* ART STAR *

Public Art Unveiling and Reception

2010-09-01T23:27:00.000-07:00

MainStateVentures to Unveil Artwork of Third Finalist in Inaugural Public Art Competition.

Artist Kelly Bigelow Becerra to be featured

Public reception to follow

MainStateVentures will present the third finalist in their 1st Annual Art Competition and unveil the original work to be on exhibit on Thursday, September 2 at 6:00 PM. Kelly Bigelow Becerra, a Bridgeport resident, will be on hand to discuss her work. The piece will be on display outside on Broad Street across from the Burroughs-Saden Library (925 Broad Street) in downtown Bridgeport through early November. She is the third in a series of six finalists selected in this inaugural competition. An artist reception will follow at Tiago's Restaurant, 211 State Street. Both events are free and open to the public.

"I am thrilled and honored to have been selected as a finalist in this competition," stated Becerra. "I believe there needs to be even more opportunities like this that showcase the talent in Bridgeport. The fact that the artwork on display changes every two months keeps it fun and interesting, and keeps people coming to downtown Bridgeport."

Becerra is a contemporary artist who uses the labor-intensive process of direct, flatbed scanning of objects and people to create a digital vocabulary. Images are created by literally placing objects in direct contact with the glass of the scanner which creates shadowy, softly modeled shapes that are oddly foreshortened. The resulting archive of imagery is used to piece together scenes from her sometimes idyllic / sometimes abusive childhood in the rural Midwest.

Becerra has recently exhibited with the Aldrich Contemporary Museum of Art, Ridgefield, Conn., Akus Gallery at Eastern Connecticut State University and other venues in the Northeast. Her work has been purchased as part of Eastern Connecticut State University's permanent collection and currently is on display in their library. Becerra has been selected to be included in the third Aldrich Undercover, featuring new works by select Aldrich alumni artists. Originally from Michigan, she is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Becerra is also a talented Filmmaker. Collaborating with her husband and fellow artist Roland Becerra, she co-wrote and co-produced their short film, "Dear Beautiful," which was chosen as an official selection for the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and was screened during the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. The Becerras are currently in production on their next film, which is scheduled for release in 2011.

In addition to Becerra, the MainStateVentures Public Art Competition finalists are: kHyal, Gus Moran, Yolanda Petrocelli, Liz Squillace, and John Lawson. A requirement of the competition is that all of the artists must reside or work in Bridgeport. The year-long exhibition will culminate in the selection of a Grand Prize winner, who will receive a $1,000 cash award and a "People's Choice" winner, who will be awarded a $250 cash prize. Awardees will be announced in early 2011.

All six finalists were chosen by a distinguished jury consisting of Robert Curcio, co-founder of the Scope International Art Fairs and Gallerist, New York City; MaryAnn Fahey, Curator and Gallerist, Umbrella Arts, New York City; Emily Larned, Professor, Graphic Design, University of Bridgeport; John Favret, Director, Housatonic Community College Art Department; and Penny Harrison, an arts consultant.

Bittersweet - my first solo exhibition

2009-01-31T13:02:00.000-08:00

I hope to see all of you at the opening!

Heres the press release :

Akus Gallery features artist Kelly Bigelow Becerra

Willimantic, Conn. –The Julian Akus Gallery at Eastern Connecticut State University presents the exhibition, “Kelly Bigelow Becerra: Bittersweet” a solo show. There will be a visiting artist lecture on February 19 at 3:00 followed by a reception from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. with a special performance by the Quiet Corner Fiddlers. The exhibition runs from January 29 through March 12.

Kelly Bigelow Becerra is a contemporary artist who uses the labor-intensive process of direct, flatbed scanning of objects and people to create a digital vocabulary. Images are created by literally placing objects in direct contact with the glass of the scanner which creates shadowy, softly modeled shapes that are oddly foreshortened. The resulting archive of imagery is used to piece together scenes from her sometimes idyllic/sometimes abusive childhood in the rural Midwest. Both the heavily patterned images and the process itself of piecing the digital works together are inspired from traditional American sampler patterns. The viewer is drawn in by the unassuming, familiar, and homey patterns and taken aback by the deeper message of a family in disarray.

