MARNmentors

To strengthen the network of support for artists, provide in-depth professional resources and to contribute to the health of Wisconsin's arts community, MARN has created MARNmentors for visual artists, literary artists, filmmakers, composers, and arts administrator in the Milwaukee area. MARN will act as a liaison between established working artists and administrators and those who are pursuing a career in the arts. Sixteen established artists with a track record of professionalism and who have a desire to pass on their knowledge to developing artists, have been selected as Mentors.

MARN and its Mentors believe it is essential to Milwaukee's art community that we cultivate relationships among our artists, and provide opportunities that encourage artists to stay and work in Milwaukee. We are looking for highly motivated Mentees to participate in this program.

Being picked as a mentee you...

• work with one of the most respected artists in the state
• get into all the MARN workshops for a year for free get a free MARN membership for a year
• are guaranteed a spot in the final Mentor / Mentee exhibition at Walker's Point Center for the Arts
• get you and your work published in the MARNmentors catalog
• are added to a group of past and present mentors and mentees that meet to critique their art

Deadline to apply is July 25, 2009, please submit:

• a one page letter of intent - information about you and your work what you'd like to get out of MARNmentors
• 10 visuals or samples of your work - ideally this would be a CD or DVD of images and/or video
• a CV or Resume -- send to MARN, P.O. Box 713, Milwaukee, WI 53201

Questions?

Contact Melissa Musante, melissam(at)marnonline(dot)com or 414/305-2109. There is a $100 fee for MARNmentors, due upon acceptance to the program. Scholarships and payment plans are available.

Additional Important Information:

• Preference will be given to residents of Milwaukee County
  
• Mentees may not be currently pursuing a degree
• Mentors choose which mentee they would like to work with
• You may specify which Mentor(s) you would like to work with in your letter of intent
• There are 4 full scholarships available
• Payment plans are available
• The $100 fee includes admission to MARN's 2008/09 Workshops and a Membership to MARN

THE VISUAL ART MENTORS

Santiago Cucullu was born in 1969 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and currently lives in Milwaukee. He received his M.F.A. from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1999 and his B.F.A. from the Hartford Art School in Connecticut. In addition he was a resident at the Core Program at the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Recent solo projects include exhibitions at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; INOVA, Milwaukee; Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston; and Julia Friedman Gallery, Chicago. Group exhibitions include the 2004 Whitney Biennial; How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Fresh: The Altoids Collection at the New Museum for Contemporary Art.

Lane Hall is a multi-media artist who currently teaches experimental narrative in the English Department at UWM, where he is a full professor. Within book, web and print formats he works with relationships between image and text and how meaning is made through narrative structures. His site-specific artwork often focuses upon animal subjects that occupy ambivalent places in culture: insects, reptiles, micro-life and vermin. These installations have been exhibited at the the Brooklyn Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Block Museum at Northwestern University, Carnegie Mellon's Miller Gallery and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

Anne Kingsbury has been a lifelong artist and has acted as Executive Director for Woodland Pattern Book Center since 1979. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, three grants from the Wisconsin Arts Board, a grant from the Milwaukee Artists Foundation and an artist's fellowship from Art Futures. Kingsbury's work in mixed media has been featured in many publications, and she has participated in over sixty major exhibitions. She is currently attempting to bead an entire deer hide with journal entries starting with 1979.

Kathryn E. Martin is an Associate Lecturer at University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee (UWM) and part-time professor Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) where she teaches 2D, 3D, and Basic Drawing to Foundation and Pre-Art students. She received a BFA in Sculpture and Art History from MIAD and an MA and MFA from UWM in InterMedia Studies. Martin has exhibited extensively, in solo and group shows throughout the United States, focusing on the observation of banal objects. In her site-specific, large scale installations, Martin concentrates on objects’ formal characteristics and makes instinctive, yet calculated decisions to dissect, interpret, re-assemble, repeat, and change inherent functions to make visible the invisible. In addition to studio and gallery based work, Martin has worked in the realms of Public Artist, Exhibition Designer, Visiting Artist, Artist’s Assistant, and time manager.

