workspace - Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

STUDIO WEEKEND
LMCC
WORKSPACE •
MAY 4-6, 2012

125 MAIDEN LANE, 14TH FLOOR
FLOOR PLAN
PAUL
DAVID
YOUNG
TIM
HUTCHINGS
JASON YAMINI
VILLEGAS NAYAR
SHERISSE
ALVAREZ AGATHE
KNIGHT DE
BAILLIENCOURT
NASTARAN
AHMADI
JUANLI
CARRIÓN
DRU
DONOVAN
ROB
CARTER
JESSICA
ANN
PEAVY
MOO
KWON
HAN
AUSTIN
SHULL
VALERIE
HEGARTY
ERICA
EHRENBERG
DREAD
SCOTT
WAFAA
BILAL
FIRELEI
BÁEZ
TRACEY
GOODMAN
BANG GEUL
HAN
DANIEL
BEJAR
JOELL
BAXTER
AMY
WHITAKER
SAMUEL
LEADER
HUGH KIANGA
HAYDEN
K. FORD
2 WORKSPACE Open Studio Weekend

May 2012
LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT & DIRECTOR
Dear Visitor,
Thank you for joining us at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC)’s Workspace Open Studio
Weekend 2012. We are thrilled to present this group of 23 emerging visual artists- and writersin-residence.
Since September 2011, the Workspace residents have been working in their studios,
participating in weekly Salon Evenings, and developing a dialogue that will last well beyond the
June end-date of their residency.
Working in donated and adapted office space in the Financial District, artists and writers who
participate in LMCC’s residency programs are literally changing what it means to “work” on Wall
Street. Since 1997, in partnership with the generous real estate community in Lower Manhattan,
LMCC’s residency programs have provided valuable space, time, and community to hundreds of
artists working in multiple disciplines. With 24/7 access to this constantly changing part of the city,
LMCC’s artists- and writers-in-residence are uniquely positioned to experience, explore, interpret,
and re-imagine it from the inside.
Artists and writers participating in Workspace this year are working rigorously on projects with
varied conceptual content, ranging from current political narratives to formal investigations
of different media. Performance, painting, photography, installation, sculpture, video, poetry,
playwriting, fiction, and creative non-fiction are all represented here.
Open Studio Weekend is a special opportunity to experience the creative process of this exceptional
group of artists and writers, which happens most often behind closed doors.
Thank you to the artists and writers for generously opening their workspaces and sharing their
processes and to our dedicated staff, Board, space donors, and funders, without whom these
programs could not happen.
Very best,
Sam Miller
President
Melissa Levin
Director of Artist Residencies
3

Firelei Báez was born in the Dominican Republic
to Dominican and Haitian parents and lives
and works in New York. Báez received a BFA
from Cooper Union and an MFA from Hunter
College. Her work has been exhibited in various
national and international institutions, including
the Jersey City Museum; El Museo del Barrio;
The Cortona Archeological Museum in Cortona,
Italy; the Caribbean Cultural Center African
Diaspora Institute; and in the Bronx Artist
Biennial, BX1. She participated in the Aljira
Center for Contemporary Art’s Emerge Program
and was a recent resident artist in the Skowhegan
School of Painting and Sculpture. She has
received many prestigious awards, including
the 2010 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors
Award, the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Award
in Painting, and the Bronx Recognizes Its Own
Award (BRIO), among others. Her work, featured
in El Museo’s sixth Bienal, The (S) Files 2011, has
been reviewed in the New York Times by Holland
Cotter.
FIRELEI BÁEZ
fireleibaez.com
JOELL BAXTER
joellbaxter.com
Joell Baxter was born in Washington
DC, raised in Evanston, Illinois, and
currently resides in Brooklyn. Her
recent work conflates sculpture, arts
and crafts, drawing, and design, using
cyclic systems of color and form to
explore the relationship between illusion
and object. She earned an MFA from
the University of Illinois at Chicago,
where she was awarded a University
Fellowship. Baxter has recently exhibited
at the Bronx Museum of the Arts; Regina
Rex, Queens; International Print Center,
New York; and the Visual Arts Center of
New Jersey. In 2012 she will complete a
Special Editions Residency at the Lower
East Side Printshop.
4 WORKSPACE Open Studio Weekend

