Frank Shifreen

Frank Shifreen (born February 29, 1948) is an American artist, curator, and teacher. Shifreen played a significant part in the art movement of

Shifreen was born in New London, Connecticut on February 29, 1948. He was raised in New York City, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Pratt Institute in 1976.^[6][7][8]

Artistic background

Shifreen is a mixed-media artist who has worked in painting, sculpture, digital photography, live performance, landscape painting, and massive installations.

In 1993 began attending Adelphi University, graduating with a master's degree in Science and Education (specifically special education) in 1996.^[13][15] He started teaching homebound disabled students for the New York City Department of Education in September 1996.^[15][16] He began attending Columbia University in 2001, and he is currently finishing a doctorate in Art and Art Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.^[9][13] His specific area of study is artist organized initiatives and non-institutional art.^[6][8] His mentor is Dr. Graeme Sullivan, and his focus is on "art learning" in community settings.^[17]

The Gowanus Memorial Artyard

The Monumental Show (1981)

In 1979 Shifreen began to have open-studio party shows at his

He and artists Michael Keene and George Moore[20] decided to plan an artshow with "monumental" art, which a group of artists began assembling. Six months before the show, Shifreen began putting out posters to call for entries, and with a $1500 grant from the Brooklyn Council on the Arts and help from Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation and Carroll Gardens Association,^[19] he and the organizers selected 150 artists out of the thousand proposals they received. The artists were each given a 20 by 20 foot space to create their art, which as "monumental" consisted of paintings, sculptures, mixed media, and anything one-and-a-half times normal size.

The participants included well-established artists such as

Several New York artists, including Shifreen and Julius Vitali, have theorized that the East Village, Manhattan art movement in the 1980s may have resulted partly from the artist-organized and not-for-profit shows of the early 1980s, including The Monumental Show and Monument Redefined. The shows made it possible for galleries and dealers to find and support emerging artists.^[9][14] From 1985 to 1986, Shifreen had five one-person shows as a result of these events, and became a successful grant writer.^[9][14]

Career

1983-1989

In September 1983, he co-organized and exhibited in the Brooklyn Terminal Show with AAAArt committee.^[6] Held at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, over 550 artists assembled in what had previously been one of the largest buildings in the world.^[9]

Shifreen co-founded the Pan Aats group with Michael Curtin in 1984. For a time he served as editor of PanArts Magazine, which also served as a catalog for their Art and Ego show in 1984.^[6][9]

Shifreen helped organize the Art Against Apartheid exhibition in 1984, which was held at twenty six separate locations in New York. It was also coordinated by The Organization of Independent Artists, for whom Shifreen had written numerous grants.^[14]

He has been a member of Group Scud, a New York-based portable exhibition group, who park in front of New York museums and galleries to display work.^[14] The 22 Wooster Gallery gave him the paid position of Program Director for the Artists Talk on Art series, where he organized well-attended panels on diverse topics from 1986 to 1988.^[13][14]

From 1986 to 1989, he was involved with the international artists' organization Plexus, which created multicultural art environments. Some of these exhibitions traveled to

In early 2001 he began working with crayon, curating a traveling exhibition that winter called the Crayon Show.[6]^[10] It displayed at the Open Space Gallery in Allentown, Pennsylvania in June 2000.^[13]

Counting Coup (2001)

Shifreen found himself upset after the 2000 election of

Shifreen served as artistic director of Casa del Sol in the South Bronx from 2001 to 2004.^[citation needed]

Ground Zero (2002)

New York City attempted to close the CUANDO building after From the Ashes, though the Museum of New Art (MONA) was contacted, and Frank Shifreen, Julius Vitali, and Daniel Scheffer opened a second show in July 2002 in the same building. Ground Zero was an exhibition of post-9/11 art featuring the work of over 50 artists.^[6][23] After the initial premiere in Detroit at MONA,^[22] the artist-organized show traveled around the country.^[14] Among the artists that exhibited are Amy Shapiro,^[22] Francoise Doherty and Robert Nielsen.^[23]

Art Against War (2003)

From June to August in 2003^[9] he curated the exhibition Art Against War: Posters and Multimedia, which was displayed originally on the internet^[4] and also at nine galleries and museums in different places around the world. It collected artwork reflecting American war in Iraq.^[6][7] It was partly sponsored by the Drinkink Collective, a group of artists and scholars at Teachers College, and the New York Arts Magazine.^[3][24]

The show featured works on paper, digitally printed, painted or drawn, and had a strong multimedia component. Over 40 artists from the United States and 13 other countries displayed artwork protesting or analyzing the war in Iraq.

Shifreen was a curator and artist for the exhibition Souped-up Pontiac at the Museum of New Art in Detroit, Michigan in May and June 2008.^[13][26] The show contained work from international and national artists, including a live-action "painting battle" between Shifreen and Dr. Barnaby Ruhe.^[5][27]

Shifreen was in a show in 2008 at Harvard University called Speech Acts: Art Responding Language, Rhetoric and Politics. His steel sculptures began as the collaboration with Danny Scheffer for the Brooklyn Artlot.^[8][13]

Shifreen and Gila Paris,

In September and October 2009, Shifreen co-produced the A Bailout for the Rest of Us: Recession Art Sale in Manhattan with Elanit Kayne. It featured thirty artists and thirty out-of-work professional artists. Shifreen hosted the online gallery on www.cultureinside.com.[30]

In December 2009, he participated in the Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project at the John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Guy de Muyser, President du Conseil d'Administration du CCRN, the organization that runs the Abbaye, as well as the Culture Minister of Luxembourg Octavie Modert, both spoke at the opening ceremony.

Personal life

Shifreen continues to teach homebound disabled students for the New York City Department of Education.^[15][16] He is a practitioner of shamanism.^[33]

See also

• Gowanus Memorial Artyard

References