RiverArts creates opportunities to amplify the artistic voice, bringing insight and delight to our community. We are proud to spotlight great storytelling and leading voices in art, music, poetry, dance, and theater.
Under the direction of Marie Louise-Miller, our Artist Conversation series offers a chance to get up close and personal with artists and arts experts. Recent events have featured Maxine Sherman and Bennett Rink of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, three octogenarians on what it means to be an Ageless Artist, and a panel of Young Audience authors: Veera Hirandanani, Sheela Chari, and Dr. Sayantai DesGupta.
RiverArts illuminates creativity in all forms, including poetry reading events, radio plays, and stand-up comedy. RiverArts also presented the world premiere of Braiding, an original performance piece integrating music, dance, art, and video.
Past Conversations
Flow Lines: Variations on Stillness at Sunset | Artist Conversations Series
Saturday, June 22, 2024
8:00 PM – 9:30 PM
Quonset Hut
145 Palisade Street, Dobbs Ferry, NY
Flow Lines is an interdisciplinary collaboration blending art, visual effects, and sound, featuring contributions from Jon Hatch, Bruce Robbins, and Malcolm Macdougall. Inspired by the multidirectional flow of rivers and estuaries, Flow Lines represents an interconnection of multiple creative disciplines.
This immersive experience synthesizes responses to various original source materials, with each response building upon the last. Flow Lines invites the audience to explore these variations as a community, while reflecting on their own individual responses. A talk-back with the artists will follow the performance.
Tickets & more information here.
We the Spirits | A conversation with photographer Jason Gardner
Sunday, April 14, 2024
5:00 PM – 6:30 PM
Ted & Nune Studio
45 Main St., Hastings-on-Hudson, NY
Join us for a conversation with American photographer Jason Gardner as he shares details from his new book and collection, We the Spirits, documenting his 15-year journey through 15 countries as he visually documented the ritual and festival of Carnival.
We the Spirits focused on documenting tradition, folklore, and community within the celebrations. Collaborating with ethnographers and local experts, Gardner chose subjects in smaller villages and remote towns to most accurately present the complexities of these local customs. We the Spirits have been featured in Photolucida’s Top 50 portfolio, GEO Magazine France, and The Guardian (UK).
Tickets & more information here.
Memory Palaces: Imagination & Reckoning in Mosaic | An Artist Conversation with Haifa Bint-Kadi
Sunday, February 25, 2024
This collection features 3-dimensional structures with mosaic elements representing the essence of home stemming from her deep connection to her own heritage to the Arab culture. Each palace is paired with an audio recording specific to the memories contained by the palace.
Memory Palaces is inspired by Bint-Kadi’s childhood as a first generation Palestinian-Afro-Caribbean American and a daughter of refugees. Bint-Kadi’s work explores the feelings of nostalgia, grief, and yearning often felt by refugees and immigrants as they relocate in search of new homes. Each piece represents an evolution of memories drawn from the past into the present through the Bint-Kadi’s mosaic practice. This collection is made possible by a grant received from NYSCA.
More information here.
Inspiration, Fuel & Identity: A Conversation with Ted & Nune
A conversation with Ted Andreasian and Nune Karamyan, led by artist and expert art restorer, Katerina Spilio. Ted and Nune discuss their new book, Stone and Candle: Armenian Monasteries—the epic journey into the mountains of Armenia, unpack the deeper meanings of the book’s title, the inspiration for the trip, and the power of connecting to the past while shaping a creative path into the future.
Stone and Candle: Armenian Monasteries is a collection of images that pays homage to Armenian nature and the magnificent churches ingeniously assembled over centuries by stone. Within the book’s pages, Ted and Nune’s work captures the profound play between human artistry and its surrounding natural environment. The images weave a narrative conveying the intrinsic connection between human creativity and the sacred architectural marvels of Christian heritage.
Saturday, October 14, 5:30pm More information here.
T.S. Eliot & Benjamin Britten | An Immersive Dialogue of Poetry and Music
An immersive experience of poetry and music event featuring a reading of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land and performance of Benjamin Britten’s Suite for cello 1, op 72.
Award-winning narrator/actor Edoardo Ballerini will render the 100-year-old poem while virtuoso cellist Peter Seidenberg interprets the complex passions woven throughout Britten’s solo cello suite. Poetry and music, intertwine, underscore, and respond to one another, deepening our experience of these singular artistic masterpieces.
There will be a conversation with the performers and Dr. Neil Arditi, Professor of English Literature at Sarah Lawrence College, led by RiverArts’ Producer & Artistic Director of Artist Conversations & Theater, Marie-Louise Miller immediately following the performance.
“A Spirituals Experience”
The inner life and inspiration of African American spirituals, with Yolanda F. Johnson, Soprano
Why “Wade in the Water?” Was there a reason to tell the chariot to “Swing Low?”
Yolanda F. Johnson explores the emotional, spiritual journey and hidden communication in traditional African-American spirituals conveyed for the enslaved Africans in America and the influence of spirituals on music of the Civil Rights Movement on through popular music. Part lecture, part recital, the program also includes a sing-along for audience members to gain a new understanding of these well-known and beloved songs. RiverArts’ Producer, Marie-Louise Miller, leads the conversation with Yolanda with opportunity for audience questions.
Presented by RiverArts’ Artist Conversation Series. Producer, Marie-Louise Miller
Artist Conversation with Malcolm D. MacDougall III
MacDougall’s work transcends the physical. Led by the desire to capture the potential for movement in the objects around us and influenced by the world as seen through the lens of the microscope, Macdougall creates sculpture which leads the imagination to touch the sublime.
Please visit Malcolm at www.MacDougall.com to learn more about Malcolm and view his body of work.
Presented by RiverArts’ Artist Conversation Series. Producer, Marie-Louise Miller
Artist Conversation with Ray Wilcox and Evan Bishop of Yonkers Arts
A live conversation with Ray Wilcox and Evan Bishop of Yonkers Arts about the organization’s Black Lives Matter Mural with Marie-Louise Miller.
In August of 2020, Yonkers Arts, together with community support, created a Black Lives Matter mural on S. Broadway outside of City Hall in Yonkers. Hear about the inspiration for the mural, the process of getting the mural approved and created, and the plans for its future. Ray and Evan talked about goals for Yonkers Arts, their role in community building through the arts, and what it means to serve a city of 200,000.
Presented by RiverArts’ Artist Conversation Series. Producer, Marie-Louise Miller
