24 hours of uninterrupted, noncommercial musing were created for your viewing pleasure by 35 different artists.
Artwork was displayed on the south side of the LED billboard on Interstate 195 in Richmond, VA.
In the News: Richmond Times Dispatch & (download as .pdf)ABC / WRIC TV, 2nd story "Billboard Art Project..."
ADAM SHECTER is a visual artist and educator living in New York City.
Working primarily in 2D animation, his work is greatly influenced by mythology and mass cultural forms: from cinema to Saturday morning cartoons, comic books and music.
He has had solo exhibitions of his work at Eleven Rivington Gallery (New York), Konstforeningen Aura (Lund), and Bielefelder Kunstverein (Bielefelder), among others. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2006.
In 1944 General Sueyoshi Kusaba of the Imperial Japanese Army unveiled the fūsen bakudan, a cadre of unmanned military balloons designed to autonomically traverse the Pacific jet stream and deluge the American mainland with their incendiary payloads.
Acting outside of any authority beyond that divinely granted by the selfless devotion to one's fellow man, a ragtag group of international deep-cover operatives banded together with the sole purpose of preventing the imminent calamity.
Despite being isolated behind enemy lines with limited access to equipment or intelligence, the intrepid vigilantes managed to perpetrate a series of guerrilla raids on heavily-fortified munitions camps, forcibly deploying as many crafts as possible before they could be outfitted with their lethal ordnance.
So daring were their escapades that they have largely been relegated to the status of rumor or legend; however, the results are undeniable. Of the 9000 war balloons launched, 8999 landed harmlessly. The single exception lodged itself into the verdant side of Gearhart Mountain in Bly, Oregon, where it was discovered by the pregnant wife of a pastor and five of her Sunday School students. There were no survivors.
In memory of these innocent victims and in celebration of the countless others spared through anonymous acts of heroism, the mission of the Balloon Liberation Front lives on in the peaceful advocacy of its tripartite manifesto:
Carrie Rubinstein makes sculpture and works on paper focusing on play and invented memories. She loves metal, wood, fabric, glass and wire, and her recent 3D work is built with sheets of drawing paper.
She has studied at artist James Turrell’s Roden Crater project.
She has participated in group exhibitions in California, Massachusetts and New York City, with two solo shows in Western MA.
While attending Smith College, she was selected to study art criticism with curator Thelma Golden, traveled to Prague as a Righteous Persons Foundation Fellow in Jewish Studies, and graduated with honors in studio art.
While attending Hunter College’s MFA sculpture program, she was accepted as an exchange student at L’École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Currently, she is the coordinator of the tART women’s artist collective. She also studies comedy improvisation and Latin dance.
Claire Accardo was born in Baltimore in 1978. Growing up, she lived in St. Louis and New York, eventually settling in St. Louis again after bouncing around for a bit.
While there, she graduated summa cum laude from Southern Illinois University, where she studied Metalsmithing and textile design.
She is currently an artist and jewelry designer residing in Richmond, Virginia.
Her eco-friendly jewelry line, Salvaged Love, was recently featured in Jewelry in July at the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia. You can find her now at The Highpoint Project in Richmond as well as online.
Emcee C.M., Master of None grew up in a family of six boys, played outside a lot, studied linguistics, Russian, and sculpture at Brandeis and UConn, worked at a Siberian village school for a year, and received institutional support from LMCC, IPG, CUE Art Foundation, Smack Mellon, Skowhegan, Bronx Museum, Flux Factory, and Artspace (New Haven).
Emcee C.M. is mixed up with a group called the K.I.D.S. (Kindness and Imagination Development Society).
David Morrison is the organizer of the Billboard Project. He also runs the Highpoint Project in Richmond.
David was born and raised in Savannah, GA by two carpetbaggers hailing from Long Island, New York. His list of accomplishments include eating a whole box of Ice Cream Snickers Bars in 30 minutes, adopting and caring for two mostly well behaved canines, and helping his friends whenever he can.
David hopes to one day hold down a job as a social agitant but has yet to find such a position listed in the want ads. In the mean time, if anyone is in need of tile or grout restoration he can help: GroutRx.com
Got questions about the Richmond Billboard Project? Send David an email.
As a former explorer, frustrated architect, and aspiring social examiner, Derek Coté studied at Western Washington University, and Virginia Commonwealth University where he received his BFA and MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media respectively.
