TEDxSomerville will be featuring work from a variety of local artists. Below is information on each artist.

 

Resa Blatman

Resa Blatman received her MFA in painting from Boston University in 2006, and her BFA in graphic design from MassArt in 1995. Resa has been teaching graphic design at MassArt since 1997. In October 2011, Resa exhibited “Ultimate Whorl,” at Ellen Miller Gallery, and her work received high praise from the The Boston Globe and Art New England. She is the recipient of several grants, and her work is featured in several magazines and journals, most recently, Abstraks, March 2012 and The U.K.’s Aesthetica Creative Works Annual, 2011. Resa will be exhibiting in “Landscape Remade,” at Northeastern University’s Gallery 360, in October 2012.

Ilana Krepchin

Ilana Krepchin received her BA from Hampshire college in Photography and Anthropology, and has extensive training in jewelry making from a number of venues including the Decordova Museum. Post-college she ran teen photography programs as the Associate Director of a small non-profit arts collaborative. During that period, she also took jewelry making classes at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education and Metalwerx. She later immersed herself in world of jewelry production and craft shows, working as a studio manager and production assistant for an established jeweler before finally going out on her own.

Emily Garfield

Emily Garfield creates intricate maps of imaginary places that explore the origins of cities and the function of maps themselves. She received her BA in Visual Arts from Brown University, where she also pursued studies in the brain’s response to art and aesthetic beauty through the Cognitive Science department. She has participated in exhibitions throughout the greater Boston area as well as New York and Philadelphia. Her work is in the collection of the Kamm Teapot Foundation as well as numerous private collections.

New American Public Art

New American Public Art is a collaborative of artists, engineers, programmers and community groups with the goal of developing interactive, responsive, and beautiful public art. Their method of development is always contextual. The existing physical and social aspects of a space are integral to the work or installation in that space.

Paul Endres

Paul received his M.F.A from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2011. Fascinated by the fictional nature of human history and how it is perpetuated, Paul’s work is dedicated to commemorating the events of The American Burden, a fictitious catastrophe of his own creation. Paul is currently teaching figure painting as a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the SMFA, as well as an instructor at the Essex Art Center in Lawrence, MA. In 2012 Paul has shown his work at La Montagne Gallery and was the recipient of an artist grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Raul Gonzalez

Raul Gonzalez was born in El Paso, Texas. In 2011 Beautiful/Decay awarded him a Wet Paint Grant. In 2009 Gonzalez received an award from the Artadia Foundation. His work has been exhibited widely in the northeast including The Drawing Center in New York, the Aidekman Gallery at Tufts University in Medford, MA and The Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts in Boston, Ogunquit Museum of American Art as well as on the west coast at SCION Installation, San Francisco Art Institute and Self-Help Graphics in Los Angeles. He is represented by Carroll and Sons, Boston.

Yassy Goldie

Yassy Goldie is the Master Representative of GJYD. GJYD attempts to shed light on issues and create social change. GJYD is the manipulation of ideas and emotions in order to shift focus onto otherwise hidden agendas or social injustices. Using elements of truth, irony, humor and satire, GJYD is meant to target closed-mindedness, prejudice, hatred and unquestioning thinking. GJYD deconstructs the status quo. GJYD attacks the misuse of power by media, government, business and religion. GJYD is a smoke and mirror illusion that can change people’s perceptions and make them realize that most of their reality is–smoke and mirrors.

Katherine Vetne

Katherine Vetne creates intensely pedantic, process-driven work as an attempt to explore and explain her place in a restrictive, rule-based culture. She received her B.A. from Boston University’s College of Fine Arts and has pursued additional education at the Art Institute of Boston and Lesley University. She has exhibited in and around the Boston area and organizes the Somerville Critique Group, an artist collaborative that offers a platform for feedback, collaboration, and networking within the greater Somerville artistic community.

Ariel Freiberg

Ariel Freiberg earned her MFA in painting from Boston University in 2004 and a BA from Smith College in 2002. She is a recent recipient of a Visual Arts Fellowship from the Somerville Arts Council. Ariel has been a visiting artist at Harvard University and Smith College and has taught painting, drawing and printmaking at Bunker Hill and Northern Essex Community Colleges for the past five years. She has exhibited locally and internationally, such as at the Tufts Art Gallery and the Art Center in the Republic of Macedonia. Ariel works in her art studio at the Vernon Street Studios in Somerville.