May 2012
Daniel Bejar was born in the Bronx and lives in
Brooklyn. His interdisciplinary practice utilizes
intervention, sculpture, performance, and
photography as tools to appropriate historical and
cultural residue as strategies to create ruptures
within established narratives. Bejar received a
BFA from the Ringling College of Art & Design,
Sarasota, FL and an MFA from the State University
of New York, New Paltz in 2007. In 2011, Bejar was
selected to Smack Mellon’s Hot Picks program
and completed a residency at SOMA, Mexico City.
Additionally, Bejar has participated in residencies
at Vermont Studio Center, LMCC’s Swing Space
program, and the Artist in the Marketplace Program
at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Bejar’s work has
been exhibited internationally, with recent venues
including El Museo’s sixth Bienal, The (S) Files
2011; SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico; Artnews Projects,
Berlin; and the Bronx Museum of the Arts.
WAFAA BILAL
wafaabilal.com
DANIEL BEJAR
danielbejar.com
Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal, an Assistant
Arts Professor at New York University’s Tisch
School of the Arts, is known internationally
for his online performative and interactive
works provoking dialogue about international
politics and internal dynamics. For his
current project, the 3rdi, Bilal had a camera
surgically implanted on the back of his head
to spontaneously transmit images to the web
24 hours a day -- a statement on surveillance,
the mundane and the things we leave behind.
Bilal’s 2010 work …And Counting similarly
used his own body as a medium. His back
was tattooed with a map of Iraq and dots
representing Iraqi and US casualties -– the
Iraqis in invisible ink were seen only under a
black light. Bilal’s 2007 installation, Domestic
Tension, also addressed the Iraq war where
he spent a month in a Chicago gallery with a
paintball gun that people could shoot at him
over the internet. Bilal’s work is constantly
informed by the experience of fleeing his
homeland and existing simultaneously in two
worlds.
VISUAL ARTISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES
5

Born in Yecla, Spain, in 1982, Juanli Carrión is a New York Citybased
artist. He received a BA in Fine Arts from Universidad
de Granada and Université Paris 8, and an MFA from
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. Solo exhibitions include
Artium, Spain; White Box and Y Gallery, New York; and Ego Art
Center, Mexico. Residencies include ISCP in New York, Nagoya
University in Japan, IAGO in Mexico, and Kuona Trust Studios
in Kenya, among others. He has been nominated for the 2011
ICP New York Infinity Awards and has received grants from
Iniciarte 2009 and 2010 by Instituto Andaluz de las Artes y
las Letras, and a 2010 Grant for Visual Arts by the Cultural
Department of the Government of Murcia, Spain. In 2011, he
was awarded the Generación 2012 prize by Caja Madrid, Spain.
ROB CARTER
robcarter.net
JUANLI CARRIÓN
juanlicarrion.com
Rob Carter uses photography, stop-motion animation, and
time-lapse video to spotlight architecture and its shifting
historical and cultural significance. A few years after
completing a BFA at Oxford University, he relocated to New
York to attend Hunter College’s MFA program. Since then,
he has exhibited work in numerous locations worldwide
including solo exhibitions in Madrid, Chicago, and Rome. In
2010 he exhibited his work at the ICA, Philadelphia; Bruce
Silverstein Gallery, New York; and the Shanghai World Expo.
Additionally he received a NYFA Fellowship and took part in
residencies in Austria and Spain. In 2011, he showed work
at Ebersmoore, Chicago; 1000 EVENTI, Milan; and Festival
Narracje, Poland. His large-scale installation at Art In General
opened in April 2012 and is his first solo show in New York.
AGATHE DE BAILLIENCOURT
agathedeb.com
Born in Paris, Agathe de Bailliencourt’s media range from canvas and
paper to public spaces and architecture. After graduating from Ecole
Boulle in Paris, she has been working and exhibiting internationally while
based in Berlin. Her work on canvas and paper has been exhibited in Paris,
Berlin, New York City, Shanghai, Tokyo, Osaka, Mumbai, and Singapore,
among others. In 2006, she participated in the Singapore Biennale with
a site-specific paint installation. In 2007, she completed her first largescale
light projection at the IHZ-Building/Berlin, followed by another
light installation in 2008 at the Berliner Dom, and an installation for the
Shanghai Zendai Museum. In 2009, she was invited by Mori Art Museum
in Tokyo for an installation, then by Tokyo Wonder Site Residency. In
2010, she published an artist book with Revolver Publishing and had her
first New York solo exhibition at Lu Magnus. In 2011, she completed a
permanent public installation for a high school in France.
6 WORKSPACE Open Studio Weekend

May 2012
Dru Donovan was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. She
received a BFA in Photography from California
College of the Arts and an MFA in Photography
from Yale University, where she was awarded
the Richard Benson prize for excellence.
Donovan was included in the 2010 California
Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art
and Generation2: Tomorrow’s Photographers
Today at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne,
Switzerland. Her work has been published in
Blind Spot, Wallpaper and the New York Times
Magazine. In 2011 TBW Books published her first
book, Lifting Water.
DRU DONOVAN
drudonovan.com
TRACEY GOODMAN
traceygoodman.net
Tracey Goodman was born in Warren, Ohio, and
currently lives and works in Brooklyn. She received
an MFA from New York University and a BS from the
Rochester Institute of Technology. Goodman attended
the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and has
participated in the Artist in the Marketplace Program
at the Bronx Museum. She recently had a solo show at
the artist-run space Regina Rex in Queens. Goodman
has been included in numerous group exhibitions:
One and Three Quarters of an Inch at St. Cecilia’s
convent in Brooklyn, I stepped into the room at Tina Kim
Gallery in New York, Two Way Miracle at Peres Projects
in Berlin, Host at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis, and
the Emerging Artists Show at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn.
VISUAL ARTISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES
7

