The Gallery Date: Episode 4 - Rushdie, How To Spot a Great Artist & a Netflix Worthy Plot
SHOW NOTES
Welcome to The Gallery Date, a weekly date with Jenn Singer to chat about art and life and perhaps the art of life, all in bite sized, not-at-all fancy, but definitely savory episode nuggets!
Jenn starts the show off this week on a more solemn note, as she learned about the attack on Salman Rushdie just before filming this episode. She shares her thoughts on the resilience and lasting legacy of artists.
Also featured in Episode 4:
Brooklyn shows of his new 'do
Jenn answers viewers/listeners questions about how she finds great artists to work with
And her Crazy Art World News this week is definitely Netflix Original material
Link to the Crazy Art World News Story:
Artnet: A Woman Allegedly Paid a Psychic to Convince Her Mother Her Art Was Cursed...
Shameless Plug!
@dovneon's August 18 Print & NFT Drop on Dovneon.com
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You can email your questions for Jenn to gallerydate@jennsingergallery.com.
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Twitter: @jennsingernyc
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to The Gallery Date. I'm Jenn Singer, founder of Jenn Singer Gallery. Thanks for joining me for our weekly Date to chat about art and life and perhaps the art of life all in bite-sized not at all fancy, but definitely savory episode nuggets. Let's mingle my friends!
Don't forget to press record, Jenn.
Hey there, thanks so much for joining me today for our Gallery Date.
I have to start the show off today on a more solemn note than usual. As of the filming of this episode, writer Salman Rushdie is laying in a hospital bed after being brutally attacked in New York. We know that he's on a ventilator unable to speak. He will likely lose an eye. We also know that the nerves in his arm were severed and that his liver was damaged by the stabbing.
I have no idea what's going to happen between now and when this episode goes live, but I do know this: No artist should face this. No person should face this. The freedom of expression is under great threat at a time in history when everyone can express ourselves to a global audience with a click of a button when creators have more tools than ever at their disposal to reach more people than ever. And at a time when we have every chance to listen to each other and hear each other and try to understand each other even if we don't agree with each other.
This is a time when we have every opportunity in the world to come together to find common ground. Unfortunately, those who lead by fear and control and manipulation can't hear or listen. They don't have other ways of seeing. They fear the freedom of expansion and understanding that the Arts provide.
The Arts are an expansive bridge they don't want to cross. And these narrow-minded extremists will do everything in their power to destroy this. They don't want us to see any way but their own so they will take an eye in an attempt blind us.
But the thing is you can't take away an artist's vision by taking their eyes. You can't silence them with a knife to the throat. You can't take an artist's soul by burying a knife in their vital organs. Burn their books, destroy their paintings, silence their music, ban their dancing. It doesn't matter what the extremists among us try, as there are ever growing resources and tools that we can easily access and the artists presence will only grow louder and stronger and more powerful, in concert, whether they survive these threats or not. You cannot erase an artist's soul and legacy. We will not allow it.
I hope beyond hope that Salman Rushdie survives this, but either way his life's work will live far beyond the lives of those that tried for decades to silence him.
We're lighting a candle for you, Sir.
—
Oh, it's Brooklyn. He wanted to show off his new haircut. Did daddy shave you? Brooklyn, your new haircut really accentuates your wonky
ear.
You know, one of my favorite things about this podcast is the connection that is happening with the viewers and listeners who have sent in some really wonderful, very supportive messages and have submitted questions. Please keep them coming. Thank you thank you for sending them. I make my very best effort to personally respond to each message. So I hope to hear from you soon.
A couple of different questions that have come in from two different viewers have been combined. They're very similar, so we put them together and thank you to Audra and Lisa for sending these in.
Question number one: How does your background in the Arts, and in dance specifically, inform how you select the visual artists you work with? I love this question because I've been so fortunate to be able to learn from and work with artists throughout my life, and that's informed, not only my career path, but also how I choose artists to work with. From a very young age I was able to see and experience art. I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, "Cowtown", and I spent most of my childhood going to see Fort Worth Ballet performances and that's back when it was under the direction of Paul Mejia who was a New York City- a former New York City Ballet dancer - and the ex-husband of Balanchine protege Suzanne Farrell. So it was incredible to also have the chance to be taught by both of them and learn from both of them. I feel like watching Balanchine ballets for years from a very early age didn't just enrich my appreciation for ballet and music, but for the visual arts as well. You learn in dance to tell stories, to create a visual language with your body and movement, and the stage is like a canvas. It is painted with carefully curated lighting and costumes and sets, and the influence of Balanchine's contemporaries of the time on some of my favorite Balanchine ballets is evident to me now, but back then it was just like this visual feast being coded into my brain and it really set the bar for how I see and experience art now. It's set the bar really high.
