WaveMaker Grantee: Fresh Art International
Written by Cathy Byrd and Locust Projects
Interview with Cathy Byrd, Miami-based founder of the Fresh Art International podcast and publication platform
Tell us about your WaveMaker project:
I received a WaveMaker Long-Haul grant in 2018 supporting and expanding Fresh Art International’s programming and reach. Ten years ago, after working for decades in the field of contemporary art, I took the plunge into podcasting. When I launched Fresh Art International from a park bench in Brooklyn on October 1, 2011, I initiated an entirely new way of engaging with the art world. Podcasting was still new and art podcasts were rare. Fresh Art began as a nomadic audio program designed to transport thousands of listeners to sites of creativity at the center and fringe of art scenes across six continents. Infusing insightful conversations about today’s art, design and film with unique sonic experiences, our mission is to make contemporary art and culture relevant, fresh, exciting and educational for the cognoscenti and the curious.
Fresh Art has always been a communal endeavor. Back in 2011, a few close friends in Baltimore, Providence, and New York worked with me to create the brand and launch the website FreshArtInternational.com. We set up accounts on Twitter and Facebook and registered the podcast on iTunes. I recorded my first episode with Baltimore-based artist Joyce J. Scott (released October 15, 2011). Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016, Joyce Scott was my first guest when I launched a weekly show on Jolt Radio in October that year, also joining us was Miami-based artist Antonia Wright, who talked about her traumatic fall through the ice on a frozen lake in a filmed re-enactment that was a feature of her 2016 multimedia exhibition at Locust Projects, Under the water was sand, then rocks, miles of rocks, then fire, (listen to the episode here). The archive has since grown to almost three hundred episodes.
Once an experimental foray into the unknown, Fresh Art is now a respected podcast and publication platform, an established resource for teaching and learning about contemporary art and culture. The project brings together my own experience in curating, writing, teaching, and mentoring and the knowledge and expertise of collaborators and partners. Our multi-dimensional platform is devoted to cultural literacy.
What was the easiest aspect of this project? What was the most challenging? Did you learn something new? What do you wish you had done differently? What went perfectly?
What makes Fresh Art International easy is my passion for contemporary art, for research and fieldwork. I channel tremendous creative energy into this long-haul project. My high level engagement encourages those who work with me to give their best to each project we take on. The work enables me to pursue my life-long commitment to social, political, racial and economic equity. Fresh Art allows me to participate in and share the value of experiential learning. I love what I do!
The greatest challenges I face in sustaining an independent creative project are time and money. For instance, there are myriad stories than I’ll never have the chance to share. Since I’m the founder and artistic director, and the entire history of Fresh Art is inside my head, I’m logically the one to set the tone and tempo, make strategic use of the archive, and determine the direction we take. It’s easy to get overwhelmed!
Like many of my peers, I’m a self-taught podcaster determined to excel. Learning the technology was daunting at first. My biggest trepidation was recording voice-overs (sometimes, more than 30 takes to achieve the desired 3-minute recording!). A friend suggested voice coaching. I followed through with Cathy Sobocan, a professional based in Toronto. During a series of Skype sessions, she taught me how to enhance my voice and enliven my stories. Thanks to Cathy, I reached a level of self-confidence that impacted my interviews, too. Our sound editor Alyssa Moxley is based in France. We’ve been working together for three years. Alyssa is a true collaborator when it comes to producing stories. From Alyssa, I’ve learned how to make the most of recording technology. She’s an ace at critiquing my scripts, too. Here in Miami, communications expert Julia Rudo is the force behind our online engagement. Julia envisioned, designed, and launched FreshArt.Education, our awesome new learning portal. Since 2012, I’ve commissioned these three and other tech-savvy writers, editors, curators, and communications professionals based in the U.S. (New York, Miami, Santa Fe, Providence, Bentonville), Korea, Turkey, and Greece, to build and promote Fresh Art International. We call ourselves Team Fresh. This year I mentored Miami-based producers Jahné King and Giselle Heraux to become members of Team Fresh, I equipped them with a recording kit and trained them to introduce episodes in the Fall 2020 Student Edition.
