laboratory for creative concepts
Professional Development for Artists
Time & Location
About the Event
Professional Development for Artists is KODA’s inaugural community building and business bootcamp. Artists are invited to participate in shaping the program of the organization, to best suit their needs. Host Sheetal Prajapati will facilitate a 30-minute discussion asking the question “What do artists need from a residency program?”. Participants will share their experiences, ideas and recommendations for the development of a social justice focused residency.
Three comprehensive seminars will follow, each lasting 30 minutes, plus 15-minute Q&A. Patton Hindle, Head of Arts at Kickstarter, will share insights on how to launch and run a Kickstarter campaign. Kenseth Armstead, Artist, will lead a session on developing site-specific public art proposals. Dread Scott, Artist, will share his community engagement journey and examples.
4:00-4:30 PM Evening opens & welcome remarks by Sheetal Prajapati and Klaudia Ofwona Draber
4:30-5:00 PM Focus Group: Future of Residencies: What do artists need from a residency program? by Sheetal Prajapati
5:00-5:45 PM Seminar #1: Kickstarter for Artists: How to launch and run a campaign for your project? by Patton Hindle
5:45-6:00 PM Short Break
6:00-6:45 PM Seminar #2: Public Art Proposals: How to develop site-specific concepts and enter public dialogue? by Kenseth Armstead
6:45-7:30 PM Seminar #3: Community Engagement: The journey, its magic, challenges and ways to manage them? by Dread Scott
7:30-8:00 PM Mingle
Sheetal Prajapati, Host
Sheetal Prajapati is a Brooklyn-based educator, artist and advisor. She is the Principal and Founder of Lohar Projects, a boutique consulting agency working with individual artists and cultural organizations with a focus on professional development, public engagement, organizational planning, and new initiatives. She also serves on faculty at the School of Visual Arts (New York) in the Master of Fine Arts program and is a founding board member at Art + Feminism. Sheetal has had over 15 years of experience working across the field at organizations including The Museum of Modern Art, Pioneer Works, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She has been invited to sit on residency and grant selection committees at organizations including the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Apex Art, The Joyce Foundation, Creative Capital, Asian American Arts Alliance and others. Sheetal received her BA from Northwestern University and her MA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. You can learn more about her field-wide practice at sheetalprajapati.com.
Patton Hindle
Patton Hindle is the Head of Arts at Kickstarter, where she oversees the Arts and Performance Arts team whose specialists work closely with visual and performing artists, arts organizations, museums, and cultural institutions around the world to help them realize creative and ambitious ideas. Hindle was previously the co-founder of Chinatown gallery yours mine & ours and the Director of Gallery and Institutional Partnerships at Artspace. She is a co-author of the second edition of How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery and was a 2019 Catherine Hannah Behrend Fellow at 92Y Women inPower in New York. Hindle was raised in London and attended university in Boston.
Kenseth Armstead
Kenseth Armstead has created provocative conceptual art for three decades. His work has been included in pivotal explorations of history, American culture, ethnicity, and institution defining moments. Selected historic exhibitions: Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Frames of Reference: Reflections on Media at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Race in Digital Space at the MIT List Visual Arts Center; Veni Vidi Video at the Studio Museum in Harlem; Open House: Working in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Museum; “Edited at EAI”: Video Interference at Electronic Arts Intermix; Modern Heroics, 75 years of African American Expressionism at the Newark Museum.
Commissioned public work from Armstead’s current series Farther Land and beyond include site-specific installations at: Olana State Historic Site, Heresy • Hearsay, for an iteration of the award-winning exhibition Groundswell (2014); Socrates Sculpture Park, Master Work: Astoria Houses (2015); Master Work: Slaves of New York 1776 at BRIC House, Brooklyn, NY (2018); and Washington 20/20/20 at the George Washington Equestrian Monument in Union Square Park, New York, presented by NYC Art in the Parks Program (2018). The Boulevard of African Monarchs in Harlem (2020) is planned with the DOT and Marcus Garvey Park Alliance.
Dread Scott
Dread Scott makes revolutionary art to propel history forward. His work is exhibited across the US and internationally. In 1989, his art became the center of national controversy over its transgressive use of the American flag, while he was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Dread became part of a landmark Supreme Court case when he and others defied the new law by burning flags on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Dread's studio is now based in Brooklyn.
His work has been included in exhibitions at MoMA PS1, the Walker Art Center, Jack Shainman Gallery, and Gallery MOMO in Cape Town, South Africa, and is in the collection of the Whitney Museum and the Brooklyn Museum. His performances have been presented at BAM and on the streets of Harlem, NY. He is a 2019 Open Society Foundations Soros Equality Fellow and has received grants and fellowships from United States Artists and Creative Capital Foundation. In 2019 he presented Slave Rebellion Reenactment, a community engaged performance and film project that reenacted the largest rebellion of enslaved people in US history. The project was featured in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Christiane Amanpour on CNN and highlighted by artnet.com as one of the most important artworks of the decade.
About KODA
KODA Arts Inc. is a nonprofit arts organization based in New York dedicated to mid-career artists of diverse backgrounds. KODA grants residencies to allow for experimentation and facilitates creative projects through strategic partnerships with socially engaged businesses. KODA is the go-to thinking spot and serves the community through exhibitions of contemporary art, events and outreach to strengthen art education. KODA’s projects and strategy are artist-centered and aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. KODA Arts Inc. is fiscally sponsored by New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).
KODA: Community is a week-long programming with community and public events, taking place from February 11 to February 16, 2020 at FiveMyles, 558 St Johns Pl, Brooklyn, NY 11238.
Image Release
Registrants, instructors, and guests attending the program agree they may be photographed, videotaped, and audio taped during the event. Photographs, videos, and voice recordings are the sole property of KODA Arts Inc., which reserves the right to publish attendees’ likeness online and use it in promotional materials.