Zoae Arts Vision
Art creates community. People love it together: music is taken in by the multitudes of swaying bodies and singing hearts in concerts; museums are filled with hungry eyes ready to devour new exhibitions; words move souls to believe again. People come together to appreciate and enjoy the arts. They talk about it, critique it, and celebrate it with one another. Somehow a song is more deeply felt when hundreds of other are also singing along; a painting is more beautiful when you can turn and see it reflected in another pair of eyes.
Community creates art. The history of art is filled with great dialogues between artists: the conversations in paintings by Matisse and Picasso, Cezanne and Pissaro, the summer Tennessee Williams and Somerset Maugham spent at the same kitchen table, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe in an argument outside the Chelsea Hotel. When artists gather, they sharpen each other, and the sparks that fly sometimes lead to new work—sometimes to new movements.
Zoae Arts was founded in 2005 to create a home for artists and art lovers and to meet the practical needs of artists in all genres by providing them with a listening audience, a supportive and challenging arts community and the freedom to create, experiment, and collaborate. Zoae Arts: Art creates community. Community creates art.
The Zoae Series
Today, Zoae Arts’ central activity is the Zoae Series, a showcase which presents several artists from different genres on the same stage. (Currently, we are graciously hosted by the Bowery Poetry Club.) The Zoae Series selects artists based on the single criteria of excellence, but is also interested in giving established artists a venue for experimentation, providing emerging artists with more exposure, and creating collaborations between artists. Showcase artists are encouraged to share the details of their process along with their work, giving the audience an intimate glimpse into their creative process and growth. At a typical Zoae Series event, a singer-songwriter might play a set, followed by a visual artist projecting slides of their work and describing its inspiration, and closed by a performance poet. The audience absorbs all this with beer in hand and new friends at their side.
Upcoming schedules will be posted as artists and venues are booked.
We look forward to enjoying the arts with you.
Zoae Arts Team
David Bush oversees the Bridging Ministries of the Village Church, which direct the congregation outward to engage the city. A scientist who believes that faith and reason are altogether consistent with faith in God, he holds a PhD from the University of Toronto and works as a researcher in the lab of Joseph LeDoux at New York University’s Center for Neural Science. There, David has a lead role in research that investigates the brain mechanisms that underlie emotional memory. David is also studying part-time towards his MBA at New York University’s Stern School of Business. In his youth, David was a serious piano student, and is still deeply moved on occasions when he is able to play. He and his beautiful wife, Natalie, met in Toronto, but then moved to New York shortly after their wedding. They love the city, and reside in the East Village.
Albert Kim was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he stared at his room wall for endless hours. It was not until his mother hung a painting on that wall when he said to himself, “Gee, I think I should be an artist. ” So he applied to the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, where he enrolled as an Illustration major and graduated in 2005. He now resides in New York City, pursuing Art and Painting.
John Pa is a businessman with a passion for the arts. He holds a degree in creative writing from Truman State University, where he concentrated in poetry. He also earned a masters in divinity from Covenant Theological Seminary. A rhythm guitarist with broad musical taste that embraces an eclectic blend of classical, rock, pop, and hip hop, John has arranged music professionally. Since childhood, he has been a lifelong frequenter of art museums. John was captain of his high school football team, the Parkway North Vikings. He founded Zoae Arts in 2005.
Brie Walker’s journey to New York began as an avid watcher of Reading Rainbow in the mountains of North Carolina, where she began her lessons in dance, violin, and acting. After a detour through Texas and a half-hearted attempt at preparing for medical school, she spent four years in full-time ministry to college students during which she took an acting class that re-ignited her passion for acting. She spent four more years in Austin, acting professionally and working in the leadership of a burgeoning community of Christian artists before finally jumping off the proverbial cliff to move to NYC and study Applied and Educational Theatre at NYU, where she completed the Master of Arts in December of 2006. She is currently discovering the joys of “temping,” while working with the establishment of three acting ensembles and the development of the ZOAE Arts Series.
Carey Wallace is the author of Choose, A Handbook for Spies, A Small War, The Lost City, and A Thousand Rhymes. Eloise, for which she wrote the original screenplay, won a silver medal at the 1999 Houston International Film Festival. As The Wallace Bros., she and her brother have recorded and released six LPs, five singles, and 3 EPs since Valentine’s Day 2003. She has also released a solo record, Waltzes and Lullabies. She is the founder and curator of Detroit’s Lost City Gallery, and her feather boxes have hung there as well as at Detroit’s Sweetwater Gallery and Brooklyn’s Stain Bar. She is also founder and director of the annual Michigan Hillbilly Underground artist’s retreat, which draws experimental film directors, painters, poets, recording engineers, sculptors, makeup and con artists from around the country. She was first runner-up and won the talent award in the 1991 Chelsea Community Fair Queen pageant.