45+ top contemporary artists. Four days. Extraordinary impact. Opening October 22, 2014 at Pace Gallery, FIERCE CREATIVITY is a selling exhibition benefitting Artists for Peace and Justice.  We are blown away by the enormous talent and artistic vision of our curators and 49 participating artists and their commitment to education as a fundamental human right. APJ Advisory Board Members and curators of FIERCE CREATIVITY, meet Chuck Close and Jessica Craig-Martin.

“When every kid on the block wanted to become a policeman or fireman, I wanted to be an artist. It was the first thing that I was good at, the first thing that really made me special. I had skills the other kids didn’t have,” says Chuck Close in his biography Up Close (1998). “Art saved my life.”

Chuck Close is a visual artist noted for his highly inventive techniques used to paint the human face, and is best known for his large-scale, photo-based portrait paintings. He is also an accomplished printmaker and photographer whose work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions in more than 20 countries, including major retrospective exhibitions at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid and most recently at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. An award winning artist, Mr. Close was presented with the prestigious National Medal of Arts by President Clinton in 2000.  Close is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was appointed by President Obama to serve on The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

“For us Artists for Peace and Justice is different,” say Craig-Martin and Close in the FIERCE CREATIVITY Catalog’s opening letter. “We’ve both been directly involved in APJ and know the work first hand. APJ is focused on results. There’s no big bureaucracy and no exorbitant administrative costs. At APJ we see vital schools that grow each year with more buildings, improved programs and increased scholarships.”

Jessica Craig-Martin has been a professor of photography at the School of Visual Arts for 10 years. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The New Museum, New York, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid. Her editorial photography has been featured in publications including Vogue, Vanity Fair, W Magazine, The New Yorker, Self Service, The New York Times Magazine, Purple, NOWNESS, Italian Vogue, and Bald Ego. She is currently writing a book about her experiences growing up in the art worlds of New York and London.

“Our actions today, in this bold new world, require us more than ever to act together, to use our voices and our talents to help usher progress and solutions forward. We must do so quite fiercely, if we are to make a real difference.”

Please join Chuck Close, Jessica Craig-Martin, and Artists for Peace and Justice on October 22, 2014 for the opening reception of FIERCE CREATIVITY at New York City’s Pace Gallery.

We’ve got water! Everyone knows that in developing countries throughout the world, access to clean water is a game changer. Even on our beautiful campus by the sea, we had trouble providing reliable, clean drinking water to our staff and students. Since Artists Institute is built on the edge of a cliff,  everyone told us we’d never hit water drilling a well, just rock. Everyone thought it couldn’t be done. So we were forced to adapt and have water delivered from town to our campus on trucks twice a week, every week, for the past five years. Whether for drinking, cooking, bathing, or basic sanitation, clean water can help. This past week with the help of our friends at Waves for Water, we successfully drilled a well on our campus in Jacmel, providing Artists Institute access to fresh, clean drinking water!

Jon Rose, founder of Waves for Water, is an old friend of Ciné Institute and its founder David Belle, now our CEO here at Artists for Peace and Justice. Rose and Belle worked together to distribute food, water filters, and general aid in the wake of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. When Jon and his team heard our community in Jacmel needed clean water, he did not hesitate to help. Two days later, we struck big.

Waves for Water (W4W) have a simple mission: get clean water to every single person who needs it.  W4W founder Jon Rose says, “In my opinion, the Artists Institute truly represents the new paradigm in Haiti. It’s an environment that gives the next generation a real opportunity for a brighter future. In conjunction with APJ, we at Waves For Water are honored to help support their amazing program, by providing a new fresh water well.”

With Haiti’s population of nearly 10 million people, 70% of the population does not have access to safe drinking water, and totally avoidable waterborne diseases such as typhoid, cholera, and chronic diarrhea claim half the nation’s deaths each year.  Clean water is an issue that some times feels overlooked, but organizations like W4W are doing something about it. On behalf of all of our staff and students, we can’t wait to put this much-needed well to good use!  Thank you Waves for Water!

Presented by Bovet 1822 and Vhernier, FIERCE CREATIVITY is a selling exhibition featuring work from over 45 leading contemporary artists who are committed to extraordinary impact. Curated by Artists for Peace and Justice Advisory Board members, Chuck Close and Jessica Craig-Martin, each piece of artwork in the collection is poised to change lives. 100% of proceeds from the exhibition benefit Artists for Peace and Justice.

Please join us October 22-25, 2014 for the FIERCE CREATIVITY exhibition at New York City’s iconic Pace Gallery.

Driven by concern that a primary school education alone does not provide the training and skills necessary to climb out of endemic poverty, Artists for Peace and Justice has made major strategic investments in secondary and higher education in Haiti over the past five years. We believe in the power of education to change a nation – and we need your help to keep doing it. We support programs in education, healthcare, and dignity through the arts to create modern opportunities for some of the most talented and deserving youth in the nation.

Artists for Peace and Justice are so grateful to the vision and leadership of our advisory board members Jessica and Chuck for curating FIERCE CREATIVITY and inspired by their commitment to education as universal a human right. As all 46 participating artists have generously donated a major work to supports our schools, we are sure FIERCE CREATIVITY will create a ripple effect extends far beyond the exhibition itself.

Proceeds will be used for bricks and mortar, scholarships, teacher salaries and programmatic operational costs on the ground. The works in this collection are bound together by our shared belief that as artists, we must act fiercely in order to create change.