11 LGBTQI artists selected for Queer/Art/Mentorship in NYC

Eleven LGBTQI artists are the lucky recipients of the Queer/Art/Mentorship 2015-2016 Fellowship, a multi-disciplinary, inter-generational arts program that pairs and supports mentorship between emerging and established LGBTQI artists in New York City.

Part of the 2015-2016 annual mentorship cycle, each of the Queer/Art/Mentorship Fellows will be paired with an established New York-based artist within their creative field for the yearlong mentorship.

The relationship that develops aims to support the artistic and professional practice of the Fellow, as well as to develop community-wide conversations about what it means to generate and curate queer work in New York City and beyond.

LGBTQI Fellows and Mentors

The Fellows chosen in five artistic disciplines are: Monstah Black, Eva Peskin and Justine Williams in Performance; Jacob Matkov and Brendan Williams-Childs in Literary; Rodrigo Bellott, Erin Greenwell and Mylo Mendez in Film; Caroline Wells Chandler and Doron Langberg in Visual Arts; and Hugh Ryan in Curatorial.

The Mentors they will be working with for the 2015-2016 Fellowship year are: Arthur Aviles and Talvin Wilks in Performance; Jaime Manrique and Sarah Schulman in Literary; Thomas Allen Harris, Silas Howard and Stacie Passon in Film; Angela Dufresne and Avram Finkelstein in Visual Arts; and Shannon Michael Cane in Curatorial.

LGBTQI artist profiles

Rodrigo Bellott’s breakout film, Sexual Dependency won over 15 awards in over 65 film festivals around the world and was also Bolivia’s first film competing for “Best Foreign Language Film” at the 2004 Academy Awards. Variety magazine named Bellott as one of the “TOP TEN Latin American Talents to Watch”.

Monstah Black is a multi-disciplinary performing artist and educator and has accumulated numerous awards including the Tom Murrine Performance Award and the BRIC Media Arts Fellowship. He has taught and performed internationally with various dance companies as well as with his own work.

Caroline Wells Chandler is a MFA recipient in painting at the Yale School of Art where he was awarded the Ralph Mayer Prize for proficiency in materials and techniques. With shows nationally and internationally, Chandler’s latest body of work entitled “The Best Little Whore House in Texas” opens this fall at Roberto Paradise Gallery in San Juan, PR.

Erin Greenwell wrote and directed the feature film My Best Day, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. Her other directing endeavors include Oh Come On, a punk DIY performance video for Kathleen Hanna’s band The Julie Ruin and The Golden Age of Hustlers, featuring Justin Vivian Bond’s remake of the iconic song written by legendary punk chanteuse Bambi Lake.

Doron Langberg eceived his MFA from Yale University and holds a BFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a Certificate from PAFA. He is a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and the Yale Schoelkopf Travel Prize, named as a NYFA Painting Finalist.

Jacob Matkov writes poetry in Brooklyn, NY where he teaches first year writing and is the coordinator of the English/Creative Writing graduate programs at LIU Brooklyn. He is a co-founding editor of visceral brooklyn and his poems have been published in fields magazine, voicemail poems, Maudlin House, thosethatthis, Downtown Brooklyn and others.

Mylo Mendez’s work uses humor, narrative, and characters with aberrant bodies to navigate identity, social and geographical borders, and history. Mendez has been featured in group shows in New York City and Austin. Ze received hir MFA from Parsons The New School for Design.

Eva Peskin & Justine Williams are interdisciplinary artists, performers and culture producers. Joint project, Nothing to See Here is perfect example of their use of civic multi-media performance engaging audience-participants dystopia (co-created with Vanessa Gilbert).

Hugh Ryan is a writer and curator in New York City, whose work focuses on queer politics, culture, and history. He is the Founding Director of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, sits on the Board of QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, and has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Bennington.

Brendan Williams-Childs is a short-story writer from Wyoming. His work has appeared on NPR and in Midwestern Gothic Issue Literary Journal. In 2013, he was awarded the Larry Neal Writers’ Award. He co-edits the very small zine and chapbook press Cheap Dates Press.

For the LGBTQI artists and art communities

Queer/Art/Mentorship is one of several ongoing programs run by the larger Queer/Art organization that includes the popular Queer/Art/Film series held monthly at the IFC Film Center in New York.

Founded in 2011 by filmmaker Ira Sachs and Pilobolus Co-Executive Director Lily Binns, the program has established itself as an ongoing force within the city’s LGBTQI artists and arts communities, with an expanding series of public events and exhibitions. (PR)