Tune into free103point9 Online Radio and WGXC 90.7-FM for a special radio iteration of George Quasha's expansive art is/Speaking Portraits project. This program will feature "radio portraits" in-process and broadcast live from the free103point9 Wave Farm Study Center and WGXC's Acra studio including Jim Holl, Susan Wides, Suzy Sureck, Anthony Martin, Peter Wexler, Julie Hedrick, Brian Dewan, Tom Roe, eteam, Rebecca Wolf, and others.

"art is … what?” Quasha’s ongoing video work of “speaking portraits” puts this impossible, but inevitable, question before artists themselves, who let us in on their private space of art definition. Since 2002, he has filmed around 1000 artists of all kinds (including sculptors, painters, filmmakers, video artists, poets, composers, performance artists, dancers, potters, etc.) in 11 countries (and 24 languages!). The result is an ongoing and constantly changing work called art is/music is/poetry is, which has been internationally exhibited in museums and galleries, primarily as installations, screened either as projections or on one or more monitors. You can see multiple volumes online at quasha.com/art-is.

Now, for the first time, art is will be created live and unedited for radio, where Quasha interacts with Hudson Valley artists of various kinds as he asks them to say what, in their view, art or music or poetry actually is. In his own view there is no “right” answer, but only the ideas artists themselves work from, either implicitly or explicitly. Many artist say that they don’t know what art is, but in the process of discussing it they discover that, often to their own surprise, they know very well what it is. What if art is different for every person? In a culture that tries to define things in the abstract, this could spur us to think very differently about art and how it works in our lives and in society at large. In art is the question comes alive in the moment as if asked for the first time.