Episode 21: Emerald Gruin interviews Scosha Woolridge

Artist, model, and curator Maxine Hoover shares her recent projects, discusses the power of women self-representing on Instagram, and explores the dynamics of her various roles. Maxine Hoover is an artist and curator, best known for her semi weekly curated shows at Landmark Art Space in Chelsea, many focused heavily on elevating female emerging and established artists. Maxine’s work as a curator has been recognized by AM New York, The Village Sun and Strauss News. She was recently honored by Schneps Media as a Power Woman of Manhattan. A lifelong artist, Maxine's paintings explore the concept of self and the relationship between the physical and spiritual world, primarily executed with acrylic, oil paint and mixed materials, inspired by out-of-body experiences, meditative visions and dreams. Instagram:www.instagram.com/maxinehooverart Mentioned Shows: Nouveau Surrealism: https://www.instagram.com/p/C4ZdVG8sxIw/.

Emerald Gruin and Leah Interview Alexandra Goldman, managing director of Barro New York. Alexandra Goldman is a writer, curator, and art dealer living in New York. She is Founder of the art publishing platform Artifactoid, and Managing Director of Barro New York, a contemporary art gallery with locations in New York and Buenos Aires. Goldman writes for Artifactoid, Whitehot Magazine, Cultbytes, ArteFuse, Vice-Versa, and Revista Jennifer. She received her M.A. in Art History from Hunter College and received her bachelor’s degree from NYU in Media, Culture, and Communications. Her Instagram is @Artifactoid.

Melissa Coote is an artist based in Sydney, Australia.  Melissa studied photography in the early stages of her practice and this still underpins the majority of her art making. Melissa works with sculpture, varying types of photography and painting techniques ranging from the earliest form of Daguerrotypes to modern day photography. Melissa is a highly skilled drawer, painter, and photographer and the sculpting of light with feeling is the essence of her work.  Coote hopes those living with her pieces have the opportunity to enjoy them in a variety of light conditions as details recede or are revealed. The alchemy of light is at the core of Coote's practice. Melissa’s exhibition opened at my gallery in March 2024 in Los Angeles and we are very excited about bringing these unique works to the United States. http://www.melissacoote.com/ https://www.instagram.com/melissa_coote_artist/

Jasmine is a professional practicing artist whose work is best described as the meeting of exploration and refinement. Jasmine has taken her art to a number of mediums – sculpture, large-scale public works and intimate paintings for private collection. She is not afraid to venture outside an established comfort zone. Whatever her choice of art form, Mansbridge brings a refined and meticulous hand to the work; her deliberation and contemplation are evident at all times.  The work provokes thought and wonder and gives the viewer the chance to apply their personal storytelling, as they unpack the geometry and portals of Mansbridge’s imagined world. Jasmine’s exhibition POETRY BURIED IN GEOMETRY is now open at Michael Reid Northern Beaches in Australia. Website

Jiayin Chen shares her very contemporary and fascinating knowledge of our new world with NFTs, Web3, and the blockchain, as well as many other topics. Website: https://jiayinchen.com/ Bio: Jiayin Chen is a writer, curator, and entrepreneur working at the intersection of art and technology. With a strong track record in digital art and entrepreneurship, she has also written extensively about NFTs and the art market for global publications including Financial Times China, Initium, The Art Newspaper (TANC), Artnet News, and many more. Having worked in both museums and art fairs, she has extensive experience working with artists and designers from different disciplines, ranging from traditional media to moving image and immersive technologies.  Her curatorial projects have showcased artists in New York, Miami, Taipei, Busan, Beijing and Berlin. She won the Digital Art Open Call by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in 2015 and curated the group exhibition “The Real Thing”. Jiayin is the co-founder of the online art bilingual magazine SCREEN, a platform focusing on art, technology, and beyond. SCREEN was featured in various interviews and articles internationally and has collaborated with major art institutions including Art 021, Asia Contemporary Art Week, Art Taipei, as well as top galleries and art foundations. In 2016, SCREEN was a finalist of the NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) Art Business Incubator. Her op-ed articles have appeared in multiple publications including The Financial Times China, artnet News, The Art Newspaper China (TANC), Taipei Biennial, the Art Trade Journal, etc.

Scosha is a jewelry designer that has evolved her collections as wearable art as a way to tell story, by collecting and collaging the body through intricate, playful and colorful decoration. This acts as a celebration of ones personal connection to nostalgia and linking us to our our past. She finds the common thread that we so long for,  that identifies where you fit and belong while passing down traditions.  Scosha’s designs find beauty in the imperfect, the kooky, and the one-off. Where others see an inclusion in a diamond as a blemish, Scosha sees a unique birthmark to be celebrated. The Scosha aesthetic is a colorful, creative combustion of Art meets Artifact. Blending the raw with the refined is a Signature Scosha. Scosha moved from Sydney Australia to New York in 2005 after traveling extensively through Brazil, Turkey, Italy, India and many other places and still to this day plus from those experiences and draws inspiration for her eclectic jewelry design pieces. https://www.instagram.com/scosha https://scosha.com

Kurt McVey takes us on an insightful journey through the search for fresh art amidst staid institutions. He also asks Leah some wonderfully poignant questions about pregnancy and the transition into motherhood as an artist. Look for some of the artists he mentions in our conversation - Junyu Liu, Alex and Allison Grey, and Jennifer Elster - as well as events he’s involved with coming up at Ma's House on the Shinnecock Reservation & Little Beach Harvest in July. Kurt McVey is a writer, artist, curator, producer, and performer living in New York City. He has contributed to The New York Times, T Magazine, Interview Magazine, Vanity Fair, PAPER Magazine, Rolling Stone, ArtNet News, Whitehot Magazine, Architectural Digest, Forbes, and many more. He is now a partner in the Venture Capital Studio, Radiical Systems. Website: https://radiical.systems/ Instagram: @whyankombone X: @kurtmcvey

