From zenhabits@gmail.com:

Learning to Sit Alone, in a Quiet Empty Room

‘All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.’ ~Blaise Pascal

Post written by Leo Babauta.

Think about some of the problems of our daily lives, and how many of them would be eased if we could learn to sit alone, in a quiet empty room, with contentment.

If you’re content to sit alone quietly, you don’t need to eat junk food, to shop on impulse, to buy the latest gadget, to be on social media to see what everyone else is talking about or doing, to compare yourself to others, to make more money to keep up with the Joneses, to achieve glory or power, to conquer other lands or wage war, to be rude or violent to others, to be selfish or greedy, to be constantly busy or productive.

You are content, and need nothing else. It solves a lot of problems.

Can you sit alone in an empty room? Can you enjoy the joy of quiet?

Most of us have trouble sitting alone, quietly, doing nothing. We have the need to do something, to check our inboxes and social media, to be productive. Sitting still can be difficult if you haven’t cultivated the habit.

I’ve been learning. In the morning, as my coffee is brewing, I sit. Even for a few minutes, at first, it is instructive. You learn to listen to your thoughts, to be aware of your urges to do something else, to plan and set goals. You learn to watch yourself, but to just sit still and not act on those urges. You learn to be content with stillness.

You learn to savor the quiet. It’s something most of us don’t have, quiet, and it takes some getting used to. When we’re driving our cars or out exercising or eating or working, we have music playing or we talk with people or we have the television on. Quiet can be amazing, though, because it helps us calm down, contemplate, slow down to savor the emptiness.

An empty room, too, is a luxury. I try to empty my room of clutter, so that it’s fairly bare. That leaves only me, and the room is a blank slate ready to be filled with me, my creativity, my silence. I love a spartan room.

Being alone is another pleasure we too often neglect. When we are alone, we go on the Internet or TV to see what else is going on, what others are doing or saying, instead of just being alone. This isolation is a necessary thing, that allows us to find ourselves, to learn to be content with little instead of always wanting more.

Can you practice being alone, being still, being quiet? Just a little at first, then perhaps a bit more. Listen, watch, learn about yourself. Find contentment. Need nothing more.

Anselm Kiefer works on a grand scale. On Friday the artist will sign a contract to buy the Mülheim-Kärlich reactor, a decommissioned nuclear power station near Koblenz, Germany. And on the same day Kiefer, one of Germany’s most celebrated postwar artists, will attend the opening night of his biggest show ever in Britain, spread over 11,000 sq ft of the newly opened White Cube gallery in south London.

Kiefer’s art is deeply serious, dense with both esoteric symbolism and political meaning. The show, Il Mistero delle Cattedrali, takes its title from a 1926 book by Fulcanelli, a mysterious figure who practised alchemy, and contains monumental paintings and sculptures alluding to ideas from the philosopher’s stone to the second world war.

“Art is difficult,” says the 66-year-old firmly. “It’s not entertainment. There are only a few people who can say something about art – it’s very restricted. When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it’s art or not. Buying art is not understanding art.”

Kiefer, 66, misses the days of the 70s and 80s when art collectors such as Donald Fisher – founder of the Gap clothing stores – took a year to decide whether they wanted to buy a work or not. He refuses to allow his works to be auctioned, or even for his gallerists to discuss the art market with him.

Though he has been acclaimed by critics such as Simon Schama, who called him “incapable of producing trivia”, and was the first artist since Georges Braque in 1953 to make a work to go permanently on show at the Louvre, Kiefer regards himself as underground compared with artists like Damien Hirst, who he says makes “anti-art”.

But he’s at pains to point out that this “anti-art” is itself part of art. “Art has something which destroys its own cells,” says Kiefer. “Damien Hirst is a great anti-artist. To go to Sothebys and sell your paintings directly” – as Hirst did in 2008 – “is destroying art. But in doing it to such an exaggerated extent, it becomes art. I liked this action, the Sotheby’s sale, and the fact that it was two days before the crash made it even better.” In fact, Hirst’s auction, which netted £93m, and the collapse of Lehman Brothers happened at the same time, 15-16 September.

