Collaborations
Working with others is a very important part of the creative process. If friend comes to you and asks, "Hey, can you show me how to do this?" And you, being a friend reply, "of course." Now, the first thing and the last thing to remember is that the work belongs to your friend. It is their idea. But the process is shared. So why bother? Because it is the closest thing to "play" that you will ever do as an adult with another adult. Out of the shared experience you will find joy, happiness, and fun.
Silence |
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Donna Sweigart is an internationally recognized Jewelry and Functional Object Artist who utilizes 3D printing and technology.
Jim Toia |
Plume |
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Jim Toia is a Fine Arts Professor at Lafayette College. He is represented in New York City by the Kim Foster Gallery in Chelsea, and smART curation in Monaco. He received his BA from Bard College and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. He is in many collections including the Morris Museum in Morristown, NJ, the AT&T Collection, the Dallas Museum of Art, The Allentown Museum (PA), and the Hunterdon Museum of Art (NJ) to name a few. He is the recipient of a 2000 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship and a Geraldine
Dodge Foundation Grant.
Dodge Foundation Grant.
Ross Gay |
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I met Ross at Lafayette College through Jim Toia. He had recently graduated and was attending Sarah Lawrence Colege for a Masters in Creative Writing. I was curating a show dealing with Retablos and wanted to hire a new voice to write the catalogue essay. I like new voices. Jim Toia suggested that I give it to Ross, so I did. In the end, Ross did not write me a catalogue essay but rather a poem. I like it so I published it anyway - much to the chagrin of the traditionalist. Since then Ross has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (2013) and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry (2016). Curators and writers always collaborate and have to trust eachothers vision even if it was not what you pre-entended.
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I have been doing theater since I was a kid. I have acted, played in the pit and as an adult been lucky enough to participate in set and sound design. So, when Jeff Lentz asked me to help him design the multi-media concepts for "Prelude to a Kiss," a play he was directing, I was really touched and grateful. The play begins and ends with an older gentleman watching television.
An extremely versatile performer, the tenor Jeffrey Lentz is gifted with innate stage presence as a singer, actor and dancer. He has appeared in opera, operetta and musical theatre with equal success in the United States, Canada and Europe. His long association with New York City Opera and Glimmerglass Opera has included appearances as Jack Bartlett in Sousa’s The Glass Blowers; Jo, the Loiterer, in Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s The Mother of Us All; Peter Quint in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw; the Ballad Singer in Floyd’s Of Mice and Men; Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni; and Tamino in The Magic Flute. He won critical acclaim for his performance as Johnny Inkslinger in Britten’s Paul Bunyan for Glimmerglass Opera, which he repeated for a "Live from Lincoln Center" telecast from New York City Opera. He created the rôle of the Young Collector in the world première of André Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire for San Francisco Opera, recorded and televised, and he created the rôle of Dorian Gray in the world première of Lowell Liebermann’s The Picture of Dorian Gray with the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. He has appeared as Matteo in Arabella with Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Laurie in Little Women with Opera Pacific, Ferrando in Così fan tutte with Garsington Opera, Count Belfiore in La finta giardiniera with Opera Zuid; and Saphir in Offenbach’s Barbe-Bleue with L’Opéra Français de New York. A native of Philadelphia. He holds a Masters Degree in Music in Vocal Performance from the School of Music at Yale University and received a Lucy G. Moses Fellowship.
Samantha BrownMeditation Room |
I met Sam when I first started out in education. I was the Chair of Digital Media and her mother was my secretary. This is how things happen. Sam was very generous and whenever she had a shoot nearby I would bring my top students and we would assist her in the production. This was important to the students and promoted the value and spirit of collaboration. Several of my student when on to work for the History and Travel Channel as well as NFL Film.
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The Travel Channel |
When Ed Kerns wanted to direct a documentary on the work of Stephen Antonakos, he asked me to be the film's editor. Antonakos's work with neon since 1960 has lent the medium new perceptual and formal meanings. His use of spare, complete and incomplete geometric forms has ranged from direct 3-dimensional interior installations to painted canvases, "Walls", the well-known back-lit panels with painted or gold-leafed surfaces, and the "Rooms" and "Chapels." Throughout, he has conceived work in relation to its site — its scale, proportions, and character — and to the space that it shares with the viewer. He calls his art, "real things in real spaces," intending it to be seen without reference to anything outside the immediate visual and kinetic experience. Since the late 1970s he has made large scale Public Works with the same concerns plus the inevitably broader engagement of space and auxiliary light outdoors. Colored pencil drawings on paper and vellum, often in series, have been an equally rich practice since the beginning. He has also made Packages, Artist's Books, and Reliefs of white wood and of silver. There have been over 100 one-person shows including a recent 50-year retrospective seen in Greece and the United States, and more than 250 group shows.
Maria Liberati |
Cooking: DaVinci StyleFrom the Gourmand World Award Winning Book Series and Celebrity Chef Maria Liberati come this book that follows Leonardo DaVinci on his travels throughout different regions of Italy and recipes from those very regions. DaVinci was a bit of a foodie, and this book reveals where his inspiration for the meal portrayed in The Last Supper comes from, as well as poetry about food, translated by Anthony Crisafulli, from DaVinci's own Notebook, and other inventions that DaVinci created for the culinary arts. The book also contains 100 recipes that are easy to follow, and follow the healthy and delicious Mediterranean Diet and Slow Food principles. Follow Celebrity Chef Maria Liberati as she shares recipes and stories from DaVinci's travels.
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Amazon Alexa and Echo DeveloperThe Broadway Trivia Game tests your knowledge of American Musical Theater History. Have fun and learn who wrote, acted in, designed, and produced for the American Stage. Download it for free today. Just click the icon to the left. Made by Anthony and Jacob Crisafulli
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Jim Toia has developed a symbiotic relationship with the flora and fauna that graces his landscape. The lush hills and woodlands, bisected by rivers and streams, emphasize the elementary rhythms of growth and decay. The inherent fecundity of these surroundings is his constant reminder of the cycles of nature, an ever-present affirmation of the cruel and splendid impartiality of life and death. His work, a direct response to observation, forces us to step closer in order that we may see. His polemic approach is directly in conflict with our traditional impulse to step back. Instead, Toia chooses to stick our nose in his "captures" in order to unveil nature's agency. - Crisafulli
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Jim Toia |
We all meet wonderful people in life, Craig is one of the most talented people I met way back when I was a student. We made this little video of his cartoons sometime ago. I posted this video tonight for a new friend Chis Shorr who his the head of theater at Moravian College. Tonight we realized we had a friend in common.