Bang Geul Han was born and raised in Seoul,
South Korea. Han earned an MFA in Electronic
Integrated Arts from the New York State College
of Ceramics, Alfred University in Alfred, New York,
and has a BFA in Painting from the Seoul National
University in Korea. She works across a variety of
media, ranging from watercolor to digital video
and computer programming. Based in the US
since 2003, Han participated in the Skowhegan
School of Painting and Sculpture (2007),
the MacDowell Colony (2008), the Triangle Artist’s
Workshop (2010), and the Artist Alliance Inc’s
Lower East Side Rotating Studio Program (2010).
She is a recipient of the 2011-12 A.I.R. Fellowship.
MOO KWON HAN
hanmookwon.com
BANG GEUL HAN
whatbunny.org
Moo Kwon Han was born in Gyeongju,
South Korea and is a New York-based
video artist. Han received an MFA from
the School of Visual Arts in 2006 and
a BFA from Dongguk University Korea.
He has had solo shows at Kyungin Museum
in Seoul, CUE Art Foundation, and Doosan
Gallery in New York. Han has exhibited
at Unit B Gallery, San Antonio; Galeria
U Jezuitow, Poznan; Bund 18, Shanghai;
Asia Society India Centre, Mumbai;
Space C Coreana Museum and National
Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; and
David Zwirner Gallery in New York. He
attended the Skowhegan School of Painting
and Sculpture in 2008 and participated in
residencies at Building 110: LMCC’s Arts
Center at Governors Island, Art OMI, and
CUE Art Foundation. Han has been named
a Smack Mellon Hot Pick and awarded a
Puffin Grant and NYFA Fellowship.
8 WORKSPACE Open Studio Weekend

May 2012
HUGH HAYDEN
hughhayden.com
VALERIE HEGARTY
valeriehegarty.com
Valerie Hegarty’s solo exhibitions include
Nicelle Beauchene, Marlborough Gallery, and
Guild & Greyshkul in New York, and Locust
Projects, Miami; Museum 52, London; and
The MCA, Chicago, among others, as well as a
commission for a public sculpture on the High
Line and an upcoming show at The Brooklyn
Museum (April 2013). Hegarty has been
awarded grants from the Pollock-Krasner
Foundation, NYFA, the Rema Hort Mann
Foundation, and The Louis Comfort Tiffany
Foundation. Hegarty received an MFA from
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago,
a BFA from San Francisco’s Academy of Art
College, and a BA from Middlebury College,
Vermont. She is represented by Nicelle
Beauchene Gallery in New York.
Hugh Hayden’s artwork explores American
cultural identity though the familiar yet
subliminal lens of hair. The work utilizes
content, form, materiality, and technique to
create new visual histories that address race,
class, and gender. The Dallas native received
a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell
University in 2007. Following graduation,
Hayden won the prestigious Skidmore,
Owings & Merrill Travel Fellowship to study
food-related art, design, and architecture
around the world. Hayden’s artwork has been
exhibited both locally and internationally
including commissions from Lacoste and
Cabinet Magazine.
VISUAL ARTISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES
9

New York-based artist Yamini Nayar’s photographs of
imagined architectures combine elements of architectural
history, memory, and personal narrative. With a deep interest
in alternate histories and experiences, Nayar’s photographs
of tabletop sculptural installations are built from found
and raw materials and physically interpret spaces sourced
from historical archives and old architectural magazines.
Constructed around a fixed perspective, once the image
is recorded, the physical installation is discarded. Only the
photograph remains, as a document, an object, and entry
point into a moment held together solely for the lens. Nayar
was a resident at the Center for Photography at Woodstock
and the Art Academy of Cincinnati as the Lightborne artistin-residence.
Her work has been exhibited internationally,
including solo exhibitions with Thomas Erben, New York
and Amrita Jhaveri, Mumbai, and group exhibitions at the
Saatchi Gallery London, Queens Museum of Art, Cincinnati
Art Museum, Basel Switzerland, Art in Embassies, and Indian
Art Summit. Publications include the Sharjah Biennial 2011
and Unfixed: Postcolonial Perspectives in Photography and
Contemporary Art, Amsterdam. Reviews include Artforum,
Art in America, ArtPapers, Art India, Vogue India, and The
New Yorker. Nayar’s upcoming exhibitions include the
DeCordova Sculpture Museum and the Queensland Art
Gallery in Australia. Nayar received an MFA from the School
of Visual Arts and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of
Design.
JESSICA ANN
PEAVY
jessicaannpeavy.com
YAMINI NAYAR
yamininayar.com
Jessica Ann Peavy was born in Columbus, Ohio
and currently lives and works in New York City.
She received a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School
of the Arts and completed an MFA in SVA’s
Photography, Video, and Related Media Program.
Peavy has performed and exhibited in galleries, museums,
and festivals across the country, including The Kitchen,
The Contemporary Art Museum
Houston, Rush Arts Gallery,
PPOW, and solo exhibitions with Momenta Art, Smack
Mellon Gallery, and Collette Blanchard Gallery. Peavy
was selected for residencies at Smack Mellon and
Harvestworks and has received funding from Franklin
Furnace, NYSCA Individual Artist Grant, and the Jerome
Foundation.
10 WORKSPACE Open Studio Weekend