It sounds as though Kiefer, who was born in the Black Forest but has lived in France since 1991, endorses Charles Saatchi’s view that the art world is eurotrashy, vulgar and masturbatory. “He described himself, no?” says the artist, laughing uproariously. “[These days] art becomes fashion, it becomes [financial] speculation, but Saatchi started it.”

Ever since his first famous work Occupations (Bezetzung), in which Kiefer, then a student, photographed himself giving the Nazi salute in different locations around Europe, the artist has interrogated Germany’s relationship with its dark past. One room in the current exhibition includes four enormous paintings depicting Tempelhof airport in Berlin, which closed down in 2008. Built in 1927, the Nazis intended the enormous structure to be their gateway to Europe in Albert Speer’s redesigned Berlin. It was described as “the mother of all airports” by architect Norman Foster.

“Germans want to forget [the past] and start a new thing all the time, but only by going into the past can you go into the future,” says Kiefer.

At the moment, he complains, “they have fashion shows at Tempelhof and all this nonsense. There’s an office, an ice skating rink – it’s trivialising. I wrote [Berlin's cultural department] a letter, saying ‘In the cathedral, you don’t bicycle.’ I spoke with Norman Foster and he said it was a pity they didn’t do something dignified with the locality.”

For instance? “They could give it to me. I could invite five or 10 artists and we could do something there, or they could do exhibitions, or use it as a private airport like Le Bourget in Paris.”

What prevents this, says Kiefer, is that Germans don’t distinguish between Nazi architecture and Nazi art. “Nazi art is really horrible, it’s boring, but the architecture of the 30s isn’t specifically German, it was the architecture of its time. Speer was a bad politician, but he wasn’t a bad architect.”

After unification, says Kiefer, Berlin should have been rebuilt along the lines planned out by Speer for Hitler, in the way that Paris wouldn’t exist in the way it does without Georges-Eugène Haussmann, commissioned by Napoleon III to modernise the city, “but in Germany it’s difficult – they are afraid of taboos”. He adds that the Berlin wall – “or part of the wall” – should have been left intact as a memorial, “and this empty space between east and west. I believe in empty spaces, they’re the most wonderful thing.”The White Cube show features images of apocalypse and regeneration, of alchemical scales, Stuka-like bombers and sunflowers, heavyweight both literally (Kiefer often works with lead) and figuratively.

An artwork was also planned for the outside wall of the gallery, but decided against at the last minute. “It was too busy there,” says Kiefer. Not that he worried about it being damaged by the public: “they can touch it, they can spray on it, I don’t care.”

Indeed, his pieces are often weathered by the elements – for instance, a giant, rusty satellite dish protrudes out of one painting.

Kiefer says that the current turmoil in Europe influences his thinking and the meaning of his work, “but you cannot see it immediately in the paintings – I am not a daily political artist.”

He approves of Angela Merkel. “I’m very happy that a woman is in power, I think they are better. We [men] are inferior.” Merkel, he says, “doesn’t want to be charismatic – she does her job in an old, Prussian way, and that impresses me. She decided to save Europe, and for that I must congratulate her.”

He is fervently pro-European, a theme which he says “pushes me”. “On a cultural level, we need Europe,” he says. “Germany alone is not good.” He says that he’d like to see Europe like the USA – “I would go so far” – with regions like Île-de-France, Bordeux and north Germany the individual states within it. “It doesn’t mean that you lose any [region's] specific individual charisma. Europe is a big political organisation and then you have all these countries – it’s wonderful, no? We need Europe in an aesthetic way and a political way, and Merkel is now on the right way.”

So what of the power station? Kiefer professes himself amused by the fuss that ensued when he announced that he was buying the Mülheim-Kärlich reactor, since “that’s what I do all the time: I buy old factories, I move in I transform them and then I leave them and give them to some collector as I did in Germany and the south of France.”

He denies that the decision to buy the building was influenced by the Fukushima disaster, and says that standing inside the power station’s cooling tower was “overwhelming. It’s so wonderful it’s like the Pantheon. It will be a challenge for me to do something with it because it’s already very good.”

