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2024 Keynote Speakers
Dr. Nettrice R. Gaskins
Dr. Nettrice R. Gaskins is an African American digital artist, academic, cultural critic and advocate of STEAM fields. In her work she explores "techno-vernacular creativity" and Afrofuturism.
Dr. Gaskins teaches, writes, "fabs”, and makes art using algorithms and machine learning. She has taught multimedia, visual art, and computer science with high school students. She earned a BFA in Computer Graphics with Honors from Pratt Institute in 1992 and an MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994. She received a doctorate in Digital Media from Georgia Tech in 2014. Currently, Dr. Gaskins is a 2021 Ford Global Fellow and the assistant director of the Lesley STEAM Learning Lab at Lesley University. She is an advisory board member for the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech. Her first full-length book, Techno-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation is available through The MIT Press. Gaskins' AI-generated artworks can be viewed in journals, magazines, museums, and on the Web. Her series of 'featured futurist' portraits are on view at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building through early July 2022.
Gaskins served as Board President of the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (The Alliance) and she was on the board of the Community Technology Centers Network (CTCNet) and Artisan’s Asylum.
Swoon Caledonia Curry (Swoon) is recognized around the world for her pioneering vision of public artwork. Through intimate portraits, immersive installations and multi-year community based projects, she has spent over 20 years exploring the relationships of individuals to the built environment, using her art as a catalyst for social change and healing. Swoon is best known as one of the first women street artists to gain international recognition. Curry’s deep consideration of form is inseparable from her vision of the transformative role of public art in communities. Her critical engagement with issues of social and environmental justice have positioned her at the forefront of the emergent discourse around socially-engaged practice. Her commitment to expanding the possibilities of art to repair trauma and foster personal and collective healing continues to drive her substantial contributions to contemporary art through experimentation with portraiture, sculpture, installation, and stop-motion animation. In 2015 she founded the Heliotrope Foundation to support multiple collaborative projects that use art to respond to crises. These include Konbit Shelter, a sustainable building project developed in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti; Music Box Village, an immersive musical environment built to and address the cultural toll of Hurricane Katrina by fostering collaborations between the New Orleans’ creative community and artists from around the world; and Braddock Tiles, a job-readiness and soft skills training program for local youth that responds to the decades-long disinvestment and economic crisis in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Curry’s recent work has been focused specifically on the relationship of trauma and addiction, drawing from her experience growing up in an opioid addicted family. In 2015, she developed The Road Home in collaboration with Philadelphia Mural Arts and the Million Person Project to serve a community ravaged by the opioid epidemic in North Philadelphia. The project included daily drop-in art therapy workshops and an ambitious advocacy component that culminated with harm-reduction workshops with the Philadelphia Department of Health and a public symposium. Curry has a long history of executing projects of ambitious scale and vision. The most notable is a series of floating sculptures and experimental living projects that include The Miss Rockaway Armada (Mississippi River, 2006-2007); Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea (Hudson River, 2008); and the Swimming Cities of Serenissima (Adriatic Sea), which crashed the 2009 Venice Biennale. Curry has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in major museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1, New York; the Brooklyn Museum; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Skissernas Museum, Lund, Sweden; MIMA Contemporary Art Museum, Brussels, Belgium; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Oaxaca, Mexico; the Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia; and CONTAINER, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her first museum retrospective was The Canyon: 1999–2017at the CAC Cincinnati. Her work is held in public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and MASS MoCA. Current projects include The House Our Families Built, a major public art commission in collaboration with PBS American Portrait, as well as a feature length stop-motion animation that will be filmed in her family home. The film, currently in pre-production, is supported by the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program.
Dudley Music is a Long Island-based Hip-Hop artist, producer, and Jazz musician, playing saxophone, keys, guitar, drums, flute, clarinet and MPC. He performs, curates and hosts events around Long Island, NYC and neighboring east coast cities. When he is not creating or performing, Dudley is contributing to the growth of Long Island’s community of musicians and visual artists. Dudley is a regular at Rockwood Music Hall and recently performed at The Blue Note and Brooklyn Bowl, two of NYC’s premier live music venues. Dudley spent the Summer of 2019 on stage supporting artists like Talib Kweli, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Sublime with Rome, Slightly Stooped, Gladys Knight, and Patti Labelle. His debut EP, On My Way, was released in the Spring of 2016. With support from Hip Hop legend Talib Kweli, an extended version of the project was made available at Talib's online store, KweliClub.com. Dudley's sophomore EP, Rely On Me, was released December 20, 2019.
Andres Gallardo is a 35 year-old Panamanian-American artist from Brentwood NY. He is most known for the "Gem Project", where he takes pieces of art and drops them all over the world for people to find, for free. Andres’s goal is to influence people in the art of giving and being selfless with their craft. Passion, love and social justice are the fuel for his work. Although he creates portraits, he finds a way to always focus on bringing positive messages to his community and uses his art as a voice for social activism. In his hometown, he is better known as the GEM GUY. “G” stands for Giving, “E” stands for Everyone and “M” stands for Moments. In 2016 Andres had the opportunity to do a Ted Talk where he proudly represented his hometown of Brentwood while sharing his story of his artistic journey and community activism. Every stroke on Gallardo’s canvases tells a story about the world through his own eyes, and he is capable of captivating and evoking the purest of emotions. Andres takes pride in making others happy through art and plans on continuing to do so around the world.
Scott Bluedorn Scott Bluedorn was born in Southampton, NY in 1986. He lives and works in Sag Harbor and Bridgehampton, NY. He holds a BFA from School of Visual Arts, NYC 2009. Scott Bluedorn is a Sag Harbor-based artist, illustrator and designer who works across media including drawing, painting, printmaking, installation, collage and assemblage. He creates surreal imagery inspired by maritime history, cultural anthropology, myth, supernatural themes and the natural world to distill a vision he deems a “maritime cosmology.”
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