Espoo, Finland and New York, NY - Nokia, the global leader in mobility, will be honored today by New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) at the second annual Inspiration Awards to be held in Manhattan. The award recognizes Nokia's international Connect to Art (www.nokia.com/art) program, a joint effort between the art community and Nokia, to bring art to mobile devices. The Inspiration Awards recognize individuals and organizations that have made significant achievements as artists or in support of artists. To double the achievement celebration, Nokia today added exciting new artworks to the Connect to Art collection by New York-based Brian Alfred, this year's NYFA recipient of the Artist Inspiration award. 

 

"We are extremely pleased to present the corporate Inspiration Award to Nokia for their outstanding Connect to Art program that commissions leading and emerging international artists to bring art to mobile devices," said NYFA Executive Director Theodore S. Berger.

 

Accepting the award, Eero Miettinen, Group Design Director at Nokia, expressed his gratitude to NYFA.  "I am honored that NYFA is acknowledging Nokia's efforts to connect art and mobility. The Nokia Connect to Art program is building a bridge between the artists and their audience by using the latest mobile telecommunications technology. It combines intimacy and broadest possible reach, two very fundamental components in art."

 

Fellow NYFA Inspiration Award winner, artist Brian Alfred joined the other big names in Nokia's Connect to Art with new artworks specifically designed for mobile devices. In his audiovisual works  - Moonglow, Radar, Sunset and Turbines - Alfred finds the romantics of urban landscapes, the melancholic beauty of modern structures, constructions and buildings.

 

"I am very interested in the different methods that images can be created and how many different ways these images can be experienced", Alfred explains. "Technology has enabled information to be disseminated in many new forms at an amazing pace. It's exciting to have my images experienced via these new methods and media."

 

With this latest artist addition, Connect to Art now offers artwork free of charge to Nokia mobile phone users from Brian Alfred, Louise Bourgeois, Nam June Paik, David Salle and William Wegman as well as Finnish artists Juha Hemanus, Stefan Lindfors, Osmo Rauhala and Kati Åberg.

 

Connect to Art is a new dimension of art, a joint effort between the art community and Nokia to bring art to mobile devices. The concept provides artists with new channels for their artistic expression and a unique way to reach both new and existing audiences with mobile phones as the interface, giving art lovers around the world the possibility to enjoy works of art on their mobile phones anytime anywhere. The artists currently involved with 'Connect to Art' have designed works of art specifically for mobile devices, exploring the vast possibilities of this new canvas. These audiovisual works of art are available for Nokia's latest Series 40 and Series 60 devices and can be downloaded from the 'Connect to Art' website at www.nokia.com/art.  Artworks are also accessible directly from compatible Nokia devices via mobile site www.nokia.com/art/mobile.

 

Brian Alfred works fluidly between painting, collages, digital drawing and animation. Alfred earned a masters degree of fine arts from Yale University and then went on to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.

Alfred has shown internationally and recently had his first Museum exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum.  He is the recipient of the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant and in 2005 he was awarded the New York Foundation of the Arts Inspiration Award.  His work is in such collections as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Denver Art Museum, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.   Alfred has worked extensively collaborating with electronic musicians creating and designing catalogs for which these musicians created songs in relation to the artist's work. His animations have been shown in film festivals internationally and he is represented by Mary Boone Gallery in New York City. Alfred lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

 

New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) provides more support to artists and arts organizations in all disciplines than any other private organization in the USA: nearly $7 million annually. NYFA's Fellowships are awarded to New York State artists from a field of 16 disciplines, covering the literary, media, performing, and visual arts. Small and midsized arts organizations on which artists so often depend are also supported by NYFA. Since its founding in 1971, NYFA has worked in partnership with many private and public funding sources to create groundbreaking programs that serve particular needs in the arts community, taking a leadership role in field studies and advocacy, as well as funding. NYFA's annual budget of nearly $8 million comes from individual, corporate, foundation, and public sources, as well as NYFA's fiscal sponsorship services for artists and emerging organizations.

 

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