Wednesday, August 15 | 6-7p
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
The second installment of Spin Off addresses Master of Fine Arts degrees. Is it necessary to obtain an MFA to be a successful artist? Is a liberal arts degree worth it? You have your MFA, now what? Panelists Kimberly Alexander, Danielle Georgiou, Tom Jungerberg, and Jason Roberts discuss these questions and more lead by moderator Greg Metz.
Missed the first panel of Spin Off? Watch the discussion on residency programs here.
Kimberly Alexander
Kim Alexander is a self-taught painter and teaches ESL in an urban high school near Dallas. With students from twenty to thirty countries per year, Alexander twists the tradition of scientific illustration to observe her international classroom and her students’ stories in paint. Greg Metz has described her work as “…a kind of narrative epistemology of the unity of living things, with the precision of Audubon and the torque of unseemly drama.”
Danielle Georgiou
Danielle Georgiou is a video performance artist based in Dallas, TX. Her work combines video and live performances and investigates the performative notions of femininity, sexuality, and identity. She is an Artist-in-Residence at CentralTrak–the UT Dallas Artist Residency program and is working on her Ph.D. in Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas. Danielle is co-founder of the performance art duo, Slik Stockings, with Hillary Holsonback, and is the founder and Artistic Director of DGDG (the Danielle Georgiou Dance Group).
Tom Jungerberg
Tom Jungerberg received his MFA in creative writing from Boston University in 2006. Since then, he has taught English at the University of South Florida and worked in the education departments of the Dallas Museum of Art and the Nasher Sculpture Center. He has had poems in The North American Review and The Mississippi Review and he has an essay forthcoming in Art Education Magazine.
Greg Metz
Greg Metz can be considered a social/political artist who works in various mediums, primarily sculptural installation in non traditional situtations.
He is a recipient of DMA’s ‘Otis Dozier Travel Grant’, NEA Warhol Rockefeller New Forms Initiative Grant, 3 times awarded Dallas Observer ‘s ‘Best of Dallas’ honors and winner of the Houston Art Car Parade for 3 consecutive years. Greg helped initiate ‘Project Teamwork’ Educational Initiative for the DMA and served as Lead Artist for DMA’s first ‘Visual Aids Day’ ,lead artist for the Dallas Master Plan’s first Public Arts Project. He was Co-founder and past president of D.A.R.E. , ‘Dallas Artist Research and Exhibitions, Co-founder of the ‘MAC’, McKinney Ave Contemporary and past co-chair of the Texas Sculpture Symposium. He teaches gallery and exhibition studies, interventionist art and serves as Gallery Coordinator at UTD where he has curated many exhibitions. He more recently founded ‘PAC-WE’ which organized and implemented one of Dallas’ first Flash Mob Art Actions ‘Making the Invisible Visible’, assembling a network of Artists in performing a dialogical intervention in the Dallas Arts District advocating for more healthcare options for artists. Mr. Metz has exhibited works nationally in a variety of venues including L.A.C.E. (Las Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), National Mall in Washington D.C., Dallas Museum of Art, San Antonio Museum, Arlington Museum among others.
Jason Roberts
Jason Roberts was the founder of the Oak Cliff Transit Authority, originator of the Better Block Project and co-founder of the Art Conspiracy and Bike Friendly Oak Cliff. In 2006, Jason formed the non-profit organization, Oak Cliff Transit Authority, to revive the Dallas streetcar system, and later spearheaded the city’s effort in garnering a $23 Million dollar TIGER stimulus grant from the FTA to help reintroduce a modern streetcar system to Dallas. In 2010, Jason organized a series of “Better Block” projects, taking blighted blocks with vacant properties in Southern Dallas and converting them into temporary walkable districts with pop-up businesses, bike lanes, cafe seating, and landscaping. The project has now become an international movement and has been featured in the New York Times, Dwell magazine, TED Talks and on NPR. Team Better Block will be showcased in the US Pavillion at the 2012 Venice Biennale.
Upcoming discussion topics:
October 11; 6:00-7:00p
The Anxiety of Influence
November 8; 6:00-7:00p
Graphic Texts
