Beauty is an ever changing standard and can be a deciding factor in determining whether we are esteemed or outcast within a culture.

From a woman suffering with ritually bound feet in Sung dynasty China to a modern American trying to squeeze into her “skinny jeans,” or a man who spends hours every week pumping exercise machines in pursuit of six-pack abs, we feel the pressure to conform to standards of idealized beauty — standards we feel compelled to measure ourselves against. Many allow this measurement to powerfully influence their sense of self-worth.

A woman’s spirit, her sense of confidence and self-worth, may be broken by repetitive messages that tell her she isn’t good enough the way she is — poisonous messages with no higher purpose than to generate demand for self-improvement products. In this age of technology the exposure to these critical messages is nearly constant from e-mail spam, radio, television, film, and print media. Men and women have to put on mental armor every day to deflect the pointed barbs and subtle hints that we should wax away hair, lose twenty pounds, and have bigger breasts or a larger penis.

Body Politics is a major collaborative series by artists Tammy Vitale and Heather Bartlett that addresses the concepts of self-image, self-worth, and submission to standard ideals of beauty, and how these affect our perceptions of our own bodies. The series features a number of interactive pieces inviting viewer participation, and though its primary focus is women’s body images, it includes works about male body image as well.

You Want to be a Peace Dove!
People are tired of sitting around watching cable and Twittering their friends: they want to do something. People are sick of anti-peace. People want peace.
Come pander to your basest desire by embodying peace or get high off someone else’s. I’ll be taking pictures and posting them over the next month.

About Me
I am an installation artist, poet, and interested in peace. I characterize my projects—which include photography, sculpture/construction, and video in varying combinations, and usually seduce passers-by to engage in public displays of art-making for peace—as Situationalist Lite.

My work over the past few years includes Peace Kiss, For the Love of God, The Making of Abu Grab Barbi and Is that Your Hand Sticking Out of the Cage. My poetry has appeared in College English, Agni and other publications and I’ve read around town at the Black Cat, Miller Cabin, Café Muse, Artomatic and Iota. I will be reading at Artomatic at some point—stay tuned for details!

Things I know I’ll be doing this summer: making more art and co-judging FLIKinteractive, an Art Whino/Art Outlet show of new media art.

About Debbi Collins
Debbi Collins is a muralist and portrait painter from Jacksonville, FL. and she designed and painted "Peace Love Dove," the incredible triptych for "You Want to be a Peace Dove!" Her work was recently featured on "Extreme Home Makeover." You can email her at debimonde@gmail.com

Violent Marshmallows

A playground. A fort. An interactive, environmentally friendly, creative space designed to give the imagination room to roam free.

I believe that glazed ceramic pieces can become art, and functional forms can also serve as art in terms of contemporary modernity. Even though contemporary art is marking as its salient features, I believe that form and content within ceramic art already possess the contemporary values by the dichotomy between tradition and modernity, not by antagonism against tradition.
A fragile ceramic piece reveals its temporality of time and place, and symbolizes an ephemeral and vulnerable emotions and feelings. The flexibility and adjustability of my forms are relating with the openness. Those are still in-process that can be expended and reduced along with the context that the form sits.
I am fond of juxtaposing different components and styles. The juxtaposition conveys the duality of aesthetics and values. As such, the totalization within an installed form illustrates a visible consonance beyond time and space.

MockTV: YOU control the horizontal

When I was a kid, I watched well over 8 hours of TV a day.
Some shows I loved and many more I hated, but I still watched them.
At a deep and unconscious level I still live in these programs.
It seemed natural, as someone who has become obsessed with video manipulation
and interaction, to allow participants to place themselves in tiny slices of my core reality.

We put our hands up into the projector's light to cast silly shadows on the screen,
maybe even interacted with a character in the movie, hamming it up anonymously.
We watch really bad TV with friends making our own humorous soundtracks.
We want to "get back" at the TV, because we have little control over it's content
that traps our eyes even when we don't particularly want to see what it is showing us.