So fast forward to working in galleries and then opening my own, I had to decide from the very beginning who I wanted to work with and I already had a list of artists that I already knew and followed for a while and I do follow artists for a while usually before I reach out to them. I'm a lurker. But what I believe is the key to success for an artist is having a body of work that, even if it morphs and changes over time, there's always this thread that connects the body of work so that when someone sees it, they know it's yours. There's such a strong, unique and identifiable voice to the work that they know it's your work. So when I look for artists I look at their work over time. I look for a consistent voice. I watch them on Instagram. Like I said, I'm a lurker and and then, you know, I notice that there's a recurring voice or that thread that ties a body of work together, which is the key to finding a great artist. And this isn't to say that an artist's work can't change or vary over time, but there's always that one thing that carries through and ties the work together overall.
So I have this dear friend, the lovely and beautiful, Sharon Estacio, who I've known since we were 18, and we were both students at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in their Dance Department. She lives in Italy now and and she's actually responsible for my marriage - she introduced me to my husband - and she is one of the most talented artists that I've had the pleasure of knowing and being inspired by. Since we were 18, I've always known that Sharon has this quality that's this thing, this thread, that ties her work together. She's a brilliant choreographer, brilliant dancer and brilliant performer of other people's works. And when you see her perform, there is something. There is a specific gaze that she has, a specific way that she moves her body and a specific intensity and a groundedness about it. It's beautiful. When she's on stage, you can spot her so easily because your eye will just always gravitate to her and this is exactly what I look for in an artist, of any sort. This is the quality that you want to see it makes you feel something. It catches your eye and you gravitate towards it. And even though it changes and the choreography is different or the paint brush is different, or the colors are different, or the medium is different, there is that thing that is always consistent - the voice that is strong and ties all of the work together.
So that's it. That's how I choose artists to work with. The end!
Next up is a family story. Remind me to tell you about the time my mother hired, well tried to hire, a hitman - a voodoo hitman - to bump my husband off via Facebook. Ummhmm. She found a voodoo hitman on Facebook and she thought, "Oh great. This is how I can get rid
of my son-in-law". Ohhh families. He is totally fine, he's alive and well, but yeah. It happened, people. It happened. All right, next!
Okay, since we started the show on a more serious note, I thought we'd skip a second viewer question this week so we can get straight to our crazy art world news.
This week's story comes from Sarah Cascone for Artnet. The headline reads "A Woman Allegedly Paid A Psychic To Convince Her Mother Her Art Collection Was Cursed and Then Stole Over a $137 Million Dollars In Art". The headline pretty much does it all, but basically a 48 year old Brazilian woman allegedly defrauded her 82 year old mother out of $142.42 million dollars worth of art, jewelry and money. I mean, I think this would be a fantastic Netflix Original movie, so if anyone knows anyone out there at Netflix, tip them off on this gem of an unbelievable story - and give Sarah the credit.
By the way, I have no idea how to say this family name, so I'm totally gonna butcher it. It might be Boghici, Bogheci, Bogucci, Bogheze?
I say Buguchi. You say Bogheze. I don't know.
"Let's Call the Whole Thing Off."
Anyway, this family had a serious Brazilian art collection and crazy daughter Sabine hired a psychic to approach her elderly mother on the street to warn her that her daughter was going to die. Sabine told the psychic all kinds of personal details about her mother and helped convince the poor old lady to make large payments for "spiritual treatments".
The mother got suspicious naturally and tried to stop the payments, so her daughter confined her to her home and physically threatened her. While there, the daughter and the psychic told the mother that the valuable paintings from her collections were cursed and that they had to take them away to be prayed over. Aye yai yai. Investigators finally intervened. They found Works valued at over $59 million dollars stashed under a bed at ONE of the psychic's homes in Rio de Janeiro's Ipanema neighborhood. This is not the girl from Ipanema you want to know, I can tell you that. Anyway, like didn't she know she'd totally get caught? It turns out she was pretty shit psychic and human being and I really hope that Mama Bogucci, or whatever her name is, gets her revenge.
..you say Boghici I say Boghazi...
[Jenn is singing & humming...she's sorry about that]
Now for the most important part of today's show...
Shameless Plug Time! Tomorrow, Thursday, August 18th at dovneon.com that's d-o-v-n-e-o-n, we're dropping a few small-scale prints and nfts in his new digital artwork series called Imperial Ether. I represent David Sstenbeck. He's the artist behind @dovneon and he's never released small works under $100 before, so this is really exciting! It's only going to be available for a limited time, so visit dovneon.com That's d-o-v-n-e-o-n.com. It's linked in the show notes. Emails with the link to the new work are going out to everyone on Thursday... and that's to everyone who's signed up. So avoid FOMO and make it happen people.
Okay, that's a wrap! Thank you so much for tuning into The Gallery Date. Join me for our Date every Wednesday, for a bite-sized episode on TheGalleryDate.com.
Thanks again for joining me and I'll see you soon...
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