Bluelab Board of Advisors
Norman G. Kurland, President, Center for Economic and Social Justice, Washington, D.C. Mr. Kurland is a lawyer-economist, pioneer of employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and a leading global advocate for “the Just Third Way,” a post-scarcity development model that transcends both capitalism and socialism by combining free markets with the democratization of economic power and capital ownership. He serves as President of the all-volunteer Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ), a non-profit think tank headquartered in Arlington, Virginia that he co-founded with Fr. William Ferree and other economic and social justice advocates in 1984. Mr. Kurland also founded and heads Equity Expansion International, Inc., an “investment banking firm for the have-nots,” which implements “Just Third Way” strategies around the world to turn non-owners into owners. He is a co-founder of Global Justice Movement (based in Canada) and the American Revolutionary Party launched in April 2005. He has taught binary economics and binary policy reforms in privatization seminars at the International Law Institute in Washington, D.C. In 1985, President Reagan appointed Mr. Kurland as deputy chairman of the bipartisan Presidential Task Force on Project Economic Justice, to promote economic democratization through ESOP reforms in Central America and the Caribbean.He was a close colleague for eleven years of Louis O. Kelso, author of binary economics and inventor of the ESOP. With Kelso, Kurland co-founded the Institute for the Study of Economic Systems. He later became Washington Counsel for Kelso’s investment banking firm. Collaborating with Kelso, Kurland authored and lobbied the first and subsequent ESOP legislative initiatives in the U.S. Congress. He is the principal architect of several model ESOPs and legal systems for expanding ownership, as well as: the first ESOP and worker shareholders association in the developing world at the Alexandria Tire Company in Egypt; the “Capital Homestead Act” (a comprehensive package of national monetary and tax reforms); the “Community Investment Corporation” (a vehicle for enabling community residents to share land ownership and profits); and “Justice-Based Management” (a system for applying Kelsonian principles of economic justice for building a participatory ownership culture at the workplaces of business corporations).Business Week described Kurland as “the resident philosopher of ESOP in the capital.” He was the recipient of CESJ’s first Kelso-Ferree Lifetime Achievement Award, an honor he shares with Senator Russell Long, the legendary champion of ESOP on Capitol Hill. Mr. Kurland has authored numerous articles on the Just Third Way, binary economics, capital homesteading and related concepts for universalizing access to capital ownership. He was a contributing author to the 1994 compendium Curing World Poverty: The New Role of Property (John H. Miller, ed., Social Justice Review), and was the principal author of CESJ’s comprehensive economic reform agenda, Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen: A Just Free Market Solution for Saving Social Security (Economic Justice Media, 2005).Before joining Kelso, Mr. Kurland was director of planning of the Citizens Crusade Against Poverty, a national coalition headed by the labor statesman Walter Reuther. Before that Mr. Kurland, as a Federal government lawyer, became deeply involved as a civil rights investigator in the Mississippi “one-person, one-vote” movement and later with the core group shaping economic empowerment initiatives in President Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” He came to Washington in December 1959 after receiving a Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Chicago, where he studied law and economics, following five years as an officer on flying status in the U.S. Air Force.
Clarence Thompson, consultant, Louisburg, Kansas. For 20 years, Clarence Thomson was the director of Credence Cassettes, the largest producer and distributor of scripture and spirituality on audio cassette in the Catholic and mainline Protestant traditions. He is the author of three books on the Enneagram and teaches the Enneagram and uses it to coach nationally and internationally. He has Master's degrees in theology and communication.