Bigelow Becerra was recently awarded an Artist Fellowship Grant via the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. She has exhibited with the Rodger Lapelle Gallery, Philadelphia, PA and the Aldrich Contemporary Museum of Art, Ridgefield, CT, among other venues in the northeast. She is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In addition to being an exhibiting fine artist, Kelly Bigelow Becerra is also a filmmaker. She is the co-writer and co-producer of the short film "Dear Beautiful" which was chosen as an official selection of The Sundance Film Festival 2009. Collaborating with her partner and husband Roland Becerra (director and animator of the film) Bigelow Becerra worked as assistant director, designed the distinctive "look" of the monsters seen in the film, and co-wrote the screenplay for the animated feature length version of "Dear Beautiful", which is in production. "Dear Beautiful" was winner of the Moving Pictures Magazine Animated Short Film competition and screened during The Cannes Film Festival 2007.

New York Times review 1/2/09 of the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition Full Circle: 10 Years of Radius which features Becerra’s archival digital work

Connecticut Post review 1/9/09 of Becerra’s film “Dear Beautiful”

Becerra’s film “Dear Beautiful” is one of 96 short films selected to screen at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival

Sundance was amazing!

2009-01-26T17:52:00.000-08:00

photo credit: nathan lewis

The New York Times

2009-01-03T09:49:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has a review of the Full Circle Show in the Connecticut section...

We all know how commemorative group shows work. They don’t, for the most part, since the artworks are often hung randomly about a room. Not so with “Full Circle: Ten Years of Radius,” at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. The guest curator, Regine Basha, from Arthouse in Austin, Tex., has made a valiant effort to group works by 14 alumni of Radius, an artist development program run by the museum and the Ridgefield Guild of Artists, by medium and subject. But in the end, the show as a whole is so beautiful and thought-provoking, the arrangement doesn’t really matter.

The art is installed throughout the first few rooms of the museum’s big, open upstairs galleries. It is not under-hung, but there is certainly enough white wall around the 20 or so works, pretty much one per artist, to give you enough space to contemplate them without the faintest possibility of distraction. Two works by each participating artist might have helped to fill things out.

Given that our understanding of art has undergone tremendous upheaval in the past couple of decades, it is surprising to find so much painting in this show. It is painting, what’s more, that uses traditional art materials, mostly oil on linen, and adheres to centuries-old genres, including landscape, history painting and portraiture. It is 2009, right?

I am curious about this focus because digital technologies have radically altered how images are made and experienced. Meanwhile, our understanding of visual art has been torn from its roots in ritual and tradition and thrust into the context of mass media and cultural studies. Art today has a very different look, purpose and social position than it did a century ago, or even four decades back.

This is not to say that the work here is reactionary, for much of the painting in this show suggests a nuanced awareness of the world in which we live. For instance, Jaclyn Conley’s dramatic, skillfully painted mis-en-scènes possess a real cinematic quality, while paintings by Joseph Smolinski, Ben Weiner, Christopher Mir and Bryan Jones touch on environmental issues and concerns.

These paintings belong to our time. It is just that they look backward as much as they look forward in their ideas and influence, suggesting the possibility of a new shift toward reclaiming some of the qualities that distinguish visual art from other imagery.

Whatever the outcome of these efforts, art today is now part of a broader visual culture. This, too, is reflected in the works here — from Paul Favello’s digital photographs of appropriated war-related imagery to Kelly Bigelow Becerra’s collage prints made of scanned imagery cut and combined into pictorial vignettes that re-create memorable scenes from the artist’s childhood.

Art as a form of writing seems to lie behind much of the abstract art that is assembled for the exhibition, some of it quite good. Jim Hett’s eye-popping, odd mixed-media drawing, “They’re All the Same Except They’re All Different” (1998-2008), presents a dense accretion of colored lines slowly built up in a cumulative process over long periods of time. It is casual yet obsessive; art as daily ritual.

The same calligraphic quality underlies Beth Gilfilen’s abstract painting, “The Big Hunch” (2008), which is based on exploratory, expressionistic drawing. She paints with no fixed or prescribed ideas in mind, simply allowing the imagery to develop and unravel intuitively. The results are lyrical, colorful and fun, but also startlingly strange. They even suggest an alchemical process.

