November 7, 2021 | 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
11am PT/ 12pm MT / 1pm CT / 2pm ET
Please join Gabrielle Selz, Jeremy Stone, and Debra Burchett-Lere as they probe the self-mythologizing narratives of artists and personalities of the 20th Century. This talk will focus on discoveries Selz made in her new book, Light on Fire, the first comprehensive biography of Sam Francis. Light on Fire traces the extraordinary and ultimately tragic journey of a complex and charismatic artist who first learned to paint while encased for three years in a full-body plaster cast. Francis portrayed himself as a pilot who heroically crashed his plane in the Arizona desert; a story Selz reveals is a fabrication that was repeated by all the male historians who wrote about his illustrious career. For indeed, Francis’s color-saturated paintings went on to fetch the highest prices of any living artist. His restless desire resulted in five marriages and homes on three continents. His entrepreneurial spirit led to the founding of MoCA, Lapis Press, a reforestation program, and several nonprofits. Light on Fire captures the art, life, personality, and talent of a man who sought to resolve in art, the contradictions he couldn’t resolve in life. Admission- ArtTable Circle Members– Free
- All other ArtTable Members – $5
- Non-Members – $7
Accessibility: Please email [email protected] if you require specific accommodations.
About the Speakers
Debra Burchett-Lere brings a range of professional international art-world experiences as an author, curator, and executive director of the artist-endowed Sam Francis Foundation, California. Her background includes key positions at the fine-art limited editions print studio Gemini G.E.L. and the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA). For over twenty-five years, Debra has collaborated on museum exhibitions including projects with the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; the Milwaukee Art Museum; Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Charlotte, NC; the Jeu de Paume, Paris; Kunsthalle- der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; Fundacio Caja de Madrid; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). In addition, Burchett-Lere has authored books and catalogues including publications by the Getty Museum Conservation Institute, Los Angeles and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Press). She has worked as a grant writer for university art programs, an art consultant, and accredited appraiser with the Appraisers Association of America, NYC. Her recent volunteer board services include positions for ArtTable, NYC and the Brand Associates of the Brand Library and Arts Center, Glendale, CA. ArtTable member Gabrielle Selz is the award-winning author of Unstill Life: Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction (W.W. Norton 2014) and Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis (UC Press, 2021), the first comprehensive biography of one of the most important American abstract artists of the 20th century. Her essays and art reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic, Square Cylinder, Art & Object, Art Papers, The Rumpus, and The Huffington Post, among others. She makes her home in Oakland, CA. For more information, visit: https://gabrielleselz.com. Jeremy Stone, also an ArtTable member, is a former gallerist, art advisor/appraiser, and collector who has advised many important private collectors, museums, and institutions. Her expert witness work over the past 25 years has included legal cases across the United States and the government of Canada. She has served on the board and held office on multiple levels with ArtTable, the American Society of Appraisers, and the San Francisco Art Dealers Association. Jeremy specializes in Post-War, modern, and contemporary art. Her collection includes Hank Murta Adams, Robert Arneson, Elmer Bischoff, Squeak Carnwath, John Chamberlain, Willem de Kooning, Nancy Drosd, Sam Francis, Mike Henderson, Mildred Howard, David Huffman, Kazuko Inoue, Franz Kline, John Graham, Rick Hickam, David Huffman, Gaston Lachaise, Joanne Leonard, Robert Mapplethorpe, Grace Munakata, Edith Schloss, Richard Sheehan, Katherine Sherwood, Lorna Simpson, Louise M. Stanley, Pia Stern, Masami Teraoka, Wayne Thiebaud, Ai Wei Wei, and John Zurier, among many others. Thank you to Gabrielle Selz, Jeremy Stone, and ArtTable’s Northern California Chapter Leaders for organizing this program.Images:
- Light On Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis by Gabrielle Selz
Grey (moderator) is a multimedia artist who identifies as AfroIndigenous, genderfluid, and queer. She’s currently known for making art pieces and installations in solidarity with the trans community as well as being the lead singer of the band God Save The Club Kids.
Philo Cohen is the founder and Editor-in-Chief at Speciwomen, an online archive and independent publishing initiative aiming to change the representation of womxn and femmes in the arts. Cohen lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 2020 with a BA in Visual Studies and Comparative Literature.