Dave Ortega

Originally from El Paso, Dave Ortega draws and paints while living and working in Somerville. He has exhibited in New York and Boston and frequently publishes comics and zines. His most recent work is a limited edition newsprint comic based on his grandmother’s experiences during the Mexican Revolution. Dave recently received a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Gretchen Graham

Graham seeks to communicate the essence of Place in her work. Beginning with the writing and photography programs at Wesleyan University’s Center for Creative Youth in high school, Graham continued to take formal classes in photography and darkroom technique throughout college. Upon graduating from New England College (NH) she moved to Washington DC, where she assisted a studio photographer for three years, gaining experience in studio and darkroom management, and lighting technique. Primarily a black & white film-based darkroom photographer, Graham has been an active and exhibiting member of The Washington Street Art Center since 2008.

Jodi Colella

Jodi Colella is a mixed media sculptor who creates abstractions of natural forms, transforming ordinary materials into the unexpected.She received a BA from Boston University and studied at Massachusetts College of Art and School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her work is in many private collections as well as many national exhibitions. She has been featured in BU Today, 500 Felt Objects by Lark Publications, Making the Art Seen and World of Threads; and is a recipient of a 2012 Somerville Arts Council Fellowship Award. Jodi will be exhibiting at the Fiber2012 Biennial in Philadelphia this March and a solo show at NK Gallery Boston this June.

Brian Hart

Brian Hart graduated from RISD with a BA in Printmaking in 2005 and has been living in Somerville ever since. His work relies heavily on appropriating imagery from a range of sources and is aesthetically influenced by both his background in printmaking and the digital tools he uses to create his paintings and drawings. Brian’s work has been shown locally around Boston, Cambridge and Somerville but also in places as diverse as Vienna, Manilla, New York and Philadelphia and featured in Beautiful/Decay magazine. He now shares space in Fringe, a collaborative work space and studio located in the heart of Union Square.

Chris Yeager

Chris Yeager is originally from New York City. He began his photographic journey in the 1970’s at The University of New Mexico, in the classes of renowned photo historian Beaumont Newhall. He lived and worked in New Mexico, Austin, and Japan before settling in the Boston area in 1990 to take a full time job in the technology sector. Always photographing as a sideline, Chris has been drawn to making both environmental and studio portraits of individuals in musical subcultures. Since 2009 he has been doing “outdoor studio” portraits of players in Somerville’s annual Honk! Festival of alternative marching bands.

Kim Blodgett

Kim Blodgett grew up on the outskirts of a small town in Vermont, a 7-mile dirt road drive. Her grandmother, an Abenaki Indian, raised her. After turning 18, Kim traveled throughout the US, moving over 55 times before making Somerville, MA home. She attended Boston University where she received her BFA in Painting with a minor in Moral and Political Philosophy, received a Post-Baccalaureate from Brandeis University, and earned her MFA in Visual Art from the Rhode Island School of Design. Kim’s work tackles issues of vulnerability, mistakes, and notions of balance between self and the other.

Rachel Mello

I find myself increasingly sensitive to the interdependence of very separate lives; to differences between us that are simultaneously superficial and profound. Through my cut-silhouette grounds and their painted surface imagery, I’m working on pulling these personal landscapes out to the surface and making connections.” Rachel Mello lives and works in Somerville, MA, using traditional painting and printmaking techniques to explore the contemporary world.

Ben Foley

Ben Foley’s concepts in sculpture are based in the idea of challenging viewers perception of the space they occupy. He uses industrial materials, including panels of clear and mirrored plate glass, kinetic armatures of wood, steel and aluminum, mechanical motors and electric devices to control his main medium: light. Graduating from Colorado College in 2009 with a BA in sculpture, Ben focused architecture, drafting, and technical drawing, which plays a large roll in is current work. Showing on the east coast and formerly Colorado, his work was recently accepted to the collisionCollective annual show at the Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media in Boston.

Jeremy Fryer-Biggs

Jeremy Fryer-Biggs works as an artist and product designer in Somervile. He is interested in creating visually striking, seemingly precarious furniture using an array of modern manufacturing techniques. Jeremy graduated from University of Chicago in 2007 with degrees on Biology and Sculpture and from Tufts University with a Masters in Biomedical Engineering in 2010. He owns Protivent L.L.C, a product development firm, specializing in prototyping for companies in the consumer goods, automotive and medical device sectors. He is also a founder of Strivers Foundation, a registered 501(c)3 charity focused on assisting entrepreneurial youth in Sub-Saharan Africa launch innovative businesses.