May 2012
DREAD SCOTT
dreadscott.com
AUSTIN SHULL
austinshull.com
Austin Shull was born in Washington, DC and
is a Brooklyn-based multi-media artist. He
received an MFA from the School of Visual
Arts in 2007 and a BA from Bard College in
2001. He participated in the Whitney Museum
Independent Study Program from 2007–
2008 and attended the Skowhegan School
of Painting and Sculpture in 2008. Most
recently, he was an artist-in-residence at the
Henry Street Settlement Abrons Art Center.
Shull has exhibited work nationally and
internationally at various venues: Cooper Union,
Syracuse University, International Print Center,
Pratt Institute, Nurture Art, Exit Art, and Socrates
Sculpture Park in New York; the Hyde Park Art
Center in Chicago; the ACC Gallery in Weimar;
Hall 14 Gallery in Leipzig; and Chiado Museum
in Lisbon.
Dread Scott makes revolutionary art to
propel history forward. In 1989, his work
became the center of controversy over its
use of the American flag while he was a
student at the School of the Art Institute
of Chicago, where he received a BFA.
His ongoing body of work has continued
to become part of a larger public dialogue
about significant social questions.
The 2006 Whitney Biennial included
his art in the Down by Law section.
MoCADA recently presented a survey
of his work, and his projects have been
included in shows at MoMA PS1 and the
Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum.
He has received a Creative Capital
Foundation grant, fellowships from NYFA,
and was a resident at Art Omi.
VISUAL ARTISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES
11

WRITERS’ BIOS+EXCERPTS
NASTARAN AHMADI
nastaranahmadi.com
Nastaran Ahmadi’s plays include Layla and Majnun,
Doctoring, Exile, and Rocket Song. Nastaran is a member
playwright at The Lark Play Development Center and a 2011-
2012 Writing Fellow at The Playwrights Realm in New York
City where her play, Exile (finalist, 2012 O’Neill Playwrights
Conference), will receive a reading in their INK’D Festival of
New Plays in May. She will attend The Orchard Project in
June to develop her new play with original music, Rocket
Song. Nastaran holds an MFA in Playwriting from Yale
School of Drama where she received the ASCAP Cole Porter
Prize in Playwriting.
Excerpt from Scene 1 of Exile
TAMRIN
I have a minute before I need to leave. So go on, try me.
(Sam faces Tamrin.)
SAMEERA
Okay, if war is necessary, which it is, then there’s no such thing as going too far. All the centuries
of history and knowledge, the poetry, the art - that’s already been passed on. The good stuff has
made its lineage.
TAMRIN
(Goading her to go on)
So
SAMEERA
So the rest of it? The actual -
TAMRIN
You’re rambling, you have to get to it in one sentence, right off the bat - draw her in.
SAMEERA
The actual place can go up in smoke and come down in rubble.
TAMRIN
To what end? Freedom?
SAMEERA
No, I don’t - I’m not talking about cursory illusions and ideology, I’m talking about building
something.
TAMRIN
You just said you want to blow something up.
Exile, CONT’D ON P. 13
12 WORKSPACE Open Studio Weekend

May 2012
Exile, CONT’D FROM P. 12
SAMEERA
In order to -
TAMRIN
You have to be clear about this -
SAMEERA
In order to make, to rebuild -
TAMRIN
Good.
SAMEERA
A new civilization in place of the old one.
TAMRIN
That’s better; there’s the action.
SAMEERA
Wipe out the entire world, and start from
scratch.
TAMRIN
How?
SAMEERA
Nuclear bombs. Nuclear holocaust.
TAMRIN
Who starts it?
SAMEERA
Who cares?!
TAMRIN
Wrong. Everyone cares. You care.
SAMEERA
The question is who survives it.
TAMRIN
Keep going.
SAMEERA
Whose left to make something new happen?
Is she a good person, bad person, radioactive
person?
TAMRIN
So your heroine is radioactive?
SAMEERA
Yes.
TAMRIN
And she uses that radiation to help make a new
world.
SAMEERA
That’s her thing.
TAMRIN
You have to get to that part sooner.
SAMEERA
A radioactive survivor of a nuclear holocaust
TAMRIN
is called upon to rebuild her world.
SAMEERA
One sentence.
TAMRIN
And where does this all take place? The Middle
East?
SAMEERA
Iran.
TAMRIN
You want to nuke the place where you were born?
SAMEERA
I want to give it a chance to start over.
(Pause.)
TAMRIN
I’d play that game.
13

