Webinar: Geographical Inclusivity: Stereotypes, Dialogue, and Representation

Wednesday, December 14, 11am ET

Artworld representation, particularly in America, typically prioritizes urban coastal cities as the meccas for creativity. Most art movements, schools of artistic thought, and residents, however,  live outside those parameters. Raising visibility to diverse and underrepresented artistic communities residing in rural spaces, this panel's takeaways include a larger understanding of the arts in rural spaces, strategies for engagement and sustainability, and identifying modes of participation.

Meet the Speakers:

• Sarah Ayers, Director, Patch & Remington, Moderator

Sarah Ayers was born in Dowagiac, Michigan. After attending Andrews University, she moved to New York City. In New York City she worked as Curatorial Fellow at Bard Graduate Center and Gallery Director at Zabriskie Gallery. Upon returning to Michigan, Ayers was employed in the Public Programming Department of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Her exhibitions have been reviewed in The New Yorker and the New York Times. 

Ayers has received additional certification in Strategic Corporate Research from Cornell University, Labor Studies from CUNY: Murphy Institute, and Collections Management in Costume and Textiles from California State University: Long Beach. She currently operates Patch & Remington, an experimental art space located in Marcellus, Michigan.

• Marcus Morris: Rural Photographer 

Marcus Morris was born and raised in Zanesville, Ohio and obtained a BFA from Columbus College of Art & Design. In addition, he spent six months studying Art and Photography at The Michaelis School of Fine Art at The University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a portrait photographer and creative producer who's work centers queer people and performers. Based in Brooklyn, NY since 2012, he is currently attending The Ohio State University and researching a thesis project focused on the intersection of his Black and queer identity in Appalachia.

• Matthew Fluharty, Art of the Rural Matthew Fluharty is a visual artist, writer, and field-based researcher living in Winona, Minnesota, a town placed along the Mississippi River. He is the Executive Director of Art of the Rural, a member of M12 Studio, and he serves on the Board of Directors for Common Field.  Matthew’s poetry and essays have been widely published in the US and abroad and are present within the field-establishing publication A Decade of Country Hits: Art on the Rural Frontier (Jam Sam, 2014), as well as in To Make a Public: Temporary Art Review 2011-2016. 

• Holly Doll, Anpao Win (First Light Woman), Ignite Rural Program Coordinator

Holly Doll, Anpao Win (First Light Woman) (She/Her) lives in Mandan, North Dakota and is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. She is the founder and president of Native Artists United, owner of Five Nations Arts, a public speaker on cultural education and racial sensitivity, and making a shift to having a healing-centered approach to work and life. Holly has a background of 10+ years in nonprofit work and cultural education and 4 years in artist cooperatives/collectives. Holly also works with the Waterers in which she assisted in the disbursements of funding and radical grant making to the BIPOC led arts and culture field in the Upper Midwest. Most importantly, Holly is an artist, specializing in traditional Lakota forms of beadwork and quillwork, modern painting with watercolor, and occasionally writing poetry. Her mother taught from the age of two everything she knows when it comes to art, and she has kept it up ever since. A lover of Halloween, astrology, fall scented candles, poetry, baking, fiction books, and crying over Pixar movies. Lives by this quote by spoken word poet Shane Koyczan: “If we ever become who we hope we are, it is because we see how far there is still to go. And if we are none of these things to everyone, then we are none of these things at all.”