the underbelly of  American suburban life while piercing through its veil. Through startling scenes of grief, adolescent sexuality and political malaise, Fischl is committed to expressing what often remains hidden and unspoken behind society’s mores.During his meteoric rise in the 1980s, in an era when art eschewed figuration and the human body, Fischl embraced it… His paintings boldly explore the body in all of its movement, gesture, and form.  By imbuing his large scale canvases with a psychological intensity, Fischl’s work invites us to examine our own relationship with taboos, internal conflict, and complacency.Fischl's paintings, sculptures and drawings have been the subject of numerous solo and major group exhibitions around the world, and his work is represented in major museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and MoCA in L.A.  His memoir “Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas” was published by Crown in 2013.A longtime resident of Sag Harbor, Long Island, Eric’s recent venture has been to renovate  and transform a local church into an artist residency, exhibition space and creative center known fittingly as The Church (https://www.thechurchsagharbor.org/).Follow our official Instagram account @artlawspod

April Gornik is an American Artist  known for her dynamic and powerful landscape paintings.  Gornik’s large scale luminous paintings evoke moments of transience and calm, as well as volatility and eruption.  Yet, her vivid canvases are never literal, but rather imagined and emotional spaces.  While Gornik focuses on the light and colors of the landscape, her evocative use of contrasts brings a sense of aliveness and psychological drama to her work.  Gornik’s fascination with light distinguishes her art, and she describes light as “the beating heart of your eyes''.April Gornik’s work is included in major museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. We spoke in depth with April about her unique creative process and artistic journey -- with her professional career beginning in New York City during the dizzying, male-dominated heights of the 1980’s art boom.  A longtime resident of Sag Harbor, Long Island, we also learned about April's recent efforts to revive the local Cinema, as well as co-found The Church, a non-profit artist residency,  creative center, and exhibition space.Follow our official Instagram account @artlawspod