WRITERS’ BIOS+EXCERPTS
Excerpt from Scene 1 of Rocket Song: An Unfinished Play with Songs
CALLIOPE
I would never let anything break you.
ANNETTE
Acid won’t break me?
CALLIOPE
Just melt you a little.
ANNETTE
I’ll tell you what you get if you let me go. You
never thought about that, did you? What you’d
be rid of.
CALLIOPE
Hold on, let me write this down.
(Calliope doesn’t move.)
ANNETTE
My inappropriate behavior at parties. My
insistence that we get out of bed right at
daybreak.
CALLIOPE
The click of your lockjaw.
ANNETTE
My habitually promiscuous sexual appetite.
CALLIOPE
Why would I want to be rid of that?
ANNETTE
My short fuse
CALLIOPE
Your swagger.
ANNETTE
My ego.
CALLIOPE
My ambition
ANNETTE
What’s wrong with my ambition?
CALLIOPE
It smells funny. Like bath salts
ANNETTE
Bath salts make your skin soft
CALLIOPE
But, your skin is meant to be made of barnacled
rock!
ANNETTE
Says who?
CALLIOPE
Says your guts, which are coarse, which eject a
rough textured mucus out through your epidermis
to lay a sediment of angry scales there. Fuckin
bath salts. Might as well wash away your insides.
ANNETTE
I don’t want my insides anymore! I want different
ones.
CALLIOPE
No one gets to pick their insides. That shit is
delivered via stork.
14 WORKSPACE Open Studio Weekend
...

May 2012
SHERISSE ALVAREZ
sherissealvarez.com
Sherisse Alvarez is a writer and editor living in New York City. She
received an MFA from Hunter College and a BA from Hampshire College.
Her work has appeared in Palimpsest: Yale Literary and Arts Magazine,
the anthologies Becoming, Revolutionary Voices, and Elsewhere. She
is currently working on a memoir that explores exile, loss, and desire.
Excerpts, past projects, and a more detailed bio can be found on her
website.
Excerpt from Parting, a memoir in progress
It is water my grandmother is carrying when she hears the news. Her mother, Celina, has just died leaving
behind ten children, five boys and five girls. Uterine tumors, each one usually smaller than a tangerine, are
the cause of my great-grandmother’s death.
They live in Cuba, on a sugarcane farm in Matanzas. Their house is a fort built during the War of Independence.
My grandmother awakens each morning to the plight of roosters. The sound echoes through the house
where every so often the children observe doors and windows that move on their own, beds that creak as if
bodies were in them.
Her father, Yaya, owns this farm. Yaya and his brother Papito grew up in an orphanage but had the good
fortune of working for a man who gave them a small loan. This is how they started out. My grandmother, the
eldest girl, has already begun working in the fields. She is nine but has already seen and heard many things
and is already becoming a woman.
It is like this for some years, my grandmother helping to raise her younger siblings. When she marries she is
twenty-four. Her father builds them a home in the city, a wedding gift he will give to each son and daughter,
and in it she has two children: first a boy she names José Manuel and, later, my mother, a girl whom she
names Alina.
The same summer my mother is born, soldiers attempting to overthrow Batista, descend from the mountains
in the east. Fidel Castro is among them. Less than a year later, revolution is underway in Cuba and many
things are changing.
In the beginning, no one knows it is communism. But, before long, land is being nationalized, concentration
camps built. Firing squads are put in place. Because of Fidel candy falls from the sky and into the hands of
school-aged boys and girls, their eyes closed.
When my grandmother leaves she will take her father, and daughter, and the clothes against their skin.
Nothing more. She will leave behind the land, her things, a life no longer belonging to her. (A few black and
white photographs with fringed edges will be smuggled, by one of the sisters perhaps. When I am older I will
keep them close: my grandmother as a girl, my mother as a young beauty, a muted countryside.) It is the only
way. To flee is the only way. But they’ll stay in America only for a while, my grandmother will think. They will
return when this nightmare is over.
I see her clearly, my grandmother, the girl who only enjoys her mother’s beauty for a few years, who is not
a child for long. The young woman who bears two children, has a husband whom, she discovers later, takes
those children to visit his mistress. The young woman who has to put her son on a plane headed for a place
she’s never seen, who cannot grieve because there is no room for that now, this is no place for tears, her
beloved country, collapsing. Destierro, to be uprooted, to be unearthed.
15

