Voice to Vision

04/22/2026

There are 2 spots still open for the Mentor series, “Develop Your Own Artistic Potential.”
The retreat is limited to 10 participants. This group consists of skilled artists representing a range of styles, who engage in discussions about their recently created artworks developed throughout the week. There are no assignments, engage in your own ideas. Mentor David Feinberg will lead discussions and visit participants individually throughout the week.
https://grandmaraisartcolony.org/event/develop-your-artistic-potential-2/2026-06-08/

www.grandmaraisartcolony.org
218-387-2737 ext 1

04/15/2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LCr69yml2E&t=47s

Videographer: Sara Feinberg

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Aristides Vargas 3Min 480p

03/08/2026

The Personal Is Universal: discussing collective trauma and other sensitive issues through art.
A workshop for the Spanish and Portuguese Department, University of Minnesota, 2/29/26 and 3/6/26

Important discussions should take place in neutral, rather than familiar surroundings, as in this case where the art department serves as neutral ground.
In fifty-three years of teaching art in higher education, the handling of art critiques concerning very personal creative work often has led to profound disagreement and tensions among the participants. Most participants tend to stay silent while an aggressive minority dominates. Personally, for me, having to deal with this as a student who graduated from three different institutions, I wasn‘t going to let this phenomenon happen during my watch as an art professor.
Here is the way I address this situation, and in my opinion, it can be applied to all disciplines that are challenged with difficult topics to discuss:
Art is the search for truth, but what constitutes truth is up for debate. Artists, when they talk, should be broadcasting and they should not be concerned with reception. When you are trying to make the other artists conform to your opinions, this may be labeled as propaganda, and it is not an honest basis for the pursuit of truth, nor does it create an atmosphere for self-expression.
The broadcast should be an expression of one’s viewpoint. It should be shared and not be attacked or challenged. The response, if there is a disagreement, should follow with sincere questions trying to reach a deeper understanding of these differing points of view. There should be no arguments. If there is an agreement, the response could offer other supporting examples. There are no winners or losers, everyone’s broadcasts are seen in broader depth, They are remembered, and possible adjustments in beliefs could be modified or strengthened for future meetings. No one is left out and empathy is in command. We get to know each other in depth.
In artmaking and discussions, all preconceived notions should be abandoned, as if this is the first time you are exposed to the situation. It is a group effort to seek truth. There should be no definite truth as an endgame, but the process elicits new roads of understanding.
Each Participant was asked to draw with pencil on a large index card, a spontaneous meandering timeline in the form of a ribbon. They were also asked to draw a person, an animal or a thing that was very meaningful to them with the timeline interacting with the meaningful image.
On the timeline place:
X for a negative experience
✔️ for a personal experience that few or no one knows
★ for a special positive experience
— Draw a colored line anywhere for feelings concerning ICE

12/24/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1D444fm9ZJ/

Thirteen years ago, our children and loved ones were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary. The holes in our hearts will never be filled.

12/16/2025

Happy Holidays

10/30/2025

This is how you make a better world!

10/04/2025

On September 30, I gave a lecture explaining my ongoing 23-year-old project, “Voice to Vision” at the Marvella Speakers Series. I presented the process, history, and then used my 2018 project on the Mothers of Soacha as an example. I have included the drawings made by 5 of the mothers and also included the drawings of Patricia Ariza, Director of Teatro de la Candelaria, former Cultural Minister of Colombia, and winner of many international awards. The 6 interviews were at 6 tables with V2V team members and translators. The Mother’s drawings were used to create the artwork within 6 triangles and a yellow circular ring to join them all together. In each triangle, one of the drawings overlapped into another triangle thus linking all the stories together. The Mothers of Soacha succeeding in convicting 10 soldiers for murder!

09/17/2025

This lecture is for the reidents of Marvella. If you wish to attend please contact me.

09/02/2025

12 Escape from Vietnam artwork/boat stories, are making one long boat.

05/15/2025

Only in 2D art such as painting, drawing, Printmaking, Photography, Etc.., where there is no beginning, no ending, and no physical movement, does the concept of implied energy becomes uniquely important. The movement occurs in the viewer's mind. When a perceiver examines a two-dimensional artwork, the implications of its structure may match a structure from their own experiences despite major differences. Each time a viewer perceives the artwork; a new vision can be prompted. This is what Kandinsky implied in his book, “Concerning the spiritual in art”.
“Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and... stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to 'walk about' into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want"?
-Wassily Kandinsky
The implication of art means that all visual marks or forms have visual energy. Voice to Vision does not think of good and bad because all marks can be important parts of creating a work of art. Collage allows all found random images to be potentially important. In Voice to Vision, this concept allows us to use images made by genocide survivors, even if they claim that they have no art talent, to make a really unique image with the help of the V2V team. Whatever marks they make, they can be combined with other energies to form a significant work of art. These implied energies, when combined with other forms of energy, can create rhythms, contrasts, similarities, rest stops, and points of interest.
When Voice to Vision has the storytellers physically make drawings or just abstract marks, even though many people might think them not worthy of aesthetic consideration, their marks have their visual DNA formed in it that is based on aspects such as hand pressure, choices in making the form, colors, sizes, and placement of the form. It is like fingerprints or signatures for identification. It represents the unique, real, person. This is how substance is internalized in the artwork! The concept of the implication of energies allows everyone to participate in a collaborative art project and even in an individual artwork with the possible help of a mentor.
To view a work spiritually, one should bypass prejudices and open up to the world of the visual language whose structure is newly created in each original artwork. The visual language is universal! Its meanings can transcend the artist’s vision.
This premiere lecture at the Grand Marais Art Colony’s Studio 21 at 4:30 pm on June 12, will present the essence of the visual language in a form that is easily comprehended and will make all 2D art from the beginning of time, become a new experience.