It’s all part of his mission to confront the past. “In Germany, if something is finished, they like to flatten it, bring it down, make the grass grow over it. That’s no good. You should keep these old buildings because they played a role and they can teach us something. I’m against the idea of bringing all these power stations down. I said, ‘I’ll take them all if you want’.”

Created by artist Noah Fischer and published on Paddy Johnson’s Tumblr, Occupy Museums! is a protest call to fight the “intense commercialization and co-optation of art” that has occurred in recent years. The plan is to visit a trio of New York City art museums and occupy them, asking the museums to “open their minds and hearts.”

The  polemical manifesto argues for fighting museums as manifestations of the cultural power of Occupy Wall Street’s targeted “1 percent.” The full text of the call is below, with boldfaced highlights added:

The game is up: we see through the pyramid schemes of the temples of cultural elitism controlled by the 1%. No longer will we, the artists of the 99%, allow ourselves to be tricked into accepting a corrupt hierarchical system based on false scarcity and propaganda concerning absurd elevation of one individual genius over another human being for the monetary gain of the elitest of elite. For the past decade and more, artists and art lovers have been the victims of the intense commercialization and co-optation or art. We recognize that art is for everyone, across all classes and cultures and communities. We believe that the Occupy Wall Street Movement will awaken a consciousness that art can bring people together rather than divide them apart as the art world does in our current time…

Let’s be clear. Recently, we have witnessed the absolute equation of art with capital. The members of museum boards mount shows by living or dead artists whom they collect like bundles of packaged debt. Shows mounted by museums are meant to inflate these markets. They are playing with the fire of the art historical cannon while seeing only dancing dollar signs. The wide acceptance of cultural authority of leading museums have made these beloved institutions into corrupt ratings agencies or investment banking houses- stamping their authority and approval on flimsy corporate art and fraudulent deals.

For the last few decades, voices of dissent have been silenced by a fearful survivalist atmosphere and the hush hush of BIG money. To really critique institutions, to raise one’s voice about the disgusting excessive parties and spectacularly out of touch auctions of the art world while the rest of the country suffers and tightens its belt was widely considered to be bitter, angry, uncool. Such a critic was a sore loser. It is time to end that silence not in bitterness, but in strength and love! Because the occupation has already begun and the creativity and power of the people has awoken! The Occupywallstreet Movement will bring forth an era of new art, true experimentation outside the narrow parameters set by the market. Museums, open your mind and your heart! Art is for everyone! The people are at your door!

In a slightly strange string of targets, Occupy Museums! plans to occupy the Museum of Modern Art, the Frick Collection, and the New Museum. Beginning at the Occupy Wall Street site, the march’s itinerary includes calls to occupy a series of subway trains as well.

Art and artists are a powerful part of the Occupy Wall Street protests but Occupy Museums! is attempting to bring the protest spirit directly into the art world (maybe Fischer should talk to the proprietor of a certain Twitter account). Except these museums — public institutions as they are — don’t really seem to be fitting targets for such vitriol. Try Gagosian gallery, maybe?

UPDATE: Fischer has noted that the Occupy Museums! action has been approved of by Occupy Wall Street’s Art and Culture group, of which the artist is a part. Occupy Museums! “is definitely not just my personal project,” Fischer writes, “it’s broadly part of the Occupy Movement’s aim to claim back the commons back from the 1% — from economic justice to public space, to art.” The statements that will be read will also be approved of by consensus.

For now, I’m reposting a piece written some time ago about the jurying process, because the issue arises again and again.  We tend to be dismayed when our work is declined. Yep, I am also guilty of this, feeling the pangs of disappointment that the nasty word “rejection” calls up. Throwing a quiet fit, I swear I’ll never paint again.  But as a member of the Exhibition Committee, I’ve watched the process of jurying, watched the submissions and the pickups, seen the artists’ discouragement, and have developed a much more accepting attitude.  The tantrum passes in under 5 minutes. A new painting I was rather proud of was just declined, and the juror said “it simply didn’t fit with anything else.”  She was absolutely right.  She spoke of selecting artworks that created a conversation with one another so that the show flows.  It’s not a contest, not about which pieces are the best and worst. When you decorate a room in your home, you don’t put in everything you love…you choose elements that are in harmony.  Yes, it’s frustrating to create something outstanding that doesn’t fit in, but the resulting shows are beautiful in themselves.  Try to think of it as sacrificing the part in favor of the whole.