WRITERS’ BIOS+EXCERPTS
Erica Ehrenberg is a graduate of Amherst College
and the Creative Writing MFA Program at NYU. Her
poems have appeared in journals and anthologies
including The New Republic, Slate, jubilat,
Octopus, The St. Ann’s Review, Dancing With Joy
(Crown, 2007), and Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets:
Poems About Horses (Knopf, 2009). Born and raised in
New York City, Ehrenberg has received fellowships from the
Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and from
Stanford University where she was a Wallace Stegner
Fellow in Poetry. She currently lives in Brooklyn and is
completing her first collection of poetry, Bruno Goes to
the City of the Night to Plead for His Possessions.
“Bruno Goes to England to See the Elgin Marbles”
Bruno goes to England to see the Elgin marbles
and to walk for days in green fields where he won’t be seen.
He wants to walk in the Downs,
as if it meant walking with such lightness
that he could walk softly on a rabbit’s back,
or underneath the landscape. He dreams of sleeping
in a heap of swans, so many he can’t distinguish them
as individuals, he sleeps with both his face and his hands against
warm oval bodies with beating hearts and higher up,
through the course of the necks, a system of elevated eyes
watching him—but they are not birds but the university girls
who swarmed the bar he had been sitting in since the late afternoon,
ERICA
EHRENBERG
after he had been to the museum and left with a sense of desolation so great
that he almost stopped breathing. He drinks to be welcome,
making himself in the process the target of these girls
in heels high as the stems of meat thermometers.
16 WORKSPACE Open Studio Weekend

May 2012
SAMUEL LEADER
Samuel Leader grew up in the UK and France. He holds a BA in Philosophy and Modern Languages
from Oxford and an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Irvine. From 2009-2010, he was a fellow at the
Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Leader is working on a novel entitled Dust, featuring, among
other things, a goldfinch, a missing woman, and an aged demographer on trial for crimes against
humanity.
Excerpt from Dust, a novel in progress
Perhaps now is the time to tell your shouting wife that someone
you both love - let us say, for the sake of economy, at least, that
this someone is your daughter; and let us say that she has been
missing for some time and no one has been able to find her, despite
her cloud of hair that is bright orange and her eyes that are
zinc-blue and her outlandish clothes and her tendency also
to shout - that someone you love is, for certain, dead, but
there are no words in you to tell your wife this, and when your
silence proves unending your wife says she is going out. She
will not be back for lunch. There is some leftover choucroutte
on the kitchen counter, she says. She is going to Mass to
pray for the children in Rwanda, then to the Bingo, then to
Chantal’s to get her hair done, and then to Hyper-U, where
there is a special on oysters. She is in the mood for oysters.
The door slams (she always slams it) and you are alone in the
house.
You are alone in the house and you do not know what to do
with your body, nor with the news – so cumbersome - that your
daughter is dead, so after pacing for a while you do various
things merely not to do nothing - go to the kitchen and sweep the tiles; wash the plates from breakfast
that your wife has left in the sink; put some of that left-over choucroutte on your plate - but these things
you do, even as you do them, strike you also as superfluous, and you feel guilty for these acts that are not
relevant to your daughter, whom perhaps you did not love correctly, and you stand up and look around at
the things in the kitchen – the crumb-strewn terracotta tiles; the branch of bay leaves dangling over the
black stove; the stove itself; the row of white mugs with blue polkadots on the pegs above the sink; the
porcelain figurine of a greyhound on top of the sarcophagal fridge; the nesting stack of jade-green pots
with white polkadots on the pine sideboard (your wife has an affinity for polkadots) – the particularity of
everything you see offends you and, like all this gratuitous stuff in the kitchen, the things that you did
and still are doing that are not relevant to your daughter (who is dead now, you must remind yourself;
who is nobody; whose corpse is divided, perhaps, into little rotting pieces) – for instance you were tired
so you took a nap; you were restless so you read an article in yesterday’s egg-stained newspaper; you
are hungry so you went to the kitchen to eat some leftover choucroutte; you were bored and agitated
so you swept the kitchen tiles; you were upset so you cried, and prayed - these acts now feel to you like
physical things, actual and protuberant; they are decorations festooning a ship’s stern – the intricate gilded
scrollwork, garlands, emblems, balustrades, coats of arms, the mermaid figurehead with jutting breasts - and
as you stand there in the kitchen amidst the profusion of your things and your acts not relevant to the dead
person you loved, you feel giddy, the ship will keel under the weight of its pretty ornamentation, and you
look down at your plate and regard the cold fat sausage and little heap of sauerkraut with an
inkling of disgust.
17

WRITERS’ BIOS+EXCERPTS
Amy Whitaker works at the intersection of art,
business, and everyday life. She holds an MBA
from Yale and an MFA in painting from the Slade
School of Fine Art. She loves teaching business to
artists, which she does currently as a member of
the Art Business faculty at the Sotheby’s Institute
and as an adjunct professor of economics in the
Design MBA program at California College of the
Arts. She has also taught at RISD, Williams College,
Trade School, and LMCC’s Artist Summer Institute.
Her first book, Museum Legs (Hol Art Books,
2009), was assigned freshman reading at RISD
in 2010, where she gave the orientation keynote.
She is at work on new projects about creativity in
everyday life and economics for everyone.
AMY WHITAKER
museumlegs.com
Excerpt from the Art21 blog: “Monday Painter / Sunday Banker”
(May 10, 2011)
Joseph Beuys famously said that everyone is an artist. Even though the statement is
funny coming from someone whose artistic practice was as democratically available as
the decision to lock yourself in a room with a coyote, I think he is right. Everyone is an
artist, but everyone is a businessperson too. Creativity is a basic human birthright, but we
also live in one of the greatest market economies of all time.
When I was actually getting an MFA, it never felt like a newer, shinier version of an MBA. . .
At the beginning of art school, I occasionally felt like a social pariah who was viewed as a
rapacious capitalist. I owned a gray interview suit that was not a costume, though perhaps
even more controversially, I made traditional oil paintings. . . .
The real thing I learned in art school was not how to paint, per se, but how to lean into the
messy, uncertain, trial-and-error process of making work—buoyed by a belief in some aim
larger than myself but otherwise solidly in the weeds most of the time.
If anyone could learn to deal with the fundamental, almost existential uncertainty, of
trying to make art then maybe those same temperamental skills could apply outside of
making a drawing or a video installation. . . . If the world itself could be the canvas . . . then
that artistic resourcefulness and temperament was probably exactly what is required to
stare down, make budge, and wholly lift intractable social problems. My real pie-in-thesky
aim is . . . maybe one day for creative people to make a contribution to the field of
economics itself.
18 WORKSPACE Open Studio Weekend