He has exhibited nationally and internationally including exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Tacoma Art Museum, Art Museum of the University of Memphis, Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Scope art Fair in New York and Miami, Exit Art and Roebling Hall in New York, Marmara University in Istanbul, Marc DePuechredon Gallery in Basel, and Artwave Radio in Athens, Greece.
In addition, Derek was included in the 2007 Young Sculptors Competition, received a Professional Artist Fellowship from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Development Support Grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Tennessee Arts Commission, and will be an Artist-in-Residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in the summer of 2011.
Elaine Kaufmann is an artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
She received an MFA in Painting from Hunter College and an MA in English Literature from San Francisco State University.
Her work has been exhibited at Momenta Art, Exit Art, Schroeder Romero Gallery, Rotunda Gallery, the Center for Book Arts, the International Studio and Curatorial Program, the Bronx Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Andy Warhol Museum.
She is the recipient of an Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) residency from the Bronx Museum and an Independent Project Grant from Artists Space.
Based in Providence, Rhode Island, Greg Pennisten is a 27 year old visual artist working primarily in graphic design and illustration.
Focusing on print and digital media he hopes to reintroduce his peers to the joys of tactile art and it's potential for implementation in the digital field. Despite this being his primary area of focus he also actively engages in sculpture, photography and writing on things that don't belong to him.
He has completed no formal education program, eats poorly and has a troubled past.
Hamilton Glass is an artist native to Philadelphia, PA and currently based out of Richmond, Virginia. Before relocating to Richmond, Hamilton attended Hampton University where he obtained his Bachelor of Architecture and went on to work within numerous architecture design firms.
It’s been his journey in Richmond that has allowed Hamilton to introduce his design ideas to the city and the art community. Hamilton’s work also serves to create dialog between mainstream and underground art enthusiast. He is one of many street artists who have taken part in the on going debate as to whether graffiti belongs on a gallery wall.
Influenced by the memories and experiences with street art growing up, Hamilton Glass tries to infuse the vibe and grit of the city into each piece. What makes Hamilton work unique is the use of architectural elements within graffiti like the line work. Elements that are common within Hamilton’s work are freehand shapes executed with graffiti hand styles, along with unpredictable raw mediums and bold bright colors.
The nature of Hamilton’s work thrives with and around the city, which is why he is always seeking to make a impact with his large scale projects and murals.
Born in Washington D.C., 1942, Happy began his professional art career at age 15 as a quick sketch artist on TV, after reaching the national finals in the Disney Talent Roundup. At age 21, he studied with Raul Middleman (Maryland Art Institute, Baltimore), Gene Massin (Artist and professor, University of Miami) and Robert E. Kuhn, painter, sculptor, sire and confidant.
Artist Happy Kuhn, unconventional and versatile, has splashed and dripped his trademark from New York to California, Mexico to Canada, Brazil to Santa Domingo and on world-wide television.
His work, which he calls "play", has drawn the attention, compliments and personal responses from notable figures like Ted Kennedy, George Bush, Gerald Ford, Mort Sahl, Jim McKay (ABC Sports), Maury Povitch (Metro Media), Mickey Mantle, Sam Irving, Arlo Guthrie and many others.
James Sham was born in Canada but has been based in the United States since 2001. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Sculpture in 2008.
Taking a variety of forms, his work includes elements of performance, video, photography and sculpture. Common themes in his work involve translation, cultural displacement and alternative collaborative systems.
He is currently based in Houston, TX.
Jesse Robinson’s studio practice primarily involves working with sculpture, photography, and video.
He has had solo/two person exhibitions at Showcave, Los Angeles, CA Lawndale Art Center in Houston, TX, and Reference Gallery, Richmond, VA. Group exhibitions include Area Lugar de Proyectos, Caguas, Puerto Rico, Kim Foster Gallery, New York, NY, Fine Art Gallery, California State University, Los Angeles, and Gallery 533, Los Angeles, CA.
Jesse’s awards and honors include the Presidential Scholarship and Fanny B. Thalheimer Scholarship, UCLA and VCU Project Grants.
Jesse earned a BA in Fine Art from UCLA in 2005 and an MFA in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2008.
Jesse currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Born in Jamaica, West Indies and raised in Miami, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow received a BFA at the New World School of the Arts, Miami in 1996. In 2005 she attained an MFA from Hunter College, New York City.
Her work has been exhibited at numerous venues including Exit Art (NYC), Rush Arts Gallery (NYC), Amelie A. Wallace Gallery at SUNY Old Westbury College (NY), Scope Art Fair (FL), was featured in ‘Queens International 4’ at the Queens Museum of Art (NY) and recently represented the USA in the “10th Open International Performance Art Festival” at Open Contemporary Art Center in Beijing, China. She is also a Rema Hort Mann Award nominee.
