Who: Anne Pasternak, President and Artistic Director of Creative Time, NY, NY
What: A public lecture for Locust Projects' Locust Talks
When: Today, January 17th at 6:30 p.m.
Where: Miami Design District 3852 North Miami Avenue
Do you like art? If you reply yes, you will be interested to know about the Locust Projects celebrating its 15th anniversary by inaugurating a series of free lectures, Locust Talks, hosting well-known visiting curators and others highly involved in the world of the arts. The purpose of these public speaking engagements will be to stimulate the community and those in the South Florida community to express their thoughts in conversations with the participants.
The first speaker will be Anne Pasternak, President and Artistic Director of Creative Time, New York, NY. Pasternak has been with Creative Time since 1994. Pasternak’s contribution has been to bring the work of hundreds of artists to spark an interest in the public. She has been behind Creative Time’s recent domestic and world projects, with programs that have connected New York to New Orleans, Haiti to Hanoi, and Dubai to Denver. Some of her accomplishments include Playing the Building, Tribute in Light, Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, and more.
Locust Projects was founded in 1998 by three visionaries composed of Miami artists Elizabeth Withstandley, Westen Charles and COOPER. During that time, the organization settled in a converted warehouse in Wynwood’s old days when the neighborhood was in a neglected condition. Wynwood bloomed afterwards with the infusion of the arts and so did the Locust Projects, which received a grant award from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in 2006, opening the way to hire its first full-time Executive Director and moving to the Miami Design District in 2009.
The James L. and John S. Knight Foundation, a major force in supporting the arts in Miami, and Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs have also contributed and therefore contributed for the Locust Projects to become a well-known institution in Miami, which is increasingly spreading its wings each day more and more. The Locust Projects has supported and exhibited art works by a melting pot of artists who have added to the organization’s international prestige and recognition. The once struggling organization has grown and is still growing.
Anne Pasternak’s interview:
RS: What is one word that describes Anne Pasternak?
AP: Innovative
RS: What would you like to achieve with Creative Time?
AP: The great artists we work with, and of course the talented Creative Time team, have already ensured that we are the leading presenter of innovative art in public places. Most important is that we not sit still, but that we continue to innovate, to transform public places—including online—with art projects that question assumptions and make people think and ask questions. And of course we want to honor the critical importance of artists to society.
RS: What are some of the qualifications you look for in order to grant residency to an artist?
AP: Creative Time has one artist’s residency program, our Global Residency. For this, we ask invited artists to let us know of a burning question they would like to explore in order to expand their practice, and we enable them to go anyplace they need to in order to answer that. We tend to focus on places that are off the art world beaten track, places where there may not be robust contemporary art infrastructures.
For our other projects, we look for artists who delve deeply into important issues of our time, and in so doing create works that raise new questions and make us think in new ways. We look for artists who are ethical, collaborative and trailblazing.
RS: How may the community help with your program?
AP: Each work that we commission and present engages a variety of specific communities. We want as many people as possible to experience our projects, whether it’s our Creative Time Reports website (www.creativetimereports.org), on which artists comment on and analyze important issues, or the work of an artist working with immigrants in Queens.
RS: How many residents does the program have now?
AP: Creative Time does not host artists-in-residence. (Please see answer above about the Global Residency program.)
RS: What are some of the projects you are concentrating on presently?
AP: We have some amazing stories on Creative Time Reports, and are also working on a fantastic work that we will be announcing later this week. We'll let you know!
RS: What are your plans within the next 3 years?
AP: To ensure that Creative Time continues to be the trailblazer for new, engaging, and provocative works of public art.
RS: Please give a website for the readers.
AP: www.creativetime.org, and www.creativetimereports.org.
RS: There are several links for Examiner readers interested to know more about the Locust Projects and the James L. and John S. Knight Foundation:
http://www.locustprojects.org/ http://www.locustprojects.org/events/event/locust-talks/
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