May 2012
PAUL DAVID YOUNG
pauldavidyoung.com
Excerpt from In the Summer Pavilion
NABILE:
You’re moving out of your place?
BEN:
I don’t need it anymore.
CLARISSA:
You just moved in there. You don’t like it?
BEN:
I don’t need it.
CLARISSA:
Have you talked to your shrink about this?
BEN:
I don’t need her either.
CLARISSA:
Ben, she’s been really good for you. She helped you get clean.
BEN:
And now that I’m clean I’m going to do something with my life.
NABILE:
Fantastic. What are you thinking about?
Paul David Young won the Kennedy Center’s Paula Vogel Playwriting
Award and was a finalist for the Kendeda Fellowship. He has been
produced at MoMA PS1, Marlborough Gallery, the Living Theatre,
Lion Theatre, Kraine Theater and the Red Room, and at the
Kaffileikhusid in Reykjavik. He was the Kerr Fellow at the
Millay Colony, the Pearlman Fellow at Djerassi, and a Fulbright Scholar
in Germany. He graduated from Yale College, Columbia Law School,
and New School for Drama. His In the Summer Pavilion premiered
in 2011 (Critic’s Pick, “a deceptively quiet winner,” Backstage.com;
“a perfect little play,” NYTheatre.com; “achy, richly observant story,”
a “gem,” NY Daily News; a “highlight” of the NY Fringe, Village Voice).
He is a Contributing Editor at PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art
(MIT Press). His translation, with Carl Weber, of Heiner Müller’s
Anatomy Titus Fall of Rome will be published in 2012.
BEN:
I’m not thinking. I know. I met this girl, Theresa, when I was in rehab. We talked. In rehab, you talk and talk.
It’s all you do. Talk and think about your life. Why you’re using and then what else is there, what do you do
with the time you have on Earth. Since we graduated from Princeton, what have I done? I was hooked on
coke and then I switched to heroin. I’ve never had a job. I’ve never had a relationship. I’ve done nothing with
my life. Nothing.
In the Summer Pavilion, CONT’D ON P. 20
19

WRITERS’ BIOS+EXCERPTS
In the Summer Pavilion, CONT’D FROM P. 19
NABILE:
This is heavy. I think I need more coffee.
CLARISSA:
Sorry, Ben, would you like some?
BEN:
I don’t drink coffee anymore.
NABILE:
I’m still on it. Clarissa?
CLARISSA:
No, thanks. You used to be Mister Espresso.
BEN:
It’s a drug. It’s like heroin. You get to where
you need it just to be normal. I don’t want any
of that.
CLARISSA:
You’ve made a lot of progress.
BEN:
And it’s wrong.
CLARISSA:
Wrong?
BEN
Coffee is made on the backs of peasants.
They plant, they pick. They do all the work
and they’re practically living in slavery. The
societies of South America are essentially
still feudal. The landowners and the large
multinationals control the agriculture and
make all the profits by exploiting landless
peasants who aren’t politically organized.
Most of the time the plantation owners own
the police and the military. The workers
can’t stand up for their rights. They live in
substandard conditions, deprived of adequate
health care. Their children don’t have access
to education. It’s all a process of exploitation
and I don’t want to be a part of it. I can’t
support it. It’s morally and ethically wrong.
BEN
It’s not just coffee.
CLARISSA
What else?
BEN
The apartment.
NABILE
It’s wrong to have a place to live?
BEN
Private property is where it begins, the whole
system of capitalist oppression, the dominance
of the media and information systems by the
ruling classes, the internet.
CLARISSA
The internet?
BEN:
The internet and all electronic media are
essentially a complete system of surveillance
and we are all complicit in it.
I don’t use the computer or the cell phone.
NABILE
You’re going to rely on the post office?
BEN
I’m relying on the human network. I’m going
off the grid.
CLARISSA
Who is this Theresa?
20 WORKSPACE Open Studio Weekend

