PRH/Core Residency
In collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, a year-long residency is available for a Glassell Core Fellow Artist. Second-year Core Fellows interested in broadening the scope of their work by living and working in an urban environment are eligible to apply for this dual residency. Once selected, the Core Fellow has an opportunity to live onsite at PRH, participate in programming activities and create an original project that responds to, engages and/or is reflective of the Third Ward community.
2010-2011 Artist in Residence
Steffani Jemison
Steffani Jemison is a second-year artist resident in the Core program at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Her work has been exhibited and screened in several venues, including the UCLA Wight Biennial, Los Angeles, CA; the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, UK; Union Docs, Brooklyn, NY; Spaces Gallery, Cleveland, OH; and Unspeakable Projects, San Francisco, CA.
Steffani is also active as a writer and curator: her writing has recently been published in ART LIES and I Like Your Work: Art & Etiquette, and she has curated exhibitions and time-based programs for several venues, including Light Industry, New York, NY; The Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York, NY.
She was a 2008 resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and a 2010 resident at The Wassaic Project. Steffani received a BA from Columbia University and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives in Houston and works in Houston and New York.
Artist Statement: The Present Crisis
In 1910, W. E. B. DuBois founded The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races, the official journal representing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Inspired by James Lowell’s poem “The Present Crisis,” DuBois believed that his magazine served as a forum for conversation during a particularly “critical time in the history of the advancement of men.” One hundred years later, the concept of “crisis” remains surprisingly salient as a metaphor for the remarkably persistent “problem of the color line” described by DuBois, and also serves to highlight the complex role of “critique” (in its philosophical meaning—“an opposing force”) in African American aesthetics and literary theory.
This year, using the 100th anniversary of DuBois’ The Crisis as a point of entry, Steffani is organizing a project in two parts:
Future Plan and Program
Future Plan and Program is a provisional publishing project featuring book-length conceptual literary works by visual artists. The first round of five books includes new commissions from Jina Valentine (Paris), Martine Syms (Chicago), Jibade-Khalil Huffman (New York), Khorey (“Greatness”) Smith and Michael (“Truth”) Graham with Steffani Jemison (Houston), and Harold Mendez (Chicago).
A sixth book will present transcripts, conversations, and questions derived from the Fall 2010 meetings of Book Club (see below). The launch of all six books in Spring 2011 will be marked by workshops, performances, readings, and panel discussions with partners in Houston and across the country.
For more information about Future Plan and Program, visit the website: http://futureplanandprogram.com
Book Club Fall 2010, Labotanica at Project Row Houses
Book Club is a think tank and reading group inspired by the powerful history of self-education in communities of color. Organized around a core group of ten participants—artists, teachers, community leaders, and other lifelong learners—Book Club convenes to investigate progressive, experimental, and provocative texts by black writers. The results of the experiment will be captured in an edited volume published in Spring 2011.
Book Club is a collaboration of Jamal Cyrus and Steffani Jemison and is presented with support from Labotanica.
For more information about this project, contact Steffani Jemison steffani@whatfelt.org
2008-2009 Artist in Residence
Andres Janacua
Andres Janacua received his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2007 and his BFA from University of Southern California in 2004. He was awarded the Walker and Parker Fellowship in 2007, CGU Art Fellowship in 2006 and the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship in 2003. He has exhibited his work at Schalter, Berlin, Germany; Peggy Phelps Gallery, Claremont, CA; and Galeria Perdida, Michoacan, Mexico.
para/site
para/site is a gallery space facilitated by galería perdida, with the assistance of CORE/PRH artist-in-residence, andres janacua. exhibitions rotate monthly and feature work by both national and international artists.
Artist statement:
we believe that impact more or less is a relative term. what may seem significant to one person, of course may not be to another. yet, we see this relationship of being in consistent dialog, of in the same circle of circumstance. this is where we find ourselves. often working in various modes, one neglected as another is prominent. the name para/site is clearly taken from its etymological roots, meant to imply both our spatial and logistical relationship to prh; but also how we deploy meaning and experience to attach itself to architecture, history, and community. and though para/site harbors in this historic place, we of course see a difference. we expect para/site to respond to the strong force of community here, but anticipate the sweet surprise when it doesn’t.
