advisory group
board of directors
- Sandy Agustin
- Karen Atkinson
- Sarah Beiderman
- Edmund Cardoni
- Sarah S. Conley
- Joe Lewis
- Marilyn Simmons
- Oskar Sonnen
- Laura Zabel
Executive Director: Sandy Agustin
NAAO
308 Prince Street
Suite 270
St. Paul, MN 55101
651.294.0907
director@naao.net
Sandy is an independent consultant and facilitator who comes from a performing background. Most recently she served as the Artistic Director of Intermedia Arts a multi-disciplinary arts center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Sandy has been adjunct faculty at Augsburg College and has taught and performed throughout the United States. Her work has been performed at the Southern Theater, Ordway Center for Performing Arts, Walker Art Center and Studio 6A at the Hennepin Center for the Arts. She is active on many boards and is a champion for HIV/AIDS causes.
GYSTInk
CalArts Faculty
Side Street Projects:
Board Member and Founder
4223 Russell Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90027-4511
karen@karenatkinsonstudio.org
[joined October 2005]
Karen Atkinson is a media, installation and public artist, and independent curator. She was a co-founding director of Side Street Projects, a non-profit artist-run organization in Los Angeles. She has been a faculty member at Cal Arts since 1988. She has also published and guest-edited a number of publications.
She has exhibited and curated nationally and internationally including Johannesburg South Africa; Sydney, Australia; Graz, Austria; Mexico; Montreal, Toronto and Banff, Canada; and New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Her work was included in the Fifth Havana Biennial in Cuba.
She currently teaches classes and workshops with the title “Getting Your Shit Together,” and has created software for visual artists of the same title. www.gyst-ink.com
Vice President: Oskar Sonnen
Voices Breaking Boundaries
Co-director
PO Box 541247
Houston, TX 77254-1247
713.524-7821
oskar@vbbarts.org
Secretary: Sarah Beiderman
Spaces
Residency Coordinator
2220 Superior Viaduct
Cleveland OH 44113
216-621-2314
sbeiderman@spacesgallery.org
Sarah Beiderman coordinates the SPACES World Artists Program, an international residency program for visual artists at SPACES Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio. Previously, she worked at the Cleveland Museum of Art with the Extensions Collection, and in the Education Department. Beiderman is an art historian, consultant, and community organizer, working largely with the Hispanic community. She received a BA in art history from Oberlin College in Ohio in 2003.
Treasurer: Edmund Cardoni
Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center
Executive Director
341 Delaware Ave.
Buffalo NY 14202
716.854-1694
ed@hallwalls.org
A native of Boston, Edmund Cardoni, graduated from the MA program in Creative Writing of the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1981. He joined the staff of Hallwalls as part-time director of its literature program in 1984, and was named its executive director in 1991. Recently he has organized the Eileen Myles’ Hallwalls Artist in Residence Program [HARP] residency in fall 2001, and Homer Jackson’s Dogon PM project in 2003, both with major grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has served as a panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as on numerous local arts panels in Buffalo & Erie County. He has published fiction, critical essays, reviews, and articles on art, literature, baseball and the politics of art. For NAAO, he administers the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) Defense Fund, and served as NAAO board president 2003–2005.
Sarah S. Conley is Of Counsel in the law firm, Rosen Feig Golland & Lunn LLP, a law practice that emphasizes business, entertainment, art law and intellectual property. For more than a decade, she has represented clients at all stages of their creative and business development. Ms. Conley works with clients to negotiate contracts, form businesses, create strategic alliances, and engage in a wide range of internal and external business transactions, including developing, acquiring and protecting intellectual property. She also works with artists, art-related businesses and art organizations to identify and solve legal issues regarding the creation, protection, use and display of creative works. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Joe Lewis
Dean
School of Art and Design
New York State College of Ceramics
@ Alfred University
2 Pine Street
Alfred, NY 14802
607 871-2412
Joe Lewis is an artist and Dean of the School of Art and Design, New York State College of Ceramics, at Alfred University. He is graduate of Hamilton College and received an M.F.A. from the Maryland College Institute of Art, where he was a Ford Foundation fellow. His work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and most recently at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, and the Bridge Center for Contemporary Art in El Paso, Texas. He has held positions in the foundation field as well as in municipal government, most notably as project manager for the Jackie Robinson Foundation and administrator of the Public Art Program for the Cultural Affairs Department of Los Angeles. Lewis has served as a faculty member at California (State) Institute of the Arts, was minority scholar-in-residence at the University of Utah, and a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts on three occasions. He is also the co-founder of Fashion Moda and has curated and organized numerous exhibitions and community-based art partnerships. Lewis is a regular contributor to Art in America and has written for Artforum, Contemporanea, and the LA Weekly.
Marilyn Simmons
SPACES
Gallery Manager
2220 Superior Viaduct
Cleveland OH 44113
216.621-2314
msimmons@spacesgallery.org
Marilyn Simmons has been Gallery Manager at SPACES Gallery for the past 15 years. SPACES is a contemporary art center that interacts directly with artists, promoting excellence and experimentation to produce challenging gallery exhibitions, public programs, residencies, and publications. She received a BA in Studio Art and Business from Baldwin Wallace College. Simmons is also a printmaker and curator.
Laura Zabel
Springboard for the Arts
Executive Director
laura@springboardforthearts.org
Springboard for the Arts provides arts focused management and career services to artists and arts managers of all disciplines and at all stages of their careers. Springboard’s mission is to cultivate a vibrant arts community by connecting artists with the skills, contacts, information and services they need to make a living and a life. Since 1978, Springboard has served more than 50,000 artists and cultural organizations throughout Minnesota and the upper Midwest.
In addition to her work at Springboard, Laura is an actor in the Twin Cities and has worked with companies such as Theatre in the Round and the Brave New Workshop. Previously, she was the Program Director for the Twin Cities Unified Theatre Auditions and the Development Manager at COMPAS. In 2000, Laura wrote the play “Dreaming for Real” for Climb Theatre and the Minnesota Higher Education Services Office, which has been performed in Title I schools all over Minnesota. For several years, Laura taught theatre to young people at Stagecoach Theatre Arts School in St. Paul. In June 2005, Laura was awarded one of five national “Emerging Leader” scholarships from Americans for the Arts.
advisory group
Diane Barber
Diverse Works
Houston, TX
Sehba Sawar
Executive Director
Voices Breaking Boundaries
Houston, TX
Ed Taylor
Writer,Consultant
Buffalo, NY
Jon Winet
Artist/Educator
School of Art and art History Intermedia Area Head
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA