WTAF: Women - Travel - Art - Food Kelly Groehler - CEO, Alice Riot

It's refreshing to meet a curator and art advisor who deliberately stands to lift and curate works by women artists. Mollie E. Barnes is the founder of She Curates, an online and social platform that aims to champion equality in the arts. The site showcases works and Mollie’s interviews with hundreds of women artists. She’s also a highly-sought after curator who has been the architect behind a number of significant exhibitions showcasing works by women artists. I highly encourage you to visit her site, she-curates.com and explore the deep catalog of interviews with women artists. And keep an eye on Mollie; I anticipate nothing less than major things yet to come in her art curation career.

Episode resources - Mollie E. Barnes:
IG: @she_curates_
She Curates: https://www.she-curates.com/
Gillian Jason Gallery: https://www.gillianjason.com/about
Art Girl Rising: https://artgirlrising.com/
The Conversation: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6Qz_ZHWjai9jAzb6X3PAA
Guerilla Girls: https://www.guerrillagirls.com/
The Great Women Artists: https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/
Repaint History: https://repainthistory.com/
Sahara Long: https://www.she-curates.com/interviews/artists/sahara-long/
Dani Humberstone: https://www.danihumberstoneart.com/
CloverMill: https://clovermill.nl/
Dame Maggi Hambling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggi_Hambling
Dame Bridget Riley: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/bridget-riley-1845
Dame Tracey Emin: http://www.artnet.com/artists/tracey-emin/

Nina Lance is a Korean-American painter and artist based in Los Angeles. Prior to devoting her time to art and painting, she was a professional photographer for 10 years. Her work has been published in leading industry sites and magazines such as Style Me Pretty, The Knot, and Italian Vogue. Nina also worked in the fashion industry as a designer. Her inspirations include travel, interior design, music, and her life in Southern California. Although she is self-taught, she has been painting and creating since her youth.

Part 2 of our conversation in Minneapolis! Precious Wallace, artist, founder and creator of King P. Studio and Art in Many Forms, talks about the tidal shifts in contemporary art with Kelly and Chef Ann Ahmed - from generational approaches to art collecting and creation to the defining moment of the Minneapolis protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. They also dream about the places where they'll go next.

Episode resources:
https://www.instagram.com/chefannahmed/
https://www.instagram.com/kingpstudio/
https://www.lemongrassmn.com/
https://www.lat14.com/
https://khaluna.com/
Art in Many Forms: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFwVHCoQzhB6swBgR4bawZA

Every time I speak with Marlena Myles, I am reminded to focus on the things in life genuinely worth our appreciation. Marlena is a Native American digital artist – she’s recognized as one of the few Dakota women creating digital art that brings a modernity to indigenous history, languages, and oral traditions.

Marlena is a force who not only fights to preserve indigenous traditions, symbols and culture that refuse to be erased by western traditions and norms. She creates at a prolific level, from her digital prints to interactive holographic public art and murals, to fabrics and children’s books and animations. She recently launched her own literary press.

At Alice Riot, we’re delighted to represent one of Marlena’s works, Garden of Harmony – a piece brimming with Dakota symbolism that honors the plants, pollinators and morning star that all connect with Unci Maka, or Grandmother Earth. It’s in a single glance both history and the future, with an accessible appeal that anyone, from any culture, can recognize and appreciate.

She’s also a shrewd critic of the Western systems and norms that have created some of the very real challenges facing the planet. In fact, she’s one of the rare voices I’ve heard in the art world against NFTs for an obvious reason most don’t consider: the amount of literal energy needed to power those darn little digital tokens. You know, our energy grid, still mainly based on fossil fuels that ultimately destroy the ecosystem she celebrates in her art.

I’m hell-bent on having her collaborate with Adam Ant, one of her favorite pop culture icons whom she equally appreciates for his respect of indigenous culture in his own work.

Enjoy the conversation!

Episode resources:
IG: @mylesdesigns
https://marlenamyl.es/
https://cargocollective.com/chucku
http://www.adam-ant.com/
https://sioux-chef.com/owamni-by-the-sioux-chef/

Bernadine Franco clearly fits the role of art-world interpreter. Her work is to give women artists a voice, and set them in their rightful place in the canon of American art. She employs a multi-layered practice that is fun and accessible. She teaches, writes, speaks, is the producer and host of the Beyond the Paint with Bernadine podcast and designs tours centered on contributions by women in museum and gallery collections.

I had a blast speaking with Bernadine – she reminds me in some ways of listening Lynne Rosetto Kasper, host of that iconic National Public Radio cooking series, The Splendid Table. And I mean it: this is the art history professor I should have had back in the day, because I never would’ve missed a class. If you’re looking for someone to really help you immerse in the nuances of the art you observe, then check out her podcast. As for me, I can’t wait for the day when I meet Bernadine in New York, and we spend the day scanning the best artist studios and galleries in the city.

Episode Resources:
beyondthepaint.net
Beyond the Paint (@beyondthepaintwbernadine)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Edwin_Church
https://www.thewadsworth.org/
https://artgallery.yale.edu/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rothko
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Nevelson
https://www.amychaiklin.com/
https://www.aliceneel.com/
https://www.moma.org/
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79766
https://www.faithringgold.com/
https://outsidein.org.uk/galleries/ruth-bullock/
https://www.deborahwasserman.com/
https://www.elisavalentistudio.com/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CSMfoWwMhuz/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

This week comes to you from Minneapolis! Chef Ann Ahmed is owner of Lemon Grass, Lat14 Eatery and the soon-to-launch Khâluna. She joins Kelly, along with Precious Wallace, artist, founder and creator of King P. Studio and Art in Many Forms, for a conversation about the artistic power of great food experiences. (Pro tip: Never tell a chef that her food doesn't taste like your mother's cooking.)

Part 1 of a two-part conversation.

Episode resources:
https://www.instagram.com/chefannahmed/
https://www.instagram.com/kingpstudio/
https://www.lemongrassmn.com/
https://www.lat14.com/
https://khaluna.com/
Art in Many Forms: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFwVHCoQzhB6swBgR4bawZA