Robert Delford Brown, artist, New York, NY studied at Long Beach College and UCLA from 1948-1952. In 1952 he received his B.A. from UCLA and in 1956 he received his M.A. from there.From 1955 to 1958 he studied drawing with Howard Warshaw (1920-1977). “When I came out of school in 1950, the art world I was preparing for was gone.” In 1959 Brown moved to Manhattan. “If you aspired toward becoming an artist you had to go to New York.”Brown’s art career as a first rate iconoclast started shortly thereafter. “In 1963 I met Rhett and life got better.” His wife and art-partner for the next thirty years, Harriet (Rhett) Elsa Gurney once said, “When I met Bob he was 29 and working in a psychiatric ward. A lot of his work comes out of that experience.”An early significant event for Brown was his participation in Allan Kaprow’s presentation of the musical play entitled "Originale" by the German avantgarde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. This scandalous event was held at Judson Hall in New York City as part of the Second Annual Avant Garde Festival in 1964. Brown created the memorable image of "the mad painter" which was splashed across the pages of local papers and national news magazines.Next, Brown’s second success d'scandale, the "Meat Show", was staged in 1964 in a large refrigerator unit at the Washington Meat Market….Brown became the first artist to stage a meat performance, renting “tons of meat and gallons of blood” and a refrigerated locker for a blood-spattered happening.“We went and rented a meat locker, telling the owner that we were making a movie and needed a set. The trucks arrived bringing all this steaming hot meat. We hung it everywhere on hooks. Then we got thousands of yards of lingerie-like sheer fabric and created rooms as in a brothel. It actually looked very erotic. The cops came in to inspect and said we had to have some red lights in the back which made it even more erotic,” said Brown’s wife Rhett.Late careerIn 1967, Rhett and Robert Brown discovered a branch library building that was up for sale in the West Village. They immediately created a physical place for the headquarters of a work begun in 1964: The First National Church of the Exquisite Panic, Inc. The building on West 13th Street, referred to as The Great Building Crack-Up, became an architectural landmark that was later featured in the New York Times.From his Church, Brown continued to create collaborative performance artworks for the next three decades.His physical collaboration of choice these days is the “Collaborative Action Gluing” where by email and telephone, he arranges for a space and a participative audience of non-artists. This can be in another city or another country. He then shows up, armed with glue, scissors, rubber gloves, colored paper, magazines to cut up and several canvases for the participants to embellish collectively with their unschooled musings, each eventually transformed from a day-glo tabula rasa into a vibrant, swirling testimony to the power of joint action by non-artists, yet at the same time, surprisingly reminiscent of the likes of Miro, Kandinsky and of course, Matisse’s cutouts. Since the early 1990s he has done much of his work online via the church website, Funkup.com. His work is represented in the collections of (partial list): The Museum of Modern Art, New York City; Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado.Allan Kaprow, credited with originating the Happening movement in the early 1960s, said of Robert Delford Brown,"The ecstatic power that has marked Bown's art since the 1960s threw a monkey wrench into the avant garde in those days. He was (and is) a visionary you couldn't ignore or forget. Brown's work is important. He touches a nerve at the core of the social codes that organize not only our behavior but also the limits of our art… Robert Delford Brown's transcendent vision takes on a great significance."
Mark Bloch, artist, New York, N.Y. also known as Pan, P.A.N., Panman, Panpost and the Post Art Network, is an American multi-media artist from Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Since 1982 he has lived in New York City. He is a conceptual artist in the tradition of Dada, the Surrealists, Marcel Duchamp, the Fluxus group and Ray Johnson.Bloch has been interested in digital electronics since 1977 when he created his first computer-related artwork. His art uses the postal system as well as other communications media. In 1989, after over a decade working in mail art, he began to work on the Internet and soon after created a "digital performance artwork in progress" called Panscan for Echo Communications.Bloch has done video, performance art and experimental music since the late 1970s and also works with networks, e-mail art, postcards, 'artistamps', coded envelopes, information theory, mass media, speaking, journalism and broadcasting.He became active with mail art in 1977 and created several international postal art, post-art games including the infamous Last Mail Art Show which created controversy. He also raises eyebrows by eschewing institutionalized anarchy such as Neoism, preferring instead the strategies of Arthur Cravan. However, he supports the work of Neoists and other traffickers in Externality everywhere and is an advocate for artists' rights and against the mythic stereotype of the "starving artist." He adheres to principles originated with Situationism, DIY and other forms of Postmodernism in his theoretical approach to issues of art and commerce but refers to it in