Here’s the earlier writing:

As artists, our egos are fairly fragile, and hardened as we may be against “rejection,” it always hurts a little.  Some of us react with anger, some with tears, some with a shrug and “try next time” attitude, and some swear we’re done with art altogether, or done with the WAAM.

It helps to have an understanding of the submission and jurying processes.  We have to remember that IT IS NOT PERSONAL.  The Exhibition Committee has worked hard to select unbiased and highly qualified, often prestigious jurors who are not members of our group, and it’s important to respect their vision and their decisions.  Something we, as individuals wanting our art to be viewed, tend to forget is that an exhibit is much more than simply a gathering of the “best” work hanging on walls…an exhibit is a work of art in itself, with the juror as the artist.  He or she attempts to create a cohesive and balanced show in which the pieces complement each other and show to their best advantage.  This means that many very worthy works simply don’t fit that vision and must reluctantly be put aside.  Often the same piece that is declined for one show will win an award at the next one…this has happened to me and to a number of other WAAM artists.

It’s very important to present your work at its best: be sure it is nicely framed and matted, that it  looks clean and professional.  If you can afford it, have it framed professionally, or at least make sure your mat is well-cut and not smudged, any nicks in the frame are touched up, the glass is polished, and that it is wired properly for hanging.

When your name is not on the Accepted list, the best attitude is the one of the shrug; trust your own judgment and if you’re proud of your work, bring it back next month.

Check out the “random interesting art stuff” for a most interesting article about the judging process, from Professional Artist magazine.

Saturday, September 24, 4pm

$10 / $5 to WAAM members

The Woodstock Artists Association and Museum (WAAM) presents a lecture on Saturday, September 24 at 4 pm entitled “ To Make a World: George Ault, Woodstock, and 1940s America” by Alexander Nemerov,  Vincent Scully Professor of the History of Art at Yale University and the curator of the recent Smithsonian exhibition on Ault. The talk is presented with funding from the Milton and Sally Avery Foundation. The talk is $10 or $5 to current WAAM members and is presented with support from the Milton and Sally Avery Foundation.

The life of George Ault (1891-1948) is the tragic (while intriguing) story of an artist driven to alcoholism and depression after a series of personal catastrophes as well as financial devastation in the 1920s and 30s.  In 1937, Ault and his future wife Louise moved to Woodstock, New York and remained there until his death eleven years later.  At his home in the quiet rural town, Ault found respite and order in a life devoted to household chores, yard work, and the meticulous execution of his paintings. The artist discovered particular inspiration in an intersection just a few hundred yards from Woodstock’s Village Green, a junction known as Russell’s Corners, which he portrayed in several major paintings. Curator and author Nemerov writes of the Ault painting Black Night, Russell’s Corners (1943) in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Elements of disquiet are there, certainly:  some windows of the red barn at left tilt strangely; the angled dead tree counters the straightness of the telephone poles; and the telephone wires disappear into the black night that gives the painting its title. But the sense of geometry wrested from blankness and emptiness remains. Ault “painted to make order out of chaos,” his friend John Ruggles recalled in 1949. “The words of A. E. Housman, ‘I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made,’ touched him acutely.

Late November in the Catskills (1940) from the WAAM Permanent Collection is part of the exhibition To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America, which ended this month at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The WAAM Permanent Collection includes several paintings by Ault in its collection, including Jane Street Corner, Hudson (a sister painting to an oil in the Whitney Museum of American Art), a tonalist landscape from 1911 painted in France where the young artist studied, and a number of other oils and drawings which provide an excellent overview of the artist’s career.  The WAAM also published a catalogue and organized an exhibition in 2001 entitled George Ault, The Woodstock Years, which was curated by Eila Kokkinen.

The Smithsonian exhibition travels to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO (October 15, 2011– January 8, 2012) and to the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA (February 18, 2012–April 16, 2012).  The exhibition centers on five paintings Ault made between 1943 and 1948 depicting the crossroads of Russell’s Corners in Woodstock.  The additional twenty-two artists represented in the exhibition include Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth.