Through a feminine perspective Lyn-Kee-Chow uses allegories to navigate issues of the body, desire, and nature while weaving in humor, absurdity, and familiar objects.
She lives and works in Queens, New York.
John Henry Blatter currently resides in Richmond where he maintains a studio, runs the publication 'Daily Constitutional' and teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Blatter's audio and video installations have been exhibited in New York, Miami, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Omaha, Pittsburg as well as internationally in British Columbia, Basel and Istanbul.
Kim Beck grew up in Colorado and lives and works in Pittsburgh and New York.
She has exhibited at the Walker Art Center, the Carnegie Museum of Art, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and Socrates Sculpture Park and is developing a new project for the High Line in NYC.
She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, International Studio & Curatorial Program, Cité Internationale des Arts, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program.
She has received awards from ARS Electronica, the Pollock-Krasner, Thomas J. Watson and the Printed Matter Emerging Artist Publishing grant.
She received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and BA from Brandeis University, and teaches at Carnegie Mellon.
Kimberly Witham was born and raised in Wakefield, Rhode Island.
She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography from the University of Massachusetts and her Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History and Women's Studies from Duke University.
Her photographs are strongly influenced by her studies in Art History and her interest in the natural world.
Her work has been exhibited at venues including the Jersey City Museum (Jersey City, NJ), Chashama ABC (New York, NY), The Light Factory (Charlotte, NC) and The Houston Center for Photography (Houston, TX). Images from her series Transcendence were recently featured in a solo exhibition at the New Bedford Art Museum in New Bedford, MA.
Kimberly is an Assistant Professor at Bucks County Community College where she teaches both photography and art history courses.
Lee Hunter is a multi-media artist based in Oakland, CA with an emphasis on photography & video, although this could be subject to change.
Hunter enjoys urban exploration, reading more science fiction novels than can possibly be healthy, and living in the marine layer of the Bay Area.
Born in Manila, Philippines, Maria Dumlao currently lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.
Her art has been exhibited and screened in Art in General and Momenta Art Gallery in NYC, The Contemporary Museum in Hawaii and internationally in Utrecht, Barcelona, Vancouver, London, Madrid, Berlin, and Tokyo.
Dumlao has been awarded two residencies at Experimental Television Center in Owego, NY, and AIRtime residency at free103point9’s Wave Farm in Acra, NY and was most recently selected as a finalist for Public Art Fund's In The Public Realm.
She received an MFA from Hunter College in 2003 and currently teaches at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, PA.
Dumlao also works collaboratively with artists Elaine Kaufmann, Danielle Mysliwiec, and Anne Polashenski as Brainstormers, with whom she has performed at Brooklyn Museum of Art, outside of both PS1 and the Armory Show and collaborated with the Guerrilla Girls for a project featured at the Bronx Museum of Art.
They have co-written and co-published articles and photo essays in Women’s Studies Quarterly and Women & Environments International Magazine, as well as artists books funded by a grant from The Puffin Foundation.
Brainstormers’ video received an Official Selection award for the 41st BAC International Film and Video Festival.
Dumlao is currently a member of Little Berlin, an artist-run collective and an undefined exhibition space, in Philadelphia.
Melissa Cowper-Smith was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1979. She studied art at the University of Victoria in British Columbia before moving to New York City to complete an MFA at Hunter College.
In 2001 she received the Helen Pitt Award (Vancouver Foundation) and in 2005 she was awarded the Carolyn David Horowitz Fund (Hunter College).
She is a founding member of tART, an all female art-collective, and has exhibited her work regularly in tART salon exhibitions. Her work has been shown in many galleries and in public installations and was most recently included in t.A.R.T: What's in a Collective at the A.I.R. Gallery.
Melissa teaches Digital Art and the Philosophy of Art at Adelphi University.
In March of 2004, while attending Virginia Commonwealth University, Mickael Broth was arrested for painting the word “REFUSE” across a railroad bridge that spanned six lanes of traffic over I-295, just outside of Richmond. He spent ten months in jail and the Virginia General Assembly passed new anti-graffiti legislation in response to his arrest.
He developed his current drawing style during the time he was incarcerated.
Since his release, Mickael has continued exploring the drawing style he developed in jail and has shown work in Virginia, North Carolina, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York City over the past few years.
In February of 2008, he was awarded a prestigious Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship and ironically, was invited to the Virginia General Assembly to be honored as a valued member of the community.
