Beyond the Walls: Support for Artist Driven Research and Production, A Cleveland Sculptors Network Panel, with visiting curator Sara O’Keeffe

Sara O’Keeffe, juror for The Sculpture Center’s current exhibition After the Pedestal, the 12th exhibition of small sculpture from the region, is an Associate Curator at the New Museum. She was part of the curatorial teams that organized “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon” (with Johanna Burton, 2017-2018), and the “2015 Triennial: Surround Audience” (with Lauren Cornell and Ryan Trecartin, 2015). She curated “RAGGA NYC: All the threated and delicious things joining one another” (2015) and “Screens Series: Dynasty Handbag” (2018-2019), and co-curated “Jeffrey Gibson: The Anthropophagic Effect” (2019); “MOTHA and Chris E. Vargas: Consciousness Razing—The Stonewall Re-Memorialization Project”(2018-2019); “A.K. Burns: Shabby but Thriving” (2017); “My Barbarian: The Audience is Always Right” (2016); “Beatriz Santiago Muñoz: Song, Strategy, Sign” (2016); “Cheryl Donegan: Scenes and Commercials” (2015-2016); and “Wynne Greenwood: Kelly” (2015), all with Johanna Burton.

Key Jo Lee, Assistant Director, Academic Outreach for Education and Academic Affairs at the Cleveland Museum of Art, is a doctoral candidate in the History of Art and African American Studies departments at Yale University, graduation in December 2019. She has taught extensively both within traditional classrooms and in the museum setting. Ms. Lee has held positions at the Yale University Art Gallery as a Wurtele Gallery Teacher and as the Rose Herrick-Jackson Graduate Intern in American Painting and Sculpture. Her research interests include histories and theories of photography, American Visual and material culture, performance studies, contemporary African American and transnational art, as well as histories of black visual humor. Key Jo is also an independent curator and has published multiple critical essays on the work of emerging artists.

Amanda D. King, founder of shootingwithoutbullets.org, is a conceptual artist, activist, and legal scholar on the front lines of the ideological tension between the state and the state of black America. Her artistic practice involves analog photography, creative direction, public art, and arts education as activism. Her work explores black subjectivity and seeks to awaken society to the enduring struggles and residual strengths of black people. She is interested in the nexus between the individual experiences of black folks and the systemic issues of race, gender, and socioeconomics that affect us all. In a society that weaponizes blackness to maintain white supremacy, she uses imagery as force to compel racial equity and justice. Amanda has a law degree from Case Western Reserve where she received the Martin Luther King Jr., Diane Ethics, and Dean’s Community Service Awards. She uses her public platform and creative talents to advocate for systemic change in Cleveland’s public policy and arts ecosystem.

Kristine Mifsud, based in Toronto, Kristine received a BA Visual Studies from the University of Guelph, then lived in Japan, Australia, and Europe before returning to Canada in 2008. She continued studies at OCADU from 2010-2012. Through an intuitive process she explores material, notions of chance, and indeterminacy and making from what already exists. Kristine received an Ontario Arts Council grant in 2017 to pursue the practice of pine and birch tar-making, an extension of her interest in materials. Recently Kristine’s work was included in Get Noticed at RedHead Gallery, curated by Niki Dracos and Jamie Angell, After the Pedestal at The Sculpture Center, Cleveland (June-August 2018,  curated by Dr. Cathleen Chaffee, Chief Curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and 2019, curated by Sara O’Keeffe) , Support Gallery’s inaugural exhibition this will never end (January 2018) in London, Ontario, and had a solo exhibit twice removed (February 2017) at Gallery A, Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. She will be created an installation for DesignTO, January 2019, attended Rucka Residency in Cesis, Latvia April-May 2019, and will present a durational performance at Nuit Blanche Toronto 2019.