Art and Culture discussions locally and internationally, this program runs the gamut.....

Live Culture with Martha Willette Lewis

This month Live Culture offers a discussion with members of the exhibition Undue Burden: Privacy, Protection and Politics, a project and sale to benefit Planned Parenthood of Southern New England including artist and exhibit organizer Linda Lindroth, and exhibiting artist Scott Schuldt, along with Planned Parenthood of Southern New England President & CEO, Amanda Skinner to discuss what the local impact of the overturning of Roe Vs Wade is having on the organization and how artists and others can get involved.

Undue Burden: Privacy, Protection and Politics
takes place October 4 – 30, 2022 The Da Silva Gallery, 899 Whalley Avenue, New Haven, CT.

There will be Two public reception events featuring the artists will be held on Sunday October 16 from 3-5 pm and Saturday, October 29 from 3-5pm, as a part of Artspace New Haven's Open Source Festival.

Posters have played a role in America’s political landscape since 1824 when John Quincy Adams used one to announce his presidency. Each of the 20 artists in Undue Burden: Privacy, Protection and Politics have used their considerable talents to weigh in on the Dobbs Decision which essentially has overturned the 50 year precedent of Roe v Wade. This exhibition features original poster-sized works on paper, which are each for sale for $250 with all of the proceeds going to Planned Parenthood of Southern New England.

The exhibition is curated by Linda Lindroth and Sally Hill.

Featuring the work of :
A. Kimberlin Blackburn
Patrick Carroll
Colleen Coleman
George Corsillo
Jeanne Criscola
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Alex Girard
Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez
Elena Grossman
Luke Hanscom
Sally Hill
Beth Klingher
Shirley Parker Levine MD
Martha Willette Lewis
Diane & Tim Nighswander
Scott Schuldt
Kevin Van Aelst
Brenda Zlamany

Scott Schuldt is a self-taught multimedia artist. His work has been collected by the Museum of Art and Design and several public collections. His focus for the last 3 years has been sewing large bead embroidery pieces. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Linda Lindroth is an artist and educator. Her work is in the collections of a dozen museums including MoMA and The Met. She received her MFA in Art from the MGSA at Rutgers.

Amanda N. Skinner, is President & Chief Executive Officer of Planned Parenthood of Southern new England. Skinner, a nurse midwife, is a graduate of Rice University with a BA in philosophy and managerial studies. She holds an MSN from the Yale School of Nursing and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. Skinner spent ten years in clinical practice as a nurse midwife, serving for four years as the Chair of the Connecticut Chapter of the American College of Nurse Midwives. During her tenure, she led a major legislative effort that ensured increased access to care for women in Connecticut, expanded the scope of practice for nurse midwives, and provided liability protection for collaborating physicians.

Live Culture 76: Undue Burden

This month it's two conversations. one with Artist Rita Valley about her show with fellow artist Lydia Viscardi at Camp Gallery,  and secondly, arts organizer Elinor Slomba of ArtsWest Ct, which is amplifying and supporting the arts communities in West Haven through events, increased information and coverage and creating venues.

Live Culture episode 77:

