Teleportraiture

(FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 4/9/2012)
by Janet Bruesselbach
teleportraiture.com
Exhibition May 18-31, 2012
Opening Reception Friday, May 18^th, 7-9pm
Space Womb Gallery
22-48 Jackson Ave.
Long Island City, NY 11101

Teleportraiture is a series of small, intimate oil portraits, painted from live poses, by remote video chat, via Skype, Google Hangout, or iChat. Janet Bruesselbach launched Teleportraiture in 2011 as a Kickstarter campaign.  The subject of each portrait is a backer of the campaign, or a loved one volunteered by the backer.

Janet is pleased to announce that the 45 resulting paintings, completed between October 2011 and February 2012, will be displayed in a 2-week gallery exhibition in New York City, in downtown Long Island City, to be more precise.  Attendance at the opening reception on Friday, May 18^th, will also be possible remotely through a simultaneous online video chat.

The pricing and experimentalism of the series made the fine art portrait experience open to people who had never before considered commissioning one. The subjects include the artist’s friends and relatives as well as people met only through the campaign, and only online.  Some posed from the other side of the world, others from the same room, all framed by their computer screens. The ages of subjects ranged from under a year old to septuagenarian.  Many subjects had never used video chat before.  The project reflects a moment when a flexible technology is still finding its social niche.

Janet has been working as a portrait artist since she was 15, and was further trained at RISD and the New York Academy of Art.  Her painting is traditional but fresh and lively, and feeds on the energy of interaction with a live subject.  Paintings reflect on both the artist’s personality and her subjects’.  Yet as artifacts of sittings, they are not quite realistic, and often contain traces of awkwardness in every level of communication.

Some of the portraits remain available for purchase, as are a limited number of catalogs.  The artist will be working in the gallery and will be available for live video chat Monday (21, 29), Tuesday (22, 30), and Thursday (24), from 12-6pm EST.  The gallery is also open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 12-6pm.  To commission a portrait during this or another time, to schedule a viewing, and for any other inquiries, contact: janet@bruesselbach.com (310) 617-3366

Download as pdf

Letter from Steve: Repossession of property at 285 E 3rd St.

A Gathering of the Tribes

(where I'm doing my first solo show next month)


Say folks,

Here's the situation, read it and weep: NY Times Article

Because of the situation I find myself in, and I'm certainly not going to get my eyesight back anytime soon, I need your help.

Since selling this building to Lorraine Zhang, I have found that she has no idea how to manage this property here in NYC.  She seems to have found herself in an awful lot of debt.  

With your help, I was hoping you might know anyone with deep pockets or charitable organizations that might help me with repossessing the building to place it under new management.  

I've owned the building for over 40 years and in the process, lost my eyesight, and currently have nobody around to manage the property.  I'll need someone to manage the property properly.

If you know anyone that might be able to help with this current crisis here, please forward this email to them.

For the last 20 years, for the most part I, Steve Cannon, have been financing Tribes myself.  2/3 on my own, and 1/3 funding

The total loss in running Tribes since opening is well over a million dollars, if not more.  Since Lorraine has proven incapable of keeping up with the bills of the property (tax, mortgage, bills, etc.), she finds that she's had to put it on the market.

What I'd like to do is to rent the other spaces out to artists.  Have them pay a maintenance fee...  And find a philanthropist or charity to pay off the mortgage.  I need your help in this search and if you know someone who can help, let me know. The discrepancy between rich and poor is ever widening in the nation, and artists are among the people who suffer most. For over 20 years, Tribes has sought to help emergent and established artists pursue their calling in the arts, and I should like to keep it that way.

If you have any questions, please give me a call:  212-674-8262

Please read the article line by line carefully.

And here's another article to consider as well:

Create an East Village Dream House by Evicting a Local Legend

For more info about Tribes, check out www.tribes.org. We're also on Flickr, Youtube, Twitter and Facebook.   

Love you madly,
Steve