This WAIA Wednesday, the inspiring and incredibly thoughtful curator Olivia Miller discusses de Kooning's 'slashed' women, opportunities and challenges of working in a smaller city, the inspirational significance of women-led art organizations, the contextual power of a museum, the return to craft and fiber arts in this age of AI, and an artist's original intentions versus the ever-changing meaning of their work itself. Olivia Miller is the Interim Director and Curator at the University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA) where she has worked since 2012, curating or co-curating more than 30 exhibitions. She has contributed scholarship for exhibition catalogues and regularly presents her research at academic conferences. As an arts educator, she has taught at the University of Arizona’s Humanities Seminars Program, the Arizona State Prison Complex, Osher Life-Long Learning Institute, and Pima Community College. Her most recent exhibition is Restored: The Return of Woman-Ochre, which traces the incredible story of Willem de Kooning’s stolen, recovered, and recently conserved painting. She is currently co-curating a solo exhibition of Diné weaver and painter, Marlowe Katoney, which is supported by a grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art and will open at UAMA in October, 2023.

This week artist-activist Emma Shapiro talks with us about the exhausting liberation of being an art model, art censorship in social media, the belated recognition of women artists, the "original sin" of linking nudity with sex, and finding inspiration in a Walmart. Emma Shapiro is an American artist, writer, and activist. After graduating from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2010 with a degree in painting, she moved to New York City where she worked full-time for 6 years as an art model. Inspired by her experience, she eventually began using her own body as her primary tool alongside photography, video, and layered projection. However, regular censorship of her artwork online and offline has driven Emma to become an activist against art censorship and censorship of the female-presenting body, and an advocate for visual artists' involvement in digital rights.  In 2017, in response to sexist censorship of her artwork, Emma created the Exposure Therapy Project which has since reached over 45 countries and promotes awareness and activism for body equality. Her writing has been published in the US and Europe, including regularly with Hyperallergic and The Art Newspaper, and since 2021, she has been the Editor-At-Large for the Don't Delete Art campaign which fights against art censorship on social media. The Don't Delete Art campaign is a collaboration between artists, the National Coalition Against Censorship's Arts and Advocacy Program, Freemuse, and PEN America's Artists at Risk Connection -- they have recently released their manifesto which demands that social media companies include artists in decision-making, and calls on powerful art institutions to speak out for the equal treatment of artists online. The manifesto has received over 2400 signatures from leading artists, organizations, and art workers.  Emma lives in Valencia, Spain, and collaborates with The Liminal Gallery. She recently won the Primer Premio d'Llibros Artisticas in Spain for her artists' book "Cut Out" Show Addendum: The original podcast was recorded in April 2023, so I have recorded this addendum below to catch listeners up on what Emma has been up to! See some of her recent articles below: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/09/12/nvisible-by-numbers-artists-must-remain-vigilant-to-escape-censorship-loop-created-by-social-media-shadowbans

This week we dig in with Andréa Stanislav, covering the inspirational cross-fertilization of narrative film and fine art, the erotic yet imperial power of horses, the artist's role in the face of genocide, avoiding and accepting identity, and the axiom of 'practice practice practice.' Andréa Stanislav (b. 1968, Chicago) is a contemporary American artist based in New York City. Her hybrid practice spans sculpture, complex multimedia installations, collage, and public art and performance interventions. Through spectacle or experiential immersion, her work questions how histories re-contextualize in the present — focusing on themes of genocide, migration and space exploration. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Alfred University, NY. Stanislav’s work has been exhibited and collected internationally. Select solo exhibitions and projects include NART, Narva, Estonia; The Mattress Factory Museum of Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh; Saint Louis Art Museum; The Museum of Russian Art, Minneapolis; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Museum of Cosmonautics, Moscow, Russia; Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis; 21c Museum, Louisville; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha; thisisnotashop, Dublin, Ireland; Melissa Morgan Fine Art, Palm Desert, CA; Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis; Ca’D’Oro Gallery, NYC; Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London, UK; Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago; and Socrates Sculpture Park, NYC.  Her work has also has been featured in exhibitions at The State Hermitage Museum, SPB, Russia; Center for Digital Art, Holon; Israel; Kuryokhin Center for Modern Art, SPB; CYLAND, NYC/SPB; Museum of Non-Conformist Art, SPB; Smack Mellon, NYC; Art Ii Biennial, Finland; Alvar Aalto City Library, Vyborg; Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad, SPB; 5th Moscow Biennial; U.S (Ambassador’s) Residence, Stockholm, Sweden; Fieldgate Gallery, London; Al Sabah Gallery, Kuwait City; Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland; Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; Kentucky Museum of Arts and Craft, Louisville; Dumbo Arts Center, NYC; Catalyst Arts, Belfast; Garis and Hahn Gallery, NYC; House of the Nobleman, NYC. Selected awards include Foundation for Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant - NYC; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art Alumni Artist-in-Residents Award, Freund Fellowship for Visual Arts , Washington University; IUPAH Presidential Award, Target Studio Grant, Weisman Art Museum; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Residency; McKnight Artists Fellowship; and the Jerome Artist Fellowship. For the past decade, Andréa has worked extensively in St. Petersburg, Russia on projects and research focused on the creative production during the Siege of Leningrad and Soviet and Russian space exploration. Andréa Stanislav is an Associate Professor at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, and affiliate faculty in the Russian and Eastern European Institute (REEI) at Indiana University, Bloomington