Alexander Nemerov teaches and writes about American visual culture from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century, focusing on painting, sculpture, photography, and film. In addition to the Ault catalogue, he is also the author of Acting in the Night: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War, published in 2010, about a single night’s performance of Macbeth attended by Abraham Lincoln in Washington in 1863. He is the author of a book on film—Icons of Grief: Val Lewton’s Home Front Pictures (2005)—and two books on painting, The Body of Raphaelle Peale: Still Life and Selfhood, 1812-1824 (2001), and Frederic Remington and Turn-of-the-Century America (1995). In 2011-12 he is teaching a graduate seminar at Yale on the 1930s in America, and an introductory survey of the history of Western art from the Renaissance to the present.

For details about these and other events and a list of all exhibitions, explore our website at www.woodstockart.org or call 845 679-2940. The Woodstock Artists Association & Museum is located at 28 Tinker Street in the heart of Woodstock, New York and is open on Friday and Saturday from 12 – 6 pm and Sunday, Monday, Thursday 12 – 5 pm. The WAAM is a not-for-profit membership organization featuring a landmark collection of regional art, contemporary artist galleries, and a dynamic education program.  Exhibition and programs are supported by the WAAM Founders Circle, other individual supporters and membership.

The reception for the new exhibits in the Main Gallery, Small Works, Active Member Wall, and Youth Exhibition Space will follow the concert, from 4-6 PM.  And stop by next door at the Kleinert to see the Eccentric Portraits exhibit, featuring some of our WAAM artists among others…4-6 PM.
Main Gallery : September Group Show; September 10 – October 10
Juror: Brian Wallace, Curator of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz
Doris Lee/Elfriede Borkman Award($100): Michael Fattizzi
Honorable Mention: Patti Ferrara, Jennifer Neff, and Paulette Esrig
Featured Artists:  
Loel Barr, Joel Benten, Miriam Bisceglia, Sophia K. Browne, Mari-Claire Charba, David Morris Cunningham, Ron DeNitto, Lynne Digby, Christopher Engel, Paulette Esrig, Michael Fattizzi, Patti Ferrara, Kari Feuer, Angela Gaffney-Smith, Bob Glassman, Laura Gurton, Calvin Grimm, Marilyn Hauser, Catherine Hazard, Franz Heigemeir, Peter Heller, Annette Jaret, James Karayannides, Lenny Kislin, Gretchen Langheld, Barbara Tepper Levy, Dolores Lynch, Dan McCormack, Wilma Miller, Joy Moore, Michelle Moran, Art Murphy, Vince Natale, Jennifer E. Neff, Paula Nelson, Stephen Niccolls, Petra Nimtz, Sandra Nystrom, Pia Oste-Alexander, Susan Phillips, Paul Stewart, Llyn Towner, Claudia Waruch

Founders Gallery: Small Works
Juror: Judith Hoyt, an award winning artist who works in found metal, collage and encaustic.
Alan Koff Award ($100): Carol Davis
Honorable Mention: William Gotebeski, Bob Glassman, and Ellie Steffan
Featured Artists:
Joel Benten, Bobby Blitzer, Joanna Borrero, Rosalyn Z. Clark, Carol Davis, Margarete de Soleil, Michael Fattizzi, Stacie Flint, Reidunn Fraas,
Bob Glassman, William Gotebeski, F. Tor Gudmundsen, Catherine Hazard, Franz Heigemeir, John Kleinhans, Polly M. Law, Kate McGloughlin, Elin Menzies,
Wilma Miller, Gloria Mirsky, Vince Natale, Stephen Niccolls, Pia Oste-Alexander, Valerie Owen, Barbara Adrienne Rosen, Rita Sherry, Eleanor Steffen,
Rosalind Tobias, Karl Volk

Solo Gallery: C. Michael Norton

Active Member Wall: Lucette Runsdorf

Youth Exhibition Space: Homeschool Art

Woodstock, NY, August 19, 2011  -  Mimi Goese and Ben Neill will perform John Cage’s famous composition 4’33” at the Woodstock Artists Association Museum (WAAM) at 7pm on Monday, August 29, 2011.  WAAM is located at 28 Tinker St. in Woodstock and can be reached at (845) 679-2940.