There is some video art in the show, as might be expected, but not much. “Blue Plasma” (2008) by Robert Federico magnifies simple scenes — fresh water flowing freely over a rock, the flickering of a flame — to the point of abstraction. He makes the familiar strange, a technique that also harks back to the past,specifically the early-20th-century Russian Modernist avant garde.

Perhaps it’s a symptom of the cultural moment, but on the face of many of the works assembled for this show, art seems to be heading back to the future.

See you in Park City!!

2008-12-13T22:37:00.000-08:00

DEAR BEAUTIFUL
Official Selection-2009 Sundance Film Festival

Bridgeport, CT- SoMuch Pictures announces its groundbreaking animated short film, “Dear Beautiful”, has been named an Official Selection by the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. (This year the Sundance Film Festival selected 200 films for exhibition from more than 9,000 submissions.)

Winner of the Moving Pictures Magazine Animated Short Film competition and screened at Cannes, “Dear Beautiful” has captured audiences and critics alike with its combination of haunting, jarring visuals and foreboding audial immersion. Using flash animation and stop motion animation techniques, Bridgeport-based director Roland Becerra and wife/production/writing partner Kelly Bigelow Becerra have created a unique and gripping animated horror-movie experience that extends beyond the run-of-the-mill grotesqueness of the genre and delves into the emotional impediments faced by all subjects in the film.

Synopsis:
The sudden appearance of exotic flowers in New Haven spawns an unprecedented epidemic that threatens to destroy the city. Infected people cover themselves maniacally with lotions, creams, and rags, the result of a botched experiment by cosmetics giant, V-Zone.

Paul and Lauren, a married couple, are caught between the catastrophe and their own troubled relationship. Paul has grown defeated and depressed from job frustrations and their banal existence taken its toll on Lauren as she becomes more and more isolated and he descends into alcoholism.

On her way out of the house to leave Paul, Lauren encounters one of the flowers and becomes infected. As her symptoms worsen, Paul's denial of Lauren’s illness puts the couple in grave danger as the city is overrun with infected people, media frenzy, National Guard, protesters and a panicked populace.

“Dear Beautiful” has garnered on-line acclaim and cult-status among both horror/science-fiction genre fans and critics drawn in by Becerra’s artistic, technical and storytelling styles. Ain’t It Cool News calls “Dear Beautiful”, “…an unforgettable and artful zombie experience”, while sci-fi website io9.com hails the infected characters in the short as “The World’s Most Beautiful Zombies”. In addition to Cannes, “Dear Beautiful” also screened at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, where it was awarded Bronze place in the audience choice competition.

“Dear Beautiful” represents five and a half years of tireless work between this husband and wife collaboration. Roland and Kelly Becerra moved to Bridgeport, CT as “artist pioneers” in the city’s first artist housing development, Read’s ArtSpace. There, they met and partnered with another Bridgeport husband and wife team, Keith Saunders and Meredith DiMenna, who supplied the project with the short’s distinctive music and assisted on the script.

Sundance Screening Dates and Times:

Fri. Jan 16 9:15 AM Holiday Village IV
Fri. Jan 16 4:15 PM Yarrow Hotel Theatre
Sat. Jan 17 12:30 PM Rose Wagner Center
Sun. Jan 18 11:59 PM Egyptian Theatre
Thu. Jan 22 9:00 PM Egyptian Theatre
Sat. Jan 24 3:15 PM Eccles Theatre

For More Information, contact: info@somuchpictures.com

Full Circle - at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

2008-11-24T09:16:00.000-08:00

I was selected to be part of the Full Circle: Ten Years of Radius exhibition at the Aldrich! "Grandma Whackin' Me with a Yellow Hoe" will be representing me in the exhibition - which runs through June of 2009. So, Mark your calendars and I'll see you at the opening!

The Art Agenda ...On the radio

2008-07-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

I will be live on the radio tomorrow doing an interview with Lex Leifheit on her weekly show The Art Agenda. I'll be discussing my work which is currently on display as part of the Tracing Identity show at The Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism Gallery in Hartford.

