What drives cultural practitioners to experiment, discover, and create?
We spoke to Jymie Merritt (2016) a pioneering bassist and composer who, over the last 60 years, has played with some of the most acclaimed American jazz and blues artists in history, including Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, B. B. King, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, and Chet Baker.
We spoke to Tokay Tomah (2016), a traditional African vocalist, composer, and recording artist who has dedicated her career to inspiring dialogue about critical issues facing Liberian immigrant communities.
Ann Hamilton on her interest in exploring the social and material connotations of cloth.
We spoke to Christopher Colucci (2016), whose sound designs for theater are distinguished by their sense of musicality and, in the artist’s words, a “sensitivity to the power of sound to evoke the ineffable.”
We spoke to Heidi Saman (2016), a filmmaker influenced by Italian neo-realism’s emphasis on working-class protagonists, whose own work examines cultural identity, family, class, and daily life among Arab Americans.
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founding director of Urban Bush Women, reflects on her artistic evolution and the importance of living on the "edge of failure."
Choreographers Reggie Wilson and Faustin Linyekula discuss the role of "place" in their artistic practices.
Performance artist Martha McDonald and visual artist Billy Dufala on how creating art at a recycling facility influences their understanding of impermanence.
In advance of the premiere of Breaking the Waves, we invited Mazzoli and Vavrek to share insights into their artistic processes and inspirations.
Cohabitation Strategies and Anthony Smyrski discuss how new understandings of design can better relate to and engage communities.