Up Now in the archives! 
https://archives.wpkn.org/bookmarks/listen/377818
This month's episode features guest co-host and artist Maxim Schmidt as we celebrate Women's History Month with a discussion with artists George Corsillo, Clymenza Hawkins and Amy Wachtel about their involvement with the art exhibit Sound & Vision II: For the Record...  a visual and musical celebration of feminism involving over 40 artists  in a gallery exhibit featuring imaginary record covers, real covers form  private collections and the wpkn archive and musical memorabilia from  women musicians at many stages of their careers.
The show is up until May 6th at the Institute Library 847 Chapel St. new Haven.
More about the show can be found at: Institutelibrary.org
Live Culture is a monthly conversation about Visual Art- a full set of podcasts is available here on the WPKN Soundcloud page
https://soundcloud.com/wpkn895/sets/live-culture-with-martha
The full list of 
Exhibition Participants:
Amanda Bouquet
Amelia Maurer
Amy Wachtel
Angelica Sistrunk
Ann Kennedy
Carol Snyder
Christine Ohlman
Claudia Doring Baez
Corinthia Saez
Dika Kuljis
Dylan Strazar
Emily Herberich
Eva Geertz
Eve Hars
George Corsillo
Jahmal Henderson
Jeff Sokolowski
Joanne Connon
Jody Clouse
John Keefer
Julia Cumming
Julie Bowers Murphy
Kathleen DeMeo
Linda Lindroth
Martha Willette Lewis
Matt Feiner
Michelle Beaulieu-Morgan
Mohan Maharaj, Sr
Patrick Carroll, Linda Lindroth,
Sally Hill & Tim Nighswander
Regan Avery
Sadie Grey Murphy
Sue Czark
T.M. Stewart
Tammy Faye Starlite
Tina Sarno
V.V. Aldebaran McEvoy
The Collection of Alec Cumming
The Collection of Eva Geertz
The Collection of Del La Pietro
The Collection of Steve DiCostanzo
The Collection of WPKN
Curated by
Martha Willette Lewis
With Special Thanks to:
Café 9, Alec Cumming, Steve DiConstanzo, Eva Geertz, Del La Pietro, Mohan Maharaj Sr, Ann Marlowe, Michelle Beaulieu-Morgan, Rick Omante/Shaki Presents, Valerie Richardson, Scott Schuldt, WPKN radio, and the board and volunteers of The Institute Library

Live Culture Episode 79 : women's History Month, For the Record...

Giving Trees: On being an artist. How creatives are asked consistently to work for free, donate art, and otherwise give away ones talents....and how to survive and thrive when the culture at large doesn't perceive creative capitol as labor.

Live Culture 80:Maxim Schmidt, Ruby Gonzales Hernandez and  Susan Clinard

This month we offer a discussion with members of the exhibition No Bodies: Clothing as Disruptor opening February 17 at Real Artways in Hartford. Listen in on a lively conversation with artists Carlos Estevez, Lesley Dill, Micki Watanabe Spiller and curator Alva Greenberg about this expansive group exhibit focusing on the ideas around garments and embodiment.
  About the exhibit:   "Clothing conveys impressions of social background, economic status and ethnicity. Like physical features, it is one of the most common means used to project ourselves and understand others. This inclination to categorize others is also a way of controlling our responses to them. How often do we subconsciously imbue clothing with a significance which is misleading?   The altered and uninhabited clothing in No Bodies disrupts these autonomic responses by playing with perceptions of materiality, cultural identity, relationships, political beliefs and portraiture itself. Being free of physicality, the works in No Bodies force us to confront assumptions, as well as the ever-growing societal compartmentalization of people and behavior and the #socialmedia which increasingly rules our thinking. What does it mean when we deconstruct a garment by unraveling it or burning it or turning it into another material? What does clothing symbolize when there never was or will be a body inside?"   Participating Artists:   Reginald Dwayne Betts, John Boone, Marsha Borden, Rachel Breen, Chris Burden, Patrick Carroll, Susan Clinard, Hannah Conradt, E.V. Day, Lesley Dill, Anindita Dutta, Nina Dwin, Carlos Estévez, Kathryn Frund, Jonathan Herrera Soto, Jesse Krimes, Whitfield Lovell, Adriana Marmorek, Carol Paik, Sidney Russell, Karen Shaw, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Micki Watanabe Spiller, Cindy Tower, Cleo Wilkinson, Cybèle Young.   About the Curator:   Alva Greenberg is a curator and artist based in Connecticut.  From 1997-2009, she ran ALVA Gallery, in New London, CT dedicated to promoting mid-career artists working in all disciplines. In 2006, she was a recipient of the Eugene O’Neill Center’s “25 of Connecticut’s most Uncommon Women” award and in 2018 she received the State of Connecticut Governor’s Patron of the Arts award.   https://carlosestevez.net/index.html https://www.lesleydill.net/ https://mickispiller.com/

live culture  garment

a talk with the curator and artists from "no bodies: clothing as disruptor"

