Baysa with Brianna Harlan while visiting the LVA exhibit, “Ballet Box”, curated by Skylar Smith.
Kóan Jeff Baysa is a specialist physician, writer, art collector, Whitney Museum ISP Curatorial Alumnus, and AICA member who networks the areas of medical science and contemporary culture and creates interactive exhibitions and forums that focus on health perception, acculturation, sustainability, access to creative experiences and the sensate human being. Some of these goals are achieved through his company, SENSEight, and the Come to Your Senses Series. Others are manifest in two startups: Collectrium, that pioneered image recognition software for art, and Medical Avatar, a visually personalized avatar on a health app for handheld devices, where his current focus is the role of social media in patient engagement and formulating educational strategies for improving individual self-awareness and health betterment.
He is currently the 2020 Great Meadows Foundation Critic-In-Residence. The residency was intended to be only for the months of February and March, but the CoVID 19 pandemic dramatically altered his plans to return to Los Angeles, his home base, or the location of his next adventure in Hawaii, so he is staying with us a bit longer. I spoke with him at length on March 26 about his observations on the art community in Kentucky and other subjects.
Baysa’s mission, as was the case with the previous Critics-In-Residence from Great Meadows, was to visit a wide array of visual artists in their studios. Of course, about halfway through his tenure, social distancing took over because of the growing coronavirus pandemic. Still, he estimates he did personal or live social media interactions with over 50 artists so far, and he hopes to accomplish more now that his stay in this area has been extended. “Using social media you miss the dimensionality, texture, and visceral feeling of the work, but in terms of what sort of observations and advice I am able to give the artist, I believe that hasn’t changed.” We were pleased that he did manage to visit LVA’s “Ballot Box” exhibit at Metro Hall, conceived and curated by Skylar Smith, while the building was still open to the public.
Even more than his predecessors, Baysa had emphasized group meetings and public events in his schedule, but most of it had to be canceled. “I’m a grass-roots person,” explains Baysa, “and I approach with a perspective formed from multiple overlapping careers: medicine, collecting, and curating. I arrived with an open mind, but I had an idea of coming to Louisville to investigate the interstices of the art world here. I am looking at the diversification of the community, art made in prison, art made by special needs individuals - ‘incarceration’ in any form, even if self-imposed.” How much has social isolation affected his ambition? “I had planned on traveling the state more. I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to explore Appalachian art on this trip, especially Queer Appalachian artists that I’ve heard about. Which just means I will definitely be returning.”
Baysa has traveled and worked all over the globe, and when asked how he saw Louisville fitting into an international landscape, he answered, “States can be considered entities within themselves, with something like a creed among the communities found there. What I have discovered is that Kentucky has an air of Southern Hospitality, a politeness that is certainly very welcoming, but it begs the question of how do you then develop a useful critical perspective, which I think is what is badly needed here.“
Baysa, Stan Squirewell, Susan Moremen, & Lance G. Newman II.
“Kentucky, and Louisville in particular, has been described as, ‘where the south meets the west’. What I have found is that it is a city filled with conundrums. It is also called the most cultured city in the MidWest, but at the same time, it is the 4th most segregated city in the region and has the 4th highest number of deaths from opioid overdose. But are artists addressing these issues?” The open space Basa leaves in the dialogue there suggests that he hasn’t found sufficient evidence that they are, but his recommendation is problematic in this moment of government-issued orders to stay at home and quarantine. “I look at the LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) program (public talks that happen internationally in 30 cities and which have now moved on-line) as an example of events that break down what I call ‘stealth regation - the isolation that Louisville needs to overcome. It could boost the common integrity of the art community.”
With Baysa’s unique background crossing medicine, science, art, and broader cultural concerns, I wondered about his take on our current public health crisis. ”People will always seek ways to lessen the anxiety and art will help,” he offered. We spoke at length about the opportunity for new forms to develop during this period, as artists turn to social media both as a means of self-expression and a method for reinforcing the existing community and perhaps building new ones.”
For visual art, some models are already in place. “The Catherine Clark Gallery in San Francisco has placed their current and upcoming exhibits online.” In Louisville, Moremen Gallery has posted both an on-line catalog and a video tour of Anne Peabody’s Sunspike exhibit that was opening at the very moment that non-essential businesses were being closed, and the University of Louisville Hite Art Institute MFA candidate Shae Goodlet’s Invocation exhibit is also online.
Big Talkers: Kóan Jeff Baysa is a virtual lecture from Baysa hosted on Zoom by Ruckus and Great Meadows Foundation on April 7 beginning at 6:00 pm.
Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2020 by Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.
In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.