The piece was composed in 1952 for “any instrument (or combination of instruments), and the score instructs the performer not to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece.”  It was first performed in Woodstock on August 29, 1952, presented by the Woodstock Artists Association at the Maverick Concert Hall.  This will be the 59th anniversary of that performance.

It is an enormously influential piece in the world of art and is considered by many to be the perfect minimalist creation.

Norm Magnusson, who is producing this concert, saw it performed years ago by composer, percussionist, and avant-guardian David Van Tieghem and recounts that he was “surprised at how deeply moved he was by the purity of the work.”  He adds: “4’33”, on one level, seems to be as close to artistic perfection as an artist can get.”  After hearing it performed, Magnusson researched the piece, discovered that it had debuted in Woodstock, and decided to put on an anniversary concert.  This is it.
Mimi Goese is known as the lead singer/co-songwriter of Hugo Largo, the critically acclaimed minimalist punk/pop group who released two albums on Brian Eno’s Opal label in the ’80s. After touring with musician/producer Hector Zazou and co-writing/singing on the Moby album Everything is Wrong, Goese’s solo album Soak was released by Luaka Bop, David Byrne’s label.
Ben Neill is a composer, performer, producer, and inventor of the mutantrumpet, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument. He has recorded eight CDs of his music on labels including Universal/Verve, Thirsty Ear, Astralwerks and Six Degrees. His most recent CD Night Science was released in 2009 on Thirsty Ear.

The Woodstock Artists Association & Museum was founded in 1919 to exhibit and collect work in all media by area artists and to support the tradition of Woodstock as the “Colony of the Arts.”  It is a super awesome place that has attained even higher levels of awesomeness by agreeing to host this concert.

After the concert there will be a short Q&A with assembled experts on Cage and 4’33” and Mimi and Ben may or may not play one or two of their own pieces off of their new CD: Songs for Persephone.

Questions?  Answers?  Call Norm Magnusson or Carl Van Brunt (845-679-2940) at WAAM.
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BOARD ELECTION RESULTS

The votes are in, and the candidates elected for the six open active member seats are Christopher Engel, Pat Horner, David Marell, David Morris Cunningham, Susan J. Neff, and Llyn Towner.  Vivienne Hodges was elected as an Associate Member candidate.  No longer serving on the board are Susan Nickerson, Mercedes Cecilia, and Marcello Amari.  Congratulations to our new and re-elected Board members!  And to those leaving, thanks for your generous service to the WAAM.

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SOLO SHOW JURYING

Submissions for 2012 Solo Show Jurying are due on Friday, Sept. 2.

Guidelines for Submission for 2012 Solo Show Jurying  
1. Submit 12 digital images on a CD (PC compatible) or 35 mm slides in a plastic sleeve. Digital images should be jpegs sized 4″ x 5″ at 300 ppi (1200 pixels x 1500 pixels). All images must be identified with artist last name, first name, and number (ie. SmithJane1) that correspond to a separate list (see 2 below). CDs should be clearly marked with artist’s full name and phone number.   
2. Submit a numbered list of images with title, date, medium, and size, along with your name and contact information. Numbers should correspond to numbered images (ie. number 1 should be 
SmithJane1 etc). 
3. Include a resume and artist statement.
4. If you would like your materials returned, include a SASE. The WAAM is not responsible for return of materials otherwise.
5. If you are not a currently paid member of WAAM, you must pay a $40 submission fee. All solo artists are required to be paid members at the time of their shows.
6. Additional materials or incomplete submissions will not be considered.
Juror for 2012 Solo Exhibitions
Juror D. Dominick Lombardi is an artist, writer and curator. Lombardi was Art Critic for the Westchester edition of the New York Times for seven years.  He has shown his paintings, drawings, sculptures and screen prints throughout the USA and abroad since 1977. Feature articles and reviews of his art have appeared in many publications including ARTnews, The New York Times and Time Out.

