AMERICA: NOW and HERE
Eric Fischl is an internationally acclaimed American painter and sculptor. His artwork is represented in many distinguished museums throughout the world and has been featured in over one thousand publications. His extraordinary achievements throughout his career have made him of one of the most influential figurative painters of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Eric has taken on a new and exciting role as the curator of "America: Now and Here" (ANH), www.americanowandhere.org, a vast new art exhibition with visual art, poetry, film, music and drama - all embodying "America" - designed to reconnect the nation to its artistic roots and genius. The project will launch with a national tractor-trailer tour of the main exhibition.
A key component will be the creation of Artist Corps - a program that will enable students and emerging artists to inject themselves, and their towns, into an inclusive artistic community by helping to find and document "America" in their own cities and communities. There will be response shows as the tour moves across the country each year featuring local artists, filmmakers, playwrights, poets and singer/songwriters so that ANH will be an ongoing dialogue about our country from both a national and regional perspectives.
ANH Artist Corps
The program invites art and design students and young emerging artists to explore America and to share what they discover and their ideas through new works of art— submissions will be featured on the project website and in publications.
Equally important to enhancing America: Now and Here content with the work of young talent, Artist Corps will provide opportunities for young artists and designers to participate in art education and community service. Explore the work of several artists we have commissioned to go out and find America:
Maggie Mull
Ki Ho Park Second year Photography MFA at RISD
"My project is called Everything Must Go. But in fact, each closed store, left in a hurry, is filled with stories of broken promises and uncertain futures."
Jordan Baumgarten First year Photography MFA at RISD
"A lot of the people I spoke to [about gun-ownership] were somewhat apprehensive about opening up to me, especially when I had my camera with me, because if you think about it, the camera is like a gun. But I found that people were more open to me when they learned I was a gun-owner myself."
Alexander Winthrop Senior in Sculpture at RISD (now graduated)
One Thousand Eighty Degrees (High Quality) from alexander Winthrop on Vimeo.
"I set out to explore public spaces and to see if they were functioning at the levels they should be, but ran into really horrible rain and found myself mostly alone in neighborhood parks. At first, I felt pretty lost, but I think that eventually...worked much better as a starting place for exploration."
Michael Mergen First Year, Photography MFA at RISD
"We tend to think of voting as this great civic duty, and I know I thought of polling places as being in schools or city halls or other grand civic structures. But I found...people voting in car dealerships and funeral homes and garages, which was so incongruous with what we all believe and propogate."
Arielle Avenia Printmaking, Senior
"My initial work consists of 5 etchings that are the result of a day tip to Newport, Rhode Island. I was born there and many of my early memories are of places in the town....I wanted my final piece to show a power and gesture of combined symbolism that my initial studies did not have. I created a drawing that was a compilation of collected symbolism from my memory of being a child when I lived in Newport, as well as from the initial drawings that I made from observation."
ERIC'S PRESENTATION AT THE ARTS CLUB