Opashona Ghosh (b. Kolkata 1987) is an artist and facilitator, based in London. Graduate of Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts, London). Their work explores feminist approaches to mental & sexual health, and club culture, locating the intersections of body, community & ritual. They curate FEMME NEW WORLD, an intersectional panel exploring migrating femme landscapes. Currently, they are co-publishing HONEY with Bahraini-British writer and editor Nadia Jones, a zine meditating on the experience of friendship. (
Anne-Sophie Guillet 
Alyssa Nitchun 
Harriet F. Senie is professor of art history at City College and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11; The “Tilted Arc” Controversy: Dangerous Precedent?; and Contemporary Public Sculpture: Tradition, Transformation, and Controversy. She is co-editor and contributor to Teachable Monuments: Using Public Art to Spark Dialogue and Confront Controversy; Museums and Public Art?; A Companion to Public Art; and Critical Issues in Public Art. In 2008, she cofounded Public Art Dialogue, an international organization and College Art Association affiliate, and coedited its peer review journal Public Art Dialogue from 2011-17. She has served on the New York City Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers; the She Built New York advisory committee, and selection committees for the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in Central Park; the Mexico City 1968 Memorial; and the Flight 587 Memorial. Her current book project is Monumental Controversies: Mount Rushmore, Four Presidents, and the Quest for National Identity.
Alison Saar was born in Los Angeles, California. She has been commissioned to create a number of Public Monuments including Swing Low a monument to Harriet Tubman, Terra Incognita a memorial to York of the Lewis and Clark expedition and Embodied a monument to Justice. She received the United States Artist Fellowship in 2012 and has also been awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and two National Endowment Fellowships. Alison has exhibited at many galleries and museums, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her art is represented in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Baltimore Art Museum, the Modern Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Marisa Williamson is a project-based artist who has produced site-specific works at Monticello, & by commission from Storm King Art Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Monument Lab, & the National Park Service. She has had solo exhibitions at the University of Virginia, the University of Washington, & SPACES in Cleveland. Her work has been exhibited nationally & internationally. Williamson has received grants from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, & the Graham Foundation. Williamson holds a BA from Harvard & an MFA from CalArts. She lives & works in New Jersey & Connecticut, serving as an assistant professor of media arts at the University of Hartford.
Deborah Fisher is an artist and creative leader working to expand the roles artists play in civic life. She is the founding Executive Director of A Blade of Grass, a non-profit solely dedicated to nurturing socially engaged art. Fisher has served as an art, strategy, and philanthropy advisor to Shelley and Donald Rubin, and has worked in many capacities at the intersection of art and civic life in New York City, including as studio manager at Socrates Sculpture Park, and as an educator and curriculum developer for the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment. Her approach to leadership is deeply informed by her training as a sculptor, particularly her experience making public art. She also writes and lectures internationally about arts funding and socially engaged art.
For fifteen years, curator Irene Mei Zhi Shum has actively explored the intersection of art and architecture, organizing ambitious projects and championing the artists and designers with whom she works. Most recently, she was the Executive Director of Art in General in New York City. Prior to this, Shum served as the Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas (2018-2020) and the inaugural curator for the Philip Johnson Glass House, a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in New Canaan, Connecticut (2007-2018). An early and major responsibility at the Glass House was the coordination of the transfer of property from the estates of architect Philip Johnson and art patron David Whitney to the National Trust. Shum shaped the Glass House’s collection and implemented the site’s arts initiative, introducing exhibitions, music and dance performances. Notably, she organized and secured funding for the large-scale, site-specific exhibitions Fujiko Nakaya: Veil (2014) and Yayoi Kusama: Narcissus Garden (2016), as well as a highly acclaimed sound performance by composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and visual artist and musician Carsten Nicolai (Alva Noto), that was recorded and released as Glass (Noton, 2018). Shum holds a Master’s in Architecture from Yale University; a certificate of architecture from the École des Beaux-Arts of the Ecoles d’Art Américaines de Fontainebleau, where she was awarded the Prix de Ville de Fontainebleau; and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Architecture and Art History from Barnard College, Columbia University.