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AUCTION

Sunday, September 4, at 1 PM, to be held at 
WAAM – 28 Tinker St – Woodstock, NY 12498

Preview hours start 
Fri, Aug 26; Fri & Sat 12-6 pm 
Sun to Thurs 12-5 pm

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Don’t forget to check the Opportunities and Exhibits pages!

If you are a currently paid, ACTIVE artist member of the WAAM, you have the right to vote for the full slate of candidates for the Board elections.

Please review candidate statements below, print and fill out the message/ballot you received by email, and return it by mail, fax, or submit it in person at the Membership Meeting on August 21.  YOU MAY NOT VOTE BY EMAIL.  Please call or email if you have any questions, problems printing this ballot, or if your record of your membership status differs from ours.

BALLOT FOR ELECTION TO THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

VOTE by placing an “x” in the space adjacent to the name.

Candidates for WAAM Board of Directors

Active Member Candidates – VOTE for 6
____Marcello Amari*
____Susan Asarian Nickerson*
____Christopher Engel
____Kari Feuer
____Pat Horner*
____David Marell
____David Morris Cunningham
____Susan J. Neff*
____Llyn Towner*

Associate Member Candidates – VOTE for 1
____Vivienne Hodges*
____Clara Steinzor
* currently serving on the Board

Active members may vote for both Active and Associate member candidates.