So, tune in to WESU (88.1fm), Thursday July 31 - 4:35pm—4:55pm

Live Stream - http://www.wesufm.org/...

Tracing Identity

2008-07-29T11:36:00.000-07:00

Pretty Things - review from Connecticut Art Scene

2008-06-15T09:46:00.000-07:00

AH! I love Hank Hoffman!!! ... heres an excerpt from his review of the show.

Pretty but not vacant at Artspace...

... "Kelly Bigelow Becerra also invokes folk art, in her case the samplers of middle America. It's a combination of contemporary technology and tradition with a dose of dysfunctional American Gothic. Bigelow Becerra uses a flatbed scanner to scan all the pictorial elements of her montage "Grandma Whacking Me with a Yellow Hoe." It's a real tour de force (and a little bit tour de farce). She has scanned not only blades of grass, a rose and tree leaves native to her Michigan home but also herself and her grandmother. She manages to combine the flat perspective that's at once the hallmark of folk art and the inevitable result of using a scanner with a sense of depth and distance.

The imagery of orchards and distanceless expanses of flat land convey order, bounty and a benevolent, domesticated Nature. But counterposed to this is the central conflict—the artist in young girl mode cowering as her grandma looms over her, hoe raised high to strike. Within the framework of the traditional, sometimes (often?) looms the threat of oppression. "...

Pretty Things ...opening.. and artist talk

2008-06-15T09:38:00.001-07:00

Pretty Things @ ArtSpace New Haven

2008-06-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

PRETTY THINGS: Confronting Sensuousness

Kelly Bigelow Becerra
Phyllis Bramson
Mia Brownell
Oliver Herring
Grant Lincoln Johnston
Joyce Kozloff
Cristi Rinklin
Ben Weiner
Jane Rainwater
Cheryl Yun

This exhibition seeks to explore the role of sensuousness in contemporary art and promote new discussion about the significance of materials and form in art-making, beyond the context of formalist rhetoric. Including not only work that demonstrates a direct embrace of sumptuous materials and explores traditionally “decorative” motifs, enticing textures, and rich colors, but also work that problematizes seductive aesthetics in contemporary art with conscious irony or ambivalence.

Curated by Joy Pepe

CWOS 2007

2008-06-15T09:20:00.000-07:00

From Connecticut Art Scene - Hank Hoffman

"Kelly Bigelow Becerra and Roland Becerra were in high spirits when I stopped by their room. I had met Bigelow Becerra last year when I checked out her installation "Harvest: Hidin' from the Hair Cut, Amongst the Sweet Corn." The reason for the married couple's excitement was showing in the darkened room: clips from and a trailer for their short animated art/horror film Dear Beautiful.

Dear Beautiful won Moving Pictures Magazine's Spring 2007 Short Film Award Contest in the Animation category. The award scored the couple a paid trip to the Cannes Film Festival where the short was shown.

Becerra, who received his M.F.A. from Yale in 2001 and teaches at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, used still photography, hand drawings and animated painting to create the visually unique film. What he didn't use was video. The paintings are of areas around New Haven. The photographs are of friends playing the roles of the characters in the film.

"It's a combination of scanning in the actual paintings and drawings, using stop-motion photography and compiling all those in Photoshop and using Flash and Final Cut Pro to make it move," Roland Becerra explained. "It's painting outside the computer and painting inside the computer."

Bigelow Becerra described the short as "the calling card to get into competitions: 'We can do this and this is what it will look like.'" The ultimate aim is to parlay the short into a contract to make Dear Beautiful a feature film.

The short will be featured with the other Spring 2007 Short Film Contest winners on a DVD to be included in an upcoming issue of Moving Pictures Magazine."

Dear Beautiful - at The Cannes Film Festival 2007

2008-06-15T08:03:00.000-07:00

I really need to post more often..theres so much i haven't posted info about... so many shows.. including attending The Cannes Film Festival in 2007 and showing Dear Beautiful. (click the link to view the short. )

"Keep Young & Beautiful -if you want to be loved."