He currently lives, works, and skateboards in Richmond Virginia with his wife, Brionna and dog, Chance.
Monica Carrier is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY.
She received her BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in 2002 and her MFA from Hunter College in 2007.
While at Hunter she received the William Graf Travel Grant for an independent study of art and architecture throughout India. She was an A.I.R. Gallery 2008-09 Emerging Artist Fellowship recipient and subsequently had a solo show at A.I.R.'s Fellowship Gallery in NYC in 2009.
She exhibits regularly in NYC and has also shown internationally. Her work has been featured in a number of publications, most recently in LIC Magazine.
She is also an active member of the tART artists' collective and shares a home and a studio with her amazing family.
Nico was born in Toronto, Ontario and has been slowly moving her way south ever since. Currently based in Richmond, Virginia, Nico traffics in the notions of pop culture reference and the lowbrow aesthetic.
She has been studying art for 14 years in varying institutions, attaining a BFA in painting and ceramics from SUNY Cortland in 2005.
She has had work included in such institutions as the MASS MOCA, Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, Tyler Gallery, Beard Gallery, and the nefarious Luckys in Cortland New York.
You may reach Nico by her e-mail of cathcart_n@yahoo.com or facebook.
Nicole Tschampel is a visual artist living and working in New York City.
She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summer of 2001 and received her Masters degree in Combined Media from Hunter College in the spring of 2005 where she currently teaches.
Her sculptural works and videos have been included in multiple national and international exhibitions most recently Feel Good, Feel Bad Boys and Girls, at Lange Gasse 28, in Augsburg, Germany, Painting 2008, at The Gallery Project, Ann Arbor, Michigan and most recently Queens International 4 at The Queens Museum of Art in Flushing, Queens.
Through re-photographing, painting, cropping and collaging images lifted from mass media, Rachael Gorchov reframes these ubiquitous and disposable images, bringing their seemingly insignificant details to center stage. Through doing this, she creates an environment to stop and closely observe the elements that construct these images in order to commune with a representation of American’s collective dreams, influences and daily life.
She currently works and lives in New York City.
Richard Humann is a contemporary conceptual American artist.
He lives and works in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and has received national and international attention and was chosen for inclusion in the 2003 Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy.
Other major exhibits include DIA Art Foundation, New York, NY; Tampere Art Museum, Tampere, Finland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sonoma, CA; Museo Cristóbal Gabarrón, Murcia, Spain; Lance Fung Gallery, New York, NY; Gallery St. Gertrud Malmo, Sweden; Leo Kamen Gallery, Toronto, Canada; Project Row Houses, Houston, TX; Gasworks Gallery, London, England; Kemi Art Museum, Kemi, Finland; Planet Art Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa; Samzie Space, Seoul, Korea; Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York, NY; Voorkamer Gallery, Lier, Belgium; and Corridor Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland.
His work has appeared and been reviewed in the following publications: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, Dwell, New York Arts, ArtReview, The New Yorker, Sculpture, American Craft, Flash Art, Artforum and Art in America. Richard has received awards from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Brooklyn Arts Council.
A visual artist who creates re-constructed imagery of architecture and landscape, using photography, time-lapse and video animation, Rob Carter received his BFA from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (Oxford, 1998). In August 2000 he relocated to New York to attend Hunter College, receiving his MFA in 2003.
Since then he has exhibited his work in numerous locations in Europe and North America. In May 2008 he opened a solo exhibition in Madrid and a second in October at the Pastificio Cerere, Rome. In the same year he attended the Art Omi Residency, became a West Prize finalist, and was awarded a Marie Walsh Sharpe studio space. The following year he premiered a new video at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and mounted his first US based solo show in Chicago at Ebersmoore gallery.
In 2010 he is working on an Art In General New Commission (opening in 2011), will exhibit his work at the ICA in Philadelphia, the Oslo Screen Festival, Ramis Barquet Gallery and the ‘Bruce Silverstein Photography Annual’ in New York, plus take part in a two-month residency in Krems, Austria.
Rosemary Williams is a multimedia artist whose work frames the ambiguous or paradoxical realities of contemporary society through an exploration of the overlooked aspects of our everyday life.
Rosemary has worked often with corporate subject matter, as well as that of consumption, most notably in her 2008 work “Supermarket,” and her 2004 video work “CEO Views.”
Other recent projects include her 2006 sculpture “The Wall of Mall” built from shopping bags from the Mall of America, and its companion podcast, “Rosemary Goes to the Mall.”
Rosemary’s work includes video and audio works, sculptural installation, digital photography, and performance.
