Tne Tony Awards are upon us and State of the Arts NYC has Brandon Victor Dixon joining the show. Brandon Dixon has been nominated for a 2016 Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Rolefor his performance as Eubie Blake. 

Also joining th show artist and interculturist Janet Goldner who will talk about her upcoming summer art intsllation on Governor's Island. Young artist Pedro Ramirez who creates elaborate botanical art installations will share what he is doing in the City. And we round the show off with Brooklyn-based artist Fred Hatt who focuses on figurative works.

BRANDON VICTOR DIXON

Tony Award Nominee Brandon Victor Dixon, following his Grammy Award nominated role as Berry Gordy in Motown The Musical on Broadway, is currently starring as Eubie Blake in Shuffle Along on Broadway. Brandon has just been nominated for a 2016 Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Rolefor his performance as Eubie Blake. 

A Presidential Scholar Semi-finalist and scholarship winner at the British Academy of Dramatic Acting in Oxford, Brandon is a graduate of Columbia University and a recipient of the University's I.A.L Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts which is an honor he shares with Tony Kushner (Angels in America), Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change, and Katori Hall (Mountaintop).

Since his professional debut, originating the role of Adult Simba in The Lion King National Tour (Cheetah), Brandon has displayed his diverse abilities in a number of roles. Notably, he was nominated for a Tony Award for his role as Harpo in Broadway's The Color Purple, and most recently, he was nominated for Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League, and AUDELCO awards for his outstanding portrayal of Haywood Patterson in Kander and Ebb's The Scottsboro Boys.

JANET GOLDNER

Born to a family of political activists, Janet Goldner grew up in the Washington, D.C. area, fully immersed in the social and political issues of the tumultuous 1960’s. The evolution of Janet Goldner’s artistic practice traces her enduring exploration of sculptural form, her ongoing relationship with African culture, and her lifelong involvement in political activism.  Goldner’s life experiences have played an integral part in the development of her work, and have allowed her oeuvre to carry on a unique cohesion where themes recur and overlap, appear and disappear, then reappear in altered form.

Over thirty years as an active artist, Janet Goldner has shown her work in over twenty solo exhibitions, and over one hundred group exhibitions throughout the United States, as well as in Lithuania, Germany, Italy, Bosnia, Australia, New Zealand, and Mali. Exhibition highlights include Multiple Exposures (2014) and The Global Africa Project (2010-11) at the Museum of Arts and Design, and Women Facing AIDS (1989) at the New Museum as well as Have We Met?, a major installation at Colgate University (2007). Her work is in the permanent collection of the American Embassy in Mali, the city of Segou, Mali and the Islip Museum on Long Island, NY.

She is the recipient of numerous awards, grants, and artist residencies, including a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship andtwo Fulbright Senior Specialist grants as well as grants from the Ford Foundation, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid.

Her work has been published in many books, journals, magazines, catalogs and news sources. An artist-scholar, Janet Goldner has curated exhibitions, published articles and catalogs, and lectured at conferences, universities, and community venues. Published articles include a chapter in Contemporary African Fashion, Indiana University Press, an essay in Poetics of Cloth, Grey Art Gallery, NYU. She has also conducted sculpture workshops and community art projects in both the United States Mali and Zimbabwe.

PEDRO RAMIREZ

Pedro Ramirez' works exist somewhere between the convergence of ceramics, biology, and horticulture.  Moving from rural Virginia to New York City has contributed to his investigations into the relationships that people have with the environment.  His fully immersive installations attempt to create a connection between city-dwellers and the natural environment; while his planted pots utilize nature itself as the artistic medium.  

Ramirez is an educator who teaches ceramics with a focus on organic forms which pay homage to the earth and the environment. 

Pedro Ramirez has exhibited at First Street Gallery, Jane Hartsook Gallery, and Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery in New York City.   He has created special commissions for the Living Beyond Belief Foundation and taught at the Third Street Music School Settlement.  He earned his MFA in 2015 at The City College of New York.

FRED HATT 

Born 1958 USA, Fred Hatt is an artist working in figurative drawing and painting, experimental video and photography, body art, and performance, exploring light, movement, energy, and the emergence of beauty from chaos. My work is an art of movement, rhythm and feeling. For me what is important is not conceptual or iconographic content, but process and practice. Drawing from life becomes a journey of transforming perception to directly experience the undivided aspect of reality. Whether making a drawing, a video piece, a photograph or a performance, the focus is on the perception of energy and its expression through light and form, movement and gesture.

 

Watch video