Pauline Lim

Somerville artist Pauline Lim created the Geocaching Urban Shrines project for a 2011 Somerville Arts Council grant. She created and hid 9 secular shrines all over Somerville; each is located near some kind of treat. You can find the GPS coordinates at www.paulinelim.net to hunt them down yourself. Pauline’s work is inspired by medieval religious art where images were naïve and somewhat cartoonish but still earnest. Born in Clarinda, Iowa, 1966; graduated Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, 1984; graduated A.B. magna cum laude Harvard College 1988. Lives in the Brickbottom Artists Building. She has exhibited domestically and abroad since 1989.

Lee Kilpatrick

Hailing from the small town of Houlton, Maine, Lee Kilpatrick might best be described as a candid fine art documentary portrait photographer. He often photographs subjects who are neither conscious of the camera nor themselves. His shots of empty rooms are also portraits — they just happen to feature zero people. Lee uses both digital and film, and conventional formats as well as panoramic. He is the director of the Washington Street Art Center, near Union Square in Somerville.

Geoff Hargadon

Geoff Hargadon is a conceptual artist and photographer from Somerville. His current project, “Cash For Your Warhol,” was the subject of a solo show at Monserrat College of Art in 2010. Since then his work has been exhibited in Miami, London, Los Angeles, and Boston. His photographs have appeared in various books and publications. Hargadon is also the creator of “The Somerville Gates” (2005).

David Marshall

David Marshall is an all-around creative artist. By day he’s a web designer, developer and illustrator for a Boston software company. At nights he writes, draws and teaches comic book art. His web comic Inky Stories is a collection of short stories; genres include satire, adventure, horror, romance, crime and science fiction. He’s been published by Fantagraphics Books, SpiderBaby Graphix and most recently The Boston Comics Roundtable. Art of the Comic Book is his college-level studio workshop for making comics with traditional ink-on-paper media. Marshall participates in gallery exhibits, lectures, convention panels and gives free comics media demonstrations through Somerville comic book stores.

Kelly Creedon

Kelly Creedon believes in the power of image and sound to move people and create social change. As a documentary photographer and multimedia photographer, she creates intimate portraits of her subjects, looking to shed light
on moments of personal struggle and transformation that illuminate larger social issues. She is the creator of the on-going project We Shall Not Be Moved that documents the growing grassroots struggle against foreclosure and displacement in Massachusetts. In addition to housing struggles, she has covered a variety of issues including labor rights and immigration, and actively partners with local nonprofits and community groups.

Danielle Krcmar

Danielle Krcmar received her MFA from UMASS Amherst and her BFA in Sculpture from SUNY Binghamton. She has won grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Fondation, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Blanche Colman Foundation. She has shown her work at The Fuller Art Museum, The Art Complex Museum, The Gallery at Green Street, and other galleries in New England and New York. Her work has been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, and Arts Media. She has taught at Brandeis University, and Clark University, and The Museum School. Currently, she is Artist in Residence at Babson College.

Meg Birnbaum

Meg Birnbaum is a photographer & graphic designer. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston & the Lishui Museum of Photography in Lishui, China. She has had solo exhibitions at Gallery Tanto Tempo in Kobe, Japan, The Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, NY, The Griffin Museum of Photography & the Cordon/Potts Gallery in San Francisco. Her current project ‘person/persona’, explores the creation of alter egos & the transformative power of costume-wearing.

Lara Adrienne

My name is Lara and I have been handcrafting jewelry since I was only ten years old. Back then, the sale of a $2 pair of earrings was a thrill. I officially turned my hobby into a business as a high school project, and in 2011, I quit my job to craft jewelry fully time. I spend a lot of time hand-picking the gemstones I use in my pieces. Over the years I have learned to select only the highest quality materials and gemstones and to create works of art that I am proud to share with my customers.

Kristin Breiseth

Kristin Breiseth received her BA from Dartmouth College and her BFA from the California College of the Arts. Exploring movement and mark, her work is concerned with issues of narrative and the collaboration between artist and viewer. Can an artist produce work that is solely about feeling or formal concerns of rhythm, pattern or color, or will the viewer’s participation always conjure a memory and find a story? Kristin’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and is in numerous private and corporate collections. She currently works out of the Joy Street Studios in Somerville.