May 2012
ABOUT LMCC
Founded in 1973 by Flory Barnett with support from David Rockefeller and Chase Manhattan Bank, New
York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), and other local business and civic leaders, Lower Manhattan
Cultural Council (LMCC) is an advocate and service provider to artists and arts groups Downtown and is
deeply committed to the relationship between art, culture, and quality of life.
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has been a leading voice for arts and culture
Downtown and throughout New York City for nearly 40 years, producing cultural events and promoting the
arts through grants, services, advocacy, and cultural development programs.
ABOUT WORKSPACE
Offered in partnership with Downtown’s generous real estate community since 1997, Workspace is a
nine-month studio residency program focused on creative process and professional development for
emerging visual artists and writers. Through the program’s offerings, which include studio space, studio
visits, talks and seminars, access to a network of peers, and public programs, Workspace encourages
creative production, professional development, and community-building in the early stages of an artist’s
or writer’s career. Residents are expected to be active in their studio throughout the nine months—using it
as a space for experimentation and dialogue.
APPLYING TO WORKSPACE
The 2012 Workspace application deadline has passed and we are not currently accepting applications.
We expect to begin taking applications for the 2013-2014 Workspace residency session in late 2012. To keep
up to date on all LMCC opportunities and events, including calls for residency applications, please sign up for
This Month, our monthly email newsletter, at www.LMCC.net/subscribe.
21

At LMCC, we believe that arts and culture play a crucial role in the vitality and well-being of our
communities. For nearly 40 years, LMCC has spurred cultural development in Lower Manhattan
through unique arts and cultural initiatives, helping make the neighborhood a more desirable
place to live, work, visit, and play.
Become a Friend of LMCC and take part in our efforts to infuse Downtown with arts and culture!
As a Friend of LMCC, you:
• Support more than 1,000 artists and 550 small arts groups from across New York City
who actively work Downtown and throughout the borough of Manhattan, as well as free arts
programming Downtown — such as the River To River® Festival — for more than 120,000
residents, workers, and visitors;
• Gain access to exclusive open studio previews, art receptions, and premier River To River
Festival events that provide unique opportunities to meet artists, cultural leaders, and Downtown
stakeholders;
• Have the opportunity to participate in programming and forums that address sustainability
practices in the arts, the development of Lower Manhattan’s cultural identity, and the future of
Downtown.
Thank you for helping LMCC make art happen here!
22 WORKSPACE Open Studio Weekend

May 2012
BENEFITS OF BECOMING A FRIEND OF LMCC
$25-$99
• LMCC tote bag
$100-$249
• The above benefit, plus...
• Invitation for two to the R2R Bash, the launch party for the 2012 River To River Festival
$250-$499
• All of the above benefits, plus...
• lnvitation for two to 2 River To River VIP events
• Invitation for two to 3 LMCC special events
$500-$999
• All of the above benefits, plus...
• Invitation for two to the River To River 2012 and 2013 Stakeholder Convenings
• Invitation for two to the River To River 2013 Conference
$1,000+
• All of the above benefits, plus...
• Advanced reservations for two to select River To River performances
• Advanced reservations for two to Access Restricted events (limited availability)
MAKING YOUR DONATION
Donations can be made online at www.LMCC.net/donate, by calling our Development Department
at 212.219.9401 x101, or by mailing a check (payable to Lower Manhattan Cultural Council) to:
Development Department
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
125 Maiden Lane, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10038
Thank you again!
LMCC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit tax-exempt organization. Please note that your contribution is tax deductible
to the fullest extent allowed by law.
23

VISUAL ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE
FIRELEI BÁEZ
JOELL BAXTER
DANIEL BEJAR
WAFAA BILAL
JUANLI CARRIÓN
ROB CARTER
AGATHE DE BAILLIENCOURT
DRU DONOVAN
TRACEY GOODMAN
WRITERS-IN-RESIDENCE
NASTARAN AHMADI
SHERISSE ALVAREZ
ERICA EHRENBERG
BANG GEUL HAN
MOO KWON HAN
HUGH HAYDEN
VALERIE HEGARTY
YAMINI NAYAR
JESSICA ANN PEAVY
DREAD SCOTT
AUSTIN SHULL
TIM HUTCHINGS, ON-SITE ASSISTANT
SAMUEL LEADER
AMY WHITAKER
PAUL DAVID YOUNG
WORKSPACE SUPPORTERS
LMCC’s Artist Residency Programs are supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts,
Bloomberg Philanthropies, Charina Endowment Fund, Cowles Charitable Trust, Greenwall Foundation,
Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust, Lambent Foundation, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Inc.,
Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, New York Community Trust, and Pollock-Krasner Foundation.
Workspace is supported by the Jerome Foundation.
LMCC’s Artist Residency Programs are also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City
Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; New York State Council on the Arts; and
the National Endowment for the Arts.
SAVE THE DATE:
OPEN HOUSE AT GOVERNORS ISLAND
SATURDAY - SUNDAY, MAY 26-27, 12-5PM
BUILDING 110: LMCC’S ARTS CENTER AT GOVERNORS ISLAND