In this episode, Sergio & Dr Yanina Gomez discuss setting goals and asking the right questions that lead to the right answers.  Download the FREE Goal Setting and Progress System for Artists at http://www.theartistnextlevel.com/goals

Conversation with artists Michiko Itatani and art critic Jason Foumberg. Hi Point Contact. Retrospective at the Zhou B Art Center. October to December 2016

Itatani's work has been seen in more than 100 solo and group exhibitions nationally, and internationally. Most recent exhibition of her new work was just closed at Linda Warren Project, Chicago.

Her works are in many public and private collections, including Museu D’art Contemporani(MACBA), Barcelona, Spain, Olympic Museum, Switzerland, Tokoha Museum, Japan, Musée du Québec, Canada, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, State of Illinois Museum, Muskegon Museum of Art, MI, Erie Art Museum, PA, Maier Museum,VA, Cincinnati Art Museum, OH, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA, Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum, MI

Itatani is a Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has taught at many other institutions, for example, SACI, Florence, Italy; University of Bonn, Germany; Royal College of Art, London; China National Academy of Fine Arts, China; Tokyo National University of Art and Music, Japan.

She has received National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Marie Sharp Walsh New York Studio Grant and John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship among others.

Julia Martin

Julia Martin’s latest series of paintings focus on single figure female faces, rendered with expressive lines and tonal complexity. Guided by instinct she explores line and color to develop compositions. Using layers of non-objective colors, Martin realizes unique faces on canvas that communicate individual personality and identity. Her wooden sculptural work complements her paintings conceptually and enables her the freedom to explore a more hands on process. Martin searches for inspiration within herself to make art that expresses what she knows and feels as a woman. “The feminine flows freely out of me for obvious reason, but there’s a cocktail of deep-seated strength and vulnerability in women that I find utterly fascinating.”

Buddy Jackson

Buddy Jackson’s new series of paintings, gum dichromate prints, and bronze sculptures highlight body and facial expressions, which poignantly evoke the beauty, strength, and vulnerability that permeates the human condition. Jackson’s focus on representing women comes from his admiration of their perseverance despite inequalities “little boys are taught by society—by school, by coaches, by their dads, by their moms, by everybody—that feminine traits are bad. But then we expect these little boys to grow up and respect women. Jackson’s representations of women are guided by what he sees in himself and his rejection of binary gender stereotypes that restrict men and women from revealing their authentic physical and emotional selves.

Curator’s Note (Sara Lee Burd)

One objective of this exhibition is to introduce artworks by two prominent Nashville artists to Chicago. I am interested in beginning a conversation about art from the South. While many Southern artists receive national and international recognition, many remain underrepresented in terms of prevalence and prominence. An exhibition such as this is an opportunity to see two artistic voices that are examples of the fine art being produced in Nashville, TN. Martin and Jackson do not represent the whole of art from the south. In fact there is no single narrative of southern art, but these artists are significant contributors to the fabric of the rich, diverse art being produced. Martin and Jackson create skilled, imaginative artworks with eclectic color and form and whose subjects and details provoke contemplative moments.

Ali Cavanaugh (American, b. 1973) is an internationally represented fine artist. She earned a BFA from Kendall College of Art and Design in 1995. Cavanaugh's  paintings have been featured on book covers, countless internet features such as the Huffington Post, Fine Art Connoisseur, Hi-Fructose and in numerous print publications including The New York Times Magazine, American Art Collector, American Artist Watercolor. She has painted portraits for TIME magazine and The New York Times. She currently lives in St Louis, Missouri with her husband and their four children.

Beth Inglish is an artist and emerging leader in Nashville, TN who serves the community by creating spaces for people to connect. Beth uses an “intuitive” painting process to express her creative energy within. Her instincts and energy lead the way, choosing colors by feeling and using line to create pathways that connect one moment to the next. She opens her heart to connect with the viewer in hopes that they feel what she feels.

“If I can tell their story through my story then we can discover that we’re not alone and walk together.”

Beth is also the founder of Tennessee’s largest creative network, The Nashville Creative Group. She has partnered with numerous organizations, nonprofits and communities using her experience in business and art to bring people together online and offline. Her critical eye and thoughtful process work together to help people achieve their goals creatively and collaboratively. 

Since 2013 artists Kim Dotty Hachmann (GER) and Ginny Sykes (USA) have worked on video collaborations addressing the complex relationship of civilization and nature.

