Announcing PlatteForum's 2013/14 Season

PlatteForum is pleased to announce its 2013-2014 lineup of artists selected to participate in the Creative Residence program. This September marks the start of our 12th season of giving hope and direction to underserved youth who collaborate with master artists from around the world. This experience transforms the lives of the youth, the artists and the community. These artists were selected from a highly competitive pool of amazing artists from around the world who applied this year for a PlatteForum artist residency.We are thrilled to unveil the 2013/14 roster of artists:Joan Dickinson, Media Arts / New GenresResidency date(s): September 3 - October 17, 2013Exhibition: Opens Thursday, October 17, 2013Learning Lab: Force Beacon Boys & Girls ClubJoan Dickinson is from the Midwest, but currently migrates between Denver and Paris. An interdisciplinary artist, her works are collaborative investigations into language, media, and cross-disciplinary elements such as sound, text, image, space, time—utilizing digital and non–digital forms. Of particular interest to her are people and the confluences of home and land, autobiography as resistance to history, encounters with site and weather, adaptation across media, the sky as threshold, other worlds, and phenomenology. Joan’s recent book, The Cooking School of the Air, is an illustrated novel composed of poetry, interviews, essays, footnotes, and scholarly research. During her residency she will work on a screenplay—creating storyboards, photographs, and producing a series of short performances-for-film—based on her novel. The film will include components from her 2012 opera-in-progress and draw upon her performances in The Architecture of Honey, Drove Road and The Charioteer.Joan earned a PhD in literature and creative writing, an MA in performance studies, and a BA in visual art and art history. Her work has been performed, exhibited, and published throughout the United States, and she received numerous grants and awards. thearchitectureofhoney.comAna Penalba, Architecture/Visual ArtsResidency date(s): October 28 - December 12, 2013Exhibition: Opens Thursday, December 12, 2013Learning Lab: Colorado I Have A Dream FoundationAna Penalba was born in Spain, received her Master of Architecture degree at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, and currently lives and works in New York. Ana has always understood architecture as a discipline that goes beyond the goal of the construction of a building to a belief that it is a technique for thinking. Her current work is a series of drawings based on “architecture derives”—possible scenarios beyond the limits imposed by economic/political pressures generally exercised on architecture. In that context she flips the belief of “form follows function” to “function follows form” and creates drawings of experimental structures with forms that suggest possible scenarios for living, working, and playing. During her residency Ana will build scale models of these sculptural forms that will continue to inform their meaning and potential use. She is excited to work with youth during her residency. This collaboration will not only enrich the content of her project but reinforce the importance of creativity as a cornerstone of the learning process.Ana is co-founder of the Creative Production Center and the architecture laboratory leon11 and is a member of Collective Zoohaus, Collective of the Collectives, and COAM (the Spanish institute for architects). She has received national and international awards and competitions, exhibited and published internationally and currently works with Terreform as an Urban Architect Researcher. cargocollective.com/anapenalbaKwan Taeck Park, Visual ArtsResidency date(s): January 6 - February 27, 2014Exhibition: Opens Thursday, February 27, 2014Learning Lab: ArtLabKwan Park’s work is a process of compensation for unrealized dreams and loss in life. Using organic, temporal and portable materials, he creates performances and experiences that engage the viewer. While in residency Kwan will develop his current body of work into more community-based format, including participatory performance. To date, the majority of Kwan's works reflect his own experiences of loss and memory. Kwan would like to integrate individual memories of loss from the community. Kwan will work with PlatteForum's ArtLab interns with whom he will spark conversations—with content lending itself to his exploration of loss. Born in South Korea, Kwan received an MFA from Seoul National University. He moved to New York to study at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan where he received a second MFA in the spring of 2013. His residency at PlatteForum will build upon his work created during a 2013 Yaddo residency and 2013 Expeditionary Residency at The Arctic Circle. kwantaeck.comMargaret Leininger, Visual Arts/TextilesResidency date(s): March 17 - May 8, 2014Exhibition: Opens Thursday, May 8, 2014Learning Lab: TBDPlace, site, and environment influence and inspire Margaret Leininger’s artistic practice. She is drawn to cloth specifically as a physical object that represents the passage of time involved in its creation and as a residue of the environment from which it is created. Cloth has been implicated throughout history as a contributing factor to globalization—from the Silk Road to the Industrial Revolution. Employing a variety of woven and nonwoven structures, Margaret examines the symbolism embedded in cloth construction from its ability to document a specific span of time, place and identity to its connective role among various social, economic and production networks. During her residency she will create a regional woven cloth that reflects the particular aesthetic nuances of Denver. The wearing process will be integrated into a sculptural space where the viewer is actively involved in the process.Margaret earned an MFA from Arizona State University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. Her work has been exhibited around the United States, published in regional and national journals, and supported by a residency at the Kala Institute for Visual Strata-sphere in 2013. maggieleininger.com Andrea Moore, Artist / Creative ActivistResidency date(s): June 9 - July 31, 2014Exhibition: Opens Thursday, July 31, 2014Learning Lab: ArtLabAndrea Moore is a creative activist and artist who uses writing, performance, and photography to foster connection and dialogue across social and cultural lines. Her current interest is the ever-deepening conflict between the Western and Arab worlds. The perceived lines of difference between people of Christian and Muslim faiths are entrenched and increasingly fatal. Bigotry, racism, nationalism, and cultural elitism are surging between both camps, and the most powerful political leaders of our time are as guilty as the most isolated, ordinary citizens of participating in this pandering of fear and mistrust. In the fall of 2013 Andrea will travel to the Middle East to participate in an Arab language immersion program. While there she will experience the people, religion, language, food, and customs, and she will try to build friendships and alliances, perhaps failing as often as she succeeds. Andrea will write, photograph, and be an outsider with a guest mentality. Rooting out as many of her own assumptions as she can, she will brave the surfacing of her biases. Andrea will then come home with a story to tell. She will spend her residency creating that story.Andrea is a writer, performer, photographer, and producer. In addition to her work as an artist, she operates The Detached Garage artist-in-residency program and is co-founder of both the No One Way Arts Collaborative and The Wayfaring Band. She has written, performed, photographed, and taught around the U.S. as well as internationally, was a featured speaker at TEDxMileHigh Women, and is a past creative resident at PlatteForum. She is the first-ever artist to be awarded a second residency at PlatteForum. andreamoorearts.com