2006-12-29T13:14:00.000-08:00

I cant seem to escape it.... everywhere I go I keep running into articles about the age of emerging artist and how important it is to be young.... so from here on out.. I'm officially going to be alittle younger. ;)

Is that the Word on the Street?

2006-11-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

Look Look Look - Hank Hoffman wrote about my installation on his blog "Connecticut Art Scene"

Here's the article:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Overheard conversation:
Artist's friend: "People are saying 'the little girl's room is adorable!'"
Artist: "Is that the word on the street?"
Artist's friend: "They might be referring to the girl's restroom but I don't think so!" Laughter.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The so-called "little girl's room" was Kelly Bigelow Becerra's relief paper sculpture installation aka "Harvest: Hidin' from the Hair Cut, Amongst the Sweet Corn." The installation, which looked like an old-fashioned sampler writ large, was made with scanned objects, archivally digitally printed. It also included a multi-media component, a soundtrack combining bird sounds with old time country and gospel music.

The music that was playing was "very specific: Gene Autry, early country, early gospel, the kind of thing I grew up with." Her grandparents, said Becerra, were "hardcore country."

"All my work is about my childhood growing up in the Midwest," said Becerra, who lives in the Bridgeport Artspace Building. She also has her own blog.

"I actually researched the birds" on the soundtrack, she said. "All the birds are really from Michigan."

"I think scans are more honest in some way than regular photographs," she said. "If you put your hand on the scanner, it neutralizes it all and lets me have the raw information. There are less variables, a shallow depth of field." She said she had actually scanned a tractor over the summer, part by part.

(Are scanners catching on as an artist's photographic tool? Photographer Karen Klugman, who wasn't in her room when I stopped by, also used a scanner to capture detailed images of flowers and dead bugs. A posted sign reassured viewers that the bugs were found dead, not dispatched for the glories of art.)

"When I make a composition in the computer, they are multi-layered. I can move the pieces around," said Becerra. By making sculptures rather than flat montages, she can obtain a sense of depth similar to that in Photoshop. -Hank Hoffman, "Connecticut Art Scene"

Harvest: Hidin' From the Hair cut, Amongst the Sweet Corn

2006-10-30T17:20:00.000-08:00

Kelly Bigelow Becerra
“HARVEST: HIDIN’ FROM THE HAIR CUT, AMONGST THE SWEET CORN
Paper Construction, 2006
Archival Color prints
-------------------------------
Kelly Bigelow Becerra’s digital compositions get their surreal and sometimes spooky sensibility, in part from the unusual process by which they are made. Becerra scans every single object or surface she wants to use in a composition. This includes the faces of family members, their clothing, and even the grass outside her family home. This use of a scanner as a camera allows her to combine a one-to-one truthfulness with the total artifice achieved through cutting and pasting into an image.

Her final compositions often use an organizational structure much like that of an American sampler, an art form made popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Young women stitched these small-scale compositions to demonstrate their skill, but in the process they also recorded their own histories. In these series of works, Becerra “stitches together” moments of her awkward and sometimes violent childhood in rural Michigan.

Statement from: Radius: Emerging Artist Exhibition Brochure –2005
J H, Curatorial Director,The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

Everybody's Working for the Weekend

2006-10-30T17:15:00.000-08:00

CWOS in progress shot...

... just dying to see my new work

2006-10-30T16:40:00.000-08:00

This is little thing was first in line to see my new work...
I couldn't resist taking a picture of the "dehydrated mouse/rat" that was in the hall way near my room.

In a White Room, with No Curtains...

2006-10-24T20:45:00.000-07:00

Take 1 cinder block room (unsealed), add 3 gallons of linen white paint and 1 gallon of chocolate porch & floor paint and ....

TA-DA!!

... I still have tons of work to do.

Bigger is Better

2006-10-22T18:59:00.000-07:00

((( oh yes )))

BIGGER is truly BETTER

SCALE is really EVERYTHING

Sorry to be a fountain of truisms but I'm working on one of the biggest/most complex piece's I've ever made and it is so exciting! I've been working small in my studio for sometime now (under 20"x 20") but for this installation I decided to pull-out-all-the-stops and tackle 8'3"x 9'5".