For twenty-five years, Candace Wark has been a Mechanical and Aerospace engineering professor at Illinois Institute of Technology specializing in the field of aerodynamics and utilizing photography in her research.  Shirley Nannini worked as a high school teacher, coach and administrator at Evanston Township High School for over thirty years and reinvented herself by actively pursuing her passion for photography.  A student wind tunnel project led to a series of steps and turns that evolved into an intriguing art form that neither anticipated and both are enthralled with.  The result has been a resolute artistic endeavor and collaboration formalized in June 2012 as Wind Flow Photography.

Krista Hoefle received her MFA in Sculpture from Penn State University, and her BFA in Furniture Design from the Savannah College of Art and Design.  Her work uses sculpture as a creative methodology in the exploration of videogame experiences. Through the reinterpretation of virtual interactions and objects into physical spaces, she is interested in revealing underlying -or- hidden aspects of game structure that are otherwise not apparent during regular game play.  

Rebecca Stahr is a visual artist living with her husband and son in a conservation community surrounded by the beautiful native prairie of northern Illinois. Rebecca went on to attend the American Academy of Art in Chicago, studying advertising, graphic design and illustration, where she graduated in 1992. After more than 20 years of working in the commercial art field, Rebecca is now a full time artist. She is a member of various professional organizations and has work displayed in many private collections and public gallery spaces in the greater Chicago and Milwaukee areas.

For over the past 10 years, Rebecca has been struggling with a growing battle of auto-immune illness and chronic pain. Rebecca has learned to use this pain as a lens which informs her art.  Rebecca’s art is inspired by being able to find beauty and value in the broken, as well as the impermanence and cycles of life and nature. The works created point toward a of reflection of deeper value and identity and enables compassion for humanity’s brokenness and imperfection.

Deanna Krueger works abstractly at the juncture where painting, sculpture, and drawing intersect, employing a variety of media, resulting in hybrid works of art.

Deanna received her MFA from Eastern Michigan University. Recent exhibitions include Mediative Surfaces exhibition in Fort Wayne Museum of Art, along with: Mediative Surfaces at North Central College, ZIA Gallery, and The Art Center - Highland Park. All curated by Chuck Gniech. She has received numerous fellowships and awards exhibited widely across the United States. 

Her work can be found in collections of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Reyes Holdings, Rosemont, IL; University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School; and numerous private collections across the United States and Europe 

Parallel Lives is created and curated by Luis Martin, Founder and Chief Curator of Parenthesis Art Space currently located at Brooklyn Brush Studios in Brooklyn. The exhibition kicks off in Chicago at Next Level Gallery at the Zhou B Art Center co-curated by Sergio Gomez, Founder and Director of NXT Level Projects.

This collaboration invites the audience of both cities to think about art and the Artists that made the work in terms of context and questions the influence of place and time. Furthermore, the PARALLEL LIVES series will create a platform to expand the Artist’s reach to forge a wider sense of community and visibility.

Both events coincide with established community art events. The Chicago opening will occur on May 20th, during “Third Fridays”, a longstanding monthly program initiated by Sergio Gomez that has created a robust audience around the Artists at the Zhou B Art Center. The New York opening takes center stage in Bushwick during an annual weekend summer arts festival, that is now a major attraction for the New York art audience.

Julia Haw (b. 1982, Flint, MI) attended Western Michigan University with a concentration in painting.  She is recognized for her highly bold, nostalgia-inducing and memory-staining paintings. She deals with issues rooted in personal life, Midwestern culture and Western Culture at large that delve into feminism, ageism, memory deterioration, death, intimacy and confrontation. She uses oil paint on cotton or linen as her mainstay medium, in order to achieve empathetic coverage of these socially and emotionally shared issues, and has been able to achieve considerable viewer pause through her dedicated work habit, vibrant color choices, straightforward subject matter, and by using people and objects within her community as models.  Haw’s paintings tend to function as highly relatable, ensuing discussion amongst viewers, and bringing the public forum necessarily back.    

Her work has been exhibited in such places as the Chicago Cultural Center, IL State Museum, and extensively with Claire Molek.

Enrico Magnani is an Italian artist who is living among Italy, France, and Germany. His first exhibition opened November 1997 in Milan. Until 2006 he worked as figurative painter and after a transition period his work has become exclusively abstract. His original abstract artworks have brought him in few years to international attention and been presented in museums, foundations, private galleries, and public institutions in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, UK, Vatican City, and the USA. 