his writings as "Pan-Modern."For the past 14 years, since embarking on his personal Art Strike, Bloch creates a new manifesto every day upon waking. These writings remain unpublished.Bloch also creates articles, pamphlets, books, and mail art-related projects in the tradition of Johann Gutenberg, William Blake, William Morris, Thomas Paine, and El Lissitzky. He recently revived his irregularly issued fanzine called Panmag in the form of a cable TV in New York show called Panscan TV.Bloch's formative years were spent in Kent, Ohio, where he was influenced by the performance artist in residence Joan Jonas and faculty members Adrian deWit and Robert Culley. Bloch founded an offshoot of the punk rock movement called The New Irreverence which also included future Art Teacher, Kim Kristensen, future Research Scientist, Daniel M. Lewis, and future Columnist, Michael Heaton as well as a group of painters that later came to be known as M'bwebwe in New York City.He became active with mail art in 1977 and created several international postal art, post-art games including the infamous Last Mail Art Show which he utilyzed to create a controversial international dialogue. He also raises eyebrows by eschewing institutionalized anarchy such as Neoism, preferring instead the less-hackneyed strategies of non-joiners like Arthur Cravan, Robert Wyatt and Brian Eno. However, he is an advocate for artists' rights and against the mythic stereotype of the "starving artist." He adheres to principles originated with Situationism, DIY, Quakerism and other forms of Post-modernism in his theoretical approach to issues of art and commerce but refers to it as "Pan-Modern."For the past 30 years, embarking on his personal Art Strike, Bloch creates a new manifesto every day upon waking. These writings remain unpublished. He is the inventor of the art of storAge (accent on second syllable) wherein the artists relationship with his work, other artists, the general public and art markets are called in constant question.Bloch also creates articles, pamphlets, books, and mail art-related projects in the tradition of Johann Gutenberg, William Blake, William Morris, Thomas Paine, and El Lissitzky. He has published his irregularly issued fanzine called Panmag since 1980 and he distributes video via a cable TV in New York show called Panscan TV. Bloch's formative years were spent in Kent, Ohio, where he was influenced by the performance artist in residence Joan Jonas and faculty members Adrian deWit and Robert Culley. Bloch founded an offshoot of the punk rock movement called The New Irreverence as well as a group of painters that later came to be known correspondence art to the Fales Library at New York University's Downtown Collection.
Stephanie Nuria Sabato artist, designer, teacher, Kansas City, Missouri, is an interdisciplinary designer/artist. Her work as a designer/artist has been exhibited throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia.Sabato’s work has appeared in several publications and books and has won her numerous honors and awards.She has been involved in the education of artists and designers for the past twenty-five years. She has taught at Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, University of Kansas, and the Kansas City Art Institute. Sabato is currently Chair of Graphic Design at Johnson County Community College. Stephanie holds a seat as an Executive Advisor to AIGA-KC (American Institute of Graphic Artists).Stephanie’s studies of world religions have taken her on spiritual pilgrimage throughout Europe, the Middle East and India. She was ordained as a minister in the School of Universal Worship in 1991, and assigned the post of Center Representative for the Sufi Order International also in 1991 by Pir Vilayat Inayat-Khan. In 2005 Pir-o-Murshid Hidayat Inayat-Khan assigned her to the post of Midwest Regional Representative for the Sufi Movement International. In 2006 Stephanie was appointed as a Shiraja in the School of Universal Worship for the Sufi Movement International. She has received initiations in all five schools of studies within these orders.Her first journey to India was in 1990 when she personally met and worked with Mother Teresa. In l990 she also met His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama. Since 1990 Sabato has traveled back and forth to India yearly where she studies and teaches. She has received numerous initiations and teachings personally from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Khamtrul Rinpoche, Achock Rinpoche, Ribur Rinpoche, and Rabjam Rinpoche. While living in India she is in residence at the Chime Gatsal Ling Nyingmapa Monastery in Dharamsala, India.Stephanie began teaching meditation in 1990, and has taught throughout the US, Europe, and India.In 1997 she co-founded the Jamtse Tsokpa Foundation – Tibetan American Friendship Society. The Foundation is dedicated to raising and distributing aid to suffering exiled Tibetan Refugees. Her work as co-founder and chair has received recognition by HH the Dalai Lama and in 1997 she was invited to meet with His Holiness in His personal residence in Dharamsala, India.
Mike Miller, Founder and Publisher Emeritus Review Magazine, Kansas City, Missouri. Publisher, Art Tattler, http://www.arttattler.com/ Mike Miller has worked in all phases of the publishing business for 35 years in Detroit as editor of the Southfield Eccentric, in Los Angeles as an account executive for the Los Angeles Reader, and in Kansas City as a marketing executive for the Pitch.
