[-empyre-] Week two on "Contextualizing Making Sense"

[Renate Ferro]

*It has been tremendously helpful for me to lurk the past couple of days to
get a better sense of what so many of you already accomplished during the
Cambridge Making Sense event. Tim and are are looking forward to leaving for
Paris in just a couple of days.  At this time I'd like to introduce four new
participants in this week's discussion of Making Sense:  Frank O'Cain,
Rebekah Samkuel, Cristina Bonilla, and Xena Lee.  I welcome them to empyre
and hope that they will tell us a bit about their work in relationship to
Making Sense.  Renate*

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*Frank O’Cain* was born in San Diego, California, and studied at the Art
Students League of New York under Vaclav Vytlacil.   O’Cain has had solo
shows at Purdue University; the Miriam Perlman Gallery, Chicago; the Miriam
Perlman Gallery, Flint, Michigan; the Princeton Art Association; Levitan
Gallery I and II, New York City; the Saginaw Art Museum; the Ella Sharp
Museum, Jackson, Mississippi; Northern Illinois University; and the Theano
Stahelin Kunstsalon, Zurich, Switzerland.  He has participated in group and
solo shows at DDB Gallery, New York City; Gallery Korea, New York City; Yale
University; the Centre Pompidou; and Gen-Paul Gallery, Paris, France.  His
work is represented by a number of private collectors; the collection of the
White Building, University of Michigan; the Midwest Museum of American Art,
Elkhart, Indiana; and in the Saginaw Art Museum.  He is currently an
instructor at the Art Students League of New York and has presented at Yale
University and the Centre Pompidou.


*Rebekah Samkuel* was a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant. Her
works have been shown in group shows in Germany, France, Chicago, and New
York. She likes the solitude of her studio and to search for deeper levels
in her work.  In her words: “Art is as old as the human race. Why the need
to express in pigment, volume, line and stone?  And dance, music and drama?
Others buy and sell or choose to be warriors and tillers of the earth.  It
is a mystery.  I am a painter. My soul seeks both inspiration and liberation
in art. Art allows me to escape the crude reality of contemporary life where
we find the masses ruling and mediocrity reigning. Although I seek the
refinement and beauty in life, the themes in my work are the disturbing
pathos of the aftermath of the battle, the ancient battles; the struggle
between darkness and light. I do search for an understanding. I am a
warrior.”



*Cristina Bonilla* has had solo exhibitions at the Galerie d’Art du Parc,
Galerie Lieu Ouest and the Galerie d’Art d’Outremont in Montreal and at the
Southampton Cultural Center in New York. Her work has been included in group
exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, the Sandra Goldie
Gallery and the Gallery of the Museum of Fine Arts of Montreal. As part of
her artistic practice, she also teaches and lectures to painters, collectors
and general audiences, to help them understand the visual reality that is at
the core of painting. This has included adult education courses at the City
University of New York and Southampton College, New York City gallery tours
and visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was public liaison at the
Dia Art Foundation’s Dan Flavin Institute and was awarded the First Grand
Prize of Contemporary Painting by la Peau de l’Ours, an association of
Montreal collectors. She currently mentors professional painters in the
United States and Canada in small critique groups.



*Xéna Lee* seeks an expression that utters the unpronounceable, giving shape
to the formless.  As poetry reveals aspects of truth that are inaccessible
to discursive prose, she believes that visual art, like music or dance, can
go further to touch upon experiences that cannot be expressed in words.
There are moments in life when we catch glimpses of intrinsic truth, when we
seem to reach into the depths of reality.  These moments of fundamental
wisdom and sublime joy are what she strives to capture in her paintings.  In
contrast to the fleeting nature of these moments, expression of them comes
only from continuous cultivation and development of the human spirit.  For
these reasons, Xéna studied physics, literature, medicine, psychiatry,
theology, and anthropology, to understand better the human condition, while
she apprenticed after modern master Frank O’Cain to develop her artistic
vision.  She showed in numerous solo and group exhibitions since 1995,
including in New York (SoHo and Chelsea), Scotland (Edinburgh), France
(Tonneins-Unet and Paris), Italy (Modena), Spain (Barcelona), and Qatar
(Doha).  Additional influences include her East Asian heritage, martial arts
training, travels to Africa, and participation in social movements to
promote justice and peace.  Most recently, she has been exploring projects
across disciplines, including painting the backdrop for SYREN Modern Dance
and serving as visual-artist-in-residence for the Lincoln Center group
Ensemble du Monde in New York City; collaborating with a harpsichord
performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in the museum of Bielefeld,
Germany; painting the walls of the Jacques Ibert Conservatory of Music and
organizing an exchange between painters and thinkers at the Centre Pompidou
in Paris, France.
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