Josie Osborne is a mixed media artist and printmaker living and working in Milwaukee. She is Director of Arts Alliances and Advocacy at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, where she worked with nationally recognized programs and led an annual art trip to New York. She exhibits her work regionally and nationally and is in many private collections. She was recently selected for a fellowship to Fundacion Valparaiso, an artist residency in southern Spain. Her work as an arts administrator has served and supported thousands of K-12 students, teachers,
community members, alumni and college age art/design students. She received her MFA in graphics (printmaking) from UW-Madison and has a BA in art history and criticism and a BFA in drawing and painting from UW-Milwaukee.

John Riepenhoff's practice integrates the roles of an artist, curator, and art fair organizer. He runs several curatorial projects including the Green Gallery, the John Riepenhoff Experience, and is a cofounder and organizer of the Milwaukee International art fair. Based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Riepenhoff is committed to a local and international dialog through his art and his programing. He received his BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts.

Robert Smith is an award-winning photographer who discovered the joy of photography as a young boy. Using a camera given to him by his parents Smith recorded his family. Years later, one of those photographs would be exhibited at the Milwaukee Art Museum. It was a harbinger of work to come. He earned his Bachelors degree from Williams College and studied at the Milwaukee Center for Photography. Smith has worked as a commercial photographer, part-time teacher and was a long-time faculty member at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. His personal projects concentrate on family and landscape. Smith's work has been exhibited at Benham Gallery, Washington; Bucknell University, Pennslyvania; The Center for Fine Art, Colorado; Elaine Erickson Gallery, Wisconsin; Haggerty Museum of Art, Wisconsin; Hood Museum, New Hampshire, The Houston Center for Photography, Texas; Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin and Meridian House, DC.

Pegi Taylor is the co-founder and chair of IN:SITE, an organization fostering temporary public art in Milwaukee County since the spring of 2006. IN:SITE curates, manages, promotes, and maintains installations, so a mentee would have a chance to engage in all these activities. In addition, Taylor is also founder and co-producer for the Performance Art Showcase, highlighting Southeastern Wisconsin performance art talents since 2004. For November of 2008, Taylor is co-producing My Vote Performs, where there will be performance art at twelve polling sites on Election Day. Depending on the interests of a mentee, She could be involved in one or both projects. This is a first of its kind in the nation project. For both projects, a mentee would have a chance to participate in very public art. Taylor works freelance out of her home. The mentee would have regular meetings with Taylor at either her home or a coffee shop, and most communication would take place via email and phone.

Richard Taylor is a nationally represented artist, having exhibited most recently at the OK Harris Gallery, New York and the Tory Folliard Gallery, Wisconsin. He is also represented by galleries in Los Angeles, Chicago, Michigan and Minneapolis. His work has been featured in shows at the Tuscan Art Museum and the Navy Pier Show as curated by Dave Hickey. He is well known for his public art works, which can be found throughout Milwaukee. As artist-in-residence at Quad Graphics from 1987 to 1999, he designed and built large, abstract murals for Quad Graphics plants located all over the world. His studio is in Riverwest.

Fahimeh Vahdat is an Associate Professor of Painting and Printmaking. Her work in installation and mixed media art has been shown nationally and internationally, most recently at venues in Naples, Italy and Buenos Aires, Argentina, as well as Washington, D.C. In addition to exhibiting her own work, Vahdat is active in both the arts and educational communities, presenting in international conferences, curating exhibitions and jurying shows. Vahdat's work has received significant attention, including the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller and Andy Warhol Foundation Grant for New Forms. A native of Iran, Vahdat experienced displacement and religious exile as the revolution broke out in 1979 in Iran, first relocating to England and then to the U.S. Vahdat received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Jason Yi studied sculpture the University of Georgia (MFA 1995) and architecture at Virginia Tech (B Architecture 1988). He has exhibited nationally and internationally in places such as New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Italy and Austria. His most recent video exhibition at Gallery Korea in New York was curated by Melissa Chiu of the Asia Society Museum, Barbara London of the Museum of Modern Art and independent curator Yu Yeon Kim. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Kamiyama Museum of Art in Japan, Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles and the Edward F. Albee Foundation in New York. His awards include Mary L. Nohl Foundation Fellowship and Kamiyama Artist in Residence Fellowship. In 2006, he was selected as Milwaukee Artist of the Year by the Milwaukee Arts Board.