The installation Mocktv gives it's participants a chance to leave their mark on these old TV programs.
It is also a contest where people can vote for MockTV's top clips.

While clips are playing, simply clap to vote.

To record, simply step on stage. The screen will go black and then a clip will come on that
you will be able to step into. The clip will not be the same as the one you were watching.

If you stand still, you will disappear. Movement makes whatever moves reappear.
You can show just your hand, your head, or show your whole body depending on what you move.

The clip will repeat several times allowing you to add multiple copies of yourself or your voice.
To complete your recording, simply exit the stage area.

Above all, have fun!!

Category: Photography
A global outlook shapes my photography. Curiosity and passion for diverse people, places and culture excite and sustain me. My Midwestern roots encouraged my youthful wanderlust and sense of adventure. Travels to Calcutta, India as a twenty-something created the backdrop for a lifelong professional and personal commitment to peoples of the world. Community development in Venezuela and Peace Corps helped define me. The camera allows me to capture my passion by connecting with people and cultures of the world and bringing them a little closer!

Embracing Thoreau's mantra "...Live the life you've imagined," I take to the airways to put my digital passion into practice. Most recently, Peru and Turkey were my targets. And, ARTOMATIC 2008 becomes one of the first venues to show my work. The subjects are Turkish antiquities and culture, Turkish community life, and the people of Peru. These photographs attempt to tell the stories of their daily life and culture. Hopefully, they speak to you as they spoke to me!

This installation was inspired by my husband's Grandfather, "Sarge". When Sarge turned 60, he gave up drinking completely. He was quite a drinker, so being able to go "cold turkey" was pretty impressive. When anyone offered him a drink he would shake his head and say, "No thank you, I have had my share." When Sarge died a few years ago, I was given two coffee cans full of nails he had saved. These bottle caps are nailed into the wall using his nails. This installation is a testament to Sarge and his ability to remain steadfast and laugh at himself all the while. So, have a toast to Sarge, but don't offer him any, he's had his share.

“CATRINA”
By
Mara Odette
My Installation "Catrina" honors my ancestors in the Mexican tradition. “The Day of The Dead” is the most important holiday in Mexico. My sculpture/installation is mixed media, including papier mache, fabric, styrofoam and acrylic.

My work consists of paintings, sculptures and installations. I use different media, including oil, acrylic, water color, clay, glass, and designer cast. I like to make installations because they allow me to play with a wide range of materials.

I am a Mexican-American local artist with roots in Chiapas and Studio in Bethesda, Maryland. I have been a D.C. area artist for more than 20 yeras and have exbited widely in the D.C. metroplitan area and throught Mexico. I have paintings in numerous collections in the US and Mexico.

My next exhibit of Oil Paintings and Sculptures will be at the ORCHARD GALLERY, located at 7917 Norfolk Avenue, Bethesda, Maryland, from July 10 throughout July 30, 2008.
Please visit my Website www.maraodette.com

Duct tape is a material I have experimented with and manipulated over the years. It is designed to be useful or practical rather than attractive. For its utilitarian purpose, duct tape is used to repair ventilation ducts in the ceiling of buildings. Hidden away never to be seen.

This body of work reflects the influences of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, the Washington Color School, and Hard Edge Painting in which in this body of work I consider to be Hard Edge Sculpting.

Stripping a material to its basic fundamentals and repetition are themes of my work. Considered minimal in their manner my work is nonetheless intellectual showing a push and pull between the consciousness and sub-consciousness as I work and respond to the environment.

The color fields are a psychological use of color that eliminate recognizable imagery. The works I present and create are one unified, cohesive, monolithic image that share, at times but not always, social, political, and religious views that fall below the threshold of consciousness of the viewer. The only insight of these references that I allude to my viewers are in the narrative titles.

Bryan Rojsuontikul