The New Social Environment#88

Martin Puryear with Jason Rosenfeld

Featuring Puryear and Rosenfeld

 

1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific

Artist Martin Puryear joins Rail Editor-at-Large Jason Rosenfeld for a conversation. We conclude with a poetry reading by Kwame Opoku-Duku.

In this talk

Martin Puryear

Martin Puryear
Courtesy Michael Rose Fine Art
Over the last five decades Martin Puryear has created a body of work based on abstract organic forms rich with psychological, cultural, and historical references. His labor-intensive sculptures are made by hand at his studio in upstate New York. They combine practices adapted from many different traditions, including wood carving, joinery, and boat building, as well as more recent technology. As a student, Puryear studied ornithology, falconry, and archery, and in the 1960s he volunteered with the Peace Corps in west Africa, where he educated himself in the region’s indigenous crafts. Since then he has continued to travel extensively, observing a range of cultures and their unique approaches to object making.

Jason Rosenfeld

A black and white photo of Jason Rosenfeld
Jason Rosenfeld, Ph.D., is a Distinguished Chair and Professor of Art History at Marymount Manhattan College. He was co-curator of the exhibitions John Everett Millais (Tate Britain, Van Gogh Museum), Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde (Tate Britain and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), and River Crossings (Olana and Cedar Grove, Hudson and Catskill, New York). He is a Senior Writer and Editor-at-Large for the Brooklyn Rail.

The Rail has a tradition of ending our conversations with a poetry reading, and we’re fortunate to have Kwame Opoku-Duku reading.

Kwame Opoku-Duku

A headshot of poet Kwame Opuku-Duku
Kwame Opoku-Duku’s work is featured in Virginia Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, BOMB, Apogee, The Literary Review, and other publications. He is an educator, a founding member of Unbnd Collective, associate poetry editor for BOAAT, and curator of the reading series Dear Ocean.

❤️ 🌈 We'd like to thank the The Terra Foundation for American Art for making these daily conversations possible, and for their support of our growing archive.