2011 ELECTION WAAM BOARD OF DIRECTORS
ACTIVE ARTIST CANDIDATES
Marcello Amari (board member since fall 2007) is a photographer specializing in performance photography. He and his
wife Mimi are involved members of the WAAM and consider themselves to be typically idiosyncratic Woodstockers and
Woodstock artists. “We are grateful for its continuing existence and growth.” He feels that the WAAM provides a unique
opportunity for peer-to-peer relations, low-pressure exhibition, and the preservation of the artistic legacy of Woodstock.
Marcello would like to have the opportunity to contribute more fully to maintaining and nurturing WAAM.
Susan Asarian Nickerson (board member since 2008) lives and works in NYC and has owned property in the Woodstock /
Malden area for over 30 years. Her abstract and mixed media art has been exhibited here and abroad. She is a member of
many groups and is a director and UN representative of The Ribbon International, the largest peace arts project ever. She
has curated and juried exhibits, served on boards and benefit committees and been a panelist and co-producer of TV arts
programs. She is an artist advocate who hopes to continue this work at WAAM.
Christopher Engel has had a home in the Catskills near Woodstock since 1988. After 15 years with the New York Times
Christopher he has now been living full time in the hamlet of Halcottsville working full time as a painter. Christopher began
life in New York City after attending the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. Eventually Christopher left a
successful career in advertising, as an art director, to become a fine artist. He then attended the Art Students league for five
years which ended with a year of studying painting with the late abstract artist Richard Pousette Dart. Christopher has
exhibited his work in New York City, Seattle, Buffalo and Woodstock.
Kari Feuer: I am a painter and an active artist member of WAAM. I had many design businesses in the past, but chose a
few years ago to focus on art as a vocation. Currently, I am the co-chairman of the new Red Hook Community Arts
Network, which is adding venues to bring the arts and artists to Red Hook. Last year I led Art Studio Views, the Northern
Dutchess studio tour, and have served on the gallery committee at ASK for the past couple years. I have shown my work at
several galleries in the Northeast and am a member of the New York Artists Circle.
Pat Horner (board member since fall 2007) has exhibited in galleries, museums and publications internationally. She
received a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design and attended graduate school in Fine Arts at the University of
Minnesota. Her work is in many collections including the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Center for Photography at
Woodstock. A member of the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum since 1996, Horner has worked in the Archives, on
the Towbin Wing Exhibition Committee, was curator for the Maverick Women Exhibit and helped with several silent
auctions, the Beaux Arts Balls, and many other WAAM events. She has led talks & workshops on “Marketing & Selling
Art” and “Presentation & Marketing” at the WAAM, has served on the Exhibitions Committee since July 2007 and on several
other committees. Horner currently chairs the newly formed Events Committee.
David Marell. I am a graduate of NYU and Pratt Institute. I am a lifelong artist (LLA). In Woodstock I have had shows at
the WAAM, Center For Photography and recently participated in a pop-up show curated by Carl Van Brunt. I taught art and
art education in all grades from elementary school through graduate school, (SUNY New Paltz). I have written and
illustrated four books of poetry. During the 37 years I have lived in the Woodstock Community, I have always been an
active volunteer, and have sat on several boards. Currently I am on The Woodstock Land Conservancy, and Woodstock
Tennis Club board of directors. I believe the WAAM is a fantastic community resource, and would like to bring my
organizational skills, community knowledge, and life experience to help WAAM continue to grow and thrive.
David Morris Cunningham is a working artist/photographer living in Woodstock, NY. He was juried in as an active member
of the WAAM in 2010. David’s most recent body of work, Remembrances of Things Present, had a solo show at the WAAM
in March, 2011. In addition to the WAAM, David’s work has been shown at The Gallery for Fine Art Photography in Fort
Collins, CO; The Cabane Gallery in Phoenicia, NY; The Van Brunt Gallery in Beacon, NY; The Photoplace Gallery in
Middlebury, VT and The Living Room in Kingston, NY. He is a regular contributor to Chronogram and Roll magazines.
David’s work has also been featured in the online magazines Mooncruise and Awosting Alchemy.
Susan J. Neff (Board member since 2008) I would like to continue as a Board Member of the WAAM because I feel, as an
Active Artist Member I still have a lot to contribute to the organization. I am the Chair of the Finance Committee, a member
of the Personnel Committee and on the Awards Committee. I resided in Woodstock from 1946 to 1970 and now reside in
High Falls, NY. I have a degree in Advertising Design and have been an artist my whole life. I have worked for the Rondout
Valley Central Schools for 25 years as a high school secretary doing mainly budget work, and have been treasurer of the
high school student class and club accounts for 23 years. The WAAM has been a part of my life since I was an elementary
student in Woodstock and was included in the student exhibitions. WAAM has been and shall continue to be such a
wonderful part of Woodstock in the past and future and I would like to be a part of that.
Llyn Towner: (board member since 2008) became an Active member of the Woodstock Artists Association in 2002 and
continues to submit regularly to all shows. Llyn is a member of several professional arts organizations. She was elected to
the WAA Board of Directors in 2008, served as Secretary until December 2010, currently chairs the Governance and
Regional Committees, works on a number of other Committees and administers the WAAM Facebook page. She remains
fully committed to the WAAM and would be pleased to serve a second term.
ASSOCIATE MEMBER CANDIDATES
Vivienne Hodges (board member since fall 2007) has lived full-time in Woodstock since 1990, having worked in New York
City in banking and systems. She holds a Ph.D from Columbia University and has written and illustrated over sixty social
studies texts and served as a member of several boards. Vivienne has been Treasurer of the WAAM since 2008, she
helped develop the Investment Policy for WAAM’s endowment funds and currently heads the Personnel Committee. She
has helped write several funded grants including the IMLS grant, the JP MorganChase grant, two NYSCA grants for
WAAM’s Dialog series, and two Helen Littauer education grants. She has studied drawing and painting at the Woodstock
School of Art with Eric Angeloch and Karen O’Neill from 2000-present, painting at the Instituto Allende and Bellas Artes in
San Miguel Mexico 2001-2006, and botanical illustration offered by the Denver Botanic Gardens at San Miguel’s El Charco
in 2011.
Clara Steinzor (Associate Artist Member). My connection to Woodstock traces back to the age of four, when my parents
bought a weekend home in Willow. I moved here full time in 1995, wanting to return to the familiar mountains, finding the
natural beauty of the area to be both a comfort and an inspiration for artistic expression. My favorite
classes during my college years at the University of Michigan were ceramics and photography. I received a Masters degree
in Social Work in 1990. I was inspired to join WAAM in 2010 after taking a collage workshop at the WSA. I quickly realized
that I wanted to have a more active role at WAAM, and so began volunteering on intake days.
I would welcome the opportunity to further my involvement by serving on the Board. I am flexible, a team player, and have
strong interpersonal skills.

Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter

This Monday, August 8, 7 PM; Free at the WAAAM.