Mutópe J. Johnson’s  current body of is a manifestation of the Social Realism painting tradition, which blossomed during the Harlem Renaissance Period, and forms an intersection with today’s African-American contemporary art scene. His work is collected, throughout the United States. Peltz Gallery in Milwaukee and Susan Woodson Gallery in Chicago represent Johnson. An award winning artist, Johnson has had exhibitions at The Charles Allis Fine Arts Museum, Northern Kentucky University, The Charles A. Wustum Fine Arts Museum, The Milwaukee Art Museum, and Susan Woodson Gallery Chicago, Illinois and many others.

Dasha Kelly is an eloquent and accomplished writer who is able to unfold the spoken word into a variety of precision tools: as a performer, lecturer, or instructor. Dasha is a nationally-respected advocate for writers and the art of spoken word.  Locally, she is founder and director of Still Waters Collective, an outreach initiative utilizing creative writing as tool to build new models of leadership and empowerment. In her own craft, Dasha is an accomplished writer, a seasoned performer and engaging public speaker: She has written for magazines such as Upscale, Black Enterprise and Milwaukee; her narrative essays appear regularly online, to include OnMilwaukee.com; her 2003 novel, All Fall Down, earned her a place in Written Word Magazine as one of the Top Ten Up-and-Coming Writers of the Midwest; she performed on the season six premiere of HBO presents Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam; she has released four recordings of her poems; her commissioned one-woman show, Anthems for Grown Folks, is being developed into a traveling production; and she works extensively as a keynote and motivational speaker. Dasha is working on a second novel and recently released a collection of poems, essays and short stories with Penmanship Books called Hershey Eats Peanuts.

John Tanner: As one of the principals of Tanner-Monagle, John Tanner brings more than twenty-five years of experience in scoring, arranging and music composition for television, radio, industrial video and theatre.
His commercial music has won numerous awards, including Golden Reel Awards from the International Television Association for industrial video projects; Telly Awards; national, regional and local American Advertising Federation “Addys”, Silver Microphone awards, and RAC Awards for retail advertising. Tanner engineered the Violent Femmes’ album, “Violent Femmes”, which garnered both Gold and Platinum sales certification. John has composed music for national commercial clients, including Sprint, Toyota, Walgreens Drug Stores, Hot Pockets, Kwik Trip, Birds Eye, Sears, Hilton Inns, Leinenkugel, Mercury Marine, Kohl’s Department Stores, Van de Kamps, General Motors, Northwestern Mutual, Miller Brewing Company, First Alert, GE Medical, and Johnson Controls. His national television projects include scoring the PBS documentary and soundtrack CD, “The Gold Rush” and the opening theme for the syndicated comedy game show, “Kwik Witz.” He co-wrote two popular regional theater musical reviews, “Hula Hoop Sha-Boop” and “Psychedelic Sundae.” He has written original scores and designed sound for theatrical productions at the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Yale School of Drama, American Player’s Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, First Stage Milwaukee and Fireside Dinner Theater.

Lisa Gildehaus is the co-producer and co-director of ALMOST HOME, a cinema verité documentary about people who live and work in an eldercare community, which was part of the 2006 ITVS Independent Lens series. She has just completed her most recent documentary, TOWN AND COUNTRY, which follows the children of Missouri farmers as they prepare for livestock showings at an annual county fair. She serves on the Board of Directors for IFP Chicago and is currently planning the second annual IFP Documentary Producers Series, dedicated to enriching the professional experiences of Midwestern filmmakers. She also line produces feature films and television commercials. Gildehaus has produced and filmed in Tanzania, Haiti, Australia, New Zealand, the former Yugoslavia and throughout America and Western Europe. She has shot on a variety of miniDV and High Definition cameras, edits on AVID and Final Cut Pro, and is conversationally fluent in Czech. She was most recently accepted into the HotDocs Film Festival’s DocLab master class, which takes place in May in Toronto.

Tate Bunker: Ambitious by nature, Tate has directed over 30 films in the last 10 years. He currently balances freelancing with teaching film production at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and directing his own films.