Lisa was awarded an Artists Residency at the Studios of Key West for 2016. She was one of six artists awarded a two year Residency from 2010-2012 at the Merchandise Mart of Chicago. Her art appears on the cover of NY Times Bestseller, Colum McCann's novel, TransAtlantic, which won the 2015 D&AD Award of Excellence in London, England. Domenic Iacono awarded Lisa Best of Show in the 2014 Less Is More Exhibition at the Mitchell Gallery in Annapolis, MD. She is featured on the Cable TV Show, Artist to Artist, is a multiple Award Winner through Manhattan Arts International, exhibits throughout the United States and has her art in private/public collections throughout the world.  

Alberto Aguilar wrote this biography but will be speaking in third person. For an unexplained reason he has omitted the word art from this paragraph but has made one exception. Alberto is a Chicago based ___ist and teaches at Harold Washington College. He is coordinator of Pedestrian Project a program dedicated to making ___ more accessible and available to all. Currently he is ___ist in residence at the ___ Institute of Chicago. Aguilar's creative practice incorporates whatever materials are at hand as well as exchanges with others. His work integrates his various life roles and has been exhibited at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary ___, the Queens Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American __, the Nelson-Atkins Museum and the Minneapolis Institute of ___.

Dan Ramirez been exhibiting Nationally and Internationally for over 35 years. A major influence in his work during his formative years was the Minimalist movement of the late 50’s and 60’s and a love for the art of Barnett Newman. Over time, his paintings developed into a synthesis of Geometric Abstraction coupled with the visual aesthetic of Minimalism. Dan tends to see his work as a form of Minimalist/Romantic/Baroque.

Dan is in the collections of numerous major museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, The National Museum of Mexican Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, MOCRA, St. Louis, The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, and Fundacion Llorens Artigas in Spain. There are numerous books and publications featuring his work and he is currently represented in Chicago by Zolla Liberman Gallery.

Mandy Cano Villalobos mingles cultural histories and personal narrative to make sense of nostalgic sentiments and life’s ephemerality. Her materials include dirt, human hair, and pig blood, which she employs as a dual symbol of filth and redemption. In the Sisyphus series, the artist repetitively marks the paper with circular patterns, thus transforming the action of painting into a meditative ritual. Erogenous and mournful, Modern Day Magdalene is a bed of burlap and human hair, a quiet reflection upon the disappointments and desires of an aging woman. Among these pieces and others, Cano Villalobos provides a thoughtful, somewhat sad pause, through which viewers might recognize their own vulnerabilities amidst her visceral materials and the stories she grafts into her work.

070 Artist Edra Soto shares her story and talks about the “Present Standard” exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center.

Edra Soto (b. Puerto Rico, 1971) is a Chicago-based artist, educator, curator, and gallery director. She obtained her Master of Fine Arts degree at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000, as well as attending Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2000), Beta-Local in Puerto Rico (2011), and the Robert Rauschenberg Residency Program in Captiva, Florida though a 3Arts Fellowship (2013), among others. She recently co-curated  with artist Josue Pellot the exhibition PRESENT STANDARD at the Chicago Cultural Center. With her husband Dan Sullivan, she designed and fabricated THE FRANKLIN, an outdoor project space that they co-direct. THE FRANKLIN has received support from various institutions, including the Propeller Fund. Soto has received a commission from the Chicago Transit Authority, and her GRAFT project will be featured at the Western Avenue stop on the train line to O'Hare Airport. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and she is an instructor at the School of the Art institute of Chicago.

Artist Brandon Graving talks about experimental printmaking and surviving Hurricane Katrina. Brandon Graving is an artist whose focus is experimental printmaking and sculpture. She has expanded and contributed to experimental techniques in printmaking and been at the forefront of creating very large scale monoprints. Her print installation " Ephemera: River with Flowers" , is the largest monoprint made by a single artist measuring 10.5' x 32'. Collected by the Frederick R.Weisman Foundation, this work was on exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.

Born in Iran to the daughter of a civil engineer, and an educated artist, Sarvin Haghighi experienced great joys, and harsh challenges. In a very short while, the pendulum would swing from privilege and independence to experiencing war firsthand, and the most basic of freedoms revoked. for Sarvin, the answer was art.

Sarvin Haghighi merges traditional Iranian art forms with a contemporary sensibility. In combining Farsi calligraphy and Islamic architectural designs with mixed media (including resin and gold leaf) and bold lines and framing, Haghighi affirms the enduring aesthetic of a culture that is too often represented through the limited lenses of war and political turmoil. The meticulous composition of these works share the laconic beauty of Rumi’s poetry, which ultimately works to create and emotionally resonant homage to tradition in the frantic modern world.