For Fresh Art’s Fall 2020 Student Edition, University of Miami student Luz Estrella Cruz went to the Third Horizon Film Festival (also a Cycle 4 WaveMaker grantee) at the Little Haiti Cultural Complex in Miami. She met filmmakers Diana Peralta (De Lo Mio, 2019) and Michael Lees (Uncivilized, 2020), whose work she had been researching. Interviewing them and watching their films, Cruz discovered the passion behind their stories and immersed herself in two diasporic experiences from the Caribbean. Listen to the episode below:
As for funding, I’ve been fairly successful at grant writing. In December 2017, we received a Knight Arts Challenge Grant. In 2018, we were selected for the WaveMaker grant through Locust Projects supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and received a commissioned publication grant from the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation. I’ve yet to establish a steady stream of revenue. With Team Fresh, I’ve staged modestly successful thematic campaigns such as Power Up!, 2014 (professional recording equipment), Destination Fresh Art, 2016 (non-stop expedition to eight cities), and Breakfast and the Beat, 2017 (remote radio broadcast equipment and expenses). In 2019, I was invited for commissioned residencies with Tempus Projects, Tampa, Artists in Residence in Everglades, and Wayne State University, Detroit. My next curatorial residencies will be with CEC ArtsLink in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art in Westfalen, Germany.
What has been perfect about Fresh Art is the timing—right place, right time to create and build a digital platform. So far, this project has been a terrific and sometimes terrifying learning experience. It’s thrilling to begin our tenth year!
Tell us what you're most excited about as a result of this project? Has it inspired a new work, collaborations, direction? Has it brought new opportunities for expanding it through other grants or exhibitions? What, where, and when? Tell us more...
I’m excited about how Fresh Art has evolved over a decade. Since our launch in 2011, we’ve remained committed to recording and sharing the voices of artists, curators, filmmakers and architects at the center and fringe of creative communities around the world. Fresh Art exemplifies equity—exposing voices that have been historically underrepresented. Notably, 132 episodes (47% of the entire archive, to-date) amplify the perspectives of curators, artists, architects, filmmakers and other creatives who identify as Black, indigenous and people of color. In 2016, we set a goal to increase the visibility of contemporary art, film and architecture from the Global South. Thirty percent of the episodes we produced over the past four years feature creative and curatorial practices in the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Africa. We witnessed and recorded many of these episodes in situ.
Not only are we nearing 300 episodes in the archive. This year, we centered on deepening the archive’s educational value, producing an array of distance learning resources. We released four new research guides and five topical playlists, produced two micro-series in our new Student Edition, and launched the learning portal FreshArt.Education.
In 2020, the COVD-19 pandemic and the resurgent Black Lives Matter Movement gave me a renewed sense of purpose for Fresh Art International. Nine years ago, we began to release a steady stream of dynamic online content—introducing a spectrum of contemporary artists, curators, filmmakers and other culture producers to the world’s growing podcast audience. The evergreen archive has always been available on multiple platforms and our educational resources are now synthesized beautifully on a microsite.
Our challenge and opportunity is to secure funding that will allow us to continue creating fresh content while encouraging wider use of our platform in the coming year. We are highly motivated to bring our best to the conversation, to remain relevant, inclusive, and consistently professional in how we serve curators, art professionals, artists, educators and students in the U.S. and beyond. Our aim is to further diversify our storytelling, feature more BIPOC voices in art podcasting, and encourage new scholarship and writing around contemporary art by sharing our digital archive and original source materials with libraries and oral history collections.
In one sentence - what one thing about doing this project will stay with you?
Fresh Art International demonstrates the power of creativity to transform and the force of technology to deepen the impact of art and culture in the world.
ABOUT CATHY BYRD
Cathy Byrd is an independent contemporary art curator, writer, educator and podcaster, based in Miami Beach. Her hybrid practice spans more than two decades. Since October 2011, she’s been directing and producing content for FreshArtInternational.com. The website features the Fresh Art International podcast, as well as news and views from the international art scene. The podcast centers on conversations with contemporary artists, curators, writers, architects, and filmmakers from around the world.
Fresh Art International received a Cycle 4 WaveMaker Grant in 2018. Since 2015, WaveMaker Grants have awarded $399,000 in grants to 77 Miami’s most visionary artists, collectives, and curators.
WaveMaker Grants at Locust Projects is made possible by support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and is part of the Warhol Foundation's Regional Regranting Program. Part of a national network of Warhol-initiated regranting programs, WaveMaker Grants is the first in the southeast. For more information about the Warhol Foundation's Regional Regranting Program, please click here.