Fr. Patrick Eastman founded and edited Monos, a bimonthly spirituality journal in 1985 which continued under his role as spiritual director of The Monos Community until 2004. He was a regular columnist on the subject of prayer for the Eastern Oklahoma Catholic diocesan newspaper from 1984 to 1992. Father Patrick has contributed articles to a number of spirituality and monastic publications. He currently writes a regular article on Prayer and Spirituality for the Clifton Diocesan newspaper and website.Father Patrick has been a Benedictine Oblate since 1963 and is currently an Oblate of the Camaldolese Benedictines at Big Sur CA. He retains close links with several Cistercian (Trappist) communities. He was a Zen student in the Sanbokyodan lineage under Dr. Ruben Habito from 1995 and from October 2001 until March 2005 he was a formal student of the Mountain and Rivers Order under the direction of Abbot John Daido Loori Roshi at Zen Mountain Monastery. His teacher is now Fr. Robert Kennedy Roshi SJ in Jersey City who installed him as a Dharma Holder in the White Plum Asangha in June 2006Father Patrick's interests include the history and development of Christian spirituality and mysticism, contemplative prayer, the recovery of the Christian Wisdom tradition, interfaith dialogue especially with Zen Buddhism, the new science, and the writings and life of Thomas Merton and Bede Griffiths. He is a member of the International Thomas Merton Society and on the Committee of the British Section of that Society, Pax Christi and Amnesty International. His central and most important concern is to draw from the ancient Christian and Monastic tradition and teach a contemplative path to non-violence and justice.From May 2004 until October 2006 Father Patrick was Priest-in-Charge of St. Thomas of Canterbury, Fairford with St. Mary’s, Cricklade in Gloucestershire England. He has now retired from Parish Ministry but continues to serve as a member of the Clifton Diocesan Committee for the On-going Formation of Priests and he is a Committee member of the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland. He continues to provide individual Spiritual Direction and is available to conduct retreats and workshops on several spiritual topics but especially on Zen practice in a Christian context, the Eucharist, non-violence, and the writings of Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths, and Julian of Norwich.
David Goff, Ph.D., M.F.T., co-directs A Foundation for e Interdependence with his wife Cynthia McReynolds. He has served as adjunct faculty at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, where he employs large group processes to promote community and personal development. David also assists organizations, including therapeutic and spiritual communities, in their quests to create and sustain genuine community. His research into the "psychological sense of community" is the first to examine and describe the conditions which facilitate group consciousness. Additionally, he maintains a psychotherapy practice specializing in the psycho-spiritual development of individuals, couples and groups. He can be reached at http://us.f371.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=dg@4interdependence.com.
PRAXIS (Brainard Carey and Delia Bajo) had a studio in the East Village that showcased current work as well as long-term projects. Now they have a studio in Chelsea.Praxis is the name they use to describe themselves as an art and performance collaborative. Their work has been shown at The Whitney Biennial 2002, PS1/MOMA, The Reina Sofia and other venues. More information on Praxis can be found on their websiteThe handwritten, lavishly illustrated Book of Job took 14 months to complete.This handbound, 70-lb manuscript was produced under conditions similar to those of medieval monks.The Book of Job is 27"x21"x6". Bound in full cowhide, folios sewn on to 5 sets of double cords woven into the cover boards. 400 pages, 100 wax pencil drawings on black Folio paper with two deckle edges. 200 pages of text drawn with a feather quill and ink on white Folio paper. 100 paintings (portraits of Job) with sumi-e brush and india ink on Folio paper. Endpapers are pre-war Japanese woodblock printed. Unsigned, unique edition. 1997.The book of Job has been highly praised by a diverse audience including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Ross Bleckner (who commissioned a book), and the poet/priest Daniel Berrigan.Their work is in numerous public and private collections. They can be reached at mailto:praxis@twobodies.com,%20jhw@interport.net or through Colophon Page.
Dylan Mortimer, artist, minister, Kansas City, Missouri http://www.dylanmortimer.com/
Jeff Hogue, Founder of Bluelab, artist, organizer, and minister, received a BFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1995. Jeff has worked on television and film crews in Austin, Texas and Kansas City, Missouri. In 1990 Hogue created Eclectic Wear Inc. in Austin, Texas and formed a partnership with Teed Shirts a large shirt printer who printed and distributed the line nationally. In 1995 he created Next Art offering fine art commissions, high end faux finishes and special art and interior design services in the Tulsa and Kansas City areas. Jeff Hogue has shown work in a number of group and individual shows and has sold work through dealers throughout the United States. In 1998 he received a commission from Richard Harris, of Chicago, Ill. who marketed his hand colored serigraphs on plaster, canvas, and wood nationally. Jeff Hogue has developed, participated in and organized a number of performances and collaborative shows in Texas and Missouri. He was ordained as a Sufi minister in 2002 under the Murshid Khabir Kitz, leader of the Cherags in the SIRS Order.
