We are gearing up for an incredible festival next weekend, and look forward to experiencing art and music in all their glory. With some of NYC’s most innovative artists on board for installations, look no further than the East River.

For AFP’s “Artists4Equality,” Michael Alan will be drawing his life long love who will be donned in a hand made painted dress and custom designed  accessories created by Alan.  In a 5 hour act of love, devotion and romance, witness Alan, the line maestro, will create many drawings live while celebrating their love in a piece titled, “Love is the Only.”

“Even the reclining male figure of Prostitution looks restless- the angular, attenuated limbs and their busy surfaces bring to mind one of Egon Schiele’s more anxious self portraits.” – Robert Shuster, The Villiage Voice, Best in Show

Kim Holleman is best known for her seminal work, “Trailer Park: A Mobile Public Park,” which has been featured in the NY Times and shown at several different sites in the city.

In Holleman’s words, her installation at Solar One Park is an enormous Festival Flag which will fly in Stuyvesant Park. The fabric flag is huge, brightly colored and has metallic elements, so it acts as a terrific visual marker and color-pops against the sky. I designed to have some dimensionality too, so when it catches the wind, it fills out creating some interesting 3D shapes as it flows.

I had the idea that the patchwork in the flag was the perfect symbol for the gathering together of peoples to create a community structure that’s vibrant, flexible and represents all types of characteristics including equality.

Berette Macaulay is a talented multidisciplinary artist, whose artistic expression ranges from award-winning photography to dance, and of course installations.  Berette’s created a special interactive installation for the festival titled, “Embrace Difference.” This project is a multicolored interractive installation quilting process conceived by Berette Macaulay, and created for and by all participating festival attendees. The quilt is designed to show that though we are not the same, we are equally valid parts of a whole.

The painted canvas pieces will represent each color band in the Pride Flag signifying:
Life (red), Healing (orange), Sun (yellow), Nature (green), Serenity/Harmony (blue), and Spirit (violet).

The quilt will build with each person’s canvas wish square and attached to the whole with hemp twine until it’s finished.

Anyone can do this. We create ‘equality wishes’ on provided canvas pieces by drawing an outline of our hands, writing a wish or a statement about equality inside our ‘hands’, and then adding it to the quilt. The full size quilt measuring 6 x 7 feet will be on display til the end of the Festival.

For those who become friends of Art For Progress or follow SeBiArt on Facebook, they can look for us to tag themselves in the quilt-photo online.

Daniel Maldonado is a well respected, award winning filmmaker who always gets your attention.  Maldonado’s installation for the festival will feature his film “Spectacle of Death” which is a film/video examination on the active perception of observing death and its various presentations, forms and meanings that struggle through projected light.

Cat Del Buono is an artist who always brings innovation and humor to the art world, with thought-provoking pieces that incorporate both film and performance. Her work has been featured during Miami Art Basel among other noted venues, and is always surprisingly light while broaching heavy subject matter.

Cat’s piece to be featured at the festival is titled “Swimming Upstream.” The video installation is inspired by Brooklyn’s East River and the fact that pollution keeps people and wildlife from being able to swim freely and safely in the waters surrounding New York City. Since it can’t happen in reality, it happens in a projection.