Norm Magnusson is mildly renowned all over the world.
He’s received a NYFA Fellowship (2014-2015) for sculpture, Pollock-Krasner
Foundation grants for sculpture (2016-2017) and for painting (1998-1999), and a
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council grant (2008-2009) and a NYSCA grant (through
the Center for Sustainable Rural Communities - 2014), both for public art
installation. He is the recipient of the Ulster County Executive's Art Award for Art in Public Places for 2017.
As a visual artist, he has shown in galleries and museums in
New York and New Zealand, London and Paris and all over the United States. His
work is in private and museum collections around the world, including NY’s MoMA
(Franklin Furnace Artist’s Book Collection) and he’s been reviewed everywhere
from the NY Times to the Washington Post to the Utne Reader, the “Center for
Sustainable Practices in the Arts” magazine, Sculpture magazine, TrendHunter.com
and many other national and international magazines, websites and blogs.
As a curator, he has brought together exhibitions such as
“FU”, which examined and illustrated U.S. fair use laws as they pertain to
visual artists; “The Museum of Controversial Art”, which re-created some of the
most controversial art through the ages; “Beautiful nonsense”, which consists of
objects and art meant to challenge the intellectual sure-footedness with which
we move through our everyday lives; and “abc@WFG”, a survey of text-based art.
As an educator, he’s taught art to under-privileged kids in
NYC and over-privileged kids in Woodstock, NY. He created a 12-class curriculum entitled “Art that’s
changed the way I see the world around me” in which artists and gallerists and
rock stars and film makers and authors and academics came and spoke on that
topic with visual and audio aids.
For the last 6 years, on August 29, the date of its world
premier in Woodstock, NY, Magnusson has produced an anniversary concert of John
Cage’s 4’33” at the WAAM Museum in that town.
Recently, he’s returned to his first creative love, acting;
starring in community theater productions of plays by David Mamet and David
Ives, and as Pozzo in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” Most recently, he
performed in the The Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck’s production of
Eve Ensler’s “A memory, a monologue, a rant, and a prayer.” He wrote his first
ever words and images monologue “The signs in our lives” and performed it at
the Hudson Literary Festival in 2014 and reprised it in the summer of 2015; in
November, 2016, his “Swipe Right” monologue about online dating debuted at the
Cocoon Theater in Poughkeepsie. He will perform it again in April 2017.
He is the co-founder of FISHtheMOUSEmedia, a developer of
educational apps for iOS; where his “Animal alphabet” app was widely acclaimed
and honored with a prestigious Gold award from the Parents’ Choice Foundation.
He serves on the board of directors of two 501(c)3 organizations, CultureConnect and
GoodJTDeeds and is the father of 3 wonderful kids, all of whom are especially
talented at seeing the world around them with appreciative eyes and a grateful
heart. He reckons this is his proudest accomplishment.
Watch my Peecha Kucha video here:
