ALASKA AIR

The International Gallery is pleased to participate in USA's Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program. Launched in 2007 by USA and Rasmuson Foundation, Alaska AIR is a unique residency program that partners artists from across the country who have received USA Fellowships with cultural institutions throughout the state. USA Fellows work in dance, music, theater, literature, and visual arts.

Made possible by a grant from the Anchorage-based Rasmuson Foundation-one of USA's founding supporters-Alaska AIR provides opportunities for short- and long-term residencies at each of the host organizations where visiting artists will develop new work, offer public performances, and engage with the local community. Projects will begin in January and extend into the spring. The broad range of creative experiences available through these partnerships reflects the breadth of artistic disciplines supported by the USA Fellows program, which annually awards 50 unrestricted grants of $50,000 to artists nationwide. The fourth annual USA Fellowships were awarded on December 14, 2009, bringing USA's total investment in working artists to $10 million since 2006.

"This innovative residency program continues to bring some of America's finest artists to Alaska to experience the state's inspiring natural environment and vibrant cultural life," said Diane Kaplan, president of Rasmuson Foundation and a founding member of the USA Board of Directors. Alaska AIR reflects Rasmuson's commitment to supporting arts and culture in Alaska, and fosters a dynamic creative exchange between visiting artists, local cultural institutions, and the communities they serve..

JANUARY – FEBRUARY 2010
Join the International Gallery in welcoming
Karen Kandel
New York
USA Ziporyn Fellow, Theater Arts
Karen Kandel is an actor with more than 30 years of experience, mostly in nontraditional theater. Currently an artistic associate with Mabou Mines, she began acting for Elizabeth Swados and has worked with directors such as JoAnne Akalaitis, Anne Bogart, Lee Breuer, Peter Sellars, and Anna Deavere Smith. Since 2000 she has been exploring writing and visual art, creating multimedia installations and working with such esteemed artists as Ruth Maleczech and Basil Twist. She has studied extensively in Japan, where she learned traditional art forms that have influenced her work as a writer. Martha Lavey

Special reception for the artist (open to the public) Friday, January 29, at 6 p.m. at Out North

The International Gallery was pleased to work with the following Fellows:

AUGUST 2009
Daniel Joseph Martinez
California
USA Broad Fellow, Visual Arts
In his work Daniel Joseph Martinez persistently returns to a series of unanswerable questions. He asks whether history is being written in terms of the economy, the free market, and the corporate museum, and how artists and individuals can organize an evolving, self-sustaining aesthetic to counter the prevalent paradigm. Setting these issues against a backdrop of political chaos and global instability, he asks whether autonomy is a state of being in which the dissolution of the self is part of the secularized belief in career, property ownership, success, and coupling. To counter this, he asserts that belief itself can be a catalyst for creative change. Martinez has worked in installation, photography, performance, and public art, among other media. T.G.

JUNE 2009
Liz Collins
Rhode Island
USA Target Fellow, Crafts and Traditional Arts
Textile and clothing designer Liz Collins (Providence, Rhode Island) uses manually operated knitting machines to create garments that refer to the intricate structure of the human body, playing with the ideas of surface and anatomy and the process of knitting itself. Her experimental attitude toward materials and methods has led her to develop a unique technique of layering knits. She is also exploring the idea of knitting as a communal activity, staging performances and looking at the activity as a basis for intergenerational collectivity. Collins was trained at Rhode Island School of Design and spent several years running her own clothing label before deciding to switch to teaching. Although she occasionally creates freelance knitwear designs for other labels, her primary goals are to continue designing and making knits; to continue research into materials and manufacturing; and to sustain and develop site-specific performance collaboratives of machine knitters and stitchers (called Knitting Nation).

JANUARY 2009
Zoe Strauss
Pennsylvania
USA Gund Fellow, Visual Arts
Zoe Strauss uses photography to create an epic narrative that reflects the beauty and struggle of everyday life in invisible communities. In her series she addresses themes such as gender and identity; addiction and desire; what it means to be American; just getting by; and hope, pride, and joy. Over the past seven years she has produced an annual installation in South Philadelphia entitled Under I-95. As the Under Under I-95 project has evolved, Strauss has also addressed issues such as mortality, intimacy, and memory to weave archetypal myths that mirror daily life. T.G.

2008
Michael Joo
New York
USA Nimoy Fellow, Visual Arts
Through sculpture, video, and installation, Michael Joo addresses the complexity of our relationship to technology, nature, and spirituality. His work references science and religion equally, looking at technology and its infrastructures as a way to explore social relations and the formation of identity. Joo has had solo exhibitions at the Samsung Museum, Seoul; the Bohen Foundation, New York; the Asia Society, New York; the MIT List Visual Art Center, Cambridge; and the Palm Beach Institute for Contemporary Art, Lake Worth, Florida, among others. He was included as one of two artists in the South Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2001 and was awarded the grand prize at this year's Gwangju Biennale in Gwangju, South Korea.

For more information about United States Artists visit www.unitedstatesartists.org