Rosemary’s work is exhibited regularly in New York City, and has also been shown recently in galleries in London, Minneapolis, and the Czech Republic, with a recent project in Berlin. She was a Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Fellow in Visual Arts for 2007-8. She has an upcoming solo show at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis in December 2010.
Rosemary’s work has been profiled in the New York Times Magazine, the Times of London, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and she has appeared on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation and Minnesota Public Radio’s All Things Considered.
Rosemary received her MFA in Combined Media from Hunter College, City University of New York, and is currently Associate Professor of Integrated Media in the Art Department at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Sam Ekwurtzel received his BFA from the University of Hartford (2006) and his MFA from Columbia University (2010).
Ekwurtzel has exhibited at venues including Smack Mellon, New York; LeRoy Neiman Gallery, New York; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; Real Art Ways, Hartford; and Art-St-Urban, Switzerland.
His work has been written about in the New York Times, Sculpture, and The New Yorker.
He has participated in residencies including The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2007), and the International Sculpture Center Swiss Residency (2007). He has been given awards from Sculpture Magazine and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism.
Sarah has been included in several publications detailing her works. She has presented book/journal projects internationally and worked with many forms of publication as a special project artist.
Her work has shown through out the country in several galleries and centers including the Rochester Contemporary Art Center and the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Sarah Rebekah Byrd Mizer currently lives and works in Richmond Virginia where she is the Assistant Coordinator for the Art Foundation Program at Virginia Commonwealth University.
She received her MFA in glass from Virginia Commonwealth University and her BFA from Alfred University.
Stephen lived and worked in Richmond for the past 5 years while a student at VCU. Currently lives in New Haven, CT attending Yale as a graduate candidate in sculpture.
Sterling Martin hails from the small town of Davidson, North Carolina. He was always drawing pictures as a child, but gave it up during high school to concentrate on theatre. In 1999, he graduated with honors and a double major in Theatre and English at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington.
After school, Sterling co-founded The Other Side, a comedy troupe he would work with for four years before moving to Chicago to further his career in 2003.
During those first few years in the city, Sterling started drawing again for fun, and he created a cartoon called Fleas on Flick (his first comic strip ever.) Sterling played with the cartoon as a hobby over the next several years, and finally decided to share the strip on the web in April of 2009.
He created a second comic in 2008 while he was playing a character named Stewart Filbert in an improvised independent film, Off the Cuff. Sterling’s character in the film drew a terrible comic about oranges, so as a joke, Sterling started a blog as the character called Oranges are Funny. The orange cartoons became a favorite among Sterling’s friends, so in February 2010, Sterling started posting Oranges are Funny on Comicssherpa.com.
Since going public, Fleas on Flick has been a quarter finalist in the international Comic Strip Super Star contest in 2009, and Oranges are Funny has been published in an independent New York City newspaper, Coffee Talk.
Sterling currently lives in Chicago where he is proud to be an instructor of improv and comedy writing at the world famous Second City Theater.
Tim Bearse is from Tiverton Rhode Island, where he spent his formative years drawing pictures, skateboarding and constructing various edifices.
His current work extends the tradition of fetishing modern materials (such as cement), in a subcultural idiom.
A graduate from the VCU Sculpture Program in 2010 he now lives and works in Richmond, VA. Group affiliations include: Massart, Cardinal Sins, and 5.9.
Tim Goad is a native Virginian. With a B.A. in Philosophy from Lynchburg College, Tim studied Architecture at Virginia Tech, then K-5 Instruction at Radford University. He taught kindergarten in the Roanoke City Public Schools before moving to Richmond in 2001. Soon he discovered "by happy accident" the world of fabrics and quilting. Now his best days are spent at the cutting table and sewing machine, in a sea of fabrics, yarns, and jazz.
Tim's work is currently on display at The Highpoint Project. He shows annually at First Unitarian's "Gallery" and the Fredericksburg Lion Club's Wine & Art Show.
Top Changtrakul is a Thai contemporary artist and educator. He received his BFA in Sculpture from the University of San Francisco, California, and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Top's works have been shown at the 50th Venice Biennale, and in galleries in Lapland, Indonesia, Korea, as well as many galleries across the Unities States. Solo exhibitions were held at the Whitespace Gallery, Bangkok, H Gallery Bangkok, and in New York's Lance Fung Gallery.
Reviews have appeared in Art4AD, Art in America, Art Forum, the New York Times, Time Out Magazine, Lapin Lansa, and the Bangkok Post.