On this month's show the first guests are Artist/Curator David Borawski and Artist Liz Sweibel to talk about their exhibit Abductions and Reconstructions up now at Real Art Ways in Hartford. Featuring the artists Meg Hitchcock, Ryan Sarah Murphy, Liz Sweibel, Abductions and Reconstructions offers fresh takes on abstraction, collage, and sculpture with works that are at once intricate and tough. The three artists present a diverse range of aesthetic considerations: Meg Hitchcock often uses letters from one text, such as the Bible, to craft passages in another text, like the Quran. Regarding this process, Hitchcock says:

“…by deconstructing and recombining the holy books of diverse religions, I undermine their authority and animate the common thread that weaves through all scripture.”

Ryan Sarah Murphy’s cardboard reliefs could be aerial views of farmland, architecture plans, or political maps of imaginary nations. She crafts these objects with a sense of seriousness and play befitting the found, casual nature of her materials. Liz Sweibel uses both found and acquired materials in her precarious sculptures and assemblages. Sweibel says

“The process is low-tech, immediate, and improvisational, and primarily takes form as spare, abstract sculpture, installation, and drawing.”

Abductions and Reconstructions is at RealArtWays, 56 Arbor St, Hartford and runs from Feb 15- April 8.

More about Real Art Ways here

During the second half we talk on the phone with artist Aliza Shvarts whose forthcoming exhibit at Artspace New Haven, Aliza Shvarts: Off Scene runs from May 11 - Jun 30. . Aliza recently ran a workshop based on her Banners Project as a part of the current Code Breakers Exhibit at The Ely Center for Contemporary Art, which invited women and gender variant people to exchange of stories in which the internet left them vulnerable to public shaming, and how these individual experiences of shame can be transformed to galvanize a collective demand. The title Aliza Shvarts: Off Scene, references the artists’ investment in performance, one that shifts our attention from the center to the social, historical, and material surround. At once linguistic and bodily, “off scene” refers to the circulation of gossip, rumor, viral text, and other forms of knowing. Using text, video,and audio she explores issues of how the body means and matters, how the subject consents and dissents.

The opening reception is Friday, May 18, 5-8pm. On Friday, May 18 from 6-8pm, Shvarts will host a roundtable discussion with Robert Post (Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School), Reva Siegel (Nicholas de B. Katzenbach Professor of Law, Yale Law School), which will consider the aesthetic, legal, and ideological frameworks that choreograph the body’s capacity to produce meaning within the fictive or the real. This event is free and open to the public. Artspace is located at 50 Orange Street in New Haven, CT.

more about Artspace here

This episode of Live Culture also features a new song performed by Jody Stecher in protest of the gun violence t in this Country. Cousins Jay Feldman and Jody Stecher found they each were hit hard by the Florida school shootings. Jay began writing a song expressing his feelings about it. Jody helped him finish the song. Also on the show will be an excerpt of music from the soundtrack to the film Ladybird  by Jon Brion, and a song from The Mammals.

live culture 37

Episode: Live Culture  Episode 37: Structive (De, Con & In)

WPKN is a nonprofit, freeform, community radio station (arts organization) that is more than 50 years old.  The vision of WPKN is to build community, a loyal and growing audience, and an engaged and educated citizenry by providing the highest quality of free-form programming that broadcasts entertainment, music, news, thoughts, sounds, ideas and event listings that support free speech, diversity, and the interests of the local and global communities WPKN serves.  Our radio frequency of 89.5-FM (Bridgeport)includes a coverage map of 1.5 million people in Farfield, New Haven and Litchfield counties in Connecticut and Suffolk county (The North Fork and Hamptons) in New York.  WPKN also maintains an on-demand streaming and archive of WPKN programming as well as our WPKN PODCASTS that focus on 22+ 'talk-oriented' community, cultural and news programs. We also feature an expanding list of interviews with music personalities and artists from all over the world.

Episode: Live Culture Episode 37: Structive (De, Con & In)

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