A battery is a portable container in which chemical energy is converted into electricity and used as a source of power. Battery Journal is “where the meaning is held,” and a generator for new forms and ideas. Battery Journal is an art and cultural journal with an innovative approach to presenting cutting-edge contemporary art and cultural theory. Dedicated to covering a comprehensive spectrum of the arts, we feature writing and video by and about some of today’s most incisive thinkers.
Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Producer, Director, at Battery Journal Productions INC. Ehrsam graduated from the School of Visual Arts with a Bachelors in fine art and from Yale University with a Masters degree in fine art. At Yale she studied art history, art theory and sculpture as well as filmmaking and videography with the documentarian Carol Scully, protege of filmmaker Ken Burns. At the School of Visual Arts, she worked with artist Matthew Barney on his films, and produced and directed her own performance art videos. As a New York based interdisciplinary artist, writer, patented inventor, art historian and documentary filmmaker, she uses documentary to expand her art historical scholarship and her own art. Ehrsam produces and directs the documentary series Art World; a series of interviews, conversations, studio visits and gallery visits with contemporary artists, curators, critics and gallerists. She is also the host and moderator of the Battery Journal Salon Series which features conversations with artists, scholars and cultural producers. Ehrsam is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of Battery Journal, a new publication that features writing about art and culture, and she is a featured guest and moderator for the International Sculpture Center. As a documentary filmmaker, she has been producing and directing videos for over two decades and studying with accomplished artists and filmmakers. She creates intimate portraits of contemporary artists through dialogues, images, and documentaries. The interdisciplinary nature of her work as an academic and artist allows for an expansive vision and an in depth exploration of art and culture. In addition, Anna holds a number of scientific and robotic patents related to technology and environmental sustainability. She is passionate about making and implementing technologies to help humanity live in a more sustainable and harmonious way. Her feature length films include; Manfred Mohr; Cubic Limit, Michael Zansky; ZONE, Katherine Bradford; Friends and Lovers, Rodney Dickson; Studio Dialogues, Michael Rees; The Grounds for Sculpture Site and Para-Site.
Contributing writer
Sarah Falkner is an interdisciplinary artist working frequently in collaboration across and through multimedia, occurrent, and healing arts, and text-based manifestations. She is both a NY-state licensed and traditional lineage-apprenticed and -initiated healthcare practitioner. Her first novel Animal Sanctuary won the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction in 2011, and that same year she was a MacDowell fellow in residence; since 2010, she has co-produced and hosted a monthly community radio program, Roots, Runners, Rhizomes: Radical Health and Healing from the Underground. Her most recent publication is The Carnival at the End of the World Tarot: Madame Lulu's Book of Fate (2018), in collaboration with Kahn+Selesnick. She has recently joined the editors of Fence Magazine, where she will co-edit Other.
She will be contributing reportage and prose for BATTERY journal, and for BATTERY platform's projects, including standalone book, zine, online print + audio-video content and events, will function as editor + contributor for RETORT (art, metaphysics, dissidence) and PORTABLE DEVICES (art + artists crossing borders: people +practices untethered to fixed abodes of location, discipline or genre, nomadically and collaboratively crosspollinating and recombinating)
Bradley Rubenstein
Contributing writer
Bradley Rubenstein is a painter and writer who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His works are in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Tang Teaching Museum, and The Krannert Art Museum Teaching Collection at The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and The Museum of the Moving Image, New York, among others. He has been the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Painting, the Pollock-Krasner Award, and a grant from the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation. Rubenstein has written extensively on art and art education. Rubenstein has been a contributing editor for ArtKrush magazine, New Observations, and Art Journal; he has contributed interviews, essays, and reviews to CultureCatch, ArtSlant, M/E/A/N/I/N/G, The Brooklyn Rail, Sharkforum and Artforum. He has collaborated with many artists, including Sue De Beer, Lucio Pozzi, Bjarne Melgaard, Claude Wampler and Sarah Michelson, producing books, films, installations, and theatrical decors.
