CREATING CONVERSATIONS
WORLD BLINDNESS AWARENESS MONTH
RETHINKING DESING THROUGH DISABLED PERSPECTIVES
Tuesday, October 24th at 12:00pm EDT
Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_h7PML1T0QB6fxyEkkfrO_A
HMA2 Architects and The Jewelry Library are excited to host an online presentation with multi-sensory artist, designer, and educator Sugandha Gupta in celebration of World Sight Day/World Blindness Awareness Month. Borrowing from her own experience as a person with low vision, Gupta will discuss how disabled perspectives lend inclusive and generative approaches to design. We will explore best practices for creating accessible spaces, products, and services, gaining a new understanding of access and design that serves broader audiences in multiple ways.
Gupta will share examples of creating access that can be designed thoughtfully to remove access barriers, while also being sensorially stimulating. Creative audio descriptions for example can offer both a descriptive account of an image or performance that makes it accessible to low vision and blind people, and can also be poetic and expressive, offering all audiences more focussed points for contemplation. We will learn how disabled designers, artists, and professionals use their disabled experience to generate creative work, crafting ingenious ways of navigating inaccessible spaces, products, and services.
Gupta is the Assistant Professor of Fashion Design and Social Justice at Parsons School of Design. She creates multi-sensory textiles that engage audiences through their senses. Her research interests are at the intersections of social, environmental, and disability justice. Gupta also advocates for disabilities at museums, conferences, and universities. She is an established artist and designer with over fifteen years of experience. Her work has been showcased at the American Crafts Council Show, Smithsonian Craft Show, Hunterdon Art Museum, NYTM, The United Nations Headquarters, and The Met. She has won prestigious awards such as Dorothy Waxman Textile Prize, CFDA Design Graduate, and International Design Award.
PAST EVENTS
NEWS FROM THE NETHERLANDS
CROSSING BORDERS
Curated by Liesbeth den Besten and Alexandra van Strien-de Groot, News from The Netherlands: Crossing Borders showcases the work of two Dutch contemporary jewelers, Liesbet Bussche and Koen Jacobs, for New York City Jewelry Week 2019. Bussche and Jacobs embrace an uninhibited approach to jewelry, and by referencing the wearing and use of jewelry, they succeed in stirring our imagination. Both artists share a good sense of ‘jewelry-ness,’ and their craftsmanship, inquiring minds, rich and wide choice of materials and techniques make us aware of jewelry in new ways. A marionette turns into an ornament for one’s personal space, a wooden jewelry box becomes an intimate monument for a dropped necklace.
PAPER AS PROTECTION
We are proud to join Gallery Loupe in presenting Paper as Protection and Gift / Recent Work by Kiff Slemmons. In this exhibition, American artist Kiff Slemmons continues to investigate past jewelry forms through an ongoing exploration of paper as a material. These works address the simultaneous strength and fragility of paper, the historical and cultural significance of the material, and the use of paper and jewelry as a way to both protect and connect.
THE JEWELRY LIBRARY OPENING
10 November 2018
Grand opening during Jewelry Week NY (November 12-18) with an exhibition called The Kinship Between: American Women Jewelers curated by Mark McDonald, an expert in mid-20th century studio jewelry and Sienna Patti, a dealer of contemporary jewelry in Lenox, Mass.
HMA2 was surprised to find out that the composer of West Side Story lived in its studio back in the 1940’s. We found some amazing photos in the National Archive the very young Bernstein working here. https://leonardbernstein.com/ To celebrate Bernstein’s 100th birthday we invited students from Rosie’s Kids to play music and talk about his work. Leonard Bernstein was a composer, pianist with flamboyant conducting style, and pedagogic flair, especially in concerts for young people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZX_XCYokQo&t=1s
Bronx Faces & Voices, a Reading and Conversation
Edited by Emita Hill and Janet Munch, Bronx Faces & Voices presents the personal, uncensored stories of sixteen borough residents, an eclectic group of men and women who lived through a period of dramatic change in their urban environment. These accounts, accompanied by the striking photography of Walter Rosenblum and Georgeen Comerford, chronicle the Bronx before, during, and after the troubled years of the '70s and '80s. Read about Bronx Faces & Voices in The New York Times (January 9, 2015).
The event is part of First Person, a new conversation series produced by HMA2 + Superscript.
CONVERSATION WITH ROLAND REISLEY, FOUNDING MEMBER OF USONIA, NY, AND THE AUTHOR OF USONIA, NEW YORK: BUILDING A COMMUNITY WITH FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
Trained as an architect, Chris brings a keen awareness of design and context to his remarkable work that documents overlooked treasures in the urban landscape. He’ll discuss the making of his recently released and acclaimed book, North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City (Fordham University Press, 2014).
Located in the East River between the Bronx and Queens, this small island became home to infectious disease hospitals in the 19th century during a population boom in the city. But in 1963 North Brother and its buildings were abandoned, falling into disrepair as nature reclaimed the island. Still off-limits to the public, Chris Payne’s five-year photographic project reveals a forgotten piece of New York history.
On Thursday, May 1 at 6:30pm join Superscript and architecture writer and critic Julie Iovine for a discussion of The Power Broker by Robert Caro (1974), an epic account of the rise and fall of Robert Moses, the man who forged the cityscape of modern New York City. The first in Superscript’s 2014 readings on the theme of “Power,” we’ll talk about Moses’ monumental public works and his growing influence over the decades, as well as draw comparisons with how the city is shaped by the power brokers of today.
