This diverse group of seven artists will be in residence at Smack Mellon from July 1, 2019 through August 15, 2020, where they will be given the opportunity to create new work, develop existing work, establish relationships with arts professionals, and connect with their peers in the arts community—all with the financial, technical and administrative support of Smack Mellon. Artists have access to a private studio space and three shared common areas: a digital production lab, a fabrication shop, and a kitchen.
The public is invited into the studios to meet the artists during
Open Studio events in April and September. The studios are located
on the lower level of our building at 92 Plymouth Street in the
DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn. The program launched in 2000 in
response to the crisis in availability of affordable workspace for
artists living and working in New York City. Since then, the
challenge to find affordable workspace has only worsened making our
program more needed than ever.
Each year, Smack Mellon convenes a panel of arts professionals to select the artists from approximately 600 applicants. The panelists who selected the 2019-2020 Studio Artists were: Marcela Guerrero, Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Kalia Brooks Nelson, New York based curator and writer and Adjunct Professor in the Photography and Imaging Department in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University; and Gabriel de Guzman, Curator and Director of Exhibitions, Smack Mellon.
Preliminary panelists were former Smack Mellon Studio or Exhibition artists: Claudia Bitran, Joan Linder, Rudy Shepherd, aricoco (Ari Tabei), Dannielle Tegeder, and Juana Valdes.
Panelist Bios:
Marcela Guerrero
is Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New
York. Prior to joining the Whitney, she was a Curatorial Fellow at
the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles working on the exhibition
Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985.
She has also been a Research Coordinator at the International
Center for the Arts of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Her writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues and art journals
such as
caa.reviews,
ArtNexus,
Caribbean Intransit: The Arts Journal,
Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine
Arts,
and
Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial
Studies.
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Guerrero holds a PhD in Art History
from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Kalia Brooks Nelson, PhD, is a New York based independent curator and educator. Brooks Nelson is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and at Parsons in the School of Art, Media and Technology. She has served as a consulting curator with the City of New York through the Department of Cultural Affairs and Gracie Mansion Conservancy. Brooks Nelson is also currently an ex-officio trustee on the Board of the Museum of the City of New York.
Brooks Nelson holds a PhD in Aesthetics and Art Theory from the
Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. She received her
MA in Curatorial Practice from the California College of the Arts
in 2006 and was a Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Critical Studies at
the Whitney Independent Study Program 2007/2008.
Gabriel de Guzman is the Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Smack Mellon. He is responsible for the successful curation and production of all exhibitions in the gallery. His recent curatorial projects include the group exhibitions EMPATHY (2018) and UPROOT (2017). Prior to joining Smack Mellon in 2017, de Guzman was Curator of Visual Arts at Wave Hill, where he organized the Sunroom Project Space series for emerging artists, as well as thematic group exhibitions in Wave Hill’s Glyndor Gallery. As a guest curator, he has also organized recent exhibitions at BronxArtSpace, Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, Rush Arts Gallery, En Foco at Andrew Freedman Home, the Affordable Art Fair New York, Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, and the Bronx Museum’s 2013 AIM Biennial. His writings have been published in catalogues for Wave Hill, the Bronx Museum, BronxArtSpace, Dorsky Gallery, the Arsenal Gallery at Central Park, The Jewish Museum, Rush Arts Gallery, Kenise Barnes Fine Art, and in Nueva Luz: Photographic Journal. He earned an MA in Art History from Hunter College and a BA in Art History from the University of Virginia.
The Smack Mellon Artist Studio Program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Lincoln Restler, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Jerome Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., Select Equity Group Foundation, and Smack Mellon’s Members.
Smack Mellon programs are also made possible with generous support from the Ruth Foundation for the Arts, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Wolf Kahn Foundation, Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, and the Buckholz/Fontaine Fund.
In-kind donations and services are provided by Team, Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department of Education and Sage and Coombe Architects.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
