2010/11 SHIFT RESIDENTS

Tova Carlin is an arts writer who, for over three years, has contributed to a variety of New York-based and international publications. Her artwork has been shown at 179 Canal, the Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study, The Torrance Art Museum in California and Limlip Art Museum in Korea, among other places.

Sean Carroll is an artist and arts administrator based in New York City. He currently works on the Artist Residencies team at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), managing two residency programs that transform vacant space in the Financial District and on Governors Island into studio, rehearsal, presentation, and office space for grantees in the visual, performing, and literary arts. His artworks have been included in exhibitions in New York, Washington, DC, Northern Virginia, and North Carolina. He studied photography at Pratt Institute.

Paul Clay is a visual artist, designer, and arts administrator whose work spans many different fields. His perspective is informed by an interest in anthropology, contemporary media, and social change. Mr. Clay is the Founder of Cuchifritos Gallery, where he also serves as the Chair of the Curatorial Advisory Committee. He is also a Board Member of Artists Alliance, Inc., and formerly worked as AAI’s Director of Programming and Development. Mr. Clay also works on lighting and video design for theater, opera, and dance events, and designed the set for the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Rent in 1997. As a visual artist, Clay has shown internationally, been reviewed in such publications as The New York Times, ARTnews, The London Times, and NY Arts magazine, and has received numerous awards including the Municipal Arts Society Times Square Spectacular, Manchester Evening News Theatre Award, National Endowment for the Arts/ TCG Fellow, Drama Desk, and Bessie award.

Sebastien Sanz de Santamaria is the Director and co-Founder of Residency Unlimited and has worked profusely at at the artist-run non-profit arts organization Flux Factory, since his arrival in New York in 2001. He has curated projects at both Location One (where he was formerly the coordinator of their International Residency Program), and Residency Unlimited: “Open Stitch,” an arts production project co-curated with Jessie Cohan in 2005, brought together 15 artists at Location One to produce wearable creations using only the tools and materials provided to them, thereby temporarily removing the gallery from the appointed function of “showing” and moved it to the realm of artistic production; in 2010, he co-curated a short-term residency project, “Special Features,” with Marie Loser. For 1 month, Residency Unlimited converted the Kumukumu Gallery in New York into a low cost film studio, containing all the necessary ingredients for filming a movie: cameras, lighting, costumes, props, backgrounds, staging, etc. Artists, filmmakers, musicians, and performers were selected and invited to use the space and equipment to each make a film over the course of one eight-hour workday – an exercise in resourcefulness.

Chantal Foretich is an artist and a fundraiser for the New York City Opera. Her work involves creating small-scale constructions referencing real and fictional places, which are sometimes animated with electric motors or music-box mechanisms. Examples of some of her projects include miniature versions of the temporary walkways that are throughout the city, as well as more personal scenes; a 1970s Ford Maverick winds around a magnolia tree to the tune of ‘Amazing Grace.’ She recently completed a 12-inch take on her cubicle that includes a keyboard with moving keys!

Felicity Hogan is a British artist and curator, and active figure in two non-profit arts organizations: she is the Executive Director of Artists Alliance, Inc., and a Program Officer at New York Foundation for the Arts. Her recent curatorial projects include “Word-Less,” at EFA Project Space; “Structured Simplicity,” at D.U.M.B.O. Arts Center; “All is one, one is all,” at the Free Store, NY; and Development & Curatorial Associate at the Tuning Exhibition “The 21st Century, The Feminine Century, and The Century of Diversity and Hope,” curated by Heng-Gil Han, at the Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale in Korea, 2009. Her artworks have been exhibited nationally at the Arlington Arts Center in Virginia and Susan Berko-Conde Gallery/E.M. Berko Archive in Chelsea. A commissioned painting was included in Jose Ruiz’s The Progression of Influence, a collaborative installation for the exhibition “Shifting Constructs” at Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation in Miami. Ms. Hogan received a BFA from Coventry University and an MFA at Camberwell College of Fine Arts, London, UK.

Amber Hawk Swanson is an educator and a video and performance artist living and working in Brooklyn. She currently consults in the Learning Department of New York Foundation for the Arts, where she has been involved with MARK, NYFA’s competitive statewide program for visual artists living outside NYC seeking to develop the professional side of their creative practice, and taught the MARK program in cities across the state in 2010. Amber has exhibited nationwide at locations including Locust Projects in Miami, Georgia State University, Rosslyn Cultural Center in Virginia, Maryland Art Place, and The Redhouse in Syracuse, NY, and internationally the Non Grata Art Center in Estonia. She has participated in residencies with Fountainhead and the Vermont Studio Center, and has been invited as a visiting artist by a long list of institutions including East Carolina University, Hunter College, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. Hawk Swanson holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Some of her notable projects include “The Feminism? Project”(2005-06) and “Amber Doll” (2006-08).

Beatrice Wolert is a first generation Polish American Artist raised in Greenpoint, where she continues to live and maintain her studio practice. She is currently the Programs Director at CUE Art Foundation and has been involved there since 2004. At CUE, Wolert has worked on the founding and development of the Foundation’s programming as well as fostering partnerships with other like-minded organizations. In her artistic practice, Ms. Wolert works between drawing and sculpture exploring process, fleeting moments, impermanence, fragments, serendipity, synchronicity, found objects and transformation of materials. She received a BA in design from Adelphi University and an MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute. She has worked as the Associate Editor at Paperloop, Inc., and has exhibited in group shows at venues such as NurtureArt, Feature, Inc., Denise Bibro, HQ, A.I.R. Gallery, Artists Space, D.U.M.B.O. Art Center, and Exit Art in New York, Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, and internationally at the Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History in New Zealand. She is also a member of the female artists’ collective One Stone Collective.