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

Blind Painting, or, The Canvas Game

Artists, Writers, and Persons of Interest,

This is an invitation to participate in a collaborative project and
exhibition. I've been brainstorming it as "blind painting": what it
resembles is a surrealist game (Ipupukat/ the Paper Game, a little
bit), and, while it's probably been done before, every time it's done
is vastly different depending on the participants.

Artists will contribute one of their works - we'll stick to
2-dimensional, with a maximum largest dimension of 36 inches, to keep
it simple. Writers will be assigned (randomly) one of these works to
describe as extensively as possible, as if it were to be destroyed, or
needed to be forged. Then I will give another participating artist one of these descriptions of
another artist's submitted piece, and they will attempt to replicate the artwork
from that.

There are a lot of interesting things about image and
language being tested experimentally, here. Go with it. Ultimately,
both the original works and the telephone-reproductions will be
displayed in an exhibit, accompanied by the descriptions.
This project will evolve greatly as it goes on. Clearly, I know more
artists than writers, so please pass this on to more writers. If
you're an artist, and know you're good at visual verbiage, you may
save yourself a lot of work by volunteering to be a writer. I may
change it so that it's all artists, especially if we have mostly
artists who write well. Finishing on deadline will be important for
this project, since there are two stages of difficult creative work
before the exhibition materials can even be prepared.

If you're interested in participating as an artist, reply with a jpg
of the work you'd like to include (with media, dimensions, and date),
or say you want to make something specifically for it. If you'd like
to only be a writer, reply with a short sample of observational
writing. If you think you can do both, send both. If pulling those
together is slowing you down from replying to this, then worry about
it later and just reply.

I'm hoping to have an exhibition sometime in early 2012 - March, in
New York. By default, I can hold the show at A Gathering of the
Tribes, blind guy Steve Cannon's alternative space in the East
VIllage, but if you like the idea and can provide a more accessible
space for 4-6 weeks, or somewhere to re-exhibit, I would love that,
and we should discuss it.

I've sent this call to a very diverse crowd at all career stages. The
project's ultimate form will depend on who responds. Please pass it
on, post it, and let those you think would enjoy it know. They should
contact janet@bruesselbach.com (I may set up another address if things
get too intense).
And if you'd like to be involved in planning or funding, I'd love the help.