This week on State of the Arts NYC we spotlight power women making their mark on the NYC art scene. Joining us are artist Saya Woolfalk, curator Kelly Taxter, Linda Shelton, Executive Director & Trustee of the Joyce Theater Foundation and artist Denise Iris participating media artist in the Lumen Festival.

Saya Woolfalk will talk with us about her new digital installation ChimaCloud that is on display at Times Square through their program Midnight Moments. Kelly Taxter, Assistant Curator at the Jewish Museum, will talk about the museum's exhibition Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings: Beatriz Milhazes.

Linda Shelton, Executive Director of the Joyce Theater Foundation will talk about their work and Denise Iris will share her project at the Lumen Festival in Staten Island.

SAYA WOOLFALK

Saya Woolfalk (Japan, 1979) is a New York based artist who uses science fiction and fantasy to re-imagine the world in multiple dimensions. She has exhibited at PS1/MoMA; Deitch Projects; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Brooklyn Museum; Asian Art Museum, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Frist Center for the Visual Arts; The Yerba Buena Center; The Newark Museum; Third Streaming; MCA San Diego; MoCA Taipei; and Performa 09, and has been written about in the New Yorker, Sculpture Magazine, Artforum, Artforum.com, ARTNews, The New York Times, the Huffington Post and on Art21’s blog.

Her first solo museum show, The Empathics, was on view at the Montclair Art Museum in the fall of 2012. Her second solo museum exhibition, ChimaTEK Life Products, was on view at the Chrysler Museum of Art in the fall of 2014.

She recently completed a new video installation commission for the Seattle Art Museum, and is a 2014 recipient of a NYFA grant in Digital/Electronic Arts. She is represented by Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, NYC and teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Parsons: The New School for Design. Visit http://www.sayawoolfalk.com/ for more information.

KELLY TAXTER

Before becoming assistant curator at the Jewish Museum in 2013, Kelly Taxter co-ran Taxter & Spengemann Gallery in New York, for eight years, fostering talents like Xavier Cha and Andrew Kuo (see Andrew Kuo and Scott Reeder Opt for Panda Bear Zodiac Sign on Instagram Video).

Taxter must have hit the ground running, as she's already opened “Laurie Simmons: How We See," the artist's first New York museum solo, now on view. Besides that, no museumgoer will be able to miss her projects, as she's overseeing site-specific works in the lobby, with artists like Willem de Rooij, Chantal Joffee and Valeska Soares on tap.

LINDA SHELTON

Linda Shelton is the Executive Director, a position she has held since 1993, and a Trustee of The Joyce Theater Foundation. Prior to this, she served as General Manager of The Joffrey Ballet.  

Before The Joffrey, she managed tours for the Bolshoi Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet Academy, Moscow Virtuosi, Sankai Juku, and worked with Philip Glass productions.  From 1982 – 1988, she held various management positions at The Twyla Tharp Dance Foundation. 

Ms. Shelton began her work in the dance field as an intern at the New York State Council on the Arts, Dance Program. She holds a B.A. degree in Dance from New York University and has completed work towards her M.A. in Arts Administration, also at New York University.  

DENISE IRIS

Denise Iris makes videos, installations and photographs that blur the boundaries between reality and the imagination, defamiliarizing the recognizable contours of our world.

Her work has been screened at the Museum of Modern Art in NY, on PBS, and at festivals worldwide, winning a Silver Spire at the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Critics’ Prize at the Dakino International Film Festival, and a Director’s Choice Award at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival. 

It is held in the permanent collections of universities such as Harvard, University of Colorado Boulder, Colgate, and University of Massachusetts Boston. Recent shows include the Personal Cinema Series at UC Boulder, Microscope Gallery, Bard College, and Dumbo Arts Festival.

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