Rubenstein has also been a production artist and set painter for films, television, theater, and video. He has been the lead scenic artist for productions by Jonathan Demme, Tom McCarthy, Jean-Marc Vallée, Spike Lee, and Alfonso Cuarón. His film credits include Rosewater, Demolition, The Bourne Legacy, and Indignation; his work in television includes Girls, The Sopranos and Blindspot.
Taney Roniger
Contributing writer
Taney Roniger is a visual artist, writer, and educator based in New York. Her work has been shown in a number of venues both here and abroad, including: Robert Henry Contemporary, Lesley Heller Workspace, Sperone Westwater, The Islip Art Museum, and StandPipe Gallery in New York; the Contemporary Arts Center and The Front in New Orleans; and the Pera Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. Her awards and honors in the visual arts include three Yaddo fellowships, a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and a traveling fellowship from the Stacey Sussman Cavrell Memorial Foundation. Since 2012 she has been a contributing writer at The Brooklyn Rail, for which she served as Guest Editor in December 2017. Her writing has also appeared in Hyperallergic, Whitehot Magazine, Big Red & Shiny, Transverse, and On-Verge. In 2016 she was a finalist for the Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant in short-form non-fiction. She holds an MFA from Yale University and a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, where she teaches in the Fine Arts Department and Honors Program.
Patrick Meagher
Artist, Poet, Arts Organizer
Patrick Meagher's art explores how the digital age affects us spiritually and emotionally. Working in computer-generated collage, sculpture, and other media, his work asks how humans will evolve in an era of transgressive technology and increasingly virtual interactions. Exploring notions of space and dimensionality, his process focuses on digital production, timeliness of subject matter, and information and resource sharing. His collaborative projects such as Collective Show and the Silvershed are lateral structures to create organizational formats, spaces, and social environments: event-based happenings and groups that explore ethics and personal agency as part of studio practice. Meagher has written for Art Observed, Art Info, and is currently finishing a monograph, some poetry chapbooks, and a book of essays. A small book about Warhol's impact on the world is forthcoming. He lives and works in his native Manhattan.
Katherine Jackson
Katherine Jackson is an artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work has been exhibited extensively in galleries, universities, and public spaces in NYC, and multiple other venues in the US, Rome and Berlin. She has had solo shows at Bennington College, and Hobart & William Smith Colleges. Her large scale installation/exhibitions and commissions have been placed in various public spaces in Manhattan and include: a 6 month, multi-piece exhibition (in celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the New York Public Library); a 6 month multi-piece exhibition in the windows of the NY Tenement Museum; and a multi-windows exhibit in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Manhattan Bridge.
A one-time professor of literature and creative writing, and a published poet, she has retained a connection to poetry throughout her career as an artist. Much of her work contains text, usually imported from poetry, and she has a particular interest in the intersection between these two media.. Her artwork has been featured in numerous literary journals, including Agni and Seneca Review, and her images can be found on the covers and within the pages of a number of books of poetry.
Gennifer Levey
Editor and Publisher, Print Editions
Gennifer Levey is an editor, publisher, and production artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She manages production and publication of Battery Journal's printed editions. Working extensively in academic publishing, she has been Managing Editor of several journals at Cambridge University Press, currently managing Behavioral & Brain Sciences and Microscopy Today. Gennifer is owner of Meridian Art Press, which publishes books, provides author services, and produces printed matter for the fine arts community. She earned a BA in French and a Master's Degree in Journalism, both at the University of Kansas.
Kristen Beveridge
Paradigm Shifter
Kristen Beveridge is an executive-level storyteller, marketer, creative and experience design executive with a career that spans over 20 years at both startups and Fortune 500 companies. Kristen has built and launched brands, companies, multichannel marketing strategies, digital products and cutting-edge customer experiences for clients such as Volkswagen, Hallmark, Ralph Lauren, Proctor & Gamble, British Airways, Estée Lauder, Pfizer, Audible, Ameritrade, Citibank, Komen, and Bono, to name a few. She has managed interdisciplinary groups for companies like Razorfish and has run cross-industry, large scale, multidisciplinary teams and initiatives. She was a co-founder of the highly acclaimed, word-of-mouth marketing agency, BzzAgent, featured in a cover story of the NY Times Magazine in 2004, and has helped found and launch numerous other paradigm-shifting companies.
