Art|Everywhere is back in just about 48 hours. Whew! I can't believe it's been a year already. Last year I got involved to a fairly low-key extent, but it was the catalyst for a lot of great things for Norfolk, and for me, over the rest of the year.
I'm assisting again this year, with a little more focused responsibility. I'm also excited to say I've already blogged about several of the artists already at various points in jesiowastaken's life...If you live in Norfolk, try your best to hit Granby Street up on April 30. Though the art will be up for two months afterwards if you can't make it.
Nichole Ashikis
Nicole Ashikis has been mentioned on here before, specifically when she was part of Love Looks Better in the Morning, the gallery show whose opening night I photographed back in late January. I love how she's unabashed when it comes to color and how her strokes are ragged and kind of have a controlled violence in them.
Amanda Page Stephens
I found myself helping Amanda Page with her installation yesterday and it's awesome. I (and most others, I assume) associate her with canvases--pieces you would hang on a wall. She's doing a complete 180 for Art|Everywhere that deals with mental illness and the ridiculousness of medical care/health insurance in America right now. So basically, I hot glued a bunch of pills to wire under her direction and learned a lot more than I expected to while doing it.
DAVMO
I wrote very recently about DAVMO...About how his piece remembering John Kohn is the coolest public memorial. He's so talented and I'm so stoked Harry's BBQ is going to become DAVMO's BBQ for a couple of months.
Beth Austin
Anyone who knows me (or anyone who doesn't but reads this blog) knows I love, love, love music photography and practice it myself pretty regularly. Beth Austin reminds me of myself...not stylistically, but in the sense that she's really trying to capture moments and is a real music fan and not all about the technical.
Clay McGlamory
Clay's a dude I smoke cigarettes with at Taphouse from time to time. I didn't even realize he was an artist, let alone a professional one, until a few weeks ago. Derrrr. His works are big and complicated and I don't even know where to start without sounding completely uneducated. And since I haven't seen any of his work in person, I don't want to tell lies. However, from what I've seen online, they're toweringly impressive. Glowing, glassy installations reminiscent of kaleidoscoped mosaics are never, ever a bad thing, ya know?
Lastly, here is a preview of the work done by Elyse Lovelace and Heather Bryant, called "Bird on a String." These are girls after my own heart, what with making a blog about their piece and all. I've mentioned Elyse before on jesiowastaken, but as a curator instead of an artist. She was responsible for the art show I went to in March where I fell head over heels for the work of Asa Jackson. We've also worked together on about a billion AltDaily projects over the last year, so I'm particularly partial/proud of this one.
