A New Online Museum Showcases Expressions of Nervous Energy

BROOKLYN, N.Y. - Sept. 8, 2015 - PRLog -- A new online museum, The Museum of Nervous Energy (MoNE©), announced on August 25^th the launch of a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. The campaign’s mission is to raise a small amount of seed money in order to produce limited edition, archival prints which will be part of a permanent collection. These prints will allow for the transient, compostable, biodegradable, ephemeral, and fragile works of art to be preserved in the form of high quality prints, showcased in gallery spaces and sold by the artist. The campaign outlines that the money made from selling these prints will be put toward further expansion of the museum’s mission – to make art more accessible to everyone, to create works of art inexpensively and encourage others to do the same, to create a forum and a community of sharing art (amongst artists and non-artists alike).

MoNE©, which has accumulated its collection from artist-in-residence and founder Hai Knafo over the past few years launched its website this month (www.museumofnervousenergy.com). Creative submissions are encouraged, the most important criteria being that the creation comes organically from nervous energy. The museum is “dedicated to the unpremeditated, spontaneous expressions of nervous energy, which for these purposes, are defined as art”, according to its website.

An illustrator for over 30 years at The Wall Street Journal, Hai Knafo’s job was to draw realistic stipple portraits to appear alongside newspaper articles. While his day job exemplified his technical skills as an artist, his creative art exemplified his use of unique materials, making art from toothpaste cartons, old newspapers, dollar bills, and paper plates. (Earlier works of Knafo’s can be found on his personal website: www.haiknafo.com). Opposing the notion that one needs money to make good art, Knafo found ways of creating interesting images and sculptures with cheap materials and discarded items. Since retiring several years ago, Knafo, who can’t seem to stifle his creative nervous energy, has created a large and cohesive body of work, which he has shared a portion of on his new website. Hannah Yves, the museum’s managing director, writes in the Kickstarter campaign description: “He has always been able to find something beautiful, intriguing, strange, and meaningful in these discarded things, and can create something really stunning from...well...garbage.”

One gallery at MoNE© is titled “Foodscraps” and consists of photographs of works created while cooking, before sending scraps off to the compost. Another gallery, titled “Health Issues”, displays works of art using the plethora of materials Knafo obtained when in the hospital for a heart problem: Styrofoam cups, pills of various colors and shapes, and blood. The “Brooklyn Constitutional” gallery exhibits various constructions Knafo created in his walks around Brooklyn when he retired from his job at the WSJ and found himself with time on his hands. These works consist of stones, mud, fallen flowers, twigs, and other objects found in the natural environment of Brooklyn’s streets and parks. The other galleries are titled: Passing Time, Bundled, Figure Drawing, Foilage, Improvised Stress Balls in Situ., Photography, and Money Works. Each of the ten galleries has a theme and a story. Submissions from other artists are currently housed in a section of the online museum titled, “Acquisitions”.

The Museum of Nervous Energy (MoNE©) was created by Hai Knafo with the mission of making art accessible, inexpensive, and humorous. Knafo’s art tells a story of his life in the very moment the work is created. His pieces are ephemeral and transient, often thrown in the recycling or compost after being photographed. The mission of MoNE© is to disseminate these works and ideas, make them available to other artists and non-artists, and encourage people to create and share their work in a relatable and unintimidating forum. The crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter is meant to support costs associated with producing more work and creating archival prints for a more permanent museum collection.

Hannah Yves Knafo

Managing Director and Curator

The Museum of Nervous Energy (MoNE©)

917-538-0014

Hannah@haiknafo.com

www.museumofnervousenergy.com

www.haiknafo.com

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/961342254/the-museum-of-nervous-energy-mone