On this month's edition of "Specific Objects: Talks on Art in the Catskills," host Miriam Atkin speaks with Bryan Zanisnik, an artist working in sculpture, performance, video and photography who lives in the Catskill Mountains. We discuss his fascination with discarded objects and overlooked spaces, and the way artworks can assemble fragments of our material and cultural histories in order to tell new stories, or retell old ones.

Bryan's Website

Bryan on Art 21

Bryan Zanisnik received an MFA from Hunter College and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work has been widely featured in the New York Times, National Public Radio, Art in America, Artforum, ARTnews, and New York Magazine. Zanisnik has been the subject of four documentaries produced by Art21, the most recent of which is titled, “Bryan Zanisnik’s Big Pivot."

"Specific Objects" is a monthly freeform discussion hosted by Miriam Atkin that invites artists from a variety of disciplines to describe, ponder, interrogate, interpret, and celebrate their current projects. The focus is on guests who live and work in the Hudson Valley/Catskills region, though people will occasionally visit from farther afield. Tune in to learn what artists in your neighborhood are thinking and making right now.

Miriam Atkin is a Catskills-based writer whose work concerns the possibilities of poetry as a medium in conversation with avant-garde film, music, and dance. She is cofounder of Pinsapo, an international publishing collective, and teaches writing around the Hudson Valley region, at Bard College and the Otisville Correctional Facility.

Intro music: "Sing Out" by Joanna Mattrey