Event

A conversation with artist Allison Janae Hamilton and jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran.

This program is part of the Art and Nature series, which was launched on the occasion of Storm King’s 60th Anniversary. It is now a monthly virtual program in which artists and special guests come together to discuss the power of art in nature.

Access:
Automated closed captioning is available for all virtual public programs. ASL interpretation is available upon request with ten business days advance notice. Requests made with less notice will be accommodated whenever possible. Contact info@stormkingartcenter.org to make a request.

About the Presenters:

Allison Janae Hamilton (b.1984) is a multi-disciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation, photography, and video. Her work often incorporates natural materials such as reclaimed wood, animal hides, and feathers. Hamilton fuses land-centered folklore and personal family narratives into haunting yet epic mythologies that address the social and political concerns of today’s changing Southern terrain, including land loss, environmental justice, climate change, and sustainability. The artist’s commitment to the land is driven by her own migrations, from Kentucky, where she was born, to Florida, where she grew up, to rural Tennessee, the location of her maternal family’s homestead, and to New York, where she currently lives. Hamilton’s work connects the physicality of the landscape with the lived experience it carries, positioning landscape as critical to understanding both history and contemporary culture.

Allison Janae Hamilton has exhibited widely across the U.S. and abroad. Her work as been the subject of solo exhibitions at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), North Adams, MA (2018) and Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA (2018). She has further been featured in group presentations at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY; the Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; the Jewish Museum, New York, NY; and the Istanbul Design Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey. Hamilton has also participated in a range of fellowships and residencies, including with the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York, NY; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and Fundación Botín; Santander, Spain. She is the recipient of the Creative Capital Award and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant. Hamilton holds a PhD in American Studies from New York University and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. She lives and works in New York.

Jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran is the Artistic Director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center. Moran has recorded 16 solo albums with the most recent being The Sound Will Tell You. Within jazz, his multimedia tributes to Thelonious Monk, Fats Waller, and James Reese Europe have shifted the jazz paradigm combining striking visuals, music and history into masterful evening length works.

Moran was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010. His 21-year relationship with his trio The Bandwagon (with drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen) has resulted in a profound discography for Blue Note Records and Yes Records; a label he co-owns with his wife, singer and composer Alicia Hall Moran. The scope of Moran’s collaborators is extensive. He has collaborated with major art world figures as Adrian Piper, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Adam Pendleton, Lorna Simpson, and Kara Walker; Moran composed 5 scores for choreographer Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet Company, two for Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence Dance Company. He scored Ava Duvernay’s Selma and The 13th and the stage and the HBO film adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me.

Credits:
Epos: soundscape for thousands. Performance by Jeff Scott and The Dream Unfinished, October 14, 2018, Storm King Art Center. Photo by Max Yawney Photography

Allison Janae Hamilton, The peo-ple cried mer-cy in the storm, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen. © Allison Janae Hamilton

Allison Janae Hamilton photo by Frankie Alduino

Jason Moran photo by Ari Marcopoulos