The Non-Professional Development Workshop

The Non-Professional Development Workshop
Conceived by Mary Ting and Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful
In partnership with the Artists Alliance Inc. (AAI)

This workshop brings together artists from EFA Project Space, Artists Alliance Inc., and other organizations for a conversation on the topic of the over-professionalization of the arts.

Professional development programs endeavor to give artists the practical tools to survive in the art world in this time of rising expectations, and education and living costs.  This training, with its emphasis on “how to emerge, how to network and build your name” is often focused on art as a means of production for the market, instead of art as a form of creative expression.  In its well-intentioned mentoring on strategic planning for the career track, it –purposefully or not– sets expectations about what constitutes professional success, constraining the possibilities for making art and being an artist. The Anti-Professional Development Workshop seeks to provide alternative approaches, reflections and humor on the evolving realities of the creative person and extend the definition of what it means to be an artist in the 21st century. This event will be presented in collaboration with Artist Alliance Inc.

PARTICIPANTS

Bill Carroll is director of the Studio Program at EFA.

Mary Ting is a visual artist working in installation, drawing, sculpture, and community projects that examine cultural history, grief and nature.  Her varied work reflects on our stories – our devotions and desperations. Recent solo exhibitions in the NYC area include Lambent Foundation, Dean Project, metaphor contemporary art, and Kentler International Drawing Space and at the Wake Forest University, North Carolina.   International group shows include: Social Justice and the Right to be Human at the Athens School of Fine Art, Greece; 2011 Art Stays 9, Slovenia; 2009 International Women’s Biennale, Incheon, Korea; and the Sofia Paper Biennial, Bulgaria. A two-time recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship,  2016 Joan Mitchell Center New Orleans Residency, 2016 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council  In Process Residency, 2010 Gottlieb Foundation individual grant, Lambent Fellowship,  Pollack Krasner Foundation among others.  Residencies include MacDowell Colony, Lower Eastside Printshop Special Editions, Dieu Donne Papermill Workspace, and others. Mary Ting currently teaches at CUNY John Jay College in the studio art department and the Sustainability and the Environmental Justice Program.  She is also  faculty at Transart Institute MFA Program, New York/Berlin.  Mary is an avid gardener certified master composter and citizen She is also a frequent lecturer, independent curator and writer.  The crazed ravaging of the earth, the displacement of vulnerable communities and pending extinctions is what keeps her up at night and also awakens her in the morning. She is currently researching and writing about Chinese Modern History, Trauma, and the Lust for Endangered Species Parts.  Mary has a bachelors degree from Parsons School of Design, NYC, a diploma from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing in Chinese folk art studies, and a masters degree from the Vermont School of Fine Art.

Jodi Waynberg is Executive Director at Artists Alliance Inc.

Martha Wilson is a pioneering feminist artist and gallery director, who over the past four decades created innovative photographic and video works that explore her female subjectivity through role-playing, costume transformations, and “invasions” of other people’s personae. She began making these videos and photo/text works in the early 1970s while in Halifax in Nova Scotia, and further developed her performative and video-based practice after moving in 1974 to New York City, embarking on a long career that would see her gain attention across the U.S. for her provocative appearances and works. In 1976 she also founded and continues to direct Franklin Furnace, an artist-run space that champions the exploration, promotion and preservation of artists’ books, installation art, video, online and performance art, further challenging institutional norms, the roles artists play within society, and expectations about what constitutes acceptable art mediums.

This event takes place in conjunction with As Far as the Heart Can See (September 21 – November 17, 2018).