Awash in Blue: The Blue Portfolio
While searching for a visual throughline to direct the art we, the Art Directors, stumbled upon blue. Although typically associated with sadness, we did not find only misery in the color. We thought of ink, of handwriting, of Picasso’s Blue Period, of blue period stains in advertisements, of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, of calm, of water, of sky, of pause, and of reflection.
We also thought back to this very workshop, the reason we’re all here, of experiencing things “remotely,” of the blueness of technology (of Zoom, Twitter, Safari, Word, LinkedIn, Meta, and Google Docs). The last two years have involved digital connections and have felt like their own blue period.
All of these thoughts, feelings, and associations helped us in curating and compiling both the art you see accompanying the writing and the art in this portfolio.
Swim in blue with us.
Yvonne Estrada
Yvonne Estrada has been drawing for as long as she can remember. Attended Art School for two years in Bogotá, in 1980 traveled to New York, where she got a BA equivalency under the international student program at The Arts Students League, where she also completed three years of advanced sculpture studies. In the summer of 1986, she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and afterwards traveled through Europe for one year under a travel study grant. Since 1987 she’s had a studio in Brooklyn, NY.
She has shown at Jason McCoy Gallery, NY. Von Lintel Gallery (formerly in NY), Furnace Art on Paper, CT. and The Rotunda Gallery / BRIC in Brooklyn, NY, among others. Her work is included in The JoAnn Gonzalez Hickey Collection, The Dian Woodner Collection, J. P. Morgan, Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, The Art Students League and many private collections.
At the present time, Yvonne Estrada is not represented by a gallery. She has worked in the inventory of Furnace Art on Paper, Falls Village CT, Jason McCoy Gallery, New York, NY. She also has small works on paper at Pierogi Artists Files, New York, NY.
Urte Laukaityte
Publab Fellow 2022
Urte Laukaityte is a philosopher, writer, and tinkerer with various art forms. Her research interests span a number of disciplines within cognitive science with a primary focus on issues in theoretical psychiatry. As a philosophy PhD candidate at UC Berkeley, she has been developing an empirically-oriented account relevant to phenomena like psychogenic conditions, placebo/nocebo, culture-bound syndromes, transient mental illness, mass hysteria, hypnosis, and suchlike. A good deal of her thinking draws from research within the so-called predictive processing/active inference framework, which has recently produced stimulating new ways of conceptualising cognition more broadly and mental illness more specifically. Prior to her PhD, Urte completed an MSc in cognitive science at the University of Edinburgh, and she holds a BA in linguistics from the University of Cambridge. She is venturing into the world of general audience writing, having published in magazines such as History Today, LARB, Public Domain Review, and others. Urte experiments with a variety of visual media with a special focus on photography and film. She has led a previous life as a contemporary dance performer—a sensibility that seems to have integrated into her other artistic explorations over time. She will be spending the year 2022-23 as a Fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude.
Clarissa Fragoso Pinheiro
Publab Fellow 2022
Clarissa Fragoso Pinheiro is a Brazilian writer and photographer currently living in New York City. She holds a BA in political science from Simon Fraser University and an MFA in literary reportage from New York University. Before NYU, she worked as a legal assistant, community organizer, and crisis worker at a rape crisis center. Clarissa is currently a fellow at New York Street Photography Collective.
Instagram: @clarifragoso
Erin Gilbert
Publab Fellow 2022
Erin Gilbert’s work has appeared in publications such as AGNI, Asymptote, Bitch, and Brevity. She has participated in ecologically informed multidisciplinary residencies at The Marble House Project in Dorset, Vermont and the Interdisciplinary Art Group SERDE in Aizpute, Latvia. Having earned an MFA from Bennington College, she is now pursuing a PhD in comparative literature at the University of Washington.
Vevina-Anne Flores
Publab Fellow 2022
Vevina-Anne Flores is an artist and author. She’s been drawing and creating since the day she began forming memories on this tiny planet. There’s just something subliminal about having this blurry vision in your head reconstructed into reality for all to see. Of course, it’s not always an easy flow. She often finds herself questioning if she forgot how to draw. Vevina is not sure if any artist feels the same as her, but after pushing through that art block, she comes back feeling more skilled than before. Although I still draw traditionally from time to time, her favorite medium is to work digitally through Procreate. Her favorite pieces to draw are usually ones that circle around emotions such as sadness or hints of melancholy. As contradictory as it may seem, creating those types of pieces transfers the low spirits she may be feeling into the painting. In return, happiness appears. Living in an era where pressure is placed on us at a young age, Vevina’s glad to have found self-therapy and hopes that others will also find something that brings them happiness. As for writing, her passion is to write about those that have been wronged. Her first novel, “I Am Malory,” focuses on a pianist with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Till this day, the media demonizes these systems, and she wanted to create justice through her pages. When Vevina is not busy writing novels or drawing, she loves to sculpt little critters with polymer clay or read horror novels.
Instagram: @cutiepieviv