Currently, Kristen advises companies across a variety of industries through her consulting practice. This year, she has worked with Budapest-based, revolutionary 3D, art exhibit spatial scanning technology company, Walter’s Cube, and helped brand and launch NY-based Hello Humanity at a private Google event, which is focused on helping leaders and changemakers understand and plan for the impact of AI on the workplace. In addition, she is currently working with the Cultural Chair of the World Council of Peoples for the United Nations to create an arts and exhibit program that is aligned with the pillars of their 2030 sustainability goals and continues to oversee a social enterprise she created in 2017 called Shelter Spice, aimed at providing job training and funding to tri-state area homeless shelters.
Kristen has BA from Carnegie Mellon and Masters in Design Studies from Harvard Design School.
Jack Engdall
Videographer, Sound Producer, Editor for Battery Journal - Battery Journal Productions INC. and Humanimal INC. Engdall is an award-winning visual artist; musician, writer, director, actor, and producer based in New York City and New Jersey. As a multimedia artist, Engdall works in an interdisciplinary way across multiple platforms combining sound, music, performance, film, video, and graphic design. His creative output includes albums, films, film scores, performances and events. Engdall learned the craft of video production running a public-broadcast television channel for several years. He honed his skills as an editor and cameraperson by recording and editing segments, hosting events, planning programs, and sound productions. His work has been acclaimed and included in film festivals. Currently he is developing a surrealist talk show, recording albums and working on documentary films.
Arielle A. Williams
Media Relations Coordinator, Artist
CEO and Director of the Elan Manor Company, Arielle A. Williams is an East Coast creative and innovator with in-depth knowledge of the digital landscape for Fortune 500 companies including Google, Audible, Viacom and the History Channel. She’s worked within the intersection of entertainment, art and technology for over 16 years and has expanded her territory to include capturing the life and work of internationally recognized artists like Distort, Kern Bruce, and more. Born in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Arielle is a Jersey City native who’s directly tapped into the core of a budding subculture of street artists which blend classical and contemporary techniques to create remarkable works of art. A multimedia artist, Arielle has an eye for fine detail and captures the world through intricate art, carefully curated language and visually stunning imagery. She is also credited for her work as an artist on various television and film productions including the independent film Consumed as well as the History Channel’s Empires of Excess, with a starring role in the horror movie, Mommy: A Haunting. She is currently continuing her education in Studio Arts with an emphasis in Web Design.
Arielle will be contributing to the BATTERY JOURNAL in her capacity as an artist, copywriter and Media Relations Coordinator..
Megan Schmidt
Meg Schmidt, affectionately known as Cupcake Meg, first used baked goods as an avenue to fund humanitarian work she began overseas between 2009 and 2012 while attending Hampton University. Countless hours spent in the kitchen mixing original recipes cultivated a relationship with food beyond the stand mixer and oven. In an effort to independently market her product, an organic connection to the visual aspect of baking gave life to Meg's self-taught talent of photography.
"While my experience as a baker gave me much practice with food photography, I have to credit my childhood days of constant painting and sketching for developing that 'eye'. For a long time, there's likely nothing that I haven't taken a mental snapshot of on a day to day basis, producing a near perfect photographic memory...and if I happen to love what that mental image does for me on the inside, I am that much more apt to encompassing every emotion it created for me in one shot. I pride myself on being able to communicate in one photo not only an image that is visually appealing, but also attaching the emotion that I’m experiencing. The best photos in the world have the ability to give you goosebumps and evoke so much feeling it'll leave you speechless. This is because a good photo will propel curiosity and answer your all of your questions at the same time."
These days, Meg shoots everything from portraits, to food and products. She’s greatly inspired by her city, her peers, natural landscapes, and the authenticity and stories of every day people. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York where she is studying fine-arts, freelancing and raising her son Max.