Each time another part comes out of the printer -I'm totally awe struck by the SCALE of it. So awe struck- in fact - that I had to post something about it - and shout to the masses -

(((((( IT'S ENORMOUS ))))))

Now if I :
• can just get it done by Saturday A.M.
• and somehow not run out of ink & paper or money to buy the forementioned items...

...EVERYTHING will be just GREAT!

and by GREAT - I mean HUGE!

"I hope you know that this.. will go down on your permanent record."

2006-10-11T09:53:00.000-07:00

This year I'm part of the Artist in Residence Program of CITY WIDE OPEN STUDIOS, New Haven.(Oct 28-29) This program allows - about a dozen artist (out of the 450 that are participating) the opportunity to create a site specific installation in the room of their choice. It also allows them access to the space for a month prior to the show.

The Alternative Space this year is the old abandoned Hamden Middle School, right on the edge of New Haven. It's an amazing space filled with old classrooms-complete with desks and black boards.. it even has an old cafeteria with a working conveyer belt.

While exploring on the second floor, looking for the perfect space, I saw a door marked "FACULTY LOUNGE" and had to go in. The inside was filled with old tables and -what I bet at one time were considered stylish and comfortable- lounge chairs. Overall, the space was too big for what I had in mind - then I noticed a door marked "ADULTS ONLY" in the back of the lounge. Of course I had to go in - and I'm so glad I did! There was MY ROOM.. 4 walls and skylights..not too big..not too small....PERFECT! The only catch: it was FILLED - wall to wall - with FILE CABINETS. .....Say hello to the "Records Room".

So "we" (THANK YOU ROLAND) instantly began to clear it out. The best thing yet, ( in a "glass half full" way of thinking) - was that at one time the carpet had gotten wet.. so the bottoms of the cabinets were rusted and stuck to it. So, when we moved them -they in turn pulled up the carpet for us.

After we rolled up the carpet - I remembered we had the camera with us -and took the above picture(s) - I so wish I had gotten a picture of my room filled with file cabinets.

Me + Photocopier + Kids = The Ultimate Recess

2006-10-07T13:57:00.000-07:00

Here are a few images of the 20ft collage I made with the children during my workshop at the Aldrich Contemporary Museum.This piece is currently on view in the education center of the museum.

It all started by asking the kids..."If you could do anything you wanted during recess..what would you like to do?"

And as you can see, some of their answers included...

"I want to play basketball" -"I want to play football" - "I want to go swimming" - "I just want to be by the pool" - "I want to dive off a diving board" - "I want to be a pirate" - "i want to be an Indian" - "I want to be Superman."

Special thanks to Nathan Lewis and Roland Becerra for helping assemble all the pieces that last day. I could have never finished this without their expert help.

I would also like to thank Carolina Pedraza, Museum Educator: Youth & Family Programs, for her endless support and enthusiasm as I squashed kids, grass, bark and flowers onto the copier :)

Art Daze

2006-07-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

My new piece "Grandpa's Garden,2006" currently on view at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum , part of their Art Daze Program.

I'm happy to report that I was among the artist invited to teach a summer children's workshop centered around my artistic process. It's called "Copycats and Duplicates" 20 kids+photocopy machine=life size group portrait. : )

"art = ass in studio"

2006-07-05T18:38:00.000-07:00

So, I've been working -allot lately and more than I have in a really long time. Art is WORK - yes yes "labor of love" and all that - but its work. One of my closest friends said something like " no, its play. You have to convince yourself" Well, for me it was more like trying to play with a scorned lover - the cold shoulder.. the icy glances.. and constantly punishing myself for ever leaving such a thing unattended.

So, Art is work- work -work. All the artist I know work extremely hard... well at least until they have a little success and can hire minions to help them..ohh how I want minions.. lined up like factory workers-scanning, printing and cutting. : )

On a related note... Edward Winkleman is my new hero. "Art=ass in studio" is from his insightful "Rebels and Martyrs: Or, Does Great Art Require "Artistic Temperament"?"

Here's a great quote...

"Perhaps it's the way in which society allows itself to not resent the artist too much (i.e., it's not their fault...they were born that way) for living outside the standards of working and behaving more like everyone else. The irony is that most artists I know who attain some financial success behave exactly the same way any other person with money does: buying bigger property and nicer cars, taking better vacations, investing in the stock market, etc. In other words, becoming a vital part of the very society they were supposedly rebelling against. Of course, they still get to dress down and "play" in their studios, but as with everybody else, with success comes the pressure to make compromises in order to maintain it."

okay..... back to WORK!

testing 1...2....3....

2006-06-19T22:41:00.000-07:00

this is a test ..to see if the new updates that i have installed have fixed my posting problem...

fingers crossed!

Moby, Julia Stiles, Nathan and I

2006-04-11T21:16:00.000-07:00

That’s right, you read that correctly. Recently, at the public opening of Home Coming at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum , my best pal Nathan and I were photographed while chatting. Our photo was then posted on the museums site with the likes of ... yep ... Julia Stiles and Moby.... and of course last but not least..Damian Loeb and the other talented artist showing that day including - Sarah Bostwick and Doug Wada

But see here’s the funny part, we didn’t see /notice Julia Stiles or Moby while we were at the opening - which makes this photo gallery even more novel. During the opening, we were completely caught up in waiting our turn to speak to the ART STAR, Damien Leob and bask in his coolness(BTW he was really-really cool and so down to earth).

Here’s a brief description of the day that we were there – taken from the museums website… It really was a special treat to attend the panel discussion and meet and talk with the artist in person afterwards.

Public Opening “The spring opening at The Aldrich brought more than 600 visitors to the Museum to see Homecoming and installations by Tom Burckhardt and Mary Temple. The musician Moby and actress Julia Stiles, both friends of painter Damian Loeb, were at the Museum, enjoying the spring weather and the art. All five artists were in attendance, and Mary Temple gave a walk-through of her installation Extended Afternoon. Another highlight of Sunday's festivities was the panel with the three Homecoming artists, Sarah Bostwick, Damian Loeb, and Doug Wada, moderated by Museum director Harry Philbrick. In the audience was retired Ridgefield High School art teacher Adam Salvo, who taught all three artists and is a prized Aldrich docent.”

Dress You Up in My Love

2006-04-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

I recently had THE BEST 80's themed birthday party EVER! Everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves-everyone came dressed in his or her best 80's fashion and the latter part of the party turned into- impromptu karaoke fun!

I really have to thank my friends Sam, Mike and Ryan (yes, that’s Ryan of Cultural Wasteline) They came up from NYC and shopped, decorated and…well… Basically helped me transform my place into the 80's party! It was the best gift they could have given me. : )

The other person I want to personally thank is Nathan (yes, that's Nathan, a.k.a Hobo Willson ) He came to my party in costume! He went all out heavy metal and even wore... are you ready for it... EYELINER! Best of all, he gave me a painting that I have wanted for a long time.

So here publicly- before the 5 people who read my blog - I want to thank them all!

love you guys!!!

: )

"I want it louder"

2006-03-07T23:36:00.000-08:00

...that's the title of Dave Muller’s exhibition that is currently on view at the Gladstone gallery in NYC. The show is super fantastic - a tremendous example of balance between wall painting/installation and framed work. Juxtaposing his works on paper innovatively, enhancing the wall paintings, Muller unifies all the walls of gallery into one cohesive space. Its really a great example of how to use a space and I think a must see.

Sincerely yours truly,

Totally Influenced.

Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night

2006-03-02T22:22:00.000-08:00

mixed reviews...

...not enough women artist- only 25%!

... and not "American" enough...

and yet my panties are in a knot with anticipation!

read the jerry saltz review.

Skill without Vision...

2006-01-20T22:32:00.000-08:00

" Skill without vision and innovation is only competence or proficiency. In an inverted Bushian world, where appearances pass as core, many have forgotten that every original artist redefines skill." - Jerry Saltz

heres the rest of the article. (www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/jsaltz/saltz9-14-04.asp)

i have a dream

2006-01-11T13:10:00.000-08:00

i have a dream... that i shall one day live in prosperity among my loyal followers. .....I'